Free Republic

If Sarah Palin runs for president in 2012, can she win? Pundits have been buzzing about the possibility since the release of her book two weeks ago, and the itinerary and politics of her book tour suggest she hasn't ruled out a bid. Palin has said she "cannot predict what doors will be open in 2012," but can recent polling provide an answer? Can Palin Win a General Election? Ultimately, the potential for any Republican in 2012 will depend on voters' future assessments of President Obama. But even if he is vulnerable, Palin will face some huge obstacles, as the...

Yglesias opines: "I know some liberals who are excited about the prospect of a joke candidate like Sarah Palin or Dick Cheney getting the GOP nomination in 2012. Not me. The basic fact of the matter is that power tends to alternate between the two political parties. Ultimately, the nation’s interests require both parties to nominate the best people possible. So I hope the Republicans find someone who’s very smart and compelling and does an excellent job of identifying and explaining the flaws in Barack Obama’s approach. Cheney couldn’t possibly win a presidential election...unless somehow he could, in which case...

Lawmakers pressure Obama ahead of Afghanistan speechBy Jeff Mason Monday November 30, 2009 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama faces pressure from fellow Democrats, opposition Republicans and the international community even before he announces long-awaited plans on Tuesday for a big U.S. troop increase in Afghanistan. Members of both parties laid out their expectations and concerns on Sunday about the president's upcoming speech, to be broadcast live at 8 p.m. EDT on Tuesday (0100 GMT on Wednesday) from the West Point Military Academy. Obama is widely expected to say he will add some 30,000 troops to the eight-year war effort,...

... The so-called purity test is a 10-point checklist -- a suicide pact, really -- of alleged Republican positions... James Bopp Jr., chief sponsor of the resolution and a committee member from Indiana, has said that "the problem is that many conservatives have lost trust in the conservative credentials of the Republican Party." Actually, no, the problem is that many conservatives have lost faith in the ability of Republican leaders to think. The resolutions aren't so much statements of principle as dogmatic responses to complex issues that may, occasionally, require more than a Sharpie check in a little square. It's...

With a rapidly changing political atmosphere, the 36 Senate seats up for election in 2010 are drawing a big field of office seekers. But before Republicans can try their luck after eight years of Democratic gains, both parties have to settle their own internal struggles. A look at three key primaries: Florida Republican primary Aug. 24, 2010 The combatants Former state House Speaker Marco Rubio is a conservative darling and the face of a possible new generation of Republicans. He's 38, the son of Cuban immigrants and a strong retail politician. His campaign to take the seat formerly held by...

Iowa Poll: State Republicans like what they see in Sarah Palin

With so much attention being paid to Sarah Palin's book tour, the Fix decided to put our political nerd cap on -- okay, fine, we always wear it -- and go inside the numbers of where she's stopping and why. All told, the former Alaska governor is making 31 stops in 25 states. Florida will see the most of Palin (three stops), and she will make two appearances each in Texas, Ohio, Indiana and Idaho. Palin will not stop in the most populous state -- California -- or in another biggie, Illinois. She is sticking largely to Republican-friendly areas, as...

The Republican party wonders why conservatives are so disappointed with it?Another glowing example of the problems confronting the Republican party occurred yesterday.  The Senate Republicans had the opportunity to force a full reading of the Senate's proposed health care bill so that every bit of the 2,200 pages would be made public by the reading, and so the people could become much better informed about its contents before it is passed...if it is passed.  It had the opportunity to really hold the Democrats' feet to the fire over this abominable excuse for legislation that is being crammed down the throats...

(To be clear, that is a relatively low bar. Republicans went into the political wilderness in a major way following Bush's re-election as he grew increasingly less popular and it became increasingly more clear that the party was either unable or unwilling to break with the chief executive in any major way. Polls suggest that the Republican brand remains badly damaged in the eyes of the American public with most people still trusting Obama far more than Republicans in Congress to solve the major issues of the day.) With 2010 right around the corner, there is significant movement in this...

One should be given combat pay for defending Sarah Palin in Manhattan. The other evening at a lecture, a so-called distinguished author of political tomes reflected on the declining state of conservatism and cited Sarah Palin as the reincarnation of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who stirred the ire of the country by accusing a huge swath of the State Department as being card carrying communists. Hearings were held and eventually the Senator, an authentic alcoholic, was exposed as a liar and a fraud, chastised by the Senate and tossed into the rubbish bin of history where he belonged. The ugly comparison...

Yesterday they underlined this message by pointing to reports showing that Mr Obama had failed to convene a single policy meeting of the Senate European subcommittee, of which he is chairman. There was also strikingly robust criticism from an independent Washington think-tank about a “disconcerting void” over transatlantic relations in Mr Obama’s foreign policy, as well as from a former British Minister for Europe. Mr Obama’s advisers say that he has an “intuitive grasp” of world affairs because he spent part of his childhood abroad. “The benefit of my life of having both lived overseas and travelled overseas is, I...

What was expected to be a boring congressional hearing erupted into high drama yesterday as an unnerved Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner sparred with frustrated lawmakers calling for his head over his handling of the economy. Clearly rattled by a fusillade of attacks from Republican members of the Joint Economic Committee, the usually reserved Geithner lashed out, laying blame for the current economic mess at the feet of the GOP and rejecting suggestions that he resign. Republicans "gave this president an economy falling off the cliff," Geithner fired back at Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), one of the Treasury secretary's harshest critics...

AUSTIN – Here's what I did not hear at the annual confab of Republican governors held here this week: The words socialist, extremist, or government takeover. With the focus on jobs, jobs and jobs, the only red meat was the Texas barbecue. And by design, there was no Obama-bashing. [snip] Barbour cautioned Republican candidates to refrain from attacking the president, period: "People want the president to succeed; good Lord, they want the country to succeed, and particularly the first African-American president has a lot of goodwill. . . . We need to be careful, we need to treat the president...

All RINOs are not the same, even when they profess almost identical beliefs. All politicians try to appeal to their constituents, but not all politicians - by a long shot - have the same type of constituents. RINOs who try to win election by stating policies as conservative as the voters will allow are not the problem with the Republican Party. Democrats, shrewdly, have grasped in the last two election cycles the art of the possible in winning congressional elections. Blue Dog Democrats are congressmen who, if Republicans held their districts, have voted completely against the House leadership's health care...

She may be hugely polarizing, but Sarah Palin’s the odds-on favorite to win the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, thanks to the party’s winner-take-all primary system. The party establishment may not want Palin, but if she can maintain, say, 35% support in a multi-candidate field, she could win a few states and rack up an insurmountable lead early, Walter Shapiro of Politics Daily writes. Normally the GOP counts on South Carolina to weed out fringe candidates, but Palin is mainstream enough to win the conservative state. So if party insiders don’t want another Goldwater on their hands, they’ll either have...

Is there a revolution inside of the California Republican Party? For a third time inside of the current election cycle a statewide Republican candidate has emerged with an embarrassing voting record. The GOP’s 2010 roster of statewide elephants now feature three voting violators: former HP CEO Carly Fiorina for US Senate, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman for Governor and newcomer Damon Dunn for Secretary of State. Each of these GOP candidates are holding serve inside of their respective campaigns, yet they display a great weakness with one of the most vital qualifications for voters to determine where they stand on...

If Dems don’t support the Obamacare bill that they have not yet read in its entirety, they are not faithful to the party. If Dems do support that bill they are in trouble back home and also imploding our economy.

The government dumped tens of billions of dollars into General Motors, and then dictated a “political bankruptcy” that trampled the rights of senior creditors in order to cut a sweetheart deal for the Obama administration’s union pals. Americans expected to see that pay off in broader investment and job creation, and that’s precisely what GM has in mind … for Europe. ABC News reports that GM plans to spend billions restructuring its Opel subsidiary rather than its core American businesses, and that has some lawmakers seeing red: Specifically, at a time when the nation’s unemployment rate has soared to levels...

I had an opportunity to meet Sarah Palin a year ago during the National Governors Association conference at Independence Hall. She was the biggest star there that day attracting more media attention than Schwarzneggar. I talked to her, albeit very briefly, as she was leaving. Contrary to her image, she was not the vapid, cute cheerleader one would have expected. She was in command of the facts and spoke with authority. Of course, her vacuous image is a function ...

Both Democratic and Republican voters are happier with Congress these days, and Independents are not. The uptick for the first two is easy enough to explain: both side’s partisans are happy that their respective sides are slugging it out. The question is, which side are the folks in the middle supporting? Americans express slightly greater approval of Congress this month after last month's decline. The current 26% rating is up from 21% in October but down from 31% in August and September. Still, more than two-thirds of Americans (68%) disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job. This month's...

The self-described 'rogue' is anathema to the party establishment but manna from heaven to the grass roots. In a Republican Party hoping to rebound in 2010 on the strength of a newly energized and ideologically aroused conservative grass roots, Sarah Palin's influence is now unparalleled. She was the one who popularized the notion that Democrats advocated "death panels" as part of their healthcare plan, a charge that helped ignite conservative opposition to reform. More recently, in a special congressional election in upstate New York, Palin's endorsement of Doug Hoffman, an unknown, far-right third-party candidate, helped force a popular moderate Republican...

While interviewing people on the streets of L.A. and N.Y. for our documentary about the legacy of the Civil War, we came to the staggering realization of how many allegedly well-educated people assumed that Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat fighting slave-owning Republicans in the South.

* What can we all do, every day, to make sure we are ready to prevent fraud in the Iowa Caucus in 2012? PLEASE take this seriously. A massive effort was launched on Dr. Utopia’s behalf from Chicago to game the Iowa Caucus. A good portion of Chicago rolled across the Illinois border to vote in Dubuque, Waterloo, Des Moines,you name it to ensure Dr. Utopia won that Caucus in 2008. The caucus centers are chaos hatcheries. Dr. Utopia’s goons, most of whom certainly appeared to be ACORN or SEIU, marched in, took over, and told anyone who wouldn’t stand...

Ogabe to purge Republicans from the civil serviceZhang Fei 11/12/2009 1:59:38 PM Republicans appointed to the civil service from the ranks of political appointees in the last 5 years, that is: Via Instapundit comes word that the federal government's Office of Personnel Management (OPM) intends to purge the federal government of Republican civil servants all in the name of purify the federal bureaucracy. You can read the OPM memo here. It is a typical Washington process that many political appointees are able to take jobs within the civil service once their political appointment expires usually at the conclusion of one...

Let’s keep this simple. Word got out today via Politico that the RNC’s health care package for their employees covers abortions. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, if you at any time have donated to the RNC since 1991 (when this policy apparently took place), some incremental portion of your donation went to the administrative costs of running the RNC, including employee salaries and benefits packages. Part of “benefits packages” in this context is apparently a health care package that pays for abortions. For thirty years, we have fought tooth and nail to prevent our tax money from being...

Charlie Crist is playing the Race Card in Florida, apparently, according to an article in RedState talking about the latest sleazy attack ad Crist is running against Marco Rubio — an ad that talks about the color of Rubio’s skin and calls him Cuban. What’s most interesting about the RedState piece is that it’s the first time we’ve seen a Republican site even hint at Charlie Crist’s escapades at the Green Iguana in Tampa. During the 2008 campaign, the MSM pushed Crist as a VP choice for McCain, wanting him on the ticket so they could spectacularly out Crist and...

Conservatives win many votes saying that liberals are elitist. I am here to tell you that the liberal movement is indeed very elitist. Its organization's staffs are composed mainly of Ivy leaguers whose life experiences are dramatically different than the 70 percent of Americans that never graduate from college. Very few of them have any actual experience living with or knowing working-class people. As a graduate of Bucknell, I still feel out of a place and most glaringly underdressed when I get in a room with the Ivy Leaguers running our movement. As garbageman turned United Electrical Workers (UE) in...

Video from Rush today on his program blasting the Administration for plans to purge Republicans out of the Civil Service, Rush asks "Where is Chuck Schumer in all of this".....(Video)

Via Instapundit comes word that the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) intends to purge the federal government of Republican civil servants all in the name of purify the federal bureaucracy.

It is God, the unseen partner of prayer warriors. Those who intercede on behalf of the Republic are not in need of a mortal leader at the moment. We are bereft of a mighty party spokesperson.

The victories by Republicans in two Governors races last Tuesday appear to have lifted the party's prospects in 2010 and in 2012 in the minds of voters with 58% of those surveyed by Rasmussen now believe the next President will be Republican Both Gallup and Rasmussen now show solid leads for the GOP in the generic Congressional ballot for 2010 - 4% in Gallup and 6% in Rasmussen. For Gallup, this is a 6% shift in one month, and a 10% shift in two months away from the Democrats. Nate Silver show more Democratic held Senate seats at risk in...

Madison — Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker is among the Republicans lining up for an endorsement from Sarah Palin, the 2008 vice presidential candidate and former Alaska governor. Walker sought help in his run for governor Friday in a half-hour meeting with Palin after her invitation-only Wisconsin Right to Life event. Time magazine's Web site first reported on the meeting Wednesday, and Walker spokeswoman Jill Bader confirmed it was accurate. "Sarah Palin is one of many national political figures we're reaching out to help on the campaign trail to be part of Scott's effort," Bader said. She said Walker will...

Who is Dede Scozzfava? ... "This is my party, too," she insisted. "There are a lot of moderate people - Republicans, like me - and I'm hearing from an awful lot of them. And I think the Republican Party needs to know if they don't have room for us and they don't want us working with them, we're going to find a way to work against them." She acknowledged that many in the GOP would differ with her support for abortion rights and same-sex marriage. But she maintained that she approached those views from a conservative vantage point - a...

Looking for a scapegoat for her poor showing in New York’s 23rd Congressional race, Dede Scozzafava has chosen every liberals favorite, Sarah Palin. Scozzafava in an interview slammed Sarah Palin for “attacking” her, when in reality Palin only endorsed her opponent Doug Hoffman. But then again to liberals if you don’t support them you’re attacking them. I love the way the media is describing Dede Scozzafava even now; they say she’s a “moderate” Republican. CNN describes her as the “face of moderate republicanism”; refusing to call Scozzafava what she is, a liberal. Sarah Palin simply chose principle over party; Dede...

Republicans Jump to Six-Point Lead on Generic Ballot Republican candidates have stretched their lead over Democrats to six points in the Generic Congressional Ballot. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 43% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 37% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent. Republicans have held the lead for over four months now. Voters not affiliated with either party continue to heavily favor Republicans, 43% to 20%.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin says she's back on Twitter. Palin took to the social networking site earlier this year, tweeting about state government, national politics and everything in between. When she quit as Alaska's governor in July, she promised to keep her fans updated through tweets. But that didn't happen, and Palin instead posted regular updates on her Facebook page, which has nearly 1 million followers. In a Facebook posting Monday announcing more dates on her book tour, Palin said she'll provide Twitter updates from the tour. Her Twitter feed is SarahPalinUSA.(continued)

Matthew Continetti has a piece in this weekend’s Weekly Standard hailing Sarah Palin as the ideal leader of a new populist uprising. One obvious objection to his thesis: The populist Sarah is in fact one of the most unpopular figures in American life. According to Gallup, 63% of Americans say they would never consider voting for her. By a margin of 62%-31% Americans rate Palin “unqualified” to serve as president – by far the worst score for any leading Republican. In comparison, only 51% of Americans say they would never consider voting for Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee – and...

In 2008, a charismatic right-wing populist Republican governor won the heart of the party's base despite being forced to take a backseat to a more respectable "moderate" Republican. He was Mike Huckabee, and he is sad, and mad. Ben Smith followed Mike Huckabee around for a while as he sold his new Christmas book. Huckabee was the governor of Arkansas. He used to be fat, and then he got skinny, and now he is getting fat again. He's also basically as crazy Christian as they come, but he masks this with a genuinely likable sense of humor, which is why...

What Coattails? Why right-of-center candidates are succeeding in the age of Obama. By Yuval Levin | NEWSWEEK Published Nov 7, 2009 From the magazine issue dated Nov 16, 2009 All year, leading Democrats from the president on down have argued that the Republican Party is in the midst of a catastrophic civil war. You know the story. Successive election defeats have narrowed the GOP's ideological range, and now an open struggle is afoot for control of its voice and agenda. Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin, it seems, are out to destroy Republican moderates and commit the party to a radical...

Having been in the position of watching my favored candidate stumble badly in an endorsement session while a more liberal Republican alternative hit all the right notes, I reserved my opinion on the goings-on in the recent Congressional race in New York's 23 Congressional District. Now that it is over, I have concluded that while the local Republican Party leadership's endorsement of Dede Scozzafava may have been a what-in-the-world-were-they-thinking moment, I suspect that many would now be saying, "Can't they do any better than this?", had they had endorsed Doug Hoffman from the beginning. While Hoffman may have hit most...

I'm sure if this is not appropriate, then it will be removed, but until then, here's a new bumper sticker if anyone is interested: If this is Change, then KEEP THE CHANGE!! http://www.zazzle.com/if_this_is_change_then_keep_the_change_bumper_sticker-128518553615246132

Most politicians are not bad people, but the system has a way of chewing them up and spitting them out. Once in the system, they learn to play the game and almost always compromise their integrity when it can be justified and even sometimes when it cannot. This is done while we look the other way if it’s “our guy” and/or they give us something we want. That’s the insidiousness of democracy and these “representatives” continue to do anything to stay in power. Many of the problems that we face today can mostly be chalked up to our divisions fueled...

Actor Jon Voight and nationally-syndicated radio talk show host Mark Levin are joining Cong. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn), Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga), Cong. Mike Pence (R-Ind), Republican House leadership and other Republican members at noon today to welcome citizens coming into town from all over the country today to make calls on their representatives. Their message is to kill this turkey of a government-takeover of health care. Action is important today because Speaker Nancy Pelosi has hinted at a floor vote on the Dems’ massive bill this Saturday. Thousands are expected to join in the rally and the...

Of all of the ridiculously asinine statements of political ineptitude ever to be uttered by anyone holding political office Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine thoughtlessly confessed why she and other RINO’s keep the Republican Party in the minority. (see story) In a quip that was supposed to be in response to Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s statement, that [M]any Republicans were "mad" at Snowe for working with the Democratic majority on health care -- and suggested there might be a backlash against her is she had more "deviations" from conservative GOP orthodoxy Snowe lashed back that she is a life-long Republican...

Need some help. Was there a Health Care bill voted on in the House a few months back? Or are all health care bills still in the planning stages with no votes on any of them? What was the bill a few months back that about 20 Repubicans voted for? Was that the stimulus bill?

Alan Grayson decided it was time grandstand again on House floor. This time he used his magic math to read the number of people who are dead in Republican districts due to no health care. Click here for the videos. Below is a partial transcript from the first video. Grayson: Mr. Speaker, during the civil war Abraham Lincoln our President often pardoned people who have been convicted of treason. You may wonder why he did that. The answer is because he saw death all around him in the civil war and he wanted to make sure he did nothing to...

The third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives on Wednesday endorsed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman for the 2010 midterm elections. House Republican Conference chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) offered his support to Hoffman, who was defeated at the hands of Democrat Bill Owens in a highly contested special election in upstate New York. "Well, let me say that the lesson here is that we all need to fall behind Doug Hoffman for next fall’s election," Pence told a conservative blog today. "I look forward to welcoming him to Congress a year from now. I think he ran a brilliant campaign."

According to White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, the President was busy with other matters last night and wasn't really concerned with election results. Although one would find that hard to believe, in Obama's case it might be true. He has shown a remarkable ability to ignore events that surround him, tea parties, town halls, Afghanistan, to name a few. It's amazing how the Administration can wave off important events effecting the country in the same manner that Obama swatted a fly during an interview. Nonchalantly dismissing anything that doesn't go their way as unimportant. Truth be known, Obama's ego...

Challenger Gary Leitzell defeated incumbent Mayor Rhine McLin on Tuesday in the race for Dayton’s next mayor. According to final, unofficial totals from the Montgomery County Board of Elections, Leitzell had 51.5 percent of the votes to 48.5 percent for McLin, a Democrat. That amounted to 14,923 votes for Leitzell and 14,045 for McLin.

HARRISBURG - Joan Orie Melvin, a Republican judge from Western Pennsylvania, prevailed in the Philadelphia suburbs yesterday to claim a decisive win in the hard-fought battle for a vacancy on the state Supreme Court. Melvin's victory shifts the political balance on the state's most powerful bench to Republican, and could portend a re-energized conservative base in the 2010 gubernatorial and congressional elections. With 91 percent of ballots counted, Melvin had won every suburban county around Philadelphia except Montgomery, where Democrat Jack Panella of Easton led by only a few hundred votes. "It's clear to me she won because of the...