Free Republic

CLEMSON, S.C. — With polls opening in less than 24 hours for the important South Carolina presidential primary election, the final Palmetto Poll shows Newt Gingrich leading over Mitt Romney in a gritty battle fraught with personal attacks and breaking news about the candidates’ personal lives. That’s the finding of the third Clemson University 2012 Palmetto Poll, a sample of 429 South Carolina GOP voters who indicated they plan to vote Saturday. The telephone poll was initiated Jan. 13 and recalibrated Jan. 18-19 to measure changing dynamics. Twenty percent of the likely voters remain undecided. “We expect a reaction by...

I mean, really. How dare you peasants tell the government what to do? How dare you tell them to stay out of your lives? Santorum 2012! (VIDEO AT LINK) "One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a Libertarianish right. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. That is not how traditional conservatives view the...

Sarah Palin understands that only one candidate has the opportunity to stop Mitt Romney's momentum and give the Republican party a nominee who is truly conservative. The unusual voting process this year has allowed Mitt Romney to win Iowa and New Hampshire even without the support of a majority of Republicans. The choice is clear: if conservatives fail to unite behind a single principled candidate in South Carolina, they will be stuck with a Massachusetts moderate opposing Barack Obama. Governor Palin understands that if the conservative vote remains split between non-Romney candidates, then the only beneficiary is Mitt Romney. Mitt...

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- On June 3, 2010, a phone rang at the campaign headquarters of Iowa gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad. Leo Hough, a receptionist, picked up and was greeted by a familiar voice. It was Sarah Palin, calling to let the campaign know that she was about to endorse Branstad on Facebook and Twitter. There had been no previous discussions between the former Alaska governor and the candidate, who was as pleasantly surprised as everyone else when told the news. That episode is typical of how Palin has made endorsements: suddenly, independently and without fanfare. After leaving an indelible mark...

You’ve got to admire Sarah Palin’s cunning — even if your eardrums can’t take her squeal. If Newt Gingrich wins Saturday in South Carolina, she can claim total credit. She just endorsed him — sort of. If he even gets close — and he’s closer to Mitt Romney in two new polls — she can point to her last-minute vote of confidence. “If I had to vote in South Carolina,” she told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday, “in order to keep things going, I would vote for Newt.” If things don’t go well, hey, she’s got lots of wiggle...

CHARLESTON, S.C. – Have the tea partiers found their man to challenge President Obama? The leader of South Carolina’s chapter of the Tea Party Patriots says they have — and it’s Newt Gingrich. In an interview on Wednesday with The Daily Caller, Joe Dugan, who is also the chairman of the local Myrtle Beach Tea Party, said he sees increasing signs that conservative activists in the Palmetto State are beginning to coalesce around the former Speaker of the House. “My sense is there is a growing coalition behind Newt Gingrich,” said Dugan, who organized a state tea party convention last...

In a recent article published by The Daily Beast, its Washington bureau chief, Howard Kurtz, reasoned that if “moderate” Mitt Romney wins the Republican nomination for President, he’ll need to choose a running mate with the conservative bona fides to balance the ticket. While the notion that Mitt Romney is "on the verge of sewing up the Republican nomination" is still just a neo-con fantasy (especially in light of Ron Paul’s surging poll numbers and his respectable showing in Iowa and New Hampshire), pundits and soi disant opinion makers have suggested that the former Governor of Massachusetts choose a VP...

Mitt Romney waged a new onslaught against Newt Gingrich on Wednesday amid signs that the former House speaker was gaining traction in his drive to emerge as the sole viable alternative for the Republican presidential nomination. In a rare departure from his usual practice of ignoring GOP rivals and engaging President Obama instead, Romney ridiculed Gingrich for taking credit for millions of jobs created when he served in Congress. "Congressmen taking responsibility or taking credit for helping create jobs is like [former Vice President] Al Gore taking credit for the Internet," Romney told supporters at Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C....

Sarah Palin isn’t running for President, but she may be trying to influence how people vote. According to ABC News, Palin said that if she lived in South Carolina, she would vote for Newt Gingrich. “Just one week after her husband Todd Palin “went rogue” and endorsed Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said tonight she would vote for Gingrich “if I were a South Carolinian” — the closest she has come to an endorsement in this race. Palin said tonight on “Sean Hannity” that she wants to see the race continue because “iron sharpens...

Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich​’s outstanding debate performance on Monday and key endorsements could set the stage for a strong showing by Gingrich in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, which would position him for a possible win in the Florida primary on Jan. 31 and a chance at the Republican nomination for President this summer. That’s what the two former Republican U.S. Representatives who are chairing Gingrich’s campaign in those two key states told HUMAN EVENTS yesterday. Following what even Gingrich’s enemies say was a virtuoso performance in the debate at Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Monday evening, former Reps. John Napier (S.C.) and...

Almost two-thirds of adult Facebook users in South Carolina say they aren't fans of the tea party, according to a Facebook poll conducted today with POLITICO. Sixty-two percent of those surveyed said they are "not at all supportive" of the tea party, compared with 20 percent who were "somewhat supportive" and 18 percent who were "very supportive." Of those surveyed, women were slightly less supportive of the tea party. Just 35 percent were either "somewhat" or "very" supportive of the movement, compared with 42 percent among men. The results only represent the sentiment of South Carolina users on Facebook, not...

Sarah Palin's not quite endorsing Newt Gingrich for president, but if she were a South Carolina voter, he's the one she'd cast her ballot for this weekend. The idea, Palin explained on Fox News, would be to keep the primary season going. Via Juana Summers, here's the case Palin made: "I can tell you what I would do if I were a South Carolinian…If I were a South Carolinian though, and each one of these primaries and caucuses are different, Sean, I want to see this thing continue because iron sharpens iron. Steel sharpens steel. These guys are getting better...

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) on Tuesday went after Newt Gingrich’s labeling of the Barack Obama as the “food stamp president,” charging the former speaker “denigrates” Americans trying to make ends meet during difficult economic times. “To say those kinds of things about the President of the United States, I think, not only tries to lower the office itself, but also denigrates those people who find themselves in need of food stamps,” the South Carolina Democrat said on Fox News, the morning after a GOP debate was held in his home state. Pressed on why the label was denigrating if Gingrich...

I just recieved a personal message from State Senator Kevin Bryant of South Carolina who has confirmed that he will indeed be supporting Congressman Ron Paul for President. Quite honestly, I wrote to the Senator asking him to reconsider his support for Paul. He sent me the following gracious email: "Great to hear from you Bill, I have chosen to support Dr. Paul as I believe his message energizes our base. Interestingly, even though he's the oldest candidate, the young voters seem to be attracted to him. Thanks for your input." I responded back that I sincerely hopes that he...

If former House Speaker Newt Gingrich does the impossible and somehow defeats Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination, analysts will look back and say the upset was sparked Monday night at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center. The knowledgeable, rhetorically gifted Newt Gingrich conservatives love showed up at the Fox News/Wall Street Journal debate and shook the house. Instead of shining by attacking Romney, he thrived by battling his old antagonists: the “elite” media and Texas Rep. Ron Paul. Asked by debate co-moderator Juan Williams whether he could understand why his comments that “black Americans should demand jobs not food stamps”...

I have been hounded in media interviews to give them the scoop on which Republican presidential candidate I ‘m going to endorse. When I respond that it will be “unconventional,” they go nuts because they cannot conceive of what that means. That’s not the way they think. So they try to guess what it means based on conventional political practice. You will be endorsing yourself getting back into the presidential race, they guess. Nope. You will be endorsing someone that’s not in the race, they suggest. Nope. You will be endorsing two of the remaining candidates instead of one. No...

Big government conservatives will never truly overhaul Washington because they need the status quo in place to accomplish their objectives. They don’t want to rebuild the machine; they simply want to change the people pulling the levers. But that is not what the American people want. There is such deep and widespread discontent that nothing short of a complete overhaul will satisfy their justifiable demands. The American people expect changes equal to their concern, which is the highest it’s been in at least a generation, and I am the only candidate with a vision that is as strong and sweeping...

FOX's Neil Cavuto interviews Club for Growth's Andy Roth who rates the GOP presidential candidates economic plans.

Three new polls show former House Speaker Newt Gingrich gaining on Mitt Romney in South Carolina and emerging as the clear conservative choice of voters who are not backing the former Massachusetts governor for the Republican presidential nomination. An Insider Advantage/Majority Opinion Research survey completed on Thursday shows that Gingrich is actually in a statistical tie with Romney in South Carolina, with 21.3 percent of the vote to Romney’s 23.1. Gingrich leads Romney in several demographic groups, including voters 18 to 29 years old, black voters, male voters, and Independents. Ron Paul and Rick Santorum each received 13 percent of...

Call it the case of the rising Texan and plunging Pennsylvanian. Here’s how GOP presidential hopefuls fared in a second round of South Carolina polls released Friday. (The fine print: Two sets of polls from Rasmussen Reports, Public Policy Polling and American Research Group have been released in the past week -- before and after the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday): Winner: Ron Paul Who cares if the Texas congressman has made one announced campaign visit in South Carolina since finishing second in the New Hampshire primary. He’s got the momentum, gaining 22 percentage points combined in the three polls...