Free Republic

DAYTONA BEACH -- At the Florida Tea Party Convention Saturday, you could find buttons calling for Marco Rubio to be on the presidential ticket, t-shirts declaring that Barack Obama has made communism cool again, and freeze-dried foods to last up to 25 years in case society collapses. Scarce among the hundreds of conservative activists gathered in Daytona Beach? Any enthusiasm for Mitt Romney, the man widely expected to win the Republican presidential nomination. “The party establishment has wanted Romney all along, and they’ve been pushing him on us,” lamented James Koll of Fort Dodge, Iowa, who said he would support...

Mitt Romney, under fire from all sides on the strength of his political convictions, said Thursday he has been as consistent as a person can be during his political career. "I've been as consistent as human beings can be," the presidential candidate said in a meeting with the editorial board of New Hampshire's Seacoast Media Group. "I cannot state every single issue in exactly the same words every single time, and so there are some folks who, obviously, for various political and campaign purposes will try and find some change and try to draw great attention to something which looks...

......Days after I got into the presidential race in 2007, I was greeted with a website, “PhoneyFred.org,” described in the media at the time as an “anti Fred Thompson smear site.” You couldn’t really tell who was behind it, but we learned of it from the Democratic National Committee, which made ample use of it. We assumed that they had created it. However, a reporter at the Washington Post (of all people) decided to find out who was behind the site. After a lot of effort, she traced it to an executive of TTS Strategies, a South Carolina consulting firm...

Based on a suggestion from a local blogger to look into political donors on the Board of Directors of the National Restaurant Association for potential ties to presidential campaigns, I have attempted to identify anyone privy to inside information about the National Restaurant Association who also has recent ties to any presidential campaign. According to the October 2011 FEC report for ROMNEY FOR PRESIDENT INC. a gentlemen named Steven C. Anderson gave $1,000.00 on July 14, 2011. FEC search function here. Steven C. Anderson is the same gentlemen who took over the helm as Chief Executive Officer at the National...

The funniest scene in the old hockey movie “Slap Shot” might be the one where the Hanson brothers start a fight with the other team before the game even starts. Who knew that could be a parable for President Obama’s reelection campaign? During the scene in the Paul Newman classic, one of the infamous Hanson brothers punches an opponent while they’re skating during warm-ups. Moments later, both teams are covered in blood and standing at attention for the pre-game “Star-Spangled Banner.” The Hansons couldn’t wait for the game to start to throw a punch. And so it is with Obama...

<p>But we are interested in historical accuracy, and Cain urged people to "go back and look at the history and look at Margaret Sanger's own words" to find the evidence that she wanted to "kill black babies."</p> <p>So let's examine what the founder of Planned Parenthood actually said and also whether 75 percent of Planned Parenthood's facilities were built in African-American communities....</p>

In an email to POLITICO this afternoon, Robinson admitted that the site routinely blocks Romney supporters from posting -- and offered no apologies for the practice: Free Republic is a pro-life, pro-family, pro-gun, pro-small government, pro-constitution, pro-liberty site. Governor Romney is none of the above. His record is that of an abortionist, gay rights pushing, gun grabbing, global warming advocating, big government, mandate loving, constitution trampling, flip-flopping liberal progressive with no core values. That and the fact that he is the chief architect and advocate for ObamaCare disqualifies him for any consideration whatsoever on Free Republic as a potential nominee...

Note: This is a long, long piece and I find it impossible to excerpt it in any logical way. ( GF) -SNIP- Romney, like the other prospective candidates for president, will remain under the microscope in the months ahead.His past will be combed, his policies scrutinized, his record examined.How much his Mormon faith plays into his political journey remains to be seen. But whether he likes it, whether his campaign can control it, the fact that he may be on track to become the first Mormon president in U.S. history will garner attention.

Is the GOP co-opting the tea party movement, or are tea partiers taking down the establishment and sending the RINOs packing? A lengthy New York Times magazine article this week quoted several establishment Republicans crowing over what they see as the demise of the two-year-old tea party activism. Bill Kristol, the neoconservative editor of the Weekly Standard and a Fox News contributor, said the tea party peddles "an infantile form of conservatism."Veteran Republican strategist Scott Reed took the disdain one step further, saying the GOP is steadily co-opting the grass-roots movement. "That’s the secret to politics: trying to control a...

A dogged freshman lawmaker who refused to budge from the House chambers earlier this month until the Patrick administration came clean on how much taxpayers coughed up last year for free health care to illegal aliens finally got his answer yesterday: a whopping $93 million.

<p>Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ryan Larsen. I’m a truth lover, chess player and avid political junkie. I co-founded WhyRomney.com, which is dedicated to correcting distortions and inaccuracies perpetrated against Mitt Romney.</p> <p>Before WhyRomney, I wrote for Lyingliar.com. At Lyingliar, we debunked all of Al Franken’s big attacks, from his “Chelsea Clinton is a dog” smear against Rush, to his “Peabody” smear against O’Reilly.</p>

<p>The editors at Red State and Free Republic (among others) have had the wool pulled over their eyes. They seem to actually believe the lies originally propagated by supporters of President Obama and, in some cases, even by President Obama himself. Now, for some reason, these editors/moderators are so insecure in their prejudice against Gov. Romney that they ban people who openly support Gov. Romney. Free Republic (mostly because of it’s owner Jim Robinson) has purged all of the Romney supporters they could from the site in two waves of purges over the last few years. The anti-Romney and anti-Mormon bigotry evident at Free Republic now is absolutely sickening.</p>

Sometimes it seems as if the GOP Establishment is sleepwalking off a cliff. In 1996, having scored the stunning victories of the off-year congressional elections, the GOP suits dutifully lined up behind the impossible Bob Dole. From the moment Americans realized their choices would be Clinton or Dole, "Bubba" was never behind one day in the polls. It's looking like déjà Dole all over again. Mitt Romney is the proverbial GOP next-in-liner. After the Tea Party helped Republicans score major victories in '10, the GOP Establishment is hunting desperately for a way to lose the very next election. Mitt Romney...

The large Republican presidential field, along with the dramatic surges and collapses of several of its candidates, may ultimately be much ado about nothing. That, at least, is the conclusion of the Republican strategists surveyed in this week's National Journal Political Insiders Poll, who almost unanimously identified Mitt Romney as the most likely candidate to win the nomination. In the five times the GOP Insiders have been asked that question in 2011, Romney has never surrendered the top spot.

The large Republican presidential field, along with the dramatic surges and collapses of several of its candidates, may ultimately be much ado about nothing. That, at least, is the conclusion of the Republican strategists surveyed in this week's National Journal Political Insiders Poll, who almost unanimously identified Mitt Romney as the most likely candidate to win the nomination. In the five times the GOP Insiders have been asked that question in 2011, Romney has never surrendered the top spot.

Barack Obama's new ally: Rick Perry By: Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin October 27, 2011 President Barack Obama’s political machine is increasingly making common cause with Texas Gov. Rick Perry against a shared enemy: Mitt Romney. Romney is the opponent Democrats most fear, and whom Obama strategists view as the near-certain Republican nominee. Yet even among strategists who assume Romney will be Obama’s opponent, Perry’s newly feisty performance on the campaign trail has raised hopes that he may drag out the primary fight and bloody Romney ahead of the main event. Obama supporters aren’t exactly coordinating attacks...

By Steven Shepard October 26, 2011 | 4:00 PM | 762 Comments Share Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leads in new CNN/Time polls of the first four states on the Republican presidential nominating calendar -- Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida -- though in Iowa and South Carolina, Herman Cain runs a close second. Cain, the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, runs second in each of the four states, and in three of the four states, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, runs third. Notably, the best that Texas Gov. Rick Perry can manage in any of the states is a...

Last week the New York Times ran a piece on the efforts of Massachusetts’ politicians to rein in ration health care as costs in that state have skyrocketed in the wake of RomneyCare. One part of the article stood out like a major contusion: Those who led the 2006 effort to expand coverage readily acknowledge that they deferred the more daunting task of cost control for another day

Today, Mitt Romney refused to take a position on the big battle in Ohio over the ballot initiative to repeal Governor John Kasich’s law rolling back the collective bargaining rights of public employees. The fight is a hugely important one to conservatives, with right wing money flowing into the state, and conservative bloggers erupted in fury at Romney, asking how it is that he can be running for president when he isn’t willing to take a firm stand against the scourge of public employees. [snip] Governors who are willing to risk serious unpopularity in order to roll back the bargaining...

Here's the problem with Romney's repeated assertion that he never suggested applying Romneycare nationwide: It just isn't true. At a GOP debate in Des Moines, Iowa, on Aug. 5, 2007, here's what Mitt Romney had to say about his preferred federal approach to health care policy: Look, it's critical to insure more people in this country. It doesn't make sense to have 45 million people without insurance. It's not good for them because they don't get good preventative care and disease management, just as these folks have spoken about. But it's not good for the rest of the citizens either,...