Free Republic

Facing a flawed field of 10 aspirants, whose top tier seems way out of ideological sync with the party’s core conservatives, many veteran Republicans are now looking to Candidate No. 11 as their possible savior in what promises to be a difficult quest to retain the White House next year... Thompson, a lawyer who became a movie actor and then spent eight years as a Tennessee senator before returning to acting, did not even seem that interested in running a few months ago, when the buzz about him first started. He actually experienced what most politicians can only dream of...

In the wake of the first candidates' debate among the Democratic contenders for the White House (4/26/07), many media outlets and commentators seemed annoyed that the so-called "second-tier" candidates are even bothering to run. Oddly, similar complaints about a surplus of GOP contenders in the first Republican debate (5/3/07) were hard to find in the corporate media. As FAIR noted recently (4/26/07), early election polls are a terrible way to predict the likely nominee. So using them to determine which candidates are viable and which campaigns are merely a nuisance is unwise. What's more, because the electoral process is about...

Over 1,000 New York Republicans crowded into the ballroom of a Times Square Sheraton Thursday night to hear from presidential contenders Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, but the real elephant in the room was immigration reform. Neither candidate addressed the issue in their speeches, even though rank-and-file conservatives spent Thursday talking about little else. McCain, of course, helped shape the immigration compromise that has so many conservatives in open revolt. For his part, Giuliani issued a statement in which he didn't really take a position on the bill, which would provide amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants living in the...

Three top Republican presidential contenders took fire from their second-tier rivals and traded digs on Tuesday, with Rudolph Giuliani defending his abortion rights support and John McCain and Mitt Romney trying to burnish their conservative credentials. In the second debate in two weeks between the 10 men vying for the 2008 Republican nomination, Giuliani, McCain and Romney -- "Rudy McRomney" to their detractors -- tried to ease doubts among conservatives about their records. The 90-minute session in conservative South Carolina featured a sharp exchange between front-runner Giuliani and longshot Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who said America's Middle East policies...

Ten Republican presidential candidates will gather in South Carolina tonight for their second debate of the month, with much of the focus likely to be on former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and his continuing effort to extricate himself from a controversy over his position on abortion. Giuliani, the putative front-runner for the GOP nomination, has struggled for the past two weeks after declaring at the first GOP debate in California that it would be "okay" if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide, but then added that it would also be...