Free Republic

What’s most successful when it appears to be something it’s not? Astroturf. As in fake grassroots.The many ways that corporations, special interests and political interests of all stripes exploit media and the Internet to perpetuate astroturf is ever-expanding. Surreptitious astroturf methods are now more important to these interests than traditional lobbying of Congress. There’s an entire PR industry built around it in Washington.Below are the top ten astroturfers as viewed by respondents in an informal, non-scientific survey.* TOP 10 ASTROTURFERS 1. Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and Everytown2. Media Matters for America3. University of California Hastings Professor...

Former ice cream man Doug Ducey scooped up a sweet win today in the Arizona gubernatorial race. The Republican and former CEO of ice cream chain Cold Stone Creamery most recently served as Arizona's state treasurer, however it was his cool past that Ducey frequently invoked on the campaign trail. In the heat of the Arizona summer, he handed out mini containers of Cold Stone ice cream outside his campaign office, according to the Arizona Republic. On Ducey's website, he listed "ice cream" as the No. 3 reason to vote for him, writing: "The experience Doug gained as Cold Stone...

How does a Democrat candidate for the highest office in the state become a nonperson at the "non-partisan" Texas Tribune? When that person's campaign goes into such a freefall that it becomes an embarrassment to even report on it. Such seems to be the case with the Wendy Davis campaign for  governor in Texas. The last time the Texas Tribune directly reported about her was a full week ago on August 15 which not so coincidentally is when the Rick Perry indictment happened. The backlash from that obviously political indictment  which is already falling apart as reported by Bryan Preston...

Ask voters in North Carolina’s Research Triangle what November’s midterm elections are about and one will tell you drones. A second will say closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Yet another, the middle-class squeeze. At a Sunday school classroom in Ypsilanti, Mich., voters are concerned about deteriorating roads, teen sex parties, truancy in schools and violent crime. Six hundred miles west at a Republican campaign office in Urbandale, Iowa, people fear that America is on an irreversible decline — like Germany after World War I, as one man predicted. Across Colorado, voters are thinking about a whole other set...

Liberal darling and free-birth-control advocate Sandra Fluke is her own biggest donor in her state Senate race, according to official California campaign finance reports. Fluke donated $12,000 to her campaign and $4,826.27 in non-monetary contributions. While $16,826.27 may not sound like a lot, Fluke also loaned her campaign $100,000.

Today on Slate’s feminist XX blog, there was a headline that read: Even if She Loses in Texas, Wendy Davis Is a Win for America. Seriously? So, a Texas State Senator, who filibustered a bill that would ban abortions twenty-weeks into a pregnancy last summer, is a “win for America?” Jessica Grose, who wrote the article, added: Now, for all the support Davis’ campaign has received from fellow Democrats in Washington and elsewhere—former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm called her “Joan of Arc, standing up there for women all across the country”—she’s still running for governor of a deeply red state....

The Texas Republican Party would endorse psychological treatment that seeks to turn gay people straight under a new platform partly aimed at rebuking laws in California and New Jersey that ban so-called “reparative therapy” on minors. A push to include the new anti-gay language survived a key vote late Thursday in Fort Worth at the Texas Republican Convention where, across the street, tea party star U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz fired up attendees at a rally to defend marriage as between a man and a woman. Under the new proposed plank, the Texas GOP will “recognize the legitimacy and efficacy of...

President Barack Obama, it seemed like the right thing to do, according to officials in his administration: Release five Taliban detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison in return for Bowe Bergdahl, the only known American prisoner of war in Afghanistan. As a political firestorm engulfs the White House over that deal, Reuters interviews with current and former Obama administration officials involved in the negotiations, along with U.S. lawmakers, reveal how a close-knit circle in the Obama administration pursued the plan despite intense discord in the past over similar proposals. The White House was ultimately persuaded to go ahead, in part, after...

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) on Wednesday evening lashed out at “un-American” rush to judgment over the military record of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, following an all-senators briefing on the prisoner swap that led to the soldier’s release. One of the last senators to leave the two-hour meeting with administration officials, McCaskill said she hopes that eventually all the facts surrounding Bergdahl’s service are declassified “in fairness to the soldier and his family.” “What’s unfortunate is that many people have spoken out about this episode without having all the facts,” McCaskill said in an interview. “I’m not going to make a judgment....

Chuck Todd told Matt Lauer on Wednesday that the White House was “caught flat-footed” on the backlash against the prisoner swap for Sergeant Bergdahl. “I’ve had a few aides describe it to me as ‘we didn’t know that they were going to Swift Boat Bergdahl’,” Todd said, “And Matt, of course, that’s a reference to that political fight back in 2004 over John Kerry’s military service which became so controversial in that campaign. So there’s some fighting words there.”

A new documentary makes the controversial case that a political cocktail of big corporate money and racially charged sentiments has helped fuel the rise of the tea party. And squarely behind that movement, the film argues, are the Koch brothers. Co-Directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin sat down with “Top Line” to discuss their film, “Citizen Koch,” and why they say the GOP’s deep-pocketed donors, the Koch brothers, are such figures in American politics today. “Money – $100 billion now,” Deal said in explaining the Kochs’ influence. “When we started out making this film, their net worth was about $68...

WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — White House aides are accusing soldiers who served with Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl are “swift boating” him following his release over the weekend after five years in captivity. NBC News’ Chuck Todd reported Monday that the White House did not expect this sort of vitriolic backlash exchanging five high-level Taliban members held at Guantanamo Bay for Bergdahl, who left his Army post in 2009 in Afghanistan and was subsequently taken captive. “They did not expect this backlash on Bergdahl himself,” Todd reported on NBC’s “Today.” I’ve had a few aides describe it to me as we didn’t...

Democrat Who Wanted to Hand Out KKK Hoods to GOP Gets Absolutely Schooled By Black Conservative Woman By Emily Hulsey Days after announcing his plan to hand out KKK hoods at Wisconsin’s GOP convention, State Representative and Democrat candidate for Governor Brett Hulsey (no relation to author) took to the streets once again. Dressed in a (homemade and inaccurate) Confederate uniform, he flagged down conservative attendees to speak about what he says is the GOP’s racist agenda. However, I don’t think he intended for it to go like this…

Full title: BlahBlahBlahGate: Watch What Really Happened when We Kicked a U.S. Senate Candidate Out of Our Offices (snip) Maybe it was the part where Callahan rebuked our reporter Nigel Jaquiss for writing "blah blah blah" in his notepad while another candidate, Joe Rae Perkins, who was supposed to be talking about health care, was instead talking about eliminating the U.S. Forest Service. Maybe it was the bit where Callahan called climate change "a myth," and Jaquiss asked him, "Where are you on the Easter bunny?" Maybe it was the way our "thin-skinned liberal" editors helpfully pointed the direction in...

A Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Oregon was thrown out of a meeting with the alternative weekly newspaper Williamette Week after he confronted a reporter for writing “blah blah blah” on his notepad while another GOP candidate was talking.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday about a big setback for the Wendy Davis campaign for Texas governor.  The Democratic Governors Association (DGA) did not include her campaign as a top target which means it won't be prioritized for heavy spending. The reaction from the Davis campaign could best be described as an angry hissy fit which bitterly attacked the DGA. Pretty big political news from Texas to the extent it was covered by the Wall Street Journal. Therefore you would expect the Texas Tribune which is supposed to cover the nuts and bolts details of Texas politics to...

Sen. Ted Cruz gathered a group of House conservatives in his office Tuesday night, talking about immigration and House GOP leadership elections slated for after the midterm elections. As CQ Roll Call first reported last October, Cruz held a secret meeting with members at Tortilla Coast during the height of the government shutdown drama. Many of these same Republicans are the agitators who aren’t happy with Speaker John A. Boehner. The Texas Republican gathered roughly 10 members of the GOP Conference at 8 p.m. Tuesday for a 90-minute session that included candy bars, crackers and soda. Cruz’s office would not...

VIDEO AT LINKTerri Lynn Land, who’s running for the U.S. Senate against leftist progressive Democrat and current Congressman Gary Peters, is tired of the ridiculous “War on Women” meme that Democrats invented to smear Republicans (WATCH VIDEO BELOW). But it didn’t take any words for Land, the former Michigan secretary of state, to destroy Peters’ accusation. All is took was a pregnant pause to make the accusation that a woman would be waging a “War on Women” look moronic in this quite funny new ad by Terri Lynn Land, entitled simply, “Really?” The Michigan senate race is turning out to...

Democrats reluctant to embrace President Barack Obama's much-maligned health care overhaul in this year's congressional elections may be having second thoughts now that enrollment in the program is higher than expected and cost estimates are lower. "I think Democrats have the ability to steal the health care issue back from Republicans," health care industry consultant Bob Laszewski said. "The Democratic Party can become the party of fixing Obamacare." The Congressional Budget Office said the new law will cost taxpayers $100 billion less than previously estimated. Republicans already were pushing their luck by vowing to "repeal and replace" the health care...

In the Obama era, Democrats usually have had two big advantages over Republicans: women and volunteers. This year, Republicans are trying to change that, seeking to amass an army of young female volunteers who can carry the GOP message and counter the “war on women” rhetoric that has been so effective for Democrats. Fresh off a week in which Democrats made it clear that a key part of their midterm message will be equal pay, Republicans are set to begin their own efforts to woo women to the polls, focusing on counties that went blue in 2012 and could tip...