Free Republic

Newt up against the Prophet Obama would be a painful thing to watch. He might be deft with one-liners but it would be futile. There are .. uncommitted voters to be cultivated in 2012 — all would be unmoved by Newt’s juggling of conservative shibboleths.. Now Newt is hustling my fellow conservatives .. The last time around he successfully hustled conservatives in the House of Representatives and on the House impeachment committee.. He blew the impeachment and .. his role as Speaker. He now says Republicans in the House were exhausted with his great projects. Nonsense, they were exhausted with...

Bob Dole didn’t hesitate this weekend out in Russell when asked who the Republican Party should nominate for president next year. Gen. David Petraeus, Dole said, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan who’s about to become CIA director. “We need another Eisenhower,” Dole said. He also fretted that President Obama will build a huge warchest, and the GOP nominee will be essentially starting from scratch after the primaries are over next year. That will give Obama a huge — but not necessarily an insurmountable edge, Dole said. As to the Tea Party? Dole said he thought he was conservative until this...

It's tough to raise money for an upstart congressional campaign and particularly tough to do so in a down economy, say some of the nine challengers in Maryland's 2nd District race. Their campaign finance reports bear that out: Of the nine, only two reported any income with the Federal Election Commission as of June 30, the most recent filing deadline. "There's the economic situation now, and people with less disposable income, and expenses they're facing," said Robert Imhoff, who volunteers on Democratic challenger Raymond Atkins' campaign. While the challengers may be struggling, it's a different story for incumbent Rep. C.A....

The two-month-old oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is taking a major toll on President Obama’s presidency, according to a new poll released Wednesday evening. The Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey of 1,000 adults also shows that Obama is suffering from a backlash against his policies, and that the nation remains generally conservative on issues of government spending and the size of government. The number of Americans who think the country is on the wrong track is the highest of Obama’s presidency in this particular poll, at 62 percent. And disapproval of Obama’s job performance has also climbed to...

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Va., and House Republicans have been engaging in some premature drape-measuring for a few months in anticipation of winning back control of the House of Representatives. Some top GOP aides privately admit that they got ahead of themselves. Turns out, not all Republicans are rooting for their own to win the House. “I want Republicans to make massive gains but I want them to fall one vote short of taking the House,” said Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary to President George W. Bush. “I want to see more evidence that Republicans are ready...

Televised debates between party leaders in Britain are over and the country will go to the polls this Thursday. Conservative David Cameron is a slight favorite to become the next prime minister, but if his choice of campaign advisers is any guide, Americans shouldn't expect anything like a second coming of Margaret Thatcher. Mr. Cameron hired two high-priced veterans of the Obama campaign to help his effort: Anita Dunn and Bill Knapp. The move raised eyebrows since the Tories have traditionally imported seasoned GOP strategists to advise them. In Ms. Dunn, they are getting something completely different, as Monty Python...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ten House Democrats indicated in an Associated Press survey Monday they have not ruled out switching their "no" votes to "yes" on President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, brightening the party's hopes in the face of unyielding Republican opposition. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is struggling to secure enough Democratic votes for approval, thus the effort to attract former foes. Obama .. is expected to embrace a handful of Republican ideas for making health care more efficient. But persuading lawmakers to change their votes is a tough sell. Elected officials are loath to vote two ways on a controversial...

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been quietly assembling the blueprint of a presidential campaign and will announce Thursday the support of a group of high-level political strategists and donors... Pawlenty, under the radar of D.C.’s political community, has locked up some of the key operatives who engineered then-President George W. Bush’s reelection campaign — a significant feat for a little-known Midwestern politician. The moves underscore, and will lend credence to, the emerging belief among many establishment Republicans that Pawlenty is becoming the sole viable alternative to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a potential Republican primary rival. The Minnesota governor has...

Minnesota Democratic Senate candidate Al Franken’s campaign said Wednesday that the comedian has taken the lead in his race against Sen. Norm Coleman (R). Franken’s lawyer, Marc Elias, has been pressing for the media to focus on the campaign’s internal vote totals of the recount, which as of Wednesday showed Franken opening a lead of 22 votes. To drive home its point, the campaign will withdraw hundreds of challenges that it determines have no merit in the state’s ongoing recount. “We will be sending a letter to the Secretary of State today withdrawing 633 challenges that we believe have no...

Romney 24, Giuliani 19, McCain 18, Huckabee 12, Paul 7

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Barry Bonds became the most prolific home-run hitter in Major League Baseball history Tuesday night, slugging his 756th in front of more than 43,052 hometown fans to pass Henry Aaron. Bonds' record-setting homer came in the fourth inning to give the Giants a 5-4 lead over the Washington Nationals. Bonds hit a 3-2 pitch from Washington's Mike Bacsik deep to center field. The game was delayed by a standing ovation for Bonds, whose late father Bobby was a Giants player, coach and front-office employee.... Bonds also holds the season record for home runs with 73 in...

It was impossible to look without grief at the images of Terri Schiavo starving slowly to death in a Florida hospice. It has, alas, become impossible in America to look at such a tragic set of circumstances without hysteria. Those of us who have long worried that unleashing religious fundamentalism into the bloodstream of American politics would lead to disaster can feel only that our fears have now come true. Fifteen years ago Schiavo suffered a heart stoppage that was caused by her bulimia. Her brain was temporarily starved of oxygen and scans showed that her cerebral cortex had stopped...

It was budget week, and Democrats and Republicans were careening toward a series of bruising party-line votes. But Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wanted to talk about something in short supply: common ground. The New York Democrat was proposing spending $100 million to curb unwanted pregnancies, especially among teenagers, through improved family planning programs. ~~snip~~ The notion of reaching across divides and trying to bridge differences has become an important part of Clinton's political persona as she heads toward a possible national campaign . A poll of New York voters taken last month by Quinnipiac University found that 65 percent of...

What do we know about George W. Bush that we didn't know four years ago, when most of us voted for someone else? . Never has anyone become President of the United States less pretested by life... ... In his 40s, he was still a kid, hanging around his father's White House with not much to do. A decade later, without actually winning the most votes, he was President himself. Then came Sept. 11. ... even a mediocrity can seem great for a while. After Sept. 11, the War on terrorism was declared. An actual war was started in Iraq...

On Oct. 23, just 10 days before the election, the war in Iraq will have lasted as long as the 584-day U.S. involvement in World War I, from the April 6, 1917, declaration of war to the Nov. 11, 1918, armistice. And probably in late September or early October the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq will pass 1,000. The war already has lasted longer than the Spanish-American War (230 days), and on Dec. 9, 42 days before the next president is inaugurated, the war will be longer than was the war with Mexico (630 days). It will not...

BRLINGTON, Vt., Jan. 12 — Eddie Kasperowicz, 74 and retired from the Seabrook, N.H., auto plant that Howard Dean was touring the other day, had a question unrelated to his union's hot-button issues of trade and health care. "When," he wondered, "will America have a chance to meet your bride?" No time soon, Dr. Dean told him, "unless you get sick in Shelburne, Vt., in which case she'll probably see you." In 23 years of marriage, 18 of which Dr. Dean has spent running for, or serving in, office, his wife, Judith Steinberg Dean, has developed an unusual role for...

<p>MIDDLETOWN, R.I. -- Every action, said the political pundit Sir Isaac Newton, produces an equal and opposite reaction.</p> <p>The year 2003 will be remembered as the time when Democrats decided to fight back against President Bush after coddling and even embracing him in 2002. This whiplash will mean some surprising things for 2004.</p>

New York Yankees slugger Jason Giambi has been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury investigating a company that prescribes nutritional supplements for elite athletes, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday. Before the second game of the World Series on Sunday, Giambi told the Chronicle, "Uh, yeah, I was," when asked if he had been subpoenaed in connection with the probe of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO. Giambi said he visited Burlingame, Calif.-based BALCO last fall before going on a tour of Japan with other major leaguers. "I just asked about some vitamins and supplements and stuff like that,"...

USA Wrestling is working with the College Sports Council and other Olympic sports organizations on a campaign to flood the White House with calls "re: his Title IX decision". Athletes, coaches, parents, fans and others who support fair sports opportunities for all are asked to call the White House comment line this week at 202-456-1111. Those with cell phones that have long distance plans are asked to spend a few of their free minutes by making a phone call to support wrestling and other Olympic sports. Tell President Bush that you are upset with his decision concerning Title IX, and...

Did the Bush administration deliberately mislead the nation and the world when President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and others so confidently suggested, as their casus belli, that Saddam Hussein had hundreds of tons of banned chemical and biological weapons and a program to build a nuclear bomb? What if Saddam destroyed most, or all, of his weapons of mass destruction years ago? That suspicion is taking root in much of the world. I think it is wrong. But I also fear that the administration may have done grave damage to its own credibility abroad by overstating the quality...