Free Republic

Newt Gingrich has opened a sizable lead over Mitt Romney in the first national poll in the GOP presidential race taken since the former Speaker of the House earned the key endorsement of the New Hampshire Union Leader, showing Gingrich with a nine-percentage point lead over the former Massachusetts governor. The poll, conducted by Majority Opinion Research Sunday night, showed Gingrich leading the Republican field with 32 percent of support from those surveyed. Romney earned 23 percent, while Herman Cain rounded out the top three with 14 percent of the vote. Ron Paul led the remainder of the field with...

Part of transcript: CAIN: ... because it is a package. Secure the border for real, promote the path to citizenship that's already there. And the path to citizenship that's already there doesn't say anything about amnesty. Thirdly, enforce the laws that are already there. But make it easier for companies to be able to enforce the laws. And fourth, empower the states. Don't give the states any, you know, special things to do. Just empower them to do, within the law, what the federal government is not doing. That's my approach to the whole issue. --- On another thread, a...

Herman Cain indicated today that he does not agree with Newt Gingrich’s position on immigration. “The way I would deal with those that are already here, which has been my stated position: empower the states to deal with the illegals that are already here, not some, big, grandiose, national one size fit-all. I believe that the states should be empowered to deal with the illegals that are already here,” Cain said CNN’s State of the Union this morning. In response to whether that meant the states could allow illegal immigrants to “be put on a path toward legalization and toward...

Giving amnesty to illegal immigrants will greatly increase long-term costs to the taxpayer. Granting amnesty to illegal immigrants would, over time, increase their use of means-tested welfare, Social Security, and Medicare. Fiscal costs would rise in the intermediate term and increase dramatically when amnesty recipients reach retirement. Although it is difficult to provide a precise estimate, it seems likely that if 10 million adult illegal immigrants currently in the U.S. were granted amnesty, the net retirement cost to government (benefits minus taxes) could be over $2.6 trillion.