Free Republic

Sooner or later the bubble had to pop. Mitt Romney has had a pretty swell time of it in 2010. The former presidential contender has been ambidextrous in his political maneuvers, carefully challenging President Obama on key economic issues that play to his own strengths as a pragmatic technocrat. The success generated by his book No Apology earlier this year seemed to verify his place as the GOP’s resident wonk. The book even won praise from detractors as a thoughtful policy manifesto. As Republicans rode a wave of voter dissatisfaction towards taking back the House, Romney faithfully played the role...

As I type this, I am watching former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee on “The Wendy Williams Show” talking about his impending talk show on Fox and am reminded, not for the first time, that quite a few presidential candidates function as if they never expected or even wanted to be president in the first place. They ran to gain a media platform. But few have done so as brazenly as Huckabee, who typically ended his homespun stump homilies with pedestrian pluckings of his bass guitar. Huckabee’s ultimate role in the 2008 race was to assist in the splintering of evangelicals...

Even as the starting bell rings for the first round of the Republican presidential free-for-all, we’ve got a couple of anonymous Mitt Romney advisors coming off the top rope, aiming elbow smashes at Sarah Palin’s back. They said she’s “not a serious human being” and “if she’s standing up there in a debate, and the answers are more than 15 seconds long, she’s in trouble.” This childish and incoherent nonsense does a lot more damage to Mitt Romney than Sarah Palin. What, exactly, are the criteria for being considered a “serious human being?” Should she just give up her half-hearted...

Sarah Palin's recent web video making a pitch to conservative women may have again shifted the political spotlight to the former governor of Alaska, but more than a half dozen other GOP hopefuls are toying seriously with a presidential run this summer. ......................................................... Still, few express much regard for Palin's ultimate chances. One adviser to Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, and, by traditional standards, the putative 2012 frontrunner, says of Palin, "She's not a serious human being." Another Romney intimate warns, "If she's standing up there in a debate and the answers are more than 15 seconds long, she's...