Free Republic

Chris Christie ties his shift on gay marriage to Vatican ruling on same-sex blessingsRepublican presidential candidate Chris Christie, once an opponent of same-sex marriage, said Thursday his views on the matter have shifted, citing the Vatican’s recent document on same-sex blessings as evidence that “even the Church is changing.”“And so you know for me, it’s still, it was a process I had to go through to change the way I’ve been raised both from a family perspective and what my mother and father taught me and felt and also from a religious perspective and … what my Church taught me...

House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney (Wyo.) on Wednesday urged the GOP to steer away from what she called a "Trump cult of personality" while vowing to continue speaking out in the face of Republican backlash. Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican, has faced rising criticism within the House Republican caucus over her vote to impeach former President Trump earlier this year. In a Washington Post op-ed on Wednesday afternoon, Cheney said she stood by her statements and called on the party to back away from Trump's claims that the 2020 election was stolen, saying he is “seeking to unravel...

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) told NBC News' Geoff Bennett on Monday that the Trump administration should make the whistleblower complaint that reportedly involves the president and Ukraine available to Congress, adding that it would be "very helpful to get [to] the bottom of the facts." The big picture: Romney continues to be the only Republican senator to condemn allegations that Trump pressured Ukraine's president to investigate Joe Biden, tweeting on Sunday that the reports are "troubling in the extreme."...........

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Democratic opponents call him a chameleon, changing colors as he seeks re-election in a difficult year for Republicans nationwide. Last week, the Republican Schwarzenegger was decidedly "green," like the color of his campaign bus, as he struck a deal with the state legislature's Democratic majority to enact a law making California the first U.S. state to cap greenhouse-gas emissions. In doing so, he snubbed his own party, much of the California business establishment and President Bush, whom Schwarzenegger has accused of doing too little to fight global warming. With that and other...

But is California's governor really a closet Democrat? The question has been raised by journalists and conservative critics, who never tire of taking note of Schwarzenegger's politically assertive wife, his hiring of Democratic aides, his liberal social values, his championing of public works projects and, of late, his compromises with the Legislature's Democratic leadership on a minimum-wage hike, mandatory prescription drug discounts and a measure to fight global warming. To attempt to answer that question is not to end a conversation but to begin it. Schwarzenegger routinely sides with business and asserts quasi-libertarian views on individual freedom. When the governor...

<p>A few hours before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered his first State of the State address to the Legislature on Tuesday, San Francisco Assemblyman Leland Yee told an interviewer that in the clash over how to close a massive budget deficit, Democrats count on Schwarzenegger being "a closet Democrat" who will eventually opt for higher taxes.</p>