Free Republic

This fall's only congressional election, featuring a third-party conservative challenging the Republican nominee, tests the future of the GOP. Will the Tea Party insurgency prevail? Atlanta Pitting conservative purists against party pragmatists, a growing number of national Republican figures are bucking the party standard and backing a third-party candidate in the sole congressional election scheduled this year, upstate New York’s 23rd congressional district. Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, former Senator Rick Santorum, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, current Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachmann, former Tennessee Senator and presidential candidate Fred Thompson, and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes have all...

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund, is packing her bags in preparation for a trip tomorrow from Virginia to NY-23, where she will join members of her staff working to help Conservative nominee Doug Hoffman. Dannenfelser, who described the fund, a national pro-life PAC, as "basically the mirror image of EMILY's List, said the race for the seat vacated by former Rep. John McHugh has galvanized the GOP grassroots in a way she hasn't seen before. "There's basically a split between a few party leaders and the entire Republican base," Dannenfelser said. "Only a handful...

Poltico's Jonathan Martin reports: "The surging campaign of third-party candidate Chris Daggett has turned the New Jersey governor's race into a dead-heat and left Republicans divided over the seriousness of the threat he poses to GOP nominee Chris Christie." The Hill's Reid Wilson reports: The House GOP conference is bitterly divided over a centrist New York Republican’s run for the House seat vacated by Army Secretary John McHugh. "Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, who backs abortion rights and has voiced support for gay rights, has drawn a challenger from the right who is running on the Conservative Party line. And though House...

PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. -- The rise of conservative "tea party" activists around the country has created a dilemma for Republicans. They are breathing life into the party's quest to regain power. But they're also waging war on some candidates hand-picked by GOP leaders as the most likely to win. In upstate New York, Dede Scozzafava, 49 years old, is the choice of local party leaders to defend a Republican seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, an abortion-rights candidate who could appeal to independents. Doug Hoffman, 59, is a local accountant backed by tea-party activists who has jumped into the race...

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) exhorted Republicans Friday to rally against fiscal excess, promising a conservative crowd that the country is “on the verge of a great American awakening.” Pence, the House GOP conference chairman, said the simmering unrest that led to Tea Parties since the spring and the march in Washington last month reflected a country angry about the expansion of government. “It’s authentic and it’s real and it’s powerful and it’s American,” Pence told about 2,000 conservatives at the annual conference of Americans for Prosperity, a free-market group. The five-term Hoosier said of the movement: “The politicians aren’t leading...

<p>Sarah Palin needs to stop whining about unfair media coverage and get over the fact that some people don’t like her, Dave Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, tells Newsmax.</p> <p>Palin doesn’t seem to get that politics is a tough game, says Keene, one of the country’s most astute political observers.</p>

In GOP base, a 'rebellion brewing' By: Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin April 26, 2009 07:03 AM EST A quick tour through the week’s headlines suggests the Republican Party is beginning to come to terms with the last election and that consensus is emerging among GOP elites that the party needs to move away from discordant social issues. There was Sen. John McCain's daughter and his campaign manager who last week demanded that their fellow Republicans embrace same-sex marriage. Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman – the most devoted modernizer among the party's 2012 hopefuls – won approving words from New York...

In the ongoing debate over the economic stimulus package, South Carolina Republican Gov. Mark Sanford has made all the right enemies. The White House has brushed aside Sanford’s threat to turn down $700 million allotted for his state. Republicans in Sanford’s own state have hinted that they’ll override any attempt to veto the cash. Moderate California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has gently mocked Sanford’s position. “I’ll take it,” Schwarzenegger told George Stephanopolous last month. “I’m more than happy to take his money or any other governor in this country that doesn’t want to take this money.” Sanford’s public battle with...

Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has won the backing of some of America's best-known conservatives in his bid to become Republican National Committee chairman, just days before he and the other hopefuls are scheduled to begin a week of joint appearances to Republican Party audiences. The soft-spoken politician has received public endorsements from across the spectrum of conservatives - social, movement and economic, but some in the party, people who back him and people who don't, fear he may lack the charisma needed to represent the party on television. Blackwell supporters include limited-government champions such as American Conservative...

Where did the super-majority of votes gathered by Ronald Reagan in his presidential campaigns go in 2008? Can they be reclaimed by future Republican candidates? Reagan's 1980 and 1984 victories were based on a coalition of three different groups. He attracted the fiscal-integrity/limited-government conservatives who had not given up since Barry Goldwater's campaign, the social conservatives who newly came into the political process to be active against the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion, and the Reagan Democrats (mostly blue-collar, Catholic and/or Irish) who sought a change from the stagflation of the Jimmy Carter years. In 2008, the first two groups...

Under the myopic mantra of "not conservative enough," the nation just rejected its best known American hero and real Washington watch-dog and elected the most inexperienced far left freshman member of the U.S. Senate, aka the elitist good ole boy network, as Commander-in-Chief. Despite the fact that John McCain has a history of being "conservative" on 16 of 20 national issues (80%), according to too many "conservatives," he was not conservative enough to gain their support in the 2008 general election, even after bringing conservative Washington outsider Sarah Palin aboard. So, "conservatives" put Barack Hussein Obama and leftist Democrats in...

<p>WASHINGTON - Conservatism's current intellectual chaos reverberated in the Republican ticket's end-of-campaign crescendo of surreal warnings that big government - verily, "socialism" - would impend were Democrats elected. John McCain and Sarah Palin experienced this epiphany when Barack Obama told a Toledo plumber that he would "spread the wealth around."</p>

With that headline you may think I am employing hyperbole. If so, you would be wrong. I am absolutely and positively blaming the conservative movement for the rise to the presidency of a man that adheres to a socialist ideology. In fact, in this day and age, I might even blame conservatives for the continued existence of this man's ideas altogether, though that might be a stretch. No, more directly, conservatives are at fault for the singular fact that many millions of Americans saw no reason not to vote for a socialist. They mistakenly imagined his ideas were still just...

Democrat Barack Obama garnered a surprising 20 percent of the vote from conservatives who cast ballots on Election Day, top-ranked radio-talker Rush Limbaugh told listeners. Citing exit polls, Limbaugh also said on Wednesday that Republican John McCain lost independents and moderates by a margin of 60 percent to 39 percent. “McCain only got 89 percent of the Republican vote,” Limbaugh said. “He only got 80 percent of the conservative vote. “And therein lies the tale, the recipe offered up by the wizards of smart in the Republican Party and on our side — for whatever reason we have to abandon...

Four minutes from the impromptu presser outside his home this morning. It’s like “Meet John Doe” but without the newspaper columnist pulling the strings! If there was any doubt about his political affiliation before, listen to him on social security and Iraq and watch those doubts melt away. Can a cameo at a ‘Cuda rally be far off? The highlight: One of the reporters trying to kookify him by pressing him on some sort of old association with the Natural Law Party. He’s middle class and conservative; there simply must be some extremism in there somewhere. Update: Let the ritual...

To the degree that they are engaged in this election, conservatives are motivated entirely by fear of Obama and what he will do as president when backed by a solidly liberal Democratic House and Senate. They are not driven by love of the Republican candidate, and it shows in the anger present at McCain campaign rallies. Most conservatives will probably vote for McCain, but they also realize they are far less likely to persuade others, and they feel a disaster coming. The enthusiasm the Right felt during the 2004 election, which had been framed as a true ideological clash between...

McCain faces conservative backlash over mortgage plan By Alexander Mooney CNN (CNN) -- John McCain is facing a fresh round of anger from members of his own party deeply opposed to the Arizona senator's proposal for the federal government to purchase troubled mortgage loans. John McCain first mentioned his mortgage relief plan during Tuesday's town-hall debate with Barack Obama. John McCain first mentioned his mortgage relief plan during Tuesday's town-hall debate with Barack Obama. The pointed backlash from several economic conservatives -- many of whom already distrust McCain's commitment to free-market principles -- couldn't come at a worse time for...

I think I'm fairly representative of those conservatives who just could not stand to vote for John McCain.  But I now plan to vote for him this November.  Let me tell you why. My published criticisms of McCain can be read here, here, here and here.  I even contemplated that a President Obama might not be so bad.  I think my bona fides as a "McCain hater" are fairly well established.  (Although I don't care for the word "hate" here.  I didn't hate him, just voting for him.) To some conservatives, voting is a simple matter: only one of two...

ST. PAUL, MINN. - Republican John McCain's primary campaign almost collapsed last year under the weight of opponents' attacks that he backed "amnesty" for illegal immigrants. As McCain prepares to accept his party's nomination for president tonight, past critics of the Arizona senator's position have rallied behind his candidacy. McCain, meanwhile, has backed away from signature immigration legislation and signed off on a party platform that makes a fence along the Mexican border a priority. The party's Twin Cities unity on immigration bridges, for now, an increasingly charged ideological rift for Republican candidates and campaigns. "We don't go around talking...

The choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin last week by Republican presidential candidate John McCain has been explained in the media as a "game-changer," "bold," "daring," and in keeping with the Arizona senator's "maverick" image. But here's what the decision means for across-the-board conservatives: vital. Before McCain's decision many on the Right (including myself) were alternately ambivalent, disaffected, or outright opposed to the idea of voting for him. After years of nose-thumbing acts by the GOP candidate towards many of his party's colleagues and its base, the temptation for conservatives to register a protest vote (most likely Libertarian Bob Barr)...