Free Republic

Mitt Romney met quietly with a small group of conservative leaders in Washington on Thursday in an effort to reassure Republicans who remain skeptical about his candidacy, CNN has learned. The Romney campaign arranged a "mix and mingle" session for the candidate to meet with conservatives Thursday afternoon at the Marriott Wardman Park, where the annual Conservative Political Action Conference is being held.

New York-based political consultant Kieran Mahoney's statewide survey of probable Republican participants in the 2008 Iowa presidential caucuses shows this support for the ''big three'' GOP candidates: John McCain, 20.5 percent; Rudy Giuliani, 16.3 percent; Mitt Romney, 3.5 percent. Astonishingly, they all trail James Gilmore, the former governor of Virginia, with 31 percent. How could that be? Because it was not a legitimate survey, but a ''push poll.'' That normally is a clandestine effort to rig a poll by telling respondents negative things about various candidates. Mahoney makes no secret that his voter sample was told of liberal deviations by...

The Washington Post recently ran a "Washington in Brief" round-up of news on page six that included a small item noting that President Bush was bucking the NRA and other gun owners by backing a renewal of the so-called "assault weapons ban" that affects certain semi-automatic rifles. Since it only offended conservatives, it wasn’t front- page news. This wasn’t the only piece of disappointing news to conservatives. In an action that got slightly more attention, the Bush Administration decided not to seek a critical resolution from the United Nations Human Rights Commission about China, despite a recent State Department report...