Free Republic

Take Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee out of the 2012 presidential mix, says Al Cardenas, new chair of the American Conservative Union: If they were serious about running, "they'd probably be here." Interviewed at the end of the second busy day of his organization's Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, Cardenas dismissed the chances of the two high-profile no-shows. "Both Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin would be formidable contenders, but are unlikely to be nominees," he told On Calll. "But my sense I they're not serious about running because I would think they'd probably be here if they were."

After skipping the popular Conservative Political Action Conference for the past three years, Sarah Palin has once again turned down the invitation of CPAC officials to address the conference this year. CPAC organizers invited Palin to deliver the closing-night keynote speech on Saturday Feb. 12, immediately following the announcement of the results of CPAC’s annual presidential straw poll, but after several days of negotiations, she declined. “We’re disappointed that she wasn’t able to make it this year,” American Conservative Union Chairman David Keene said through a spokesman on Thursday. He noted that Palin "expressed interest in wanting to come this...

Here’s a first-hand story of the effects of illegal immigration. Both my parents died of cancer. Toward the end of my mother’s life, my brothers and I took her to hospitals more times than we care to remember, for life-prolonging procedures – until there was nothing more that could be done. During her final month I took her to the local Hospital Emergency Room one night. We arrived at about 10:30 p.m. and found the waiting room literally filled with non-English-speaking Latinos. None of the people ahead of us appeared to have an emergency or to be in great distress....

It's that time of year again. Pundits, pollsters and lobbyists are gathering in the nation's capital to tell conservative activists how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. ... This year, the Beltway leaders of conservatism are racing hard to catch up with a parade they did not launch and cannot control. Across America, grass-roots patriots and anti-Obama protests have changed the political landscape in ways conservatism's entrenched Beltway Politburo did not anticipate. ... The greatest threat in 1960 was international – how to deal with the threat of Soviet communism and the "missile gap" – and anti-communism was...