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Mysterious phone calls to New Hampshire and Iowa voters that harshly questioned Mitt Romney's Mormon faith and praised John McCain's military service prompted new attacks in the Republican presidential race yesterday and an investigation by New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly A. Ayotte. McCain and another candidate, Rudy Giuliani, denied any involvement in the calls and condemned them as gutter politics. They are known as "push polls," calls that sound like surveys but are designed to spread negative information about a candidate. New Hampshire law requires all political advertising, including phone calls, to identify the candidate being supported. McCain and Romney...

Pumped up by a record day of online fundraising, Republican presidential contender Ron Paul said Wednesday he hopes to do well in a New Hampshire campaign in which he's emerging as a potential spoiler or more. In an Associated Press interview, he said people startled by the $4.3 million take from his volunteer-led fundraising blitz Monday might be surprised on Election Day as well. "They said if the candidate doesn't call and pander to special interests you can't raise enough money. But here, we found out the campaign is very spontaneous and volunteers are coming," he said. "So, I would...

There are many instances where pragmatism has its place. In its purest sense, pragmatism is simply engaging in conduct that emphasizes practicality. For example, if I decide to spend $60 for a pair of pants that will last me several years rather than spend $20 for a pair that may not make it past the first outing it could be said that my decision involved the exercise of pragmatism. That may work for pants but it doesn’t work for principles. Pragmatism may work well in the fashion world but it has no place in the world of public policy. There...

The umbrella group Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, whose members include such progressive groups as the Service Employees Union International and MoveOn.org Political Action, issued a laudatory shout out today to Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, the libertarian Republican presidential candidate: While Crowded Field of Republicans Follow Bush Over Cliff on Iraq War, Ron Paul Stands Out as Being Right on Iraq GOP Presidential Hopeful Decries Fellow Candidates’ Support of Endless War Washington, DC – While the rest of the Republicans continue to follow President Bush’s unpopular Iraq war policy, Representative Ron Paul is the lone anti-war Republican presidential candidate...

This weekend, I attended and spoke at the Second Amendment Foundation’s annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, which was held at a convention center in northern Kentucky, a few miles away from Cincinnati. What I saw and heard there changed my mind about the viability of Ron Paul’s presidential candidacy; Paul is going to far outperform the expectations laid out for him. First, for some background: twenty years ago, the Second Amendment Foundation (the second-largest pro-Second Amendment group in the U.S.) began sponsoring an annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, in conjunction with other pro-gun groups, including the NRA. For a full...

In response to a reporter's question, GOP Prez candidate Fred Thompson said he would not rule out drilling for oil off Florida to achieve more energy independence. "We've got to use all the resources that are available to us," he said. "We ought to do it in an environmentally safe manner. We've got to be respectful and inclusive of the people who are most directly involved in the area. But I would not rule out our Gulf areas in terms of that if we've got resources there." Thompson also said on the stump in Cape Coral, where more than 500...

Newt Gingrich is moving closer to a presidential nomination bid in a severely divided Republican Party. "I will decide based on whether I have about $30 million in committed campaign contributions and whether I think it is possible to run a campaign based on ideas rather than 30-second sound bites," the former House speaker told The Washington Times yesterday.... Many Republicans, regardless of whether they agree with his views, regard him as conservatism's brainiest and most-engaging politician. "The party believes ideas have consequences, and no one articulates our message better than Newt," said Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saulius "Saul" Anuzis....

The Sam Brownback for president campaign has reached the condition referred to by political scientists as “extreme pointlessness.” O.K., maybe political scientists don’t call it that, but pretty much any other observer would. The Brownback campaign is essentially premised on pro-life purity. The Kansas senator himself would insist that it is based on his “whole life” views. I admire those views and think they are very important. (I was genuinely delighted to see Brownback hugging, if I’m not mistaken, a woman with Down Syndrome in his Iowa straw poll video — good for him) But it’s not any of the...

WASHINGTON: After 30 years of political organizing, the anti-abortion movement has won a series of victories in the legislatures and the courts and stands tantalizingly close to winning even more. But these are anxious days for the movement. Six months before the Iowa presidential caucuses, anti-abortion activists in the Republican Party are trying to adjust to a strikingly different political landscape. For the first time in more than a generation, they face, in former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York, a front-runner for the nomination who supports abortion rights. "Pro-life" support is divided among several other candidates, including former Governor...

The race for of the Republican Presidential nomination following the July 4th holiday looks a lot like it did before the nation's birthday party. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani essentially tied for the lead. It's Thompson at 25% and Giuliani at 24%. Trailing the frontrunners at a distance are former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Arizona Senator John McCain. They're tied at 12%. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and Kansas Senator Sam Brownback each attract support from 2% of voters nationally. Five other candidates...

Two top aides resigned Tuesday from the 2008 presidential campaign of Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain — the latest sign of disarray for the one-time GOP front-runner, whose White House bid has been beset by stagnant poll numbers, lower-than-expected fundraising and staff layoffs. CQPolitics.com Daily E-mail CQ Midday Update from Capitol Hill Congressional Quarterly Free Newsletters The latest to leave McCain’s camp are campaign manager Terry Nelson and chief strategist John Weaver. Nelson formerly was a top political aide to President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign and to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which oversees the party’s strategy in...

Mayor Giuliani, considered a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, says America needs to expand its military and pitched himself as the candidate who would instill fear in the Iranian president."What I can do is get things done, accomplish things," the former mayor told a crowd of about 1,000 supporters at a baseball-themed fund-raiser at the Sheraton in Midtown last night. "People said New York was ungovernable. We governed it and it became the best example of urban renaissance." Saying he is "impatient and singled-minded" about his goals, he told the crowd that he'd bring the same focus to the...

Garnerville resident Jerry Kiley has formed the Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain, a non-profit, non-partisan group that will collect money for negative advertising in the months leading up to the primary. Kiley, a Vietnam veteran, said that McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona and presidential hopeful, has abandoned the causes of Vietnam veterans and prisoners of war, despite being a former Vietnam POW himself. "If he had the power of the presidency, I'd really fear for this country," Kiley said. Calls to McCain's campaign and Washington Senate office have not been returned. Read more about this story tomorrow in The...

Rudy Giuliani Has Got What You Need Posted by Mark Radulich on 02.15.2007 It won't matter what Giuliani thinks about about abortion if Iran drops a bomb on us. And quite frankly I'm much less worried about Islamic terrorism with President Giuliani in charge than President Brownback or Clinton.The story right now being bandied about by the mainstream media and the talk radio world is that the GOP has no front-runner for the 2008 Presidential election or that the front-runners are not exactly inspiring anyone. The three most prominent names right now are obviously John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani....

Duncan Hunter offers much that conservatives and even non-conservatives can both admire and appreciate. Unique among an otherwise all too timid Congress, Hunter has distinguished himself as a forceful proponent of common sense views that find little favor in either party. Whether it be his principled defense of the unfairly or harshly convicted, his common sense stance against jeopardizing national security with a porous border while still being clearly in favor of legal immigration, his stance on trade that protects the individual worker and that is best for American business or his general openness to needed change as it benefits...

Slow and steady wins the race, as the old adage goes. That is certainly the approach that former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani has been taking with his possible White House run in 2008. Let’s hope that the adage holds true for Giuliani in the next couple years.In November, Giuliani created a presidential exploratory committee to “test the waters.” Since then, sources in the Giuliani camp have said that he recently filed a “statement of candidacy” with the Federal Elections Committee, a step that puts him on the same legal level with other Republican hopefuls as Mitt Romney, former...

Arizona Sen. John McCain says only Washington insiders believe his 2008 presidential campaign may be suffering because he supports President Bush's decision to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq. "Well, I think there's that, maybe, perception inside the Beltway. But outside, a lot of Republicans are rallying to this belief that we need to have a strategy that can win, and realize the consequences of failure," McCain said Sunday. "Many people trust my judgment because they've known me for many years," he said. "Look, it's of secondary importance, but I think we're doing just fine, and I think polls indicate...

Fox News' new poll, completed 1/30-31/07, provides a new look at the favorable and unfavorable ratings of the leading presidential contenders. Rudy Giuliani continues to lead the pack in the balance of favorable to unfavorable ratings in the new Fox poll with 54% favorable to 24% unfavorable . John McCain enjoys a net-positive evaluation, though not as strongly positive as Giuliani, at 45%-29%. Among Democrats, Hillary Clinton strongly divides voters yet manages a 50%-44% net positive rating. Less well known John Edwards has an 8 point net positive (41%-33%) while Barack Obama has the best balance, 41%-20% but the largest...

Arizona Sen. John McCain's presidential aspirations stand to suffer a stunning setback if California Republicans carry out a plan to move part of their nomination process up from June to Feb. 5 next year. "If the California Republican Party approves this idea, it may benefit candidates other than John McCain," Orange County state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore told The Times. The proposal backed by DeVore calls for the 1,600 members of the state Republican Central Committee to select at least 53 of their 165 delegates to the Republican National Convention at the party's regularly scheduled February convention. An alternative plan being...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton holds a strong lead over other Democratic presidential contenders in a new poll of voters in Ohio, the closely divided swing state that tipped the 2004 election for President Bush. Former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani, who appeared in TV ads and at fundraisers during last year's gubernatorial race, is the favorite among the state's Republican voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday. He is favored by 30 percent of voters surveyed compared to 22 percent for Sen. John McCain, 11 percent for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and 4 percent...