Free Republic

Furious conservatives have taken to blogs and Twitter on Thursday to vent their ire against what they allege is a conspiratorial dumping of twisted and manipulated negative attacks on Newt Gingrich. The target of their fury: The Drudge Report. For the last 48 hours, the conservative Web site led by Matt Drudge has become a virtual campaign arm for Mitt Romney, featuring huge, screaming headlines about Mr. Gingrich and his past. That prompted conservatives who support Mr. Gingrich to accuse Mr. Drudge of selling out to the Republican establishment — many of whom have come to Mr. Romney’s aid as...

Jon Huntsman has dropped out of the race for the GOP nomination for president. That silence you hear is the combined sighs of relief of all the candidates who were threatened by his candidacy. Will we miss Huntsman? Yeah. No one’s much bothered one way or the other. Now the 1 percent or so of the GOP’s loyal Huntsman backers are free to fall in behind one of the other candidates. Yeah, again.

In a campaign speech late Tuesday night, Governor Rick Perry stated that he is "returning to Texas" to reassess whether he is going to continue running for President. The speech contained several emotional moments, in particular two moments. The first was when he read a letter from an adoring supporter who called him a "great man." The letter described a conversation that Mr. Perry had had with a soldier and how his supporter looked on in awe as he watched Governor Perry call the veteran his "Christian brother." The second was when Perry announced that he would be returning to...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- Set to meet with his wife for the first time since a woman came forward claiming she had a 13-year extramarital affair with him, Herman Cain is preparing for one last campaign stop before he decides whether to press forward with his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. ... "White said the affair was never about love and that Cain never said he loved her. "Nor did I tell him that I loved him," she said. "It wasn't a love affair. It was a sexual affair, as hard as that is for me to say and...

TREYNOR, Iowa – Mitt Romney today returned to Iowa, a state that delivered a crippling blow to his candidacy in 2008, exuding a certain amount of confidence. “There’s a good shot I might become the next president of the United States,” he told community leaders here at a business roundtable at Treynor State Bank. “It’s not a sure thing, but it’s a good shot.” Romney has generally not focused his campaign on Iowa, a state that he staked much of his candidacy four years ago only to lose both the caucus vote and, perhaps more importantly, the game of expectations....

If Mitt Romney can’t start locking up the GOP nomination now, he may never be able to. The former Massachusetts governor’s charmed path toward the presidential nomination was made even smoother Tuesday when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie opted out of a campaign and recommended that voters choose the candidate with the “best chance” of beating President Barack Obama. No white knight from Trenton, N.J., or anywhere else is riding into the race as the establishment’s savior. Romney’s would-be chief rival for the nomination, Rick Perry, is dropping in the polls amid doubts from conservatives and pragmatists. And the one...

I spend a fair amount of time in Texas, where I have many friends, all solid conservative Republicans, and hardly a one of them has much use for Perry. But among Texas conservatives I have hardly ever heard a kind word said on Perry's behalf. Among the most common epithets are: egocentric, treacherous, hypocritical, shallow, unprincipled, and vindictive. Yes, these are qualities we all demand in our political leaders, but Perry stands out from the pack. Perry is supposed to be a conservative, but apart from the usual yahoo speeches about cutting taxes, seceding from the Union, and putting Jesus'...

I know, I know: It’s a Zogby poll. But c’mon. I had to blog it. Just because I knew that headline would rock your world. He’s not leading by this much. But he is leading, comfortably.

One of the most talked about subjects in politics is whether or not Sarah Palin will run for the presidency. It's frankly anyone's guess which direction she will go with her decision and when she will make the decision. However, if Palin doesn't run it will be a disaster for the Republican Party and quite possibly the country*snip*In watching the coverage of the announced candidates, the alarm bells should be clanging violently. *snip*If Sarah Palin doesn't run for president, the operatives in the media and Beltway establishment will have learned a fool-proof method of destroying any political opponent.*snip*When the political...

Newt Gingrich vowed on Friday to campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination on his own terms, saying he would do “whatever it takes” to remain in the race despite the exodus a day earlier of nearly his entire senior staff. “There is a fundamental strategic difference between the traditional consulting community and the kind of campaign I want to run,” Mr. Gingrich said. “Now we’ll find out over the next year who’s right.” Even as some prominent Republicans, including Gov. Terry Branstad of Iowa, questioned his viability, Mr. Gingrich made plans to deliver a foreign policy speech in Los...

Sources close to Texas Gov. Rick Perry say that the events of the last week have brought America’s longest-serving governor to the cusp of an announcement. The implosion of Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign frees up Perry’s political wingmen, Dave Carney and Rob Johnson, now said to be headed to Austin to prepare a Perry run. Also this week, sources say Perry got the thumbs up from the Texas moneymen whose support he sought before launching a campaign. A big piece in the Wall Street Journal also helped convince the team that there was East Coast interest in the Texan’s candidacy....

Seriously, all of this talk from pundits, politicos, supporters of other potential GOP candidates or just those always fearing doom no matter what, that Sarah Palin cannot defeat Obama in 2012 but that this list of guys has a better chance at doing it is both hubris and a fallacy of presumption Who's to say that these so-called preferred stock won't stumble when it's their turn to face intense scrutiny from the media and the myriad of attacks from the Obama administration no matter how weaken Obama may be come 2012? Better yet the question should be do they have...

THERE'S A DEMOCRAT BEHIND DOOR NO. 1, 2 AND 3February 13, 2008 A few more primary wins and B. Hussein Obama will be able to light up a cigarette during a televised speech and still get the nomination. It looks like the only thing that can stop him now is an endorsement from Al Gore. Gore is always lunging into a movement just as it has passed its prime -- the Internet, Howard Dean, global warming, trying to talk black when he campaigns at a black church. He probably bought a big house a few months ago. Gore is such...

A decisive chunk of the Republican primary electorate didn't find this goofily endearing. When Mitt stood up and warbled, they didn't like his tune. They wanted something meaner and rawer and tougher, and there was John McCain. At the risk of overextending my musical analogy way beyond its natural 32 bars, it should be noted that the defining McCain moment came back in the fall when he responded to Hillary Clinton's support for public funding for a Woodstock museum. If you're under 70 and have no idea what "Woodstock" is or why it would require its own museum, ask your...

Albert Einstein once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. With that in mind, if John McCain wins the Republican presidential nomination, it might be appropriate to temporarily designate the site of the 2008 Republican convention an insane asylum. Why? Well, a Republican doesn't need to spend much time on a political analyst's couch before depressing memories of the 1996 presidential election – also known as the Bob Dole debacle – are dredged up. If you're old enough to remember that frightening experience, but still too traumatized to recall it, perhaps...

...What's clear is that with Thompson out, the crowd on the ideological right grows less crowded. The exit polls from the Palmetto State underscore Thompson's appeal to the most conservative GOP voters. Among the voters who described themselves as "very conservative" Huckabee led the way with 41%, but Thompson claimed 22% percent (McCain placed third with 19% followed by Romney with 16%). "Based on South Carolina, a state that Thompson worked pretty hard, his departure would seem to help Huckabee and Romney probably more so than McCain," said Neil Newhouse, an [unaffiliated] Republican pollster.. Given Thompson's strengths with very conservative...

This weekend, CNN released results of general election trial heats, pitting each of the four leading Republican candidates for President against both of the leading Democrats. The unmistakable message from this national exercise (surveying 840 voters on January 9 and 10th) is that Mitt Romney unequivocally qualifies as the weakest candidate the G.O.P. could field. In the head-to-head contest with Barack Obama he is utterly wiped out, losing by a margin of 22 points (59% to 37%). Against Hillary Clinton, Romney fares little better, falling 18 percentage points behind (58% to 40%). The results for other candidates show that this...

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Rep. Ron Paul has no plans to run on a third-party ticket, he told The Trail tonight, minutes before boarding a private jet to Los Angeles. And, it turns out, being excluded from the evening's Republican forum on Fox News landed the Texas congressman a second invitation on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." He'll be the lead guest on Monday's show, he said. "It's annoying not [being] able to participate in the debate," said Paul, adding that Fox News reporters and commentators "are warmongerers who don't want to hear other opinions."

Pat Buchanan himself may be backing Ron Paul, but some of his former staffers are backing Fred Thompson. Here’s an email sent out by Pat’s Iowa campaign director from the 1996 race: To all my friends, First, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, but for those of you who live in Iowa, I need not tell you that in little more than a handful of days - the weather permitting - we will make a monumental decision at our Caucuses: who leaves Iowa with the chance to gain their Party’s nomination for President, and all that means to...

Why Huckabee is the Best General Election Candidate and What Makes Him the Ideal Candidate to Win By Yomin Postelnik An increasing number of pundits, both conservative and liberal but all heavily entrenched in Washington or Medialand disconnect, are making assessments about the candidates. As usual, they are wrong and a party that listens to them will gain their approval at the expense of the votes of the nation. Pundits today generally take into account small anecdotal tidbits of history that best suit their own personal biases. No analysis is given to the overall race, the candidates, or to electoral...