Free Republic

I have spent nearly four decades in the conservative movement — from precinct worker to the Reagan White House. I campaigned for Reagan in 1976 and 1980. I served in several top positions during the Reagan administration, including chief of staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese. I have been an active conservative when conservatism was not in high favor. I remember in 1976, as a 19-year-old in Pennsylvania working the polls for Reagan against the sitting Republican president, Gerald Ford, I was demeaned for supporting a candidate who was said to be an extremist B-actor who couldn’t win a...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee criticized rival Mitt Romney's past as a venture capitalist Thursday, saying some workers lost their jobs as a result. In 1983, Romney founded Bain Capital, a firm that developed a reputation for turning around ailing companies and earned him millions of dollars. Asked about Romney's experience, Huckabee said the former Massachusetts governor's success came at the expense of workers. "If that's the turnaround, a lot of Americans would not want to see their lives turned around like that," the former Arkansas governor told reporters before running with a group of supporters...

WASHINGTON -- Who would respond to criticism from the Club for Growth by calling the conservative, free-market campaign organization the "Club for Greed"? That sounds like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards, all Democrats preaching the class struggle. In fact, the rejoinder comes from Mike Huckabee, who has broken out of the pack of second-tier Republican presidential candidates to become a serious contender -- definitely in Iowa and perhaps nationally. Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative, but serious Republicans know that he is a high-tax, protectionist, big-government advocate of a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives...

Embattled Republican Senate hopeful Jeanine Pirro will hold an "emergency summit" with Gov. Pataki today as she weighs pulling out of the race against Hillary Rodham Clinton. A leading Republican official said Pirro was "weighing her options, weighing her future as a Senate candidate." The source added, "She wants to hear what the governor has to say about this. She's open." Pirro, whose troubled campaign was thrown into serious doubt this week when state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno urged her to run for attorney general instead, sought the meeting with the governor to discuss the direction of her campaign,...