Free Republic

MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. -- Mitt Romney's campaign is blasting out automated phone calls that feature a recording of former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania raising questions about John McCain's "temperament" -- a hot-button issue that Romney himself has assiduously avoided. Santorum said in an interview today that he wrote the script himself, and the campaign deferred to him and approved it.

HOW THE CLINTONS WILL DESTROY JOHN MCCAIN Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler    Thursday, 31 January 2008 The number of fellow Senators who think John McCain is psychologically unstable is large.  Some will admit it publicly, like Thad Cochran who says, "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine." Others relate times when McCain screamed four-letter obscenities right in their faces in the Senate cloak room, like Dick Shelby, Rick Santorum, or Jim Inhofe.  "The man is unhinged," one Senator told me.  "He is frighteningly unfit to be Commander-in-Chief." That John McCain is clinically...

John McCain Defends Embryonic Stem Cell Research Backing in Florida Stop by Steven Ertelt LifeNews.com Editor January 25, 2008 Tallahassee, FL (LifeNews.com) -- Republican presidential candidate John McCain has taken a pro-life position on abortion, but his views on embryonic stem cell research are a cause for concern among many pro-life advocates. The Arizona senator defended his position in support of the destructive research at a Florida campaign stop. McCain said he continues to support forcing taxpayers to fund the research, which involves the destruction of human life and has never helped patients, but called his support for it “a...

addiction [to oil] has taken a toll on our economy while funding major sponsors of the jihadis and other terrorists that seek to harm us... we [should] dig our way out of this problem. The United States is the "Saudi Arabia of coal," and Pennsylvania is sitting on hundreds of years of this affordable and accessible resource, which, with innovative technologies - spearheaded by Pennsylvanians - we can use cleanly and right away. Pennsylvania coal already generates most of the electricity in this state. The industry is in the process of doing it more cleanly through clean-coal technologies, such as...

In a small indication of poor judgment, Sen. John McCain's operatives provided a link on his campaign Web site to the New York Times editorial endorsing Sen. McCain in the New York primary Feb. 5. The endorsement got more attention than it otherwise would because MSNBC's Brian Williams, one of the moderators of the GOP debate in Florida last Thursday, threw it in the face of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The editorial had consisted mostly of the editorial board explaining why they think Mr. Giuliani is an evil mean nasty rotten guy. Mr. Williams wanted to know: how...

Last week I wrote asking for reader input into the questions we would ask Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican candidate for President in 2008, in an upcoming interview. Thanks to the great feedback in the comments, we were able to put together a list of questions to use for the Romney interview, as well as future podcasts with other candidates we are scheduling now. The interview is below. Due to time constraints with Governor Romney, however, we weren’t able to get through all of the questions. Instead of rushing, we divided the questions up into two parts; his campaign says...

If any recent day typifies life in this crazy modern world, it was probably this past Tuesday. World financial markets were in a meltdown and the Federal Reserve held an emergency meeting to cut the interest rate a massive three quarters of a point in an attempt to stave off a precipitous stock market drop. President Bush was working with congressional leaders on an economic stimulus package to reduce the likelihood of a recession. Meanwhile the U.S. presidential campaign was in full swing with Hillary and Obama having just ripped each other to shreds at a debate, and Fred Thompson...

Is Huckabee's highway plan the nuttiest thing to come out of this presidential election? I don't want to speak too authoritatively, because I certainly haven't tried to catalogue every nutty thing everyone has said. But it certainly seems like a good candidate. I say that as the daughter of an avid transportation infrastructure advocate--indeed, my dad just co-authored a report on transportation finance for the next 50 years, which I hope he'll be joining me for a podcast on next week. Transportation spending takes years, even decades, to complete, which makes it less than ideal for stimulus spending. In a...

For the second day in a row, Republican presidential hopeful John McCain accused his main Florida rival, Mitt Romney, of favoring a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq — a charge Romney says is untrue and merits an apology from McCain. Speaking this morning to an overflow crowd of several hundred supporters at a restaurant, McCain didn't mention Romney by name, but said, "One of my opponents wanted to set a date for withdrawal. That would have meant disaster." Afterward, talking to reporters, McCain said, "If we surrender and wave a white flag, like Sen. Clinton wants to do, and...

It took Nixon to go to China. It took Bill Clinton, a Democrat, to get control of the federal deficit. (Sorry, conservatives, but it’s true.) And it might take Rudy Giuliani to appoint solid Supreme Court Justices.With Fred Thompson out of the race, judicial conservatives are looking for a candidate. John McCain? Three words: Gang of 14. Mike Huckabee? He’ll never be President. Mitt Romney? Ehhhh . . . he might be OK — but I think he comes across to voters as too slick and unprincipled. And there may be a reason for that.But there’s no reason, in my...

“If Fred Thompson or Duncan Hunter don't "make it" and it becomes necessary to vote while holding my nose and puking, I tried to devise a rational way to determine which RINO (Republican In Name Only) would make me the least ill.” I began another thread with this statement. The following is a promised update to that thread posted on 1/15/08. That thread is found HERE In it I posted a chart that included: The issues important to most conservatives, Rating the issues by the most important to the less important and Rating the candidates on each issue from 0...

Ever since it became apparent that the success of The Surge was undeniable the media have been increasingly ignoring Iraq and the Dems have dropped the war as an election issue. Instead, the Democrats and their partners in crime in the media, have been trying to talk up a Recession to hang round George Bush's neck. Pelosi and Reid manoevered to get GW's tacit acknowledgement of the "problem" by getting him to meet with them this week. But then today, up steps George and announces a stimulus package, complete with a stipulation to make his tax cuts permanent, and challenges...

With the victories of Mike Huckabee and John McCain in the first two primary contests and Mitt Romney's recently falling star, a fiction is being bandied about: The anti-amnesty position wasn't playing well in Peoria.  A good example is this San Diego Union-Tribune piece didactically titled "Lesson Learned?" (read: Take the blue pill or your fantasy will become a nightmare in November).  It's dishonest pablum, with more spin than a whirling dervish on speed.  The editors begin with a convenient characterization, stating that amnesty proponents Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Huckabee and McCain are prevailing while opponents are faltering; Romney is...

President, Savior, or Santa Claus? By Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, January 15, 2008 Let’s consider a simple question: What exactly are we electing when we choose a president of the United States? The traditional answer would be: “Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces and the CEO of the executive branch of government.” Those two roles alone make the president the most powerful person in the world, but for some Americans, the presidency has taken on an overtly messianic character. One of the leading candidates for the next president, Hillary Clinton, once stated, “I can’t save every undercapitalized business...

Welcome to our Phone for Fred online phone bank! Person to person contact is the most effective way to make a difference in an election. We created the Phone for Fred program for all of you Friends of Fred who want to volunteer and do more for Fred! We need your help in the early primary states. Our Phone for Fred online phone bank makes it easy for you to make a difference! Fred only needs a small commitment of time and you will soon see that your phone calls and person to person contact will help Fred win!

[RAMBLINGS] You want to know the issues? I have the answers... Pass this on.. You want Race to quit being an issue? Don't bring it up in your campaign. Period. You want peace in our time? Stop handcuffing the hands of our commanders behind their backs and let them achieve peace through strength. You want to create jobs? Quit regulating how businesses conduct themselves and Quit forcing payroll policies on businesses. Don't tell them they can't have smokers as customers and don't tell them how to cook their french fries. ... more

AIKEN --- Undecided voters stood on chairs and bumped elbows just to hear Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson on Monday. Although his visit to Aiken County was delayed by a couple of hours, about 200 residents came to his campaign stop at Papa Russ's Barbecue to see whether the Law & Order star and former senator would get past his television persona and hit on real issues. "I think we may have decided on a candidate, but we wanted to experience him personally," Mark Thompson, of Aiken, said of his family's wait. Mr. Thompson acknowledged that he needs a win...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Whatever happened to the war? For months, it was all the rage on the campaign trail. Democratic contenders never missed a chance to pound on the Bush administration, rip the Republicans and remind voters over and over how badly things were going in Iraq. Republicans, as often as not, staunchly insisted that distant battles and homeland security went hand-in-hand. Day after day, stop after stop, the war was the focus of all things presidential. Now, the war is little more than a distant echo in most stump speeches. The Democrats are generally saying little more than "We...

To the dismay of many, religion is becoming one of the defining issues of the presidential election campaign. From the scrutiny of Mike Huckabee's views about evolution and Mitt Romney's Mormonism on the Republican side, to unseemly e-mails questioning the religious upbringing of Barack Obama among Democrats, religious faith is once again front and center in electoral politics. At the same time some are paying increased notice to religion in the campaign, others are lamenting that not enough attention is being paid to science. In an essay published in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, physicist Lawrence Krauss faulted...

If every Hillary, Mitt and Barack promises it, how can it mean anything? It's hard to think of a more meaningless political watchword than "change," but "change" is what the presidential candidates are promising. Barack Obama's endless repetition of the word won him the Iowa caucuses, prompting other Democratic and Republican presidential candidates to make it their mantra too. Hillary Clinton and John McCain won in New Hampshire by arguing that they too wanted change and that they had the experience necessary to bring it about. In a Fox News interview Jan. 8, Mitt Romney, who seems less a candidate...