Free Republic

In his piece today entitled “Sarah Palin is wreaking havoc on the campaign trail, GOP sources say,” Politico’s Jonathan Martin (who was tasked with the Republican Party beat for the website for the 2008 elections) falsely claims Sarah Palin backed out of a scheduled interview with talk-radio host Mark Levin: According to a source familiar with the situation, she backed out of planned interviews with conservative talk-show hosts Sean Hannity and Mark Levin the morning she was scheduled to talk to them. Levin contested this claim on his facebook page, and has asked Politico to retract this statement: This is...

When Gov. Sarah Palin was deciding whether or not to get into the presidential race, Karl Rove was popping up on Fox News to talk about why her skin was too thin for the job. And when Gov. Rick Perry was thinking about his entrance into the race, Rove was Johnny-on-the-spot with reasons why a Perry candidacy would not be viable either. Now Rove’s moved on to Herman Cain, whose candidacy he’s doing all he can to sink, sidetrack, or otherwise derail.

Ann Coulter responds to a report from the "liberal publication" Politico that Herman Cain sexually harassed two women while he was the president of the National Restaurant Association. The most damning part of the report, which is not well sourced, seems to be that Mr. Cain made "physical gestures" that weren't sexual in nature, but made the women uncomfortable: There were also descriptions of physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable and that they regarded as improper in a professional relationship.

During Herman Cain’s tenure as the head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, at least two female employees complained to colleagues and senior association officials about inappropriate behavior by Cain, ultimately leaving their jobs at the trade group, multiple sources confirm to POLITICO. The women complained of sexually suggestive behavior by Cain that made them angry and uncomfortable, the sources said, and they signed agreements with the restaurant group that gave them financial payouts to leave the association. The agreements also included language that bars the women from talking about their departures. In a series of comments over...

Exclusive: Two women accused Cain of inappropriate behavior By: Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman and Anna Palmer and Kenneth P. Vogel October 30, 2011 08:00 PM EDT During Herman Cain’s tenure as the head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, at least two female employees complained to colleagues and senior association officials about inappropriate behavior by Cain, ultimately leaving their jobs at the trade group, multiple sources confirm to POLITICO. The women complained of sexually suggestive behavior by Cain that made them angry and uncomfortable, the sources said, and they signed agreements with the restaurant group that gave...

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...

.....The issues, in short, are who can get to 270 electoral votes and whether Perry is too bluntly conservative to be viable in large swaths of purple America. Choice A: The Hippocratic oath strategy — first do no harm. Under this approach, the party would nominate the safe-but-not-sexy Mitt Romney to keep the election focused as much as possible on Obama and to have a better chance to appeal to swing voters and independents. Choice B: Go big. Given the nation’s economic troubles and the vast majority who believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, pastels just won’t...

Another Texas governor who drops his “g’s” and scorns elites is running for president and the whispers are the same: Lightweight, incurious, instinctual. Strip away the euphemisms, and Rick Perry is confronting an unavoidable question: is he dumb - or just misunderestimated? Doubts about Perry’s intellect have hounded him since he was first elected as a state legislator nearly three decades ago. In Austin, he’s been derided as a right-place, right-time pol who looks the part but isn’t so deep – “Gov. Goodhair.” Now, with the chatter picking back up among his enemies and taking flight in elite Republican circles,...

[Jonathan] Martin [of Politico] writes: "Perry's comment (about ...Ben Bernanke's "treasonous" behavior) is exactly the sort of misstep that will worry the many GOP donors on the sideline right now who chiefly want to beat President Obama. The quote reinforces their central fear about Perry — that he has a cowboy problem — and could prompt them to remain uncommitted." This is accurate. It's also irrelevant. It's irrelevant because the "GOP donors on the sideline right now" don't matter. They think they matter, but they don't. The fact is that Rick Perry can raise $15-20 million out of Texas for...

DES MOINES – Rick Perry, on his first day of extended Iowa campaigning, foreshadowed his coming assault Monday against Mitt Romney and swiped back at the former Massachusetts governor and venture capitalist’s suggestion that others in the GOP race don’t understand the economy. In back-to-back answers, Perry nodded at the difference between his economic record as Texas governor and Romney’s in Massachusetts and then drew a cultural contrast between his background as an Air Force pilot and family farmer and his opponent’s high finance pedigree. “It’s being able to work with your legislature to get the right tax and regulatory...

WATERLOO, Iowa — Rick Perry came to Michele Bachmann’s hometown Sunday evening and schooled the newly minted Iowa front-runner in her native state’s demanding retail political culture. The day after Perry announced his candidacy and Bachmann won the Ames Straw Poll, the two candidates spoke to the Black Hawk County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day dinner, the sort of endless regional event that is a staple of the long Iowa campaign. Both candidates offered conservative standards, promising to slash government spending and ease regulations to jump-start the private sector economy. Perry promised to use his presidential veto pen “until all ink...

Tim Pawlenty manager Nick Ayers sent a blast email today to supporters making the case why Iowans will rally to the former Minnesota governor and Michele Bachmann will fade. After reiterating Pawlenty's accomplishments in St. Paul, Ayers wrote: "This doesn't make great fodder for cable news but as more Republican primary voters start to tune in to the race, they are finding out that the Governor’s record and message will stand the test a brutal campaign. Other candidates’ records (or lack thereof), and plans for the future (or lack thereof) won't." The manager also claimed they "had a record week...

Sarah Palin may have been making the case for herself with a Facebook post last night arguing that a president must be "a strong chief executive [who] has been entrusted with real authority in the past and has achieved a proven track record of positive measurable accomplishments." But she also sounds an awful lot like Tim Pawlenty, whose indictment against Michele Bachmann is that three-term member of Congress gives a good speech but hasn't actually accomplished anything. Wrote Palin: "Leaders are expected to give good speeches, but leadership is so much more than oratory. Real leadership requires deeds even more...

Palin moves spark 2012 speculation By: Andy Barr May 25, 2011 07:41 PM EDT Sarah Palin is fond of saying she’ll feel compelled to run for president “if nobody else were to step up.”It just might come to that.The recent departures of Mitch Daniels and Mike Huckabee from the 2012 GOP field, combined with a flurry of recent moves by Palin—staff changes, the purchase of a home in Arizona, the Iowa premiere of a new feature-length film extolling the former Alaska governor—is rekindling speculation that she sees an opportunity in 2012 and may be thinking more seriously than ever about...

It's a fool's errand to use traditional indicators as definitive evidence that Sarah Palin is or is not running for president. If nothing else, she's made clear since her national debut two-and-a-half years ago that she plays by her own set of rules. But her pugnacious speech over the weekend in Wisconsin, promotion thereof and re-launch of her PAC's website today, suggests that she very much wants to stay in the political conversation. As has been well-documented, Palin reads most everything written about her. So she surely didn't miss recent stories about her declining poll numbers and relative quiet. For...

Jonathan Martin stirred up a hornet’s nest with his regular hit piece on Sarah Palin. But an answer from the heart came from “Bobby, US ARMY ret” in the comments section at The Right Scoop: "She is “divisive” because the conservative movement is full of cowards who bend over because they are afraid of the left and the media. Why not fight against the smears? Why not fight for the truth? Instead conservatives run and hide and then wonder why even after 8 years of BUSH the country moved to the left!!!!!!! While Governor, her state was one of 2...

Sarah Palin has played the sexism card, accusing critics of chauvinism against a strong woman. She has played the class card, dismissing the Bush family as “blue bloods,” and complaining that she is the target of snobbery by people who dislike her simply because she is “not so hoity-toity.” Most famously, she has played the victim card—never more vividly than when she invoked the loaded phrase “blood libel” against liberals and media commentators in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting.

In the past week, two hit pieces have been written against Governor Palin. The first was the piece by Jonathan Martin that was been thoroughly debunked as "flat out lies" by practically every source he identified by name. This was followed yesterday by a second hit piece in the New York Daily News that, hilariously, claimed that it will be Governor Palin's fault if the GOP doesn't take back the Senate. Whitney discussed this silliness in a post last night. To Whitney's analysis I would add that the GOP establishment has no idea how thin the ice is upon which...

The election is two weeks away, but the campaign trail reviews of Sarah Palin already are in, and they aren’t pretty. According to multiple Republican campaign sources, the former Alaska governor wreaks havoc on campaign logistics and planning. She offers little notice about her availability, refuses to do certain events, is obsessive about press coverage and sometimes backs out with as little lead time as she gave in the first place. In short, her seat-of-the-pants operation can be a nightmare to deal with, which, in part, explains why Palin doesn’t often do individual events for GOP hopefuls.

The election is two weeks away, but the campaign trail reviews of Sarah Palin already are in, and they aren’t pretty. According to multiple Republican campaign sources, the former Alaska governor wreaks havoc on campaign logistics and planning. She offers little notice about her availability, refuses to do certain events, is obsessive about press coverage and sometimes backs out with as little lead time as she gave in the first place. In short, her seat-of-the-pants operation can be a nightmare to deal with, which, in part, explains why Palin doesn’t often do individual events for GOP hopefuls. It’s not that...