Free Republic

As Sen. John McCain assumes the GOP front-runner mantle, his long-standing, but little-noticed association with donors such as George Soros and Teresa Heinz Kerry is receiving new attention among his Republican critics. In 2001, McCain founded the Alexandria, Va.-based Reform Institute as a vehicle to receive funding from George Soros' Open Society Institute and Teresa Heinz Kerry's Tides Foundation and several other prominent non-profit organizations.

The Republican 'maverick' bends in the wind of Tea Party-style politicsWhen does being a maverick turn into a shameless flip-flopper? Pretty much about now, according to many observers of the long and storied political career of former Republican presidential candidate John McCain.Senator McCain, pictured, is now caught in one of the toughest political fights of his life, facing off in a primary fight against the Tea Party-style challenger JD Hayworth. And he is doing it in Arizona, which has just passed a strict anti-illegal immigrant law so controversial the White House is taking it to court.All this means that McCain's...

Link to radio clip audio Length of radio clip: 60 seconds Text of radio clip, as follows: PALIN: Hi, this is Sarah Palin. This is the time when conservatives must stand up and fight against the Big Government policies of President Obama and Democrats in Congress. No one is a more forceful leader than my friend, John McCain. Every day John is fighting the President's radical plan to put Washington bureaucrats in charge of your health care. It's John McCain who is fighting for transparency and against backroom sweetheart deals. If we have a chance to stop the Democrats in...

Arizona Sen. John McCain has a message for illegal residents of his state: Go back where you came from. McCain, who has been veering right to try and win his Republican Senate primary against conservative former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, said on Tuesday that he supports immigration reform that would deport those living in the country illegally. "No amnesty. Many of them need to be sent back," McCain said during an interview on KQTH-FM in Tucson, Ariz. when describing how he would deal with illegal U.S. residents. McCain said he supported reform that would create a guest worker program, but was...

In an EXCLUSIVE interview on “This Week,” Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., invited President Obama to the Arizona border. “[Sen.] Jon Kyl and I invite the President to come to the Arizona Sonora border. The violence is incredibly high,” McCain said. “The human smuggling and drug cartels are at a level of violence where 23,000 Mexican citizens have been murdered in the last few years. … There is a level of violence which has increased to a significant degree which makes the situation far different than it was in 2007,” he said. “We have to secure the borders,” McCain said. “We...

John McCain's campaign claimed the Arizona senator couldn't pick one of his former fundraisers — now headed to jail — out of a lineup. But new video unearthed by the campaign of his Republican primary challenger, former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, shows McCain standing next to convicted Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein at events during McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. The 4-minute video captures McCain at a pair of events with Rothstein, who was sentenced to 50 years in prison in June after confessing to running a $1.2 billion fraud operation. Rothstein showers McCain with praise during both events, and at one point...

haven’t been keeping score, but my sense has been that National Review stays out of Republican congressional primary races, at least most of the time. This is a good thing. It reflects an ethos focused on the strategic direction of the conservative movement rather than tactical politics. It underscores that issues are more critical to us than personalities. As a practical matter, moreover, it avoids diminishing the magazine’s prestige. A candidate who wins despite NR’s endorsement of his opponent could become hostile — and less open to our ideas — especially because he knows NR’s endorsement of the other guy...

Arizona Sen. John McCain’s re-election campaign has gained an important endorsement from an influential conservative publication, National Review. “This magazine has not always agreed with Sen. John McCain’s judgments,” the endorsement on National Review’s website notes. “But there are three considerations that militate against dumping McCain for his primary challenger, former congressman J.D. Hayworth.” The first is that McCain has consistently voted on the conservative side on important issues — he has never supported a broad-based tax hike, voted for every conservative Supreme Court nominee, and has a long pro-life record. Second, McCain has unmatched credibility on national security and...

(snip) MR. GREGORY: Is immigration reform in a comprehensive way possible this year or in this term?SEN. McCAIN: Not until we get the borders secure. By the way, on that issue, why is it that Phoenix, Arizona, is the number two kidnapping capital of the world? Does that mean our border's safe? Of course not. Why is it that the police chief in Nogales reported that his police officers are being told they're going to be murdered by the drug cartels on the other side of the border? The, the rise of violence and the influence of the drug cartels...

(snip) CHRIS MATTHEWS: Senator McCain, here's what you said about the Republican Party in the Boston Herald: "I believe my party has gone astray. I think the Democratic Party is a fine party, and I have no problems with it, in their views and their philosophy." Did the Herald get you right? SEN. MCCAIN: No. CHRIS MATTHEWS: You didn't say that? SEN. MCCAIN: I said that, but let me put it in the proper context. I was speaking to some constituents of Congressman Marty Meehan. The question [was]: Why don't you run as Senator Kerry's running mate? I am a...

WASHINGTON — Stymied by political opposition and focused on competing priorities, the Obama administration has sidelined efforts to close the Guantánamo prison, making it unlikely that President Obama will fulfill his promise to close it before his term ends in 2013. When the White House acknowledged last year that it would miss Mr. Obama’s initial January 2010 deadline for shutting the prison, it also declared that the detainees would eventually be moved to one in Illinois. But impediments to that plan have mounted in Congress, and the administration is doing little to overcome them. “There is a lot of inertia”...

PHOENIX -- Senator John McCain, former U.S. Congressman J.D. Hayworth, and conservative hopeful Jim Deakin will face off in the first of two debates on July 16 in Phoenix. The three candidates are vying for the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by McCain. The debate will take place at KTVK-3TV Studios in Phoenix on Friday, July 16 at 7:00 p.m and will be simulcast on KTTU in Tucson and azfamily.com. A second debate to be held in Tucson is planned for the following night at KUAT PBS-6.

Golden Oldie to remind you WHY this RINO MUST be defeated..

(CNN) – Parts of a 2007 infomercial that features Arizona Senate hopeful J.D. Hayworth are hitting Arizona airwaves today – but this time as part of a McCain campaign ad that slams Hayworth over his involvement with a company called National Grants Conferences. Hayworth, a radio host and former congressman, recorded the infomercial in 2007. The ad promised free information about "hundreds of billions of dollars in government funding" to individuals who attend a conference on the topic.

Fox News reporter Jennifer Steinhauser recently spent a few days following Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) around Arizona, on his re-election campaign. Not surprisingly, the topic which voters continue to hound the Senator on is that of illegal immigration. During a town hall meeting at a North Scottsdale library, a man named Richard Martin railed against McCain, saying: “We all know what happened after 9/11. Why didn’t you close this border down? Where were you, Senator?” Steinhauser reports that over the three days she spent with the McCain campaign, the most commonly asked question was why he supported amnesty for illegal...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) expressed reservations Tuesday night over whether Gen. Stanley McChrystal should be made to resign. McCain, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was "concerned" by the prospect of McChrystal, the commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, having to resign over remarks he made to Rolling Stone magazine that were critical of President Barack Obama and other members of the administration. “I’m sorry that he finds himself in this situation, but, obviously those words were not only unfortunate, but inappropriate," McCain said in an interview with Greta Van Susteren to air tonight on...

He still tells the story about the call he got at 2 a.m. from the woman in Chandler who was upset about changes in her garbage pick up, and the ossified joke concerning two Irish brothers (“The only ethnic group in America you can still joke about”) boozed up at a bar. Just as he did in 2008, and 2000, and most likely in the tender years of his earliest campaigns here — long before “that one,” maverick, and not-a-maverick — he takes extra time for veterans, freshly scrubbed little kids and older women who wait patiently at the back...

It appears the Senate campaign of J. D. Hayworth has hit a bump in the road. A big one: Republican Senate challenger J. D. Hayworth appeared in a 2007 television infomercial in which he helped convince viewers that they could rake in big bucks by attending seminars that would teach them how to apply for federal grants that they wouldn’t have to pay back. National Grants Conferences, the Florida-based company that hosted the classes and produced the informercial, has faced criticism from multiple state attorneys general and Better Business Bureaus. Hayworth, a former Arizona congressman who is running against incumbent...

I'm a conservative Republican on over 9 out of 10 issues. I'm for almost everything conservatives and Republicans are for. However, SB1070 is a terrible bill. We need McCain's comprehensive immigration reform. The immigrants help many companies which in turn help the US economy. The bill does nothing but make people angry at each other. I also support McCain over Hayworth in the AZ senate race. We can't risk losing that seat to a Democrat if we except to pick up both houses in November.

PHOENIX - The battle to get additional troops onto the U.S. border with Mexico has yielded few results despite state and national pledges to do something about it. Senator John McCain is pushing for 6,000 National Guard troops on the border, but can he pull that off in this election year? 3TV's Mike Watkiss asked him about it.