Free Republic

According to a new poll from Franklin and Marshall, Mitt Romney is just four percentage points behind President Barack Obama … in Pennsylvania. In September, that gap was a full nine points. “Momentum is with Romney,” says poll director Terry Madonna. Madonna thinks that Romney may run out of time to make up that deficit. But the internals of the poll are shocking for Obama. Romney is ahead of Obama in terms of who the public believes can best fix the economy. Obama’s personal favorability is down from 2008; they’re actually at George W. Bush numbers circa 2004. And voter...

Mitt Romney is to travel to Wisconsin, a state Barack Obama won in a 14-point blowout four years ago, as the Republican candidate's surging campaign seeks to expand the 'chessboard' into previously safe Democratic territory. At the same time, the Romney campaign has bought television advertising in the Boston market, which reaches screens in New Hampshire, a state Obama won by almost 10 points in 2008. Asked whether Romney himself would be visiting Wisconsin in the closing days of the race, Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior Romney adviser, said: 'Yes. Paul Ryan was just in Pittsburgh. We'll be back in Wisconsin,...

While all national attention is focused — indeed riveted — on the seven to nine swing or battleground states, a major shift is taking place in the rest of the country: Voters are turning off Obama and onto Romney. In the forty states where the Obama campaign has not spread toxic negative ads against Romney, the Republican is gaining by leaps and bounds and will likely carry a bunch of “non-swing” normally blue states. Specifically, Romney is now three points ahead in Pennsylvania, one point behind in Michigan, and only two points behind in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Together, these four...

ELIZABETHTOWN — Ann Romney, wife of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, will campaign for her husband Monday at Elizabethtown College. Ann Romney will attend a rally at Leffler Chapel and Performance Center in the 900 block of East College Avenue. Doors open at 1 p.m. and the event begins at 3 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Those interested can register for the event at http://annromneyinpa.eventbrite.com/ All attendees will go through airport-like security and should bring as few personal items as possible. No bags, sharp objects, umbrellas, liquids, or signs will be allowed in the venue....

Protesters mocked attendees at a fundraiser for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Friday morning at the swanky Union League in Philadelphia. The fundraiser was expected to raise more than $3.5 million for the candidate. As buttoned-up Romney supporters left the breakfast, protesters (who gathered prior to 8 a.m. with bagels, coffee and cheesesteaks) harangued them for wasting their money on a candidate that the polls say is losing. "How's it feel to back a loser?" one protestor yelled. The group, holding signs that said "Mitt 'Rob Me'" and "Lyin' Ryan," chanted: "Save your money, Obama's gonna win!" One Romney...

Give up -- Barack Obama has won. With the election only weeks away, it is clear from recent swing state polling that Mitt Romney has lost this election. According to the Quinnipiac numbers, in the battleground states of Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania, the president is ahead by 10%, 9% and 12%, respectively. Romney can't win. Just ask any journalist or newscaster. He is toast -- stick a fork in him. Bull... If anything, the closer we get to Election Day, the more apparent it is that Obama is not only losing, but losing big. The Obama campaign, and by "campaign"...

WAYNE, Pa. With 39 days until the election, Mitt Romney on Friday spent precious time campaigning in Pennsylvania, a state he hadn't visited in more than two months and where polls show him trailing President Obama by an average of 8 percentage points. Brushing aside the numbers, the Republican nominee told a crowd of several hundred people at the Valley Forge Military Academy & College that Obama is taking the state for granted. "I've got a little secret here and that is that the Obama campaign thinks Pennsylvania is in their pocket -- they don't need to worry about it."...

Prominent Middle East expert Dr. James Zogby tells Newsmax that President Obama is polling about 18 percent below his 2008 numbers among Arab-American voters. But those Arab-Americans who are Muslims now “overwhelmingly” support the Democratic candidate compared to four years ago, he adds. Zogby also discloses that Arab-Americans across the board consider jobs and the economy as the most important issue in this year’s elections. Zogby is founder and president of the Arab American Institute, a Washington, D.C.–based organization that serves as a political and policy research arm of the Arab-American community, and author of the book “Arab Voices: What...

CONCORD, N.C. — Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell warned Democrats today that the Republican attack alleging that President Barack Obama gutted the welfare work requirement is taking hold. "It’s starting to resonate," he told the Maryland delegation at a breakfast. "It’s starting to affect blue-collar white voters.” Rendell predicted that pushing back on the widely criticized attack will be a central component of the last Democratic president's speech. "I think the man that will push back on it will be the man that pushed for it and signed it — President Bill Clinton," Rendell said, "but he can't do it...

The GOP convention was a breath of fresh air and I love the TRUTH.

The Constitution Party has abandoned its bid to get its presidential ticket on Pennsylvania's election ballot. James Clymer, the longtime chairman of the state Constitution Party and the national party's 2012 candidate for vice president, said Tuesday that the party agreed to withdraw its petition amid a court challenge backed by the state Republican Party. Clymer acknowledged that many of the thousands of signatures were invalidated during two days of review...

The Obama-Biden campaign bus tour rolling through Pennsylvania this week, about four months before Election Day, illustrates that the road to re-election runs through the Keystone State. Many political analysts believe that President Barack Obama cannot win without Pennsylvania, so it would seem self-evident that the state should get considerable attention from both campaigns in the upcoming election. Instead, Pennsylvania has been downgraded by some pundits and may have been dropped from the list of top-priority swing states by the Romney campaign. We believe that's a mistake, and that Pennsylvania instead is poised to become the Ohio or Florida of...

President Barack Obama is ramping up a fresh phase of his re-election bid with a bus tour next week, focusing more on direct engagement with voters and less on ritzy fundraisers. Obama's two-day road trip through Pennsylvania and Ohio, two key battleground states in the November election, kicks off July 5, a campaign official said. It will be the president's first bus tour of the 2012 campaign. The bus trip also will coincide with the release of the monthly nationwide jobs report, a key economic indicator that could directly affect the president's re-election prospects...

When Erie County Democrats cast ballots in the Pennsylvania primary, 17 percent either didn't vote for President Barack Obama or wrote in someone else's name. In Crawford County, 23 percent of Democrats at the polls declined to vote for the president. And the website www.PoliticsPA.com recently reported that in 27 of the state's 67 counties, primarily in central and southwestern Pennsylvania, more than 30 percent of the Democratic voters failed to vote for Obama on April 24. Does that translate into a battleground-state problem for Obama against presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney in the Nov. 6 election? Bill Cole, Erie...

My election Shaman paid me a surprise visit today. He was standing just outside my front door as I retrieved the mail. He rattled his beaded stick a couple of times and then said: "Focus on the cost!" He then vanished in a puff of blue smoke, leaving behind only a damp bar napkin with some smudged charts scribbled on it and a few peanut shells clinging to its corners. I thought at first that he might have been talking about campaign finance or the pension plans in San Jose. After reflection, I am pretty sure he was talking...

York County Commissioner Chris Reilly has a slight lead over state Rep. Scott Perry in the Republican race to replace Todd Platts representing the 4th U.S. Congressional District, according to a poll commissioned by The York Dispatch newspaper. However, the poll of 400 registered voters found that 57 percent of the voters are still undecided. There are seven Republicans in the race for the seat, which covers the West Shore of Cumberland County, part of Harrisburg and all of York and Adams counties. In the poll, Reilly was favored by 17.8 percent of voters while Perry was favored by 12.6...

After tonight, Newt Gingrich has to be considered finished. You don't get to be the nominee if you don't win primaries, and if Gingrich can't win Alabama and Mississippi, it's hard to imagine any other state in the country where he can win. While Gingrich may remain some kind of factor, in almost every remaining state, this race devolves to a Romney-Santorum battle. That's great news for Santorum, who has been hoping and yearning for a two-man race. It's acceptable news for Romney, who knows that party donors and insiders dread a Santorum candidacy as likely to lead to a...

Livonia, Michigan—Rick Santorum is running on fumes. His is the curse of insurgent presidential campaigns—too much passion and too little sleep. You could hear it in his voice Monday morning talking to a Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Livonia as the decibel level grew higher, the diction grew muddier, and the logorrhea grew more obvious. An open-ended question on Social Security prompted a nine-minute Santorum monologue. Challenged from the audience about whether he was too conservative for the general election, Santorum out of nowhere unleashed a vicious non sequitur: “They mock conservatives, that’s what the media does. They mock the...

On Monday, America Live host Megyn Kelly invited a panel made up of radio host David Webb and Gotham Ghostwriters president / Democratic strategist Dan Gerstein onto the show to discuss candidate Rick Santorum‘s recent comments concerning Barack Obama‘s values and faith. You may recall that, while speaking at a Christian conference on Saturday, Santorum criticized Obama’s moral compass and suggested the President’s agenda was based on a “phony theology” not based on the Bible. The next say, Santorum appeared on Face the Nation, where he clarified that he hadn’t been talking about the President’s faith, nor about religion convictions...

Mitt Romney, once seen as a sure bet to win the Michigan Republican presidential primary, now appears locked in a surprisingly tight race with challenger Newt Gingrich. Michigan is home turf for the former Massachusetts governor. His late father, George Romney, was a popular governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, and the younger Romney grew up in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. But with the state’s primary approaching on Feb. 28, Mr. Romney’s lead remains small, given his home-court advantage. A poll released last week by the Detroit Free Press/WXYZ-TV found that 31% of likely voters supported Mr....