Free Republic

In the new issue of the Boston Phoenix – in print tomorrow, online now – I provide my first in-print rankings of the 2012 GOP Presidential candidates’ chances. You can read that here: The GOP’s Top Dog? It’s T-Paw, Not Mitt. But that only has room for the Top 10, and my blog readers know that I’ve been ranking the Top 25 for over two years now. So below are my full, new, updated rankings. There’s quite a bit of shake-up, because with only a year until Iowa and New Hampshire I’m shifting my calculus a little. Up to now,...

The queen of the Tea Party knows how to deliver a stump speech, and the more than 200 people who turned out to hear Michelle Bachmann in person Wednesday at the Ala Moana Hotel were not disappointed. Organized by the free-market "think tank" Grassroot Institute of Hawaii and attracting a good many local Republicans, Bachmann charged her supporters to rise up and fight for the foundations of the nation: inalienable rights of life and liberty that can't be touched by the government. "The Tea Party movement as I define it is a rejection of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda," she said. "You...