Free Republic

Mitt Romney’s supporters on Capitol Hill are giving him political cover for the healthcare plan he signed into law as governor, even as his competitors for the GOP presidential nomination ramp up their attacks on “RomneyCare.” Romney’s healthcare reform initiative in Massachusetts is viewed as one of his biggest political liabilities going into the Republican primary, due to its similarities to President Obama’s healthcare overhaul. But leading conservatives, including supporters of Romney during his 2008 presidential run, argue that the Massachusetts plan isn’t a deal-breaker. “One of the reasons I endorsed Romney [in 2008] is his attempts to make private...

MANCHESTER, N.H. – Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann kicked off her first swing through the Granite State with an unfortunate gaffe. "You're the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord," she said Saturday morning at an event organized by the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire. "And you put a marker in the ground and paid with the blood of your ancestors. Good, patriotic stuff … only the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” was fired about 70 miles to the south in Concord, Massachusetts. For a candidate already known for her gaffes in public remarks,...

A GUN-toting teenager who has bombarded right-wing US politician Sarah Palin with threatening letters has been arrested by the FBI in her home state of Alaska. Stalker Shawn Christy, 19, sent her receipts for a gun he bought and told her to watch his back. Palin, a supporter of the gun lobby, had won a six-month restraining order against Christy in October.

Dude, I think we just found our keynote speaker for RINOcon. “(Palin’s) coming from the street, she’s coming from the we-the-people rank-and-file, she makes sense when she talks, she says all the right things, she’s sincere, she’s knowledgeable , she’s articulate, she’s damn good-looking, plus she kills moose, how can you go wrong?” Nugent gushed. However, when Cooper pressed Nugent on whether Palin would make a good president, Nugent balked. “It’s too early to tell. Right know, if we had a vote, I couldn’t vote for Sarah Palin. And I love her. I love her madly, and I respect her.”...

The term “Herman Cain porn” was coined at Red State to describe videos like this one from Citizens4Cain: (see link for video) The “next Reagan” label is a heavy burden, but even if Cain is not equal to the Great Communicator — is anyone, really? — he is at least a Doggone Effective Communicator. Like I said, “Steve Forbes with charisma.” BTW, there were some negative comments on yesterday’s post — “Herman Cain: ‘We Have People on the Ground’ in Early Primary States“ – which I’m hesitant to describe as the work of outright trolls. To the one commenter who...

WASHINGTON -- He dropped off most voters' radar screens after losing a 2004 bid to represent Georgia in the U.S. Senate. But conservative Atlanta radio show host Herman Cain has hardly forgotten about politics. In fact, he may be running for president in 2012. Cain, a Republican, said he is "one step closer" toward announcing a bid for president after the GOP's big sweep of the November midterm elections. For now, Cain said he is putting out feelers and "prayerfully considering" a run, and he will make a decision sometime early next year. "Right now I'm in the process of...

Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton appeared with Tucker Carlson last night on Hannity to discuss his strong disapproval of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). Bolton believed the ripple effects of the treaty would cost America “for years to come” and Tucker even described alleged liberal rationale for the treaty as “grotesque.” The START treaty, if ultimately ratified by the Russian parliament, would require the drawing down of nuclear warheads of both the U.S. and Russia over the next seven years from current levels of 2,200 each to 1,550. Tucker was first annoyed that Obama rushed the...

Over the last couple months I have been bringing books, two sackfuls at a time to Maxwell’s House Of Books in exchange for store credit. So far, my schlepping of about 70 books has yielded a credit of $38. Yesterday I gobbled up twenty of it so I could own a copy of Duncan L. Hunter‘s new book, Victory In Iraq: How America Won. Why? Because that’s a great title and because Hunter was going to be in La Mesa, at Maxwell’s signing copies. The photo above shows Hunter signing my actual book. After he signed it we chatted for...

HONOLULU (AP) — Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie wants to find a way to release more information about President Barack Obama's birth and dispel conspiracy theories that he was born elsewhere. Abercrombie was a friend of Obama's parents and knew him as a child, and is deeply troubled by the effort to cast doubt on the president's citizenship. The newly elected Democrat will ask the state attorney general's office and health officials about how he can make public more of Obama's birth documentation from Aug. 4, 1961, spokeswoman Donalyn Dela Cruz said Tuesday.

(NewsCore) - Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has the support of more Republicans around the country than three of his potential 2012 rivals, according to a new CNN poll released Tuesday. The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll found that 67 percent of self-identified Republicans were either “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to support his candidacy in 2012. That compared with 59 percent for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, 54 percent for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and 49 percent for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. It is the second recent poll to show momentum for Huckabee. A Public Policy Polling survey...

Sooner or later the bubble had to pop. Mitt Romney has had a pretty swell time of it in 2010. The former presidential contender has been ambidextrous in his political maneuvers, carefully challenging President Obama on key economic issues that play to his own strengths as a pragmatic technocrat. The success generated by his book No Apology earlier this year seemed to verify his place as the GOP’s resident wonk. The book even won praise from detractors as a thoughtful policy manifesto. As Republicans rode a wave of voter dissatisfaction towards taking back the House, Romney faithfully played the role...

As the start of the next presidential campaign nears, a new national poll suggests that President Barack Obama's tax-cut compromise with congressional Republicans did not hurt his standing among Democrats, while former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin may be dropping in the eyes of Republicans. According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday, 78 percent of Democrats questioned in the poll say they want to see Obama at the top of their party's ticket in 2012, with only 19 percent saying they would prefer someone else as the Democratic presidential nominee. The 19 percent figure is the lowest figure since...

Long before the tea party movement grabbed half a dozen Senate seats, before its early proponents ever even dreamed of wearing Colonial-era garb in public, there was longtime Texas Republican Ron Paul, the one guy in Congress trying to abolish the Federal Reserve and shrink the government into near nonexistence. Paul won a devoted-bordering-on-cultish following during his 2008 presidential run, one which, obviously, didn't work out. But now Paul is telling the Times that "it’s at least 50-50" that he'll try again in 2012, and this time, with the movement built largely on his libertarian philosophy now a real force...

Sarah Palin may have met her political match in Mike Huckabee. Both have been criss-crossing the country on book tours. Both hold degrees in communication. Both hunt and fish. Both use various media to hit their target audiences. But while Palin often generates anger, Huckabee takes the Will Rogers road. He has an aw-shucks demeanor, freely cracking jokes, shaking hands and chatting with the media while Palin shuns reporters. Already road-tested by a 2008 White House run, Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister, may just be the strongest GOP candidate to take on Palin in a primary and...

President Obama would trounce former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) in a hypothetical match-up for the 2012 presidential election, a new poll found Tuesday. Obama leads Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate, by a 16-point margin, the Bloomberg News National Poll found. Fifty-one percent of likely voters said they would vote to reelect Obama in a hypothetical match-up against Palin, who drew the support of 35 percent of likely voters. Ten percent said they likely would not vote in an Obama-Palin contest, and 4 percent said they were not sure.

Bristol Palin and Mark Ballas Dancing with the Stars [WEEK 4] LATIN WEEK

<p>Washington (CNN) – Sarah Palin will join forces with Michael Steele and the Republican National Committee next month to hold a pair of fundraising rallies, according to multiple Republican sources.</p> <p>The former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee will team up with the RNC chairman at an event in Anaheim, California, on October 16 and in Orlando, Florida, on October 23.</p>

If Gallup’s newly-released poll looking at the GOP presidential field tells us anything about the current mood of Republican voters, it’s that despite the GOP base's much-publicized outrage over the nation's lack of fiscal restraint, they’re not terribly focused on candidates with strong records of limiting government spending. None of the top three candidates—Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee—have particularly distinguished themselves as serious government cutters. As governor of Arkansas, for example, Huckabee allowed state spending to rise by 65 percent, raised the average tax burden by 47 percent, and expanded the state’s government workforce by 20 percent. Romney,...

Two years after entering the nation’s klieg lights Sarah Palin is the subject of a detailed and sometimes scathing profile in next month’s Vanity Fair. The portrait that emerges is one of a willful, often-paranoid, sometimes vengeful woman with a terrible temper and a knack for folksy soundbites, who knows her strengths, saw her moment in the spotlight and has grabbed onto it with both hands. Or as Vanity Fair’s Michael Joseph Gross puts it “anywhere you peel back the skin of Sarah Palin’s life, a sad and moldering strangeness lies beneath.”

A new 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll offers what is, I think, a somewhat misleading way to look at Sarah Palin. The poll finds that 59% of Americans and 40% of Republicans don't think she'd make an "effective president" -- numbers that come very close to disqualifying her even in the primary, if she chooses to run. This trouble imagining President Palin is constant across the polling since soon after she was chosen as John McCain's running mate, and it reflects both her own lack of experience and the higher bar set for a woman -- Hillary Clinton did years of...