Free Republic

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - A top adviser from John McCain's presidential campaign who has criticized Sarah Palin's odds as a presidential candidate in 2012 is standing by the decision to pick her as McCain's running mate in the 2008 election. Steve Schmidt, who was chief strategist for McCain's presidential race, said Palin helped McCain as a running mate in the 2008 race. Schmidt earlier this month said that Palin would be a catastrophe for the GOP if she's the party's presidential nominee in 2012.

If Barack Obama had to stand for reelection today he'd win by as much as he did last year, if not more. He leads Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and Sarah Palin by anywhere from 7-15 points in hypothetical 2012 contests. Huckabee comes the closest, trailing Obama 48-41. In the six months PPP has run this poll he has been the most competitive Republican every time. Obama's lead has increased from 47-44 over the former Arkansas Governor a month ago. Mitt Romney does next best, down 48-39. In some ways he looks like a stronger general candidate than a...

Canadians are not Americans. That’s not to say there aren’t similarities. With a majority of the population deriving from Northern Europe, a British cultural matrix, and Anglo-Saxon systems of law and government (excepting Quebec, Canada’s wild card in all things), it couldn’t be otherwise. Like the U.S., Canada was settled through mass immigration over an extended period, with a national character formed by the impact of the frontier. Canada is second only to the U.S. as a technological culture, rivaling us in scientific research and application. It could be said without much exaggeration that the U.S./Canada form a unique double...

A May 2009 video of California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman praising Van Jones, which was posted by TWI yesterday, has inspired a parody video from the campaign of California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner. It touches all the bases, portraying Whitman as an out-of-touch elitist who hobnobs not just with a man who called Republicans “assholes,” but with Jimmy Carter. Michael Goldfarb has Whitman responding by saying she “did not do a background check of his past over dinner” and “it’s clear that he holds views that I entirely reject.” But that doesn’t even cover her comments in the original video....

It is a shame that the current health care debate hardly resembles a debate — rather, it has devolved into a screaming match among the fiercest partisans on both sides. For more than 60 years, presidents from both parties have tried to pass meaningful health care reform. There is no doubt that the sector needs reform now more than ever, but that does not mean we should be hastily or superficially negotiating a bill that carries a price tag of $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years and that could fundamentally alter more than 15 percent of our entire national...

While he remains publicly coy about the possibility of another White House bid, Mitt Romney has a calendar that tells a very different story. From returning to a key early primary state to delivering an address before a social conservative conference and reuniting with members of his campaign-in-waiting, Romney is scheduled to spend a good deal of his September in a fashion befitting a man very much interested in running for president. snip............................ On Saturday, Sept. 19, Romney will speak at the Values Voters Summit, an annual conference in the capital, put on by the Family Research Council, that frequently...

Mitt Romney told aides that he was dropping out of last year's presidential campaign because he didn't want to aid "a surrender to terror" by damaging John McCain's campaign, according to an account in the Boston Globe. The quote is from Sasha Issenberg's piece in the Globe magazine on Romney's past and future campaign, worth a read-through. Romney was considering last February whether to stay and fight, Issenberg writes: Eventually spokesman Madden’s BlackBerry buzzed with a draft from Romney. Staying in the race, he had concluded, would only weaken McCain’s prospects against Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. “In this time...

Even if the former governor of Alaska fades away before the 2012 presidential election, David Frum thinks “the Palin problem is still with us.” And as long as that’s the case, Frum — the conservative pundit and former George W. Bush speechwriter — will be here, too. “Why were conservatives vulnerable to somebody like this?” Frum mused about Palin recently in an interview with POLITICO. “The things that prevented them from seeing her are all still there. And we see them during this health care debate.” It’s been seven months since Frum parted ways with National Review to launch his...

David Frum: Barack Obama's Lockerbie sleight of hand Muammar Qaddafi delivered President Obama a welcome gift this week — a gift made all the more valuable by the remarkable lack of curiosity of the U.S. press about what exactly was contained inside the box. The hero’s welcome given to the convicted Lockerbie bomber in Tripoli diverted media attention from embarrassing questions about the bomber’s release to the much easier issue of the bomber’s reception. Now the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy will drive the entire subject into the back pages and specialty blogs. President Obama is unlikely now to have...

With the media reeling from the death of Sen. Kennedy, an underreported story is the sleazy machinations of the Massachusetts Democratic Party to ensure another Democrat replaces Kennedy. The Democrats aim to milk Kennedy's passing in every way. They are already portraying socialized medicine as the fitting tribute to the late millionaire, but the more disturbing prospect is their shameless manipulation of the law regarding his successor. The Republicans need to get in the mud on this one and stake out their own strategic ground. When Sen. Kerry ran for President in 2004, Sen. Kennedy feared that should Kerry win,...

Dumb yet fascinating. Obama’s birth certificate won’t be an issue in the primaries (let’s hope) so how the big three rank is unimportant — unless Birtherism is actually a proxy for other political dynamics, in which case this becomes an interesting little data point. But if it’s a proxy, what’s it a proxy for? Level of education? Regional identification? Something else? My hunch is that the further right you go, the more Birther-y you get, not because you’re any more credulous on the merits of the birth-certificate argument but because the more adamant your opposition to Obama’s agenda, the more...

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was the hope of many self-described conservatives during the 2008 presidential race, and was the apparent frontrunner in an early 2012 presidential poll in New Hampshire last week. The question facing most conservatives these days is: Who is going to be the standard bearer for the conservative wing of the Republican Party into the 2010 elections and beyond? The GOP has few genuine conservative voices left who are capable of credible leadership on a national level. While it's too early to start putting former GOP presidential nominee John McCain's face on a milk carton, any...

Has anybody heard anything from Romney on this hot health care issue. I seem to find him absent on this debate.

A new presidential poll has former Bay State Gov. Mitt Romney the early favorite of the GOP pack in New Hampshire for the 2012 primary. Romney was the top pick of 50 percent of Granite State Republicans surveyed, while recently resigned Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin tied former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, now a Fox News host, at tallied 17 percent each. Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich was fourth with 13 percent, while highly touted Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty garnered a paltry 3 percent. Romney narrowly lost the 2008 New Hampshire primary to Sen. John McCain.

http://www.dmcityview.com/cover.shtml What made Palin popular with Iowans was not her resume of experience in Alaska. Those who cheered her in Sioux City last fall, with the most vocal applause for a Republican I saw in Iowa in the 2008 presidential cycle, knew little about it. "There is little doubt that she still carries with her enormous admiration from the GOP grassroots," says Iowa Republican strategist Tim Albrecht, Mitt Romney's communications director in Iowa for the 2008 cycle and the founder of TheBeanWalker.com, a conservative Web site The Washington Post ranks as one of the top conservative online venues in the...

According to Public Policy Polling (PPP), a North Carolina polling firm, only 24% of self-identified Republican voters in the state believe Barack Obama was born in the United States. 47% do not believe that Obama is American born, and 29% of Republicans aren’t sure. One part of PPP’s data might reassure sentient readers somewhat: 7% of those who voted for John McCain do not believe Hawaii to be a part of the United States. Now perhaps this is just another irrational expression of Obama hatred. But, it may also be older voters who never quite absorbed the news that our...

In recent months, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has hit the speaking circuit like a man determined to be president who knows he needs to get an early start. Last week brought news that Romney had secured a major publisher for his forthcoming book, “No Apology: The Case for America’s Greatness,” in which he stands bravely against all those who insist that the U.S. is a mediocre country that’s done more harm than good. Even before the recent Sarah Palin and Mark Sanford flameouts, Romney looked like the right’s favorite son for 2012. He’d garnered National Review’s 2008 endorsement as...

Sarah Palin finally came out and made her stance on illegal immigration clear. She is pro amnesty for illegal aliens. In an interview to Univision she stated unequivocally that she is for a pathway to citizenship. In the same interview she says she is against amnesty for illegal aliens. Have your cake and eat it to, I think that is called. Back on the same day that John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential candidate I started investigating Palin's past on illegal immigration. I invited others to send in anything they found. There was nothing on the record. Many...

Here’s a great example of the bogus media pushing their agenda down our throats. A few days ago I saw this headline on CNN: Republican: Palin is Another Huckabee What they failed to mention in the headline is that the Republican, Alex Castellanos, worked for Romney during his 2008 Presidential bid. They also failed to mention the recent poll that had Sarah, Romney and Huckabee as the top three contenders for 2012. So, a more truthful headline for CNN might have been: Romney pays staffer, CNN to slam competitors.

Three Republicans are bunched within five points of each when potential GOP presidential candidates are matched up for 2012 with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney barely on top, according to a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll conducted July 21-22. The margin of error for the part of the survey dealing only with Republican voters is 6 points. Romney leads with 22 percent, followed by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee with 21 percent and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin with 17 percent. Former New York City mayor (we're dealing with a lot of "formers" here) Rudi Giuliani polls 13 percent, former House...