Free Republic

Rick Perry's campaign just responded to the attack ad that a pro-Michele Bachmann super PAC unveiled last night, which it is airing in South Carolina, and which hits him on his spending record as Texas governor: “Gov. Perry is a proven fiscal conservative, having cut taxes, signed six balanced budgets, and led Texas to become America’s top job-creating state,” said Ray Sullivan, RickPerry.org’s communications director. “Congresswoman Bachmann’s front-group ad is patently and provably false. Unlike Washington, the Texas budget is balanced, does not run deficits and limits spending, even as Texas added jobs and population in big numbers.”

Until now, the biggest question looming over the 2012 Republican primary was who would emerge as the leading alternative to the nominal front-runner, Mitt Romney. We now know the answer to that question: Rick Perry. Sure, Perry jumped into the race only one day ago and needs to prove he's worthy of the national stage. Yes, Michele Bachmann is the one who boxed Tim Pawlenty out of the race with her triumph in the Iowa Straw Poll on Saturday. But it is the governor of the great big state of Texas, not the Minnesota congresswoman, who poses the biggest threat...

Washington (CNN) - In a surprise move, Senate Republicans decided not to remove Sen. Lisa Murkowski from her top position on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Wednesday, according to several Republican senators who refused to explain their decision. Republicans had indicated as recently as Tuesday she was likely to lose her seniority on the committee as penalty for her write-in candidacy in Alaska. A GOP source in the room tells CNN, despite anger towards Murkowski, the conference decided not to even take up the question of the Senate Energy Committee post because "there was a sense that she's...

Former top Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson is a Washington Post columnist, and there is never a better time for right-leaning columnists to lean left than in the last weeks of an election season. (See George Will trashing Sen. George Allen in the last weeks of 2006.) His rant also may have granted Gerson a seat on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday. Gerson not only denounced Christine O'Donnell as a wacky candidate like Alan Keyes, he denounced "the childish political thought of the Tea Party." He insisted conservatives were like Bolsheviks. Bloggers like Michelle Malkin and talk show hosts like...

Karl Rove – the top GOP strategist who declared last week that Christine O’Donnell’s surprise victory does “little good” for the party – is now calling on the surprise Senate nominee to explain her comments about witchcraft. "In southern Delaware where there are a lot of churchgoing people, they're going to want to know what that is all about,” the former aide to President George W. Bush told "Fox News Sunday." “My view is she can’t simply ignore it,” he said. “She’s got to deal with it and explain it and put it in its most sympathetic light and move...

With his recent criticisms of Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell on Fox News, Karl Rove kicked up a controversy. His critique of O'Donnell was granular and well-informed. Having worked with Karl for a number of years, I know that he is nothing if not detail-oriented. Rove has taken O'Donnell to task for her checkered financial past, her history of litigiousness and paranoia,...

Karl Rove just might be too smart by half. If HE trashes O’Donnel (and makes her a sympathetic figure) then the Democraps can’t do it later (and you know they would be using ALL of Rove’s stuff... but it would be very different coming from them) It is like this- if your opponent knows you cheated on your wife and is prepared to floor you with it at a debate- you start your debate by saying “Yes, I cheated on my wife, but at least I am not as bad as my opponent who created the housing melt down...”

By pulling off arguably the biggest upset of the primary election season Tuesday, Christine O'Donnell shocked the Republican establishment and political pundits who didn’t think her campaign for the Delaware GOP Senate nomination had a chance. But none were more surprised then the staffers who worked for O’Donnell in 2008, when she made the second of two prior unsuccessful bids for the Senate. Continue Reading Text Size * - * + * reset Listen to this article. Powered by Odiogo.com Listen VIDEO: O'Donnell on media Latest on POLITICO * Dean: 'I actually approve' of tea party * Pelosi keeps losing...

Across the land, grindstones sing as axes are sharpened for the RINOs. For years, conservatives have railed against these moderate "Republicans in Name Only," launching primary campaigns against them, pouring money into their opponents' campaign funds, and excluding them from committee chairmanships. But since 2006 the party's pulse has weakened, and the GOP's leaders have decided that nothing is more healthful in such a situation than hacking off a limb or two. That, evidently, is the thinking behind the 10-point test for GOP candidates that was proposed last week by a group of Republican national committee members. If a candidate...

John McCain has asked his former campaign aides not to speak out against the charges Sarah Palin levels in her book, NBC news reports. This news comes after a number of former staffers anonymously blasted Palin's recount of the 2008 campaign. "John McCain offered her the opportunity of a lifetime, and during the campaign it seems that, for all of her mistakes, she is searching for people to blame," an aide said last week. "We don't need to go through this again." Even as NBC reported McCain's request, they included another swipe at her book from a former campaign aide....

Republican Dede Scozzafava endorsed her former Democratic opponent Sunday in the race for an upstate New York congressional seat, one day after Scozzafava dropped out of the contest. Scozzafava dropped out after Conservative Party candidate Dough Hoffman experienced a late-in-the-game surge. But on Sunday, Scozzafava backed Democrat Bill Owens -- the announcement was made in a statement send out by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "I am supporting Bill Owens for Congress and urge you to do the same," she said. "In Bill Owens, I see a sense of duty and integrity that will guide him beyond political partisanship. He...

CFA Executive Director: "While I admire Newt's intelligence and respect him as a fellow Catholic, his crass, political calculation in endorsing such a pro-abortion candidate sends an unfortunate signal that party loyalty is more important than morality. Newt needs to examine his conscience for so publicly flouting the Church's doctrine on abortion and gay marriage."

If vindication means anything its name is spelled George Bush. As former U.S. president George W. Bush spoke to a Saskatoon audience, I stood in the wings, sneaking a peek through the curtains at the spectators beyond the footlights. The crowd was friendly to be sure. But more than that, the relationship was like a musical virtuoso carrying the audience through every nuance, crescendo and dynamic of a composition. With every pause, smile, laugh and down stroke of seriousness, Bush had the crowd in his hand. Before the show, a friend who recently dined with the former Texas governor and...

An outburst at an angry South Carolina town hall meeting has exemplified the growing fissure in the Republican Party across the nation. “We're not going to be the party of angry white guys," liberal Republican Senator Lindsay Graham told a Greenville, South Carolina, audience at Furman University where some supporters of Congressman Ron Paul were heckling him. Ron Paul responded on CNN's Situation Room October 14 that Graham's attack was unfair. “For him to ... say that everybody who is upset with the government and upset with his type of voting record are angry white people or angry men, that...

Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul took to the cable networks today to jab back at South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who over the weekend said he would not sit back and watch the Texan “hijack” the GOP with his brand of Republicanism. “My first reaction would be, ‘What does he have against the Constitution?’ And the supporters I have support me because I’m a traditional conservative and I support the Constitution,” Paul told CNN in an interview tonight. He cited Graham’s support of TARP funds and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and “all the big government things” as...

I am going to be on TV twice tonight to respond to Lindsey Graham's attack Monday that I am trying to "hijack" the Republican Party, and that our movement is a bunch of "angry white men." Please tune in to CNN at 6:00 pm ET and MSNBC at 6:30 pm ET and help me defend our Constitutional principles from the Neo-Conservatives!

Michael Long, chairman of the Conservative Party of New York, is urging fellow conservatives not to contribute to the National Republican Congressional Committee. His complaint: The NRCC is supporting the Republican candidate in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, who he says is out of step with GOP values. The Republicans have nominated centrist State Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava as their candidate in the special election to be held on Nov. 3. In response, the Conservative Party nominated its own candidate, local accountant Doug Hoffman. Hoffman has been getting some traction, winning endorsements from several conservative groups and garnering 16% support in...

(snip)After the speech a volunteer from Paul’s Campaign for Liberty asked Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) about it, and he weighed in against Graham. There was almost a pejorative comment a moment ago. Sen. Graham spoke and said “I’m not a libertarian,” whatever, whatever, as if that’s an evil word. Liberty is the hallmark of the American experiment … People say, you know, “Mark, you’re kind of libertarian,” you know, and they say it as if it’s an evil word, like you’re a communist or something. I’m like: Throw me in that briar patch … I’ve been accused of being a...

The Republican Party has scarcely begun to repair a wound that threatens to confine it to minority status: its 2006 collapse among Hispanic voters. Driven by some Republicans’ sharp attacks on illegal immigration and — as many Hispanics perceived it, immigrants in general — Latino voters fled the GOP en masse in the midterm elections, then turned on John McCain, as well. . . . . . There are stirrings of a Republican response. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has spoken with Hispanic leaders about creating a new organization to back Latino candidates. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has made...

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said Sunday that despite the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s early endorsement of Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida’s GOP Senate primary, neither he nor the RNC will take sides in the contest until after the primary. Crist is competing with former Florida Speaker Marco Rubio in the fight for the GOP nomination. Although Crist is popular in the state and most polls have shown him winning the open seat general election easily, some conservative groups have been critical of his record as governor — particularly his decision to support President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package...