Free Republic

Republicans won't need to put a candidate like Sarah Palin on the presidential ticket this year, veteran party strategist Charlie Black says, because the candidates are already conservative enough. Asked at National Journal's Election Preview on Tuesday whether he thought the party might name a vice presidential candidate like Sarah Palin, whose addition to the GOP 2008 presidential ticket excited conservatives -- but also turned off independent voters -- Black argued such a pick won't be necessary given the current crop of presidential candidates. "We don't have any moderates running," Black said. "I don't think there will be any need...

It has come to my attention that there are still a few people in the world that I have not offended. I'd like to fix that by endorsing Donald Trump for president. But not for the reasons you might think. This morning I read a news item saying that some folks at NBC think Trump might be pretending to run for president to boost ratings. The story noted that ratings for his TV show are up 20% lately. I laughed out loud because sometimes I forget that at least half the country doesn't realize he's just screwing with the media....

Just heard a promo on Fox that O'reilly will investigate whether Obama deep sixed his college and selective service records. The show airs tonight, April 12th. Well whada ya know....

“A nightstick the size of a telephone pole and the muscle to wield it effortlessly.” Mike Huckabee, who knows a thing or two about insurgent campaigns, sees the power of the Palin candidacy. Taegan Goddard links this morning to the Des Moines Register: Mike Huckabee told the Des Moines Register that Sarah Palin would be a strong contender for president should she decide to run. Said Huckabee: “No question, she will be a very, very strong presence and force, if she gets in. You know, she may run away with it. And that’s one of those things everyone needs...

In a National Review Online column on November 19, Mona Charen provided an explanation of why she believes Sarah Palin shouldn’t run for President. She argued that after the 2008 campaign, Palin “quit her job as governor after two and a half years…and seemed to chase money and empty celebrity.” She asserted that “Palin seems consumed and obsessed” by the media, labeled Palin’s new TLC show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, a “cheesy entrant in the reality-show genre,” and took issue with the fact that Sarah and Todd sit in the Dancing with the Stars audience “cheering on their unwed-mother daughter.” She...

Like her or not, Sarah Palin will play a decisive role in who gets the Republican nomination in 2012. Since being plucked out of relative obscurity by 2008 GOP nominee John McCain, Palin has emerged as a celebrity in her own right. Anyone longing for the nomination will have to deal with her persona, her influence, and her supporters. Along with Palin’s notoriety, the rise of the Tea Party movement has created a number of inviting venues for the Palin message. She is now a regular commentator on Fox News, adroitly uses social media to comment on current issues, and...

Mr. Constitution, Glen Beck? 5PM after 5PM, day after day, Beck loves to talk about our Founders and the US Constitution as if he were the brains behind it. He talks about how the resident Alien Usurper in the white house is a communist and how all his minions are avowed communists. And with the last point of all the communists around him, Beck is correct but with the first point, regarding the US Constitution, Beck loves to think that he knows what our founders were thinking when they wrote all the founding documents of this great Republic. He conveniently...

Mitt Romney may end up being the biggest GOP casualty of ObamaCare -- his 2012 presidential hopes dashed before he's even announced a bid. Mr. Romney has continued vociferously campaigning against ObamaCare even while defending a very similar universal health-care plan he signed into law as Massachusetts's governor in 2006. Last week, he inveighed on the National Review blog that "President Obama has betrayed his oath to the nation . . . . he has succumbed to the lowest denominator of incumbent power: justifying the means by extolling the ends." Critically, Republicans need to win the presidency in order to...

In the days immediately before and after passage of the landmark health care reform bill, Mitt Romney responded so forcefully as to suggest his own political fate is tied to the new law. It may well be. Just as health care, or “Obamacare,” as it is derided on the right, hangs over this year’s midterm elections, it is already casting a shadow on the 2012 presidential contest — and its GOP front-runner. What was once thought to be an asset for Romney, his passage as Massachusetts governor of a health care mandate for the state’s residents, now poses a potentially...

Mitt Romney offered an enthusiastic defense last night of the comprehensive health care law he helped create four years ago in Massachusetts, even as he pointed to crucial distinctions between it and a similar national program enacted last week by Democrats. “Overall, ours is a model that works,’’ Romney said in response to a question after a speech at Iowa State University. “We solved our problem at the state level. Like it or not, it was a state solution. Why is it that President Obama is stepping in and saying ‘one size fits all’ ’’? Obama’s signing of a federal...

America has just witnessed an unconscionable abuse of power. President Obama has betrayed his oath to the nation — rather than bringing us together, ushering in a new kind of politics, and rising above raw partisanship, he has succumbed to the lowest denominator of incumbent power: justifying the means by extolling the ends. He promised better; we deserved better. He calls his accomplishment “historic” — in this he is correct, although not for the reason he intends. Rather, it is an historic usurpation of the legislative process — he unleashed the nuclear option, enlisted not a single Republican vote in...

As Mitt Romney sets out this week to promote his new book, “No Apology,’’ he is also auditioning for a rapidly disappearing role in American politics: a politician who is speaking out against the “temptations of populism.’’ “The populism I’m referring to is, if you will, demonizing certain members of society: going after businesspeople, going after Wall Street, going after people who are highly educated, people who are CEOs,’’ Romney said in an interview.... [snip] Instead of ideological fervor, Romney is working to win over Republican voters and party elites with intellectual sobriety more tightly linked to his career as...

History turns in a moment: Harper’s Ferry, Trafalgar, Dien Bien Phu. The Democrats may have seen such a moment with Sen. Ben Nelson this week in Nebraska, so it might be worth marking that page. At year’s end it is worth looking forward to what is likely to rise ahead. These four will be key: Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and William Daley. Sarah Palin: She was seen from the very beginning as a rising star — a cultural awakener similar to Andrew Jackson — bringing a whole new cultural paradigm to the political process; a new heartland spirit...

After laying low during Palinpalooza, the former governor is back atop the GOP pack for 2012. Mark McKinnon's year-end rundown of who's hot (Rick Perry) and who's not (Mike Huckabee). The way things are going, maybe we should go ahead and hold the 2012 elections after all—instead of just reappointing Obama president by acclamation. As we head into 2010, it seems increasingly likely that the 2012 presidential contest will at least be competitive. President Obama’s favorable ratings are now consistently below 50 percent; no candidate has been elected president with a favorable of 47 percent or lower and the Rasmussen...

Writing about Sarah Palin in Newsweek last month, I pointed out the crude way in which she tried to Teflon-ize herself when allegations of weird political extremism were made against her. Thus, she had once gone to a Pat Buchanan rally wearing a pro-Buchanan button, but only because she thought it was the polite thing to do. She and her husband had both attended meetings of the Alaskan Independence Party—he as a member—but its name, she later tried to claim, only meant "independent." (The AIP is a straightforward secessionist party.) She didn't disbelieve all the evidence for evolution, only some...

THE day after her autobiography was published, the cover of Newsweek magazine asked the musical question, "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah?" It's a play on the first line of the chorus of "Maria" in the musical, "The Sound Of Music."The nuns sing of their bewildering young charge, who not only marches to the beat of her own drummer, but sings, dances and strums guitar to it. Their solution is to ship her off to a household in need of a nanny, and thus one of the most extraordinary adventures of the 20th century begins. There is a...

I don't get the BCS. Don't get it at all. I don't get why banks are making it so hard to get a loan when the main reason the economy is staggering is because people can't get loans. I don't get why Americans watch so many shows about dancing. I don't get how Taylor Swift can be considered country. But what I really don't get is Sarah Palin. I haven't understood Sarah Palin since I first heard her name as John McCain's running mate in the 2008 presidential election, may it forever rest in peace. She was a first-term governor...

Before yesterday I didn't know much about David Frum. I've seen his name here and there on FR, and that's about it. Yesterday he was on the Laura Ingraham show, and I've got to say I don't much care for him. He is suppose to be a conservative, but to me he sounded more like a RINO. What is the deal with this guy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS12S566zF4&feature=player_embedded The video link is Courics' own YouTube of her talking about the interview prior to meeting with Palin. According to Couric the interview was a two day event and Couric ask viewers for their in put on what they would like for her to ask.. However, Wallace had this to say.. "...Wallace told msnbc that this is "rationalization or justification or fiction." "We set up this interview on the day of the U.N. General Assembly, with a walk-and-talk in front of the U.N. It was never made as two working gals ... that was supposed to be to highlight...

A former top adviser and spokeswoman to John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign is pushing back against comments reportedly made by Sarah Palin in her new book. Nicolle Wallace tells CNN that Palin's account of an ill-fated interview with CBS's Katie Couric during the 2008 presidential campaign is not true.