Free Republic

On the tail of Game Change‘s premiere on HBO, former McCain/Palin adviser Nicolle Wallace, prominently featured in the film, visited Rachel Maddow tonight to expand upon the lessons of the 2008 campaign, and made clear that she felt fairly guilty about working to make someone “fundamentally unprepared and unsuited for the job” the Vice President of the United States. Wallace noted that she was still in shock as to “how close we came to having somebody a heartbeat away from the presidency so fundamentally unprepared and unsuited for the job,” adding that, while she thought tossing around the term “PTSD”...

Well, it is both but it started with Team Romney. They started the attacks as early as the convention. It wasn’t until later on that Team Rove saw it as an avenue to also clear the path for Jeb. Team Romney? or is it Team Rove/Bush? With the primary season in full swing and the HBO movie coming out, we have gotten a very clear view of how each candidate conducts their campaigns. There is only ONE candidate who has a clear MO of nasty, dishonest attacks and rumors using a tactic that overwhelms their opponents to not just have...

Thanks to some remarkable reporting from Big Hollywood, it has become increasingly clear the upcoming HBO movie "Game Change" is less a political melodrama than an all-out attempt to destroy the person and reputation of Sarah Palin. The movie is based on a poorly researched book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, and it was criticized at the time of its publication by Howard Kurtz, then a media reporter for the Washington Post, and the New York Times for its overreliance on unsourced "deep background" interviews that were difficult to verify. Two of those sources have been revealed, according to...

Sarah Palin is weighing in on the GOP nomination race. She appears to have something to say about everyone and has little positive to say. It's almost embarrassing for the Republican Party to have her voice an opinion. Palin comes across less like an expert on campaigning and more like a washed-up booth babe trying to show she does have something useful to say. Of particular note are her recent jabs at Mitt Romney. She's calling him out for not being far enough to the political right. The former vice-presidential candidate might be suggesting Romney adopt a stance more like...

H.R. 796, which Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich voted for, was intended to preserve the right of pro-lifers to protest at abortion clinics. In 1993, President Clinton proposed a law, supposedly to protect abortion clinics from violence. In reality, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act has been used to prevent pro-lifers from coming anywhere near abortion clinics, stifling their first-amendment rights. Pro-life Republicans and moderate Democrats (they existed back then) attempted passage of H.R. 796 to head off this threat to constitutional liberties. The bill would still create a federal law to prevent the physical obstruction of clinic...

Things haven't gotten much better for Newt Gingrich ..... The former House speaker abruptly canceled a meeting with Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval ... Not even Gingrich's campaign advisers know why the campaign scheduler called it off, irking them and those in Sandoval's office who had helped set up the event. ..... Other signs of disarray appeared Wednesday. Gingrich's schedule called for a 1 p.m. rally in Reno, but volunteers put out word that the event would be at noon — and that supporters should show up at 11:30. .....

Bravo for Ann Coulter. That's not a sentence you might expect to read in this space, and I'm sure my endorsement will please nobody less than Ann herself. That said: bravo.

The Republican establishment is pulling out all the stops to try to keep Newt Gingrich from becoming the party's nominee for President of the United States -- and some are not letting the facts get in their way. Among the claims going out through the mass media in Florida, on the eve of that state's primary election, is that Newt Gingrich "resigned in disgrace" as Speaker of the House of Representatives, as a result of unethical conduct involving the diversion of tax-exempt money. Mitt Romney is calling on Gingrich to release "all of the records" from the House of Representatives...

We have witnessed something very disturbing this week. The Republican establishment which fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today has adopted the tactics of the left in using the media and the politics of personal destruction to attack an opponent. We will look back on this week and realize that something changed. I have given numerous interviews wherein I espoused the benefits of thorough vetting during aggressive contested primary elections, but this week’s tactics aren’t what I meant. Those who claim allegiance to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment should stop and...

Thursday, Bloody Thursday the Day the Drudge Report Sold Out It may be the Drudge Report sold out a long time ago and I was just too blind to see it. No one has ever accused me of being the smartest guy in the room. But if someone of the unwashed masses like myself has come to see that he has sold out, it must be quite clear to everyone. On this day he is maliciously and brutally battering a Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States by the name of Newton Leroy Gingrich. I have read the...

The entire GOP establishment has unleashed on Newt Gingrich this week, and it looks like it is slowing his momentum in the polls. Almost all of the anti-Newt Gingrich material hitting the media is coming from conservative institutions: National Review, The New York Sun, and the Washington Times. Just look at the Drudge Report from last night and early this morning.:(Snip for graphic) The number one news source for many populist and conservative readers, looks like an anti-Gingrich pinboard. There are twelve anti-Gingrich links leading the site, with video of Gingrich trashing Reagan,

Charleston, South Carolina (CNN) - In what appears to be a last ditch attempt to halt Newt Gingrich's late momentum in South Carolina, a fake CNN Breaking News alert was emailed to state Republican activists early Thursday morning claiming that the former House Speaker pressured his ex-wife to have an abortion. CNN did not send out the email alert. It's not clear how many people received the fake email, though at least two members of the South Carolina GOP Executive Committee, who did not want to be named, were among those who found the missive in their inboxes this morning....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Iowa Republican Party will certify this month's presidential caucuses as a split decision between former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, citing missing data from eight precincts, the Des Moines Register reported on Thursday.

A recount of the Jan. 3 Iowa Republican caucus results has Rick Santorum leading Mitt Romney in the race for the GOP presidential nomination by 34 votes, with data from 8 precincts missing and never to be certified, GOP officials told The Des Moines Register on Wednesday. Despite Santorum's advantage, the state Republican party views the results as a wash.

Mitt Romney’s campaign unleashed a multi-pronged attack against Newt Gingrich Wednesday — a sign the GOP front-runner could be worried about a surge from the ex-Speaker prior to South Carolina’s primary on Saturday. Romney rolled out a pair of new attack ads and dispatched two of his top surrogates to blast Gingrich’s erratic temperament just days before the make-or-break southern contest. “He’s not reliable,” former Missouri Senator Jim Talent slammed on a media conference call. “Yes, he can say exciting things — he also says things that undermine the conservative movement.” That theme was reminiscent of the line of attack...

Newt Gingrich has told voters in South Carolina not to vote for Rick Santorum because Santorum can’t defeat either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. In particular, Gingrich made an appeal to conservatives: “If you're a conservative, just look at the polls. I am the only candidate capable of stopping a moderate from winning the nomination.” Indeed, Gingrich claimed, “If you vote for Sen. Santorum, in effect you’re voting for Gov. Romney to be the nominee because he's not going to beat him. And the only way you can stop Gov. Romney for all practical purposes is to vote for Gingrich. That's...

Tuesday, January 3, 2012 Editorial by John Ziegler Sarah Palin: Selfish, Hypocritical, Sellout 1/3/2012 As surreal as it may be, after spending over two years and several thousand dollars defending Sarah Palin at great personal cost, I now find myself in the bizarre position (three years to the day from starting the journey to Wasilla to do the interview of record on her 2008 VP run) of being perhaps the only conservative commentator willing to point out that Palin has now clearly revealed herself to be a selfish, hypocritical, sellout. While she was doing her presidential tease (an act that...

<p>The editors at Red State and Free Republic (among others) have had the wool pulled over their eyes. They seem to actually believe the lies originally propagated by supporters of President Obama and, in some cases, even by President Obama himself. Now, for some reason, these editors/moderators are so insecure in their prejudice against Gov. Romney that they ban people who openly support Gov. Romney. Free Republic (mostly because of it’s owner Jim Robinson) has purged all of the Romney supporters they could from the site in two waves of purges over the last few years. The anti-Romney and anti-Mormon bigotry evident at Free Republic now is absolutely sickening.</p>

Sarah Palin wasn’t ever really going to run for president, was she? That’s Donald Craig Mitchell’s guess. In an Op-Ed that discusses Palin’s decision not to run, Mitchell says she’s long prioritized her celebrity career over her commitment to public office, reminding us of Palin’s lucrative deals that followed after she quit as Alaska’s governor, including a seven-figure contract with Fox News. After three years of tweeting, hinting and eyelash-batting, on Wednesday Sarah Palin announced that she was not running for president. Her Facebook friends are disappointed. But for Sarah-watchers in Alaska like me, the announcement was long expected, old...

Since Governor Palin’s On the Record appearance Tuesday night, the blogosphere and media outlets have been buzzing with opinions that she’s not running for president in 2012. Her conversation with Greta Van Susteren left some to ponder, perhaps more than ever, if she has decided not to relinquish her freedom–not to be shackled–for the sake of a title. Comments left in various and sundry places revealed that some people were angry, some were confused, some were frustrated, while some remained encouraged. No one was unmoved, however. No one was without some type of reaction. No one was neutral. It was,...