Free Republic

Byron York telegraphs the lines of attack Michele Bachmann is planning on using at tomorrow night's Florida debate to chip away at the support Rick Perry has taken from her: "Bernie Madoff deals with Ponzi schemes, not the grandparents of America," says a Bachmann adviser. "Clearly she feels differently about the value of Social Security than Gov. Perry does. She believes Social Security needs to be saved, that it's an important safety net for Americans who have paid into it all their lives." York goes on the say Bachmann's camp was unhappy with how few questions she got at last...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman on Thursday turned to Twitter to attack a rival, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, for his positions on evolution and climate change. "To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy," Huntsman tweeted.

Huntsman on Twitter: ‘Call me crazy,’ I believe in evolution, warmingBy Justin Sink - 08/18/11 02:59 PM ET Republican presidential candidate and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman on Thursday took to Twitter to offer his support for the theory of evolution. Huntsman made the tweet shortly after Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) offered comments that cast doubt on evolution, and his comments could be seen as a criticism of Perry. “To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy,” Huntsman, also a former ambassador to China, tweeted. Perry also has raised questions about...

The exact same spot where Pawlenty was heckled by a gay man earlier, Michele Bachmann and her husband get hit with heckling and chants of 'shame on you.' Both incidents took place today at the Iowa State Fair. There is a group of hecklers at this Bachmann speech. (video)

...Of course, Bachmann knows what every Christian woman knows — the theological richness of submission is a counterintuitive scriptural principle that defies a 30-second response ...The concept of submission is a bit more nuanced than our feminist sisters understand. Christian women are under the authority of their husbands. Submission is, as John Piper put it, “the disposition to follow a husband’s authority and an inclination to yield to his leadership.” This means that the man is the spiritual head of the household, that he should take initiative to make the family better, and lead with love. However, the “head of...

It’s not exactly a “Left Behind” story, but there were a fair number of conservative policy wonks and political operators in Texas who didn’t catch the train to Washington in 2000. Now, as Gov. Rick Perry dances closer and closer to the presidential flame, those Texas Republicans might get another chance. The conventional wisdom just a few months ago was that the rest of the country was weary of Texans, that even if they were in a mood to put a Republican back in the White House, nobody with boots should apply for the job. But maybe 2012 is like...

Perry offers no hints at local GOP fundraiser By Kiah Collier San Angelo Standard TimesJuly 26, 2011 at 9:46 p.m. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin asked her uncle Mike Sheeran to deliver a message to Gov. Rick Perry at a Republican Party fundraiser held at Bentwood Country Club on Tuesday: That he should declare his entrance into the 2012 presidential race. "Sarah wanted me to tell him that, if he were to declare, he should declare here at Bentwood," said Sheeran, who has lived in San Angelo for about 12 years, adding that he would be a big supporter of...

Rick Perry’s Campaign Approach Is Hitting All the Right Notes Seth Mandel July 26, 2011 A pro-Rick Perry group is taking advantage of a new rule in the Iowa straw poll that allows voters to write in a candidate. GrowPAC will air radio ads in Iowa urging voters to write in Perry’s name in the Ames straw poll next month. The move would–if the ad works–help Perry in two ways: it would reveal public support for Perry without having to meet expectations, as he would if his name were officially on the ballot, and it will drain support from Perry’s...

Business Journals relays the latest economic trophy for the Lone Star State and its governor: Texas is the big winner in On Numbers’ midyear analysis of employment trends. Texas added 537,500 nonfarm jobs between June 2006 and June 2011, based on the latest seasonally adjusted figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That’s nearly 10 times larger than the second-biggest increase by any state over the five-year span, Louisiana’s gain of 55,900 nonfarm jobs. North Dakota was third with a raw increase of 41,700..... This would be a big deal for Rick Perry under any circumstances, but more...

A key group sponsoring The Response, a day dedicated to prayer for the nation that has been promoted by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, says he "missed an opportunity" when he answered that he "was fine" with New Yorkers' plans to adopt same-sex "marriage" in their state. Bryan Fischer is director of issue analysis for the American Family Association, a key backer of The Response, and told WND that the organization is not changing any plans to work with Perry over the comment. But he said, "I think there's probably disappointment in the governor over his comments. … There was an...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is all but certain to launch a presidential campaign and is nearing an announcement set for the second half of August, according to sources familiar with his political team's planning. For months, Republican activists, donors, elected officials, and even voters have dithered about their choices in the 2012 presidential primary contest. But they may have their man in Rick Perry, a telegenic and booming political presence who boasts executive experience as the nation's longest serving governor, as well as a healthy level of support from the tea party faithful. Two new national polls released on Friday...

Link only due to copyright issues: Link to Article

I recently posted an article suggesting that Mchele Bachmann's candidacy, and its impact on Sarah Palin, is reminiscent of the 1980 candidacy of Phil Crane, which Ronald Reagan considered a threat to his nomination: Is Michele Bachmann Sarah Palin's Phil Crane? LINKAs I point out in the article linked above, Crane never really thought he had a chance for the nomination, and he was content to have one of the moderates (Baker or Bush) get the nomination in hopes that they would install Crane as the Vice-Presidential nominee. I did not explore some of the reasons why Crane's belief was...

The 2012 Election cycle is shaping up in many ways to be a mirror image of the 1980 election, which brought the Country and the world the great Ronald Reagan. The Democrats are set to renominate another monumentally failed and politically weak President, as they did with Jimmy Carter in 1980. The GOP Establishment is threatened, genuinely threatened, for the first time since Reagan menaced it thirty years ago, by the advent of a new Conservative superstar, Sarah Palin. And the Establishment champion who is designated to slay the new Conservative dragon? Well, you might say, "The cupboard has never...

Bachmann’s newly installed political team has had its own battles with message discipline — typified by campaign manager Ed Rollins’ recent comments alleging that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin hasn’t been “serious” over the last few years. After the incident, Bachmann was “very firm” with Rollins, according to an adviser to the congresswoman, telling him this should not happen again and that there should be “no more press”. Bachmann also demanded that Rollins call the Palin people and apologize. “She is definitely not tone deaf,” the source added. Bachmann’s move to limit her exposure in the wake of her debate...

Just happened, very strange! Wolf Blitzer Interview with Michele Bachmann. Blitzer asked Bachmann 5 times do you agree with Tim Pawlenty that Mitt romney is disqualified from being the Republican nominee for president because he supports mandated healthcare.? She kept responding that she's against obamacare/mandates. Blitzer tried again to pin down some kind of answer. She evaded the question at every turn, didn't want to touch it and finally a frustrated Blitzer then says, "You obviously don't want to answer the question?" I know people say that nominees shouldn't attack other nominees yet but if not now, when? because Romney...

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said Friday that it's her sense that Republican voters are "very satisfied" with the field of presidential candidates. Following Monday's debate in New Hampshire, Bachmann said voters were happier with their options. "I think people, especially after the debate on Monday night, were very satisfied with what they saw with the candidates," she said on Fox News. [...] She passed, though, both at the debate and on Fox, at leveling tough criticism at former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's (R) state healthcare law. [...] Rather, Bachmann suggested she's more likely to train her sights on President Obama...

Around the time that President Clinton got into hot water with Monica Lewinsky in 1998, wife Hillary coined the phrase "vast right-wing conspiracy" to denote the supposed nefarious, political forces that were determined to bring her husband down and cause him to leave office. Personally I think Hillary was a bit off in her assessment of Clinton's enemies (personally I think Bill Clinton was his own worse enemy)but 13 years later I think we do have a vast right-wing conspiracy set up to derail the Presidential ambitions of Sarah Palin. In the past I focused more on the Left and...

Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann vowed again in her appearance on GMA this morning to repeal the “job-killer” known as “Obamacare.” Yet despite several valiant attempts by George Stephanopoulos to get Bachmann to say something, anything, critical about frontrunner Mitt Romney, she refused to get off message and ignored his question completely. When Stephanopoulos asked whether Bachmann had any critique of “Romneycare” in Massachusetts, Bachmann instead repeated “Obamacare will steamroll over all the state laws” and suggested that what anyone else will do, or has done, is not relevant to her plans. .

While I freely concede that both Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry have a right to run for President, it is impossible to overlook the fact that their recent benefactress, Sarah Palin, is rolling out her own Presidential campaign at the same time. This would not generally be extraordinary. In politics, alliances are sometimes (although not regularly) forged and broken. However, in my forty years or so of close political observation, I cannot remember an analogous situation in which the beneficiaries of one politician turn on their benefactor (especially a benefactor as conspicuous as Palin) so shortly after having obtained and...