Free Republic

Obama’s top election strategist tells a Chicago audience he was surprised Mitt Romney’s team did not attack Obama more, stuck so narrowly with their base—and chose Paul Ryan for VP. President Obama’s top reelection strategist conceded surprise Monday that Republican super PACS didn’t attack Obama far earlier, Mitt Romney didn’t invest much more in ground operations, and that the Republican nominee played narrowly to the party base in picking Rep. Paul Ryan as a running mate. Offering a lengthy dissection of the campaign, David Axelrod told a Chicago audience that he was “a bit surprised that super PACS, which spent...

We are used to Democrats who use campaigns and government jobs as their private piggy banks. A Republican campaign would be the last place you would expect to see wild spending on questionable projects. Yet in the Romney campaign that seems to have happened and this might have cost him the election. What is going on?

The GOP establishment and some conservative pundits, such as Ann Coulter, are in full defense mode, claiming that Romney is not responsible for losing to an incumbent responsible for perhaps the most damaging fiscal crises in our nation’s history. Don’t believe it. Romney IS responsible for wasting a billion dollars to carry out an issue-free campaign full of simple-minded platitudes. Indeed, Coulter is leading the charge with her recent column titled, Don’t Blame Romney. It’s sweet to watch Coulter defend her darling Romney, but let’s get real. The reality is that Romney was one of the worst GOP presidential candidates...

In the wake of Mitt Romney's loss, many Republicans say the GOP must make far-reaching changes to be competitive in future elections. White voters are a smaller and smaller part of the electorate, they point out, while Latinos and other minorities are growing as a percentage of the voting public. Unless the Republican Party reinvents itself to appeal to those voters, the argument goes, the GOP can get used to being out of power. There's something to that. The electorate is changing, and the Republican Party needs to keep up with the times. But the more fundamental answer to the...

Mitt Romney's comments about 47 percent of Americans being dependent on government and locked in to vote for President Obama highlight a fundamental reality in American politics today: The gap between the American people and the political class is bigger than the gap between Republicans and Democrats in Washington, D.C. Romney's remarks are the GOP equivalent of Obama's notorious comments about small-town Pennsylvania voters bitterly clinging to their guns and religion. Both Romney and Obama highlighted the condescending attitude that political elites hold of the people they want to rule over. A National Journal survey found that 59 percent of...

Fresh on the heels of announcing January fundraising numbers in excess of $4 million, Rick Santorum's presidential campaign announced a new television ad that will begin airing Tuesday in Colorado and Nevada. The ad attacks Newt Gingrich as being too liberal for the GOP nomination by arguing that he shares many policy positions with President Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "All three supported radical cap and trade legislation that would destroy American jobs and drive up energy costs. All three supported giving illegal aliens some form of amnesty. All three sported the government health mandates which take...

Romney assured Massachusetts voters when he was running for the Senate in 1994 that he did not want to go back to Reaganomics. He said during that campaign, "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush." Romney was also one of the few Republicans in 1994 to refuse to sign on to Newt Gingrich's Contract with America. He said during that campaign, "In my view, it is not a good idea to go into a contract, like what was organized by the Republican Party in Washington, laying out a whole series of...

http://youtu.be/uZs8k4pJcyk Originally posted and then taken down....apparently its back, but its too good to let it disappear. So here it is, originally posted by Buckrush. A message to the Democrats in power. You are on notice. We are coming for your jobs now. Start packin, you're fired. 2-9-2010 ---A tad bit more information... Buckrush was the poster who originally posted this. It was taken down after a few hours. I contacted him and he sent me a new link to the video, which I then immediately downloaded and re-posted in order to help keep it up on the web. Anyone...

A think tank founded by GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich collected at least $37 million over the past eight years from major health-care companies and industry groups, offering special access to the former House speaker and other perks, according to records and interviews. The Center for Health Transformation, which opened in 2003, brought in dues of as much as $200,000 per year from insurers and other health-care firms, offering some of them “access to Newt Gingrich” and “direct Newt interaction,” according to promotional materials. The biggest funders, including firms such as AstraZeneca, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Novo Nordisk, were...

Despite an instant, commanding lead in the polls, newly-minted GOP presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry is already being viewed as “unelectable.” The panel of reporters on Sunday’s The Chris Matthews Show reached a general consensus that Perry’s loose talk and extreme views will eventually lead the Republican establishment to choose the more moderate, more electable Mitt Romney to challenge President Obama in the general election. Barely a week into his campaign, the Texas Governor has talked himself into trouble, and not just with liberals and Democrats. While John Heilemann sees Perry’s smashmouth certitude as an advantage over Mitt Romney, The...

Herman Cain defies the stereotype of blacks as liberal. And his embrace of conservatism and rugged individualism might make him the Republicans' best salesman – and counter to Obama. Black candidates must be especially image savvy to navigate the delicate contours of today’s racial politics. They must cultivate racial appeal, without provoking racial resentment, and expend their racial capital, without succumbing to the litany of stereotypes whites associate with them. We thought Barack Obama mastered this art, believing future black candidates must learn at his feet. But Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain might prove more teacher than apprentice. My co-author,...

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Herman Cain says he has three people in mind for who he’d choose as his running mate if he wins the Republican nomination for president. “Two of them are in Washington now,” he said. “But they sort of buck the establishment a lot.” Cain, a Republican running for president, made the comments in response to a question from one of several dozen customers at Sal’s Pizza here on Sunday. He said type of person he would want as his vice president is “somebody who is courageous” and “not afraid to go against the establishment.” “They’ll need to...

By the time they're done with him, GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich will look like a leading Democratic spokesman as the party moves quickly to harness his attacks on Republican plans to change Medicare. According to party sources, they plan to use Gingrich's assault on House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's plan in a bid to knock down every Republican who voted for it. "By calling Paul Ryan's budget 'radical' and 'right-wing social engineering,' Newt merely echoed criticisms millions of Americans across the political spectrum have voiced at house Republicans' budget for weeks now," says Ryan Rudominer, a Democratic consultant...

Sound off in this open thread. I’ve been thinking about the concept of electability for the past couple of days. I tend to look at policy positions and leadership qualities more than personal backgrounds and style. It’s not that the other stuff is unimportant, rather I tend to look for a conservative leader that can move us in the right direction. No limit on the comment length for this post, but come up with some good stuff instead of fluff OK? Try to keep your answers to less than a couple of paragraphs and there is no need to restate...

AP-GfK poll of Palin's F/UF (likely voters)yesterday: 49/50 Gallup poll of Obama's F/UF today: 47/50 Also from Gallup: Would vote to re-elect Obama: 39% No: 54% Avg. job approval for 3rd qtr: 44.7% So Obama has the triple whammy going for him: 1) His F/UF is declining 2) Consistently poll after poll is showing now that only 40% will vote to re-elect President Obama, meaning he would lose in a landslide in 2012 3) And his job approval is slowly dropping closer to the 40% mark as well. And then his primary rival Sarah Palin who has been attacked, demeaned...

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee continued to insist on Sunday that he won’t make a decision on another presidential run until after this fall's midterm elections. “I haven’t closed the door. I think that would be foolish on my part, especially when poll after poll shows that there is strong sentiment out there. I end up leading a lot of the polls. I’m the Republican that clearly, at this point, does better against Obama than any other Republican,” said Huckabee, a Fox News contributor, on "Fox News Sunday."

SALT LAKE CITY - Over the course of two weeks, Utah Republicans had the chance to see the two most talked-about potential presidential candidates in their party. Mitt Romney attended an event for ADX security systems and Sarah Palin visited to sign her bestselling book. The Utahpolicy.com, Fox 13 Insider Poll finds that Mitt Romney is taken far more seriously as a potential presidential candidate. 53.5 percent of Republicans say they expect Romney to be the Republican party candidate to face Barack Obama. 31.3 percent of Democrats think Romney will be the candidate. Only 4.7 percent of Republicans and 6.3...

Newt Gingrich Eyes 2012 Run Susan Davis reports on politics. Newt Gingrich is keeping an eye towards 2012, the former speaker of the House told reporters Thursday evening before a speaking engagement at Randolph Macon College. Gingrich said he and his wife, Callista, “will look seriously and we’ll probably get our family totally engaged, including our two grandchildren, probably in January 2011, and we’ll look seriously at whether or not we think it’s necessary to do it,” he said, according to the Richmond Times Dispatch. “And if we think it’s necessary we’ll probably do it. And if it isn’t necessary...

Celebs did some serious political partying last night at the Black & White Gala for Barack Obama. Although the presidential nominee wasn't in attendance, plenty of stars were there to show their support, like Lucy Liu and Nia Long. VIP tickets to the fancy fete were $2,300 a person, which included munchies like crudités, olives and eggplant and musical stylings from a seven-person gospel choir. So who else hit the bash for Barack, held at a private estate in Bel-Air? Find out in our Party Pics: Hollywood gallery!

OBAMA: We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality, uh, we can send 15,000 more troops; 20,000 more troops; 30,000 more troops. Uh, I don't know any, uh, expert on the region or any military officer that I've spoken to, uh, privately that believes that that is gonna make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.