Free Republic

Before a single town hall, debate, primary or caucus, Mitt Romney’s blown his chances for the presidency in 2012. What the 2008 also-ran had to say today on Fox News Sunday was the same thing I and others have witnessed him say a half dozen times over the past few months behind closed doors — a stubborn refusal to admit any similarity between President Obama’s national health care plan and his own disastrous solution in Massachusetts. Here’s one quote: There’s a big difference between what we did and what President Obama is doing. What we did, I think, is the...

"Secretary Paulson’s TARP prevented a systemic collapse of the national financial system. Secretary Geithner’s TARP became an opaque, heavy-handed, expensive slush fund. It should be shut down." ~Mitt Romney This is the same line that Thune uses now. This is a ridiculous position to take. One can either recognize that the original TARP was always potentially an opaque slush fund to be used for whatever purpose the executive branch wanted, and it was therefore an outrageous measure that ought to have been defeated, or one can accept the abuses of the TARP that inevitably followed from the absurd way it...

Officer Frank Palestro, the latest cop to call foul on corruption in the NYPD, has gotten serious flak from his fellow police and the union, though he maintains he was just doing his duty. The union delegate and nine-year police veteran was outed after secretly reporting Lt. Susana Seda for behavior such as telling cops to write summonses for traffic violations they didn't witness, refusing to take complaints and tampering with a gun at a crime scene. Since then, he's been transferred so he won't have to deal with the wrath of his peers in the precinct. "I was the...

Bozeman Police Officer Marek Ziegler was called to Van’s IGA last Friday night to check on a shoplifting report. The 33-year-old officer has been on the Bozeman force for three years. He is a K-9 handler and works nights, from about 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. When he got to the grocery store on North Seventh Avenue, employees told Ziegler that a 32-year-old man had stuffed food and “pens, pencils, maybe markers, things for his kids” into his coat. The officer arrested the man, cited him for theft and then released him. But the story didn’t end there. Ziegler had...

WASHINGTON - Later this winter, Mitt Romney will strike out on a national book tour, but unlike his party’s most successful recent author he does not expect to make headlines with bits of fresh gossip from the 2008 campaign, see his fans camp overnight outside bookstores, or chat with Oprah Winfrey about his family. “Inevitably there are going to be comparisons with the Sarah Palin book,’’ said Eric Fehrnstrom, a Romney spokesman. “We’re not going to match her crowd size or sales. These are two different people with different ways of expressing themselves.’’ -snip- But Romney, considered by many in...

-snip- Until 2008, Barbour had been stingy with the pardon. In 2006, I wrote a story for Reason magazine about Cory Maye, a black man in Jefferson Davis County, Miss., convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for shooting and killing a white cop during a botched drug raid. My reporting spawned an outpouring of support for Maye, including from gun rights and home defense advocates on the right, who were outraged over a death sentence for a man who by all appearances thought he was defending his home from apparent intruders. -snip- Over the last two years, as...

PORTSMOUTH — A Kensington man was found guilty of criminal threatening for holding an open pocket knife at his side while asking two people who were walking behind him at midnight, "Why are you following me?" The pair walking behind Dustin Almon, 28, of 27 Wild Rose Lane, were state Liquor Enforcement cops, both in plain clothes without any indicators that they were members of law enforcement, according to testimony during a Thursday Portsmouth District Court trial. Both were also carrying concealed handguns and Tasers, they testified. One of them, Officer Anthony Cattabriga, said he was walking behind Almon on...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who's eyeing another White House bid in 2012 after an unsuccessful run in 2008, endorsed former Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell for governor on Wednesday. -snip- Romney was also asked whether he would make an endorsement in the House of Representative race in New York's 23rd district, where Republican nominee in New York's 23rd is Dede Scozzafava, a state assemblywoman, is facing a threat from the right. "I have chosen not to endorse the Republican candidate in New York's 23rd District, "Romney said, "and that should speak a certain amount of volume. I can't endorse...

Appearing on CNN last night, Mitt Romney conceded that the Massachusetts health care plan he signed into law did nothing to control costs. But, he now says, it was never intended to. "We were unable to deal with -- and didn't have any pretense we would somehow be able to change -- health care costs in Massachusetts," Romney said. "That's a whole different topic, which is how do we get the cost of health care down in America." The problem with Romney's account is that at the time he signed the bill, he was saying it would bring down health...

Watching these clips back-to-back is simply remarkable. Here we have a mainstream conservative candidate, running in a consistently center-right district, being assailed by both major parties. The Democrats, recognizing the official "Republican" candidate's slide into the abyss, have turned their fire on viable (front-running?) third-party candidate, Doug Hoffman. Well, hello, politics of personal destruction and shameless class warfare: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15L_TaolOqg&feature=player_embedded Minor details like Hoffman's humble upbringing (which also shouldn't be an issue), and his lifetime of hard work, are ignored. The success he's earned is used to bludgeon him — which, ironically, reflects the prevailing Democratic position on taxation. The Republican...

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.), who is considered a 2012 presidential hopeful, appeared at an upstate New York Conservative Party dinner last night. Huckabee has not yet endorsed a candidate in a highly-contested upstate special election that has attracted widespread national attention. Several Republican presidential hopefuls have thrown their hat in for Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman, who is running to the right of Republican nominee state Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava. The dinner was held in a suburb of Syracuse, N.Y., which is just over an hour south of the 23rd district. "The greatest threat to America’s freedom is not a...

I’ve written about David Harmer before. He is in a very close election out in CA-10, running in a special election to replace former Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher. As Jim Geraghty noted yesterday, Harmer is running full steam ahead into the public option in his district, which leans blue, but in which Harmer is polling very, very well against a state wide elected Democrat — California’s Lieutenant Governor. Harmer could use some last minute help. Things are looking good for him, but money and volunteers remain in short supply. To donate folks can go to the website: http://www.harmerforcongress.com/ To volunteer, people...

A few questions have come up about the FEC's so-called "48-hour reports." They're actually pretty simple. From a PDF on the FEC's website: Who Must File FEC Form 6 Principal campaign committees must file 48-hour notices on contributions of $1,000 or more received after the 20th day, but more than 48 hours, before 12:01 a.m. of the day of any election in which the candidate participates. ... When to File FEC Form 6 must be received by the federal and state (where required) filing offices within 48 hours after acampaign's receipt of any contribution of $1,000 or more received after...

The combative, conservative National Republican Trust PAC -- best-known for blanketing the airwaves with more than $6 million in Jeremiah Wright-themed ads in the final days of the 2008 presidential campaign -- is joining conservative allies of Doug Hoffman in northern New York's 23rd district. The group's new ad taps into the spirit of the populist conservative revolt, rather than to any particular ideological thread: The Democratic and Republican candidates, it says, are the choices of the "political party bosses;" Hoffman is the "people's choice." To vote for him, the narrator says, is to signal that "we're taking America back."...

There is still time for potential 2012 candidates to stand with Republican voters and the conservative base against the Inside the Beltway Establishment keen on abandoning principles for ACORN supported candidates. Tim Pawlenty and Sarah Palin, both talked about as 2012 candidates, have stood with the base. The Hill reports: Other candidates, like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), have said they will not get involved on either candidate’s behalf. This is disappointing. At a time when the conservative brand is ascending and the Republican brand is still in the gutter, candidates like...

Continuing his rounds on the national political talk circuit, Gov. Tim Pawlenty this morning gingerly stepped into an upstate New York congressional race that has been splitting the Republican Party. The special election in the state's 23rd Congressional District has become a flashpoint for the GOP, with national figures lining up behind the endorsed Republican candidate and the Conservative Party's standard-bearer. No less a party heavyweight than former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has endorsed Doug Hoffman, the conservative, while more moderate voices in the party, such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich have backed the GOP's Dede Scozzafava. Appearing today...

During an appearance on the Neil Cavuto show, Mike Huckabee said he would not make an endorsement in the NY-23 special election -- and then proceeded to profusely praise Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, and say he could never support a pro-choice candidate (which so happens to be the case for the GOP's nominee, Dede Scozzafava). "Certainly his views represent more closely to mine," said Huckabee. "I'm not taking a role in that with my PAC, simply because I feel like it would be inappropriate with me at this point -- mainly because I'm already speaking to the Conservative Party...

Jack Abramoff, present jailbird, was convicted of all sorts of crooked schemes. One of his favorites was to funnel money through various organizations into the hands of other people. It appears Dede Scozzafava is funneling RNC, NRCC, and donor dollars through her campaign account to her family. Dede Scozzafava is or was until recently the Chief Operating Officer of her brother’s company. Her company’s key subsidiaries have accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars in state and federal tax liens. As of July 13, 2009 – or less than a week ago – three of Dede’s businesses have $192,000 in outstanding...

210,000 That's the amount of money that Conservative party nominee Doug Hoffman raised online in the last seven days in support of his candidacy in the special election in New York's 23rd district, according to a source close to the campaign. The source would not speculate on what Hoffman's total raised number would be when reports are filed with the Federal Election by midnight tonight. But, his Internet haul almost certainly means he will outdistance state Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, the Republican nominee, who, party strategists acknowledge, will post a very weak report. (Hoffman, Scozzafava nor Democrat Bill Owens had filed...

When a candidate commits a crime, the usual bonds of loyalty that a party requires are severed. When Sen. Larry Craig got caught in the airport restroom, Mitt Romney threw him off his campaign team. When Rod Blagojevich was arrested, every Democrat who had endorsed him and re-endorsed him ceased any sense of support. You can call this throwing someone under the bus, but there's a difference between severing a tie over political inconvenience and severing it over criminal behavior. If your friend committed a serious crime, you might end the friendship; even if you didn't, you would probably express...