Free Republic

Would you like to see Sarah Palin run for president in 2012?

Private meeting is one thing; cheap photo op is another. I don't mean to begrudge Billy Graham a Sunday afternoon visit from an admirer. I just wish he hadn't been used as a political prop. Picking up the paper Monday morning, I cringed at news of Sarah Palin spending the day with the evangelist at his home in Montreat. Especially cringe-inducing was the picture of Palin holding her special needs child, Trig, on her lap as mother and son shared what looked to be a less-than-spontaneous moment with Graham. It definitely wasn't a private moment, since a photographer had to...

Convicted Felon Martha Stewart Says Sarah Palin Is "Dangerous"

Looking toward the 2012 presidential primaries and election, one must ask, whether the Republicans can nominate a candidate that has the convictions of the founding fathers, the good looks of Kennedy, and the public relations of Reagan. Our current president has seen his favorable rating drop. He spoke of change but has proven himself a true blue liberal, even bordering on Marxist. So then, the question needs to be asked, Who will replace Obama as our national chief?

Not that it matters politically because obviously she's a female Republican dunce and he's obviously a male Democratic genius. But Sarah Palin's poll numbers are strengthening. And President Obama's are sliding. Guess what? They're about to meet in the 40s. Depending, of course, on which recent set of numbers you peruse and how the questions are phrased, 307 days into his allotted 1,461 the 44th president's approval rating among Americans has slid to 49% or 48%, showing no popularity bounce from his many happy trips, foreign and domestic. Riding the wave of immense publicity and symbiotic media interest over her...

Some interesting battles breaking out on Twitter this AM, even if I say so myself - having played a big role in fueling them! No need to link all the back and forth, but it amounts to a discussion about what works. The problem as I see it, is too many inside the Beltway Republicans have convinced themselves that they are all that. For some reason, they fear and look to shut down the Joe the Plumbers (who I personally feel has been over-played by now) and the Jackies from the recent Palin book signing dust up with Nora O'Donnell....

Frum points to the polls: I was interviewed on PBS last week about Palin’s book release. I said that Palin had an especially serious problem with women voters. This is just fact, again recorded in every survey...And yet this attested statistical fact is shrugged off with comments like, “when I saw her campaign in N.H., I was surrounded by moms with strollers”(continued)

Iowa Poll: State Republicans like what they see in Sarah Palin

Big caveat right off the bat: PPP is the same polling firm that predicted a Hoffman landslide in NY-23. But (a) they had Mitt’s favorables comparable with Huckabee’s earlier in the year, so it’s not like their data’s historically been screwy, and (b) this isn’t just a one-month snapshot but a trend dating back to July.

November 23, 2009 Lou Dobbs Considers Possible Presidential Run Lou Dobbs, who resigned from CNN in November after nearly three decades with the network, suggested in a radio interview Monday that he's eyeing a future in politics. Former populist CNN anchor Lou Dobbs said Monday he isn't ruling out a presidential run. Dobbs, who resigned from CNN in November after nearly three decades with the network, suggested in a radio interview with WTOP in Washington, D.C., that he's eyeing a future in politics. "What's so crazy about that?" Dobbs quipped when asked about a possible presidential run. "It's one of...

Vanity

Sarah's in the news again. What do you think? Should she make a bid for the presidency in 2012?

With liberal politicans, reporters pan for gold. With conservative politicians, reporters dig for dirt. The media spotlight that has been used as soft backlighting to illuminate President Obama and other liberal darlings doubles as a tightly-focused laser beam to attack Republicans. Just look at the recent issue of Newsweek magazine with its cover photo showing former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin wearing, of all things, running shorts. If you think that would be more appropriate on the cover of a magazine about running, you'd be exactly right -- it was a photo originally intended for Runner's World.It's not exactly a dignified...

God bless John McCain for having picked Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008. McCain didn’t simply introduce a new politician into the national limelight, but someone who has already lapped him in public consciousness. Palin represents McCain’s most enduring political accomplishment. In tapping her, McCain unleashed the most volatile force into American politics since Joseph McCarthy. And unlike the saturnine McCarthy, Palin seems to succeed effortlessly at playing any role she assumes—in her latest incarnation as author, she produced a best seller even before her tome hit the bookstores, a particularly impressive accomplishment at a moment when the...

ReGaining Reagan Sarah Carlsruh, November 23, 2009 Today, there are “far too many people saying ‘let’s move beyond Reagan,’” lamented Steve Hayward, author of The Age of Reagan and keynote speaker at Accuracy in Academia’s November 5th Author’s Night. Reagan stuck to an unwavering and enduring set of ideals. Yet, liberals are trying to present a distorted picture of Reagan and make him into a proto-liberal, said Hayward. Some liberals embrace the 2nd Term Reagan as a man of peace, call his foreign policy “pretty good” while condemning the Reagan of domestic policy. In contrast, Hayward insisted that “it was...

With her popularity on the rise and a number one book, Sarah Palin is coming out on top! As the L.A. Times points out, at this point in time before the 2008 election, Barack Obama was a relative unknown who rose to political fame. Given the same timeframe -- and her fanitical supporters snapping up 300,000 copies of her book in a single day -- could she be headed towards the White House? Could Palin take down President Obama in 2012? Give us your thoughts in the comments below, then take our poll to tell us: What side are you...

With so much attention being paid to Sarah Palin's book tour, the Fix decided to put our political nerd cap on -- okay, fine, we always wear it -- and go inside the numbers of where she's stopping and why. All told, the former Alaska governor is making 31 stops in 25 states. Florida will see the most of Palin (three stops), and she will make two appearances each in Texas, Ohio, Indiana and Idaho. Palin will not stop in the most populous state -- California -- or in another biggie, Illinois. She is sticking largely to Republican-friendly areas, as...

The former Alaska governor represents thwarted aspirations and brooding resentment. But she backs policies which would increase them. In the film, The American President, the president's speechwriter Lewis Rothschild (played by Michael J Fox) appeals to the commander-in-chief to take a firm, clear stand against the Right. "People want leadership, Mr President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone." he says. "They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand." The president...

The Republican party wonders why conservatives are so disappointed with it?Another glowing example of the problems confronting the Republican party occurred yesterday.  The Senate Republicans had the opportunity to force a full reading of the Senate's proposed health care bill so that every bit of the 2,200 pages would be made public by the reading, and so the people could become much better informed about its contents before it is passed...if it is passed.  It had the opportunity to really hold the Democrats' feet to the fire over this abominable excuse for legislation that is being crammed down the throats...

NOBLESVILLE, INDIANA -- The real Americans were waiting in their Audis and Outbacks in the Hoosier rain. Already, the parking lot had been barricaded and the satellite trucks from the local television stations were in place and it still was going to be five hours before we would see the ex-mayor, ex-governor and existential hero of prairie patriots like all of us. I hauled up in my rented Nissan Versa, having driven from the Indianapolis airport in the downpour, and rolled down the window and talked to the people in the next space. --snip-- Jim and Lucy Roark said they...

One should be given combat pay for defending Sarah Palin in Manhattan. The other evening at a lecture, a so-called distinguished author of political tomes reflected on the declining state of conservatism and cited Sarah Palin as the reincarnation of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who stirred the ire of the country by accusing a huge swath of the State Department as being card carrying communists. Hearings were held and eventually the Senator, an authentic alcoholic, was exposed as a liar and a fraud, chastised by the Senate and tossed into the rubbish bin of history where he belonged. The ugly comparison...

The conventional wisdom on Sarah Palin is that she's a divisive figure, and, from what polls tell us, that's true: according to Pollster.com's average, 38 percent of Americans hold a favorable view of her, while 49.2 percent view her unfavorably. So she's in minus territory--11.2 percent more Americans view her negatively than positively--which is bad for any politician running for office (if indeed she is). That's worse than other top-tier 2012 contenders, too, whose favorable/unfavorable splits, according to the same average, are 36.9 / 27.3 for Mitt Romney and 44.6 / 23/9 for Mike Huckabee. But among Republicans, she does...

Both Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich have it right. Sneer and dismiss Sarah Palin -- and/or the sentiment she taps -- at your political peril. Dowd writes that President Obama could use some of Palin's visceral appeal. Palin can be stupefyingly simplistic, but she seems dynamic. Obama is impressively complex but he seems static. She nurtures her grass roots while he neglects his. He struggles to transcend identity politics while she wallows in them. As he builds an emotional moat around himself, she exuberantly pushes whatever she has, warts and all — the good looks, the tabloid-perfect family, the Alaska...

If you're a fan of Sarah Palin, I have a distressing prediction: She isn't going to run for president in 2012. If you're not a big fan of hers, you might be cheered by that. Don't. The reason she isn't going to run for president is the process would bore her. That's the conclusion I've reached after reading her memoir, "Going Rogue." In it, she routinely describes a deeply rooted restlessness, a propelling engine that always seeks the next challenge. That means the endless slog of campaigning would grow tiresome, the fundraising would grow really tiresome and the need to...

Obama’s overall job approval slipped to 49 percent from 53percent in September. Iowans’ approval is down 19 percentage points since an Iowa Poll in January, about the time he was inaugurated. A majority of Iowans now say the Democrat’s performance in key economic areas is inadequate, including health care, his top domestic priority… Fifty-five percent of Iowans disapprove of how Obama is handling health care, up from not quite half in September.

This is the philosophical theme the film works tirelessly to promote; when you strip away our contrived institutional divisions, we are all the same, all part of one big happy human family. Survival requires abandoning antiquated paradigms and placing faith in the experts among us to “ensure the continuity of the species.” The paradigm most in the crosshairs of this philosophical apocalypse is Christianity. The eccentric Charlie Frost, a pirate radio host played with slovenly relish by Woody Harellson, demeans the Bible as the least accurate predictor of the end of days among competitors like the Mayan calendar and the...

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — When tickets to see Sarah Palin in Michigan ran out, people drove to her appearance here, three hours away. Thousands had lined up overnight, starting nearly 24 hours before she was to begin signing books, camping out in 39-degree weather for a moment with the woman many see as the great conservative hope, a role model, “one of us.” They brought their sleeping bags, their children, homemade chocolate Cheerios bars, and balloons to twist into animal shapes and hats for the crowd. And they brought their anger — about bailouts, jobs and health care. If Sarah...

Sarah Palin is back, using her book, Going Rogue, as a prop. From all indications she ain't going away -- which may be why passions, pro and con, are so intense about her. There seems no middle ground when it comes to Palin -- some of it understandable, most of it puzzling. If she's a ditz, an airhead as some insist, someone without the depth or substance to be president, why worry about her? The electorate will catch on. So why do Democrats slag her at every opportunity? If she's a genuine threat to be a contender for power on...

“Of Mayans and Millerites: 2012, 1844, and 2009” (Mark 13:24-37)There’s a new movie out called “2012,” maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s about an enormous, earth-shaking event that will take place in the year 2012. No, it’s not a fantasy about my Chicago Cubs finally winning the World Series. No, nothing as far-fetched as that. Rather, “2012” is a big-budget disaster movie about the end of the world. I haven’t seen it, and I’m not planning on seeing it, but from what I can tell, it’s your standard end-of-the-world movie: Big cataclysmic disaster coming, worldwide destruction, some time to get...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20--President Carter would easily defeat either former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California or former President Gerald R. Ford if the election were held today, according to the Gallup Poll.

John F. Kennedy believed that being passed over for vice president by the Democratic convention in 1956 saved his political career. That year, Adlai Stevenson, the presidential nominee, had left the selection of his running mate to the convention delegates—the last time a nominee did so. The choice came down to Kennedy and his Senate colleague Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, who had lined up too much early support even for the attractive young war hero to overcome. In the end, Kennedy had it both ways. He benefited from the television exposure and was spared the blame—which as a Catholic, he...

Check out this podcast: http://wumb.libsyn.com/rss How to talk about race

Fascinating NYT articles from the late 70s about the same things we see today. The GOP needs to be more moderate, reach out to independents, they're too conservative, Reagan is bad news, too extreme, etc... Things never change. Here's some highlights: From 10/3/77: Mr. Ford drew a warm but not particularly enthusiastic response when he told the Republicans that their party's future lay in avoiding idealistic extremes and in attracting non-aligned voters..."In my judgment the radical liberal or idealistically pure conservative policies will not in the long run attract the independent voter". It was a remark that some listeners interpreted...

When the apocalypse comes, China will save the world. Or at least that's how Chinese audiences are interpreting "2012," Hollywood's latest blockbuster disaster movie. "It's about time the world sees us as a dominant ally," said Liu Xinliang, 27, a Beijing-based computer programmer who watched the movie twice.

Link only, per FR copyright rules

Former presidential candidate Sen. John McCain said Thursday he has read Sarah Palin's book and has no regrets about picking her as a running mate. (snip) He also said if Mrs. Palin decides to run for president in 2012 and becomes the Republican Party nominee he would vote for her. "I hope she has every success," Mr. McCain said. "She's still pretty popular."

It seems the recent news that Rudy may use his pending Senate run for another shot at the GOP nomination has brought the Rudophiles back to FR in packs. In order to head-off the liberal treachery, I think we need to renew the "Stop Rudy" ping list. Does anyone know who had it, and can we start it back up again? I will run it or help run it if needed, thanks!

Last weekend, I warned about the dangers of Republican candidates focusing on Iowa during the 2012 Presidential primaries, as Iowa has become a reliable state for Democrats, and if a Republican wants to win the nomination, their focus needs to be directed towards the Southern and Western United States.

Conservative Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, who is emerging as a top contender for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, is gaining some attention this week for his comments in defense of President Obama. As first reported on the Huffington Post, Huckabee said some of the recent criticisms of Obama have been unfair and even "shameful." Huckabee made the comments to the Hudson Union Society. "When he [Barack Obama] was at Dover the other day, and went there to pay respect for soldiers, I heard a lot of people on the Right say "Aw, that's just a cheap photo-op."...

Presidential Candidates for 2012.

I am curious which celebrity will be the first to threaten or actually leave the country when Mrs. Palin is elected President in 2012. Already I have read that libs say that Palin is devisive and not a uniter. Which one will be the first to threaten to leave?

(1) The final stop on the tour is Sandpoint, Idaho, where Palin was born. Almost every stop on the tour has some kind of meaning to Palin (including places the McCain campaign would not allow her and Todd to go during the 2008 race, as well as Phoenix, Arizona, which is McCain’s hometown and the place she was not allowed to deliver a concession speech on Election Night). Stopping off in the place you were born sure feels like a presidential campaign sort of move. It’s also interesting Palin’s hitting Salt Lake City (Mitt Romney’s town), Minneapolis (Tim Pawlenty’s town),...

We may not be sure of Sarah Palin’s ability to assume a political office of national scope, but we can be certain she is polarizing. Obviously there is a gap between left and right, but, interestingly, the conservative commentariat itself is deeply divided. Even within the Weekly Standard crowd, Palin inspires vastly diverging reactions. Matthew Continetti has emerged as a Palin stalwart, while both David Brooks and Charles Krauthammer have taken to criticizing her regularly. The standard reproach against Palin is that she is toxic to the GOP’s brand among independents and unfit for higher office. At the same time,...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — College students ditched class, employees skipped work and some huddled in the cold overnight just to make sure they get an orange wristband Wednesday that would let them meet Sarah Palin. A line of more than a thousand people — some sporting Palin Power stickers and Palin T-shirts — moved slowly into a Barnes & Noble store Wednesday to see the former Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor on the first stop of her "Going Rogue" book tour. During the hours they waited, some broke out in chants of "Palin! Palin! Palin!" Scores more who...

WASHINGTON — Palin-Beck 2012? Sarah Palin has suggested Fox News firebrand Glenn Beck could be someone she'd consider as a running mate if she makes a bid for the White House in two years. "I can envision a couple of different combinations, if ever I were to be in a position to really even seriously consider running for anything in the future, and I'm not there yet," Palin told the conservative news agency Newsmax as she promoted her memoir, "Going Rogue: An American Life." "But Glenn Beck I have great respect for. He's a hoot. He gets his message across...

Conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham recently sent an email blast to her listeners stating something very simple, yet profound: Conservatism is the most influential political philosophy of the past 100 years because it is built upon essential truths. Ms. Ingraham is right for many reasons, but mainly because conservatism is inspired by our Constitution and the Founders’ intent that our government be limited and representative of the people. Conservatives seek to maintain the rich Constitutional traditions engendered some 233 years ago in this very city. If Tuesday’s off-year elections were any indicator of things to come in 2010, Democrats...

Sarah Palin is the beneficiary of the vast left-wing conspiracy. Palin is selling a book. Nothing sells books like attention. Lefties love to attack Palin. Attacks create more attention for Palin and her book. I suspect she will show as much gratitude to her critics as she has shown to the person who made her, John McCain. --snip-- I noticed Kate Snow’s report on ABC News’ website about a conference call that McCain held with his top aides. Snow quoted an aide describing the call this way: “He apologized to everyone on the call for people having to go through...

Sarah Palin certainly turned heads when she made an appearance in springfield just weeks before the 2008 presidential election, and now she's turning pages locally too. Many people in the Ozarks seem to be "Going Rogue. In fact south Springfield's Borders was in the nation's top ten for most copies of Palin's new memoir reserved ahead of Tuesday's release. George Carlin's "Last Words" may very well be forgotten. "Yeah i'm going to get it," one Borders patron says. He's not talking about George, bur rather his shelf-mate- one-time vice presidential hopeful turned best-seller hopeful Sarah Palin's political memoir. "Since we...

1. South Dakota Senator John Thune Like Mitt Romney, the Junior Senator from South Dakota is straight out of central casting for the role of president. Intelligent, articulate, handsome, with a winning smile and an easy going disposition - it's hard to locate anything missing from the prototypical presidential check list. SNIP 2. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels With a resume that includes both political and policy posts at the local, state and national level, Mitch Daniels arguably boasts the strongest experience of any Republican in the country. Re-elected overwhelmingly to a second term in 2008 even as President Obama carried...

Poll asks if Sarah Palin is a viable POTUS candidate.