Free Republic

Mitt Romney certainly wasn’t the first choice to be the Republican presidential nominee for most limited government activists. Some have reluctantly warmed to Romney in recent months because they find him preferable to Obama. Other liberty lovers, particularly those within the Ron Paul-inspired Liberty Movement, refuse to throw their support behind Romney or Obama. Regardless of whether a liberty-minded president is an option on the big ticket, the outcomes of the congressional races are far more important, as Congress will truly determine the fiscal policies coming out of Washington. If we really want to put an end to reckless spending,...

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has finally cleared what many aides have long seen as his biggest hurdle: A majority of voters now like him. According to multiple polls, Romney's favorability rating has surged since the Republican National Convention and in most he equals or bests President Obama's favorables. And late Thursday, the Pew Research Center, the poll that has been toughest on Romney's favorability, released results showing that Romney is ahead of Obama by a point, 50 percent to 49 percent. That is a stunning turnaround from March, when Obama's favorable rating in Pew was about twice Romney's, 55...

An interesting story from last winter: An e-mail friend, a staunch Republican who lives in an affluent suburb far from Washington, was watching one of the Republican debates with his wife, a staunch Democrat. He was surprised by her response to Mitt Romney. “He’s a grown-up. He’s someone who is reliable,” he told me she said. “People will feel safe if he is in charge.” I’ve been thinking about that e-mail in the wake of the first presidential debate on October 3 and the vice-presidential debate last week. (This is written on deadline before the October 16 Long Island debate.)...

The daughter of a Latter Day Saints bishop and author of a book on Mitt Romney’s Mormonism says that she has concerns about a Romney presidency. Tricia Erickson, who is now a professing Christian after being involved in the LDS establishment for 21 years, stated in an article this week entitled The Obamney Twins that while she cannot support Barack Obama, she is unable to vote for Mitt Romney either. “To me, as a conservative, a Republican and a Christian, I cannot justify a vote for either one of the Obamney baby-killing, annihilators of the family, government healthcare mandated to...

Tonight’s presidential debate is the last one that will include questions on domestic policy. The previous presidential and vice presidential debates covered a host of issues, but there are key questions still to be answered. Heritage experts submitted five issues below—with questions—that it is important to discuss before the debate moves on to foreign policy exclusively. Join us tonight at 9 p.m. ET—you can watch the debate live on our Debate 2012 page. We’ll have the live stream of the debate and a live blog of our experts’ analysis, and you can follow our tweets and chime in. 1. Welfare...

If you’re planning not to vote because your presidential candidate didn’t win the primary or because you feel disenfranchised with our two party political system, not only is that the greatest insult to every man and woman who ever died to give us the freedom to vote, it’s actually a vote for Barack Hussein Obama! So before you decide to sit this one out, you need to ask yourself the following questions: Do you want . . . * A president who has us on the road to serfdom? * A president who advocates higher taxes? Wealth redistribution, less freedom...

Dear Wavering Voter: No, abortion rights and access to contraception will not be jeopardized if Mitt Romney becomes president. Not remotely, not vaguely, not even close. No woman in America, including Sandra Fluke, will have war made upon her by a President Romney. Maybe you think the job of a president is to be our DJ-in-Chief and set the mood music for the country. In that case, the slow-jam Obama administration has everything to recommend it, while a Romney presidency may get on your nerves like a hokey country song. But it won't get in your way. How am I...

>BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Well, the Washington Post has a new story on their latest poll, and do you know what's interesting about this Washington Post story on the latest poll? It's that you have to read a long way into the story to find out what the poll says, and you can probably ascertain the reason for that. It ain't good for Obama. The headline in this story from the Washington Post... It's actually the ABC News/Washington Post poll, so this is actually an ABC story: "Enthusiasm Rises for Romney Ahead of Debate," by Gary Langer. "Rising enthusiasm and declining...

Democratic hopes of maintaining a razor-thin Senate majority may hinge on an unexpected outside force: Libertarians. In the battlegrounds of Montana, Arizona and Missouri, polls show the Libertarian nominee poised to siphon a fraction of the vote — a small fraction, but potentially enough to tip the outcome in a cliffhanger. And with the battle for the Senate shaping up to be a coin-flip proposition, no factor — not even fringe candidates with little more than a Libertarian label to propel their campaigns — is too insignificant to dismiss. Given the small-government mantra of Libertarian voters, Democratic officials see the...

While it has been said about every election since 2000, this really is THE MOST IMPORTANT election in our lives and the history of our nation. Americans will vote for or against the candidates for President for a variety of reasons. Catholics and like- minded Christians who will vote based strictly on economic reasons would do well by considering why they should make Christian values the ultimate factor in deciding factor in how they will vote. True Christianity requires you to yield and put your opinion aside in certain areas of life. Christian doctrine on fundamentals such as the sanctity...

In a new report heralded by the NRA, the General Accountability Office finds that the numbers of Americans with permits to carry a concealed weapon has surged and virtually every state now allows pistols to be carried under garments or even in a car glove box. "The number of states allowing concealed carry permits is increasing," said the GAO. The report included two shocking numbers: -- There are currently 118 million handguns in America, either owned or for sale. -- Some 8 million Americans already have a concealed carry permit, about 1 million more than previously thought. The report found...

President Obama faces a dilemma as Mitt Romney bashes him over high gasoline prices in the final weeks of their close race. Obama must decide whether to address the attacks head-on, or stay the course on a messaging strategy that has recently been addressing prices indirectly. Democratic strategists and other experts argue that three weeks before voters go to the polls, Obama should steer clear of big messaging or policy pivots on gas prices. “Bringing the issue up this close to Election Day would be self-defeating at this point,” said Paul Bledsoe, an independent consultant who was a climate change...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported last Friday that 114,000 new jobs were created last month, according to its Establishment Survey of business payrolls that has been emphasized by the Obama Administration. That is pitifully weak, especially for what is supposed to be the fourth year of a recovery (the National Bureau of Economic Research scored the recession as officially over in June, 2009). As economist John Lott noted at FoxNews.com on October 5, the working age population grew by 206,000 last month. With two-thirds of those working as would be expected during a normal recovery, 138,000 new jobs...

Now that the average price of gasoline in the United States is clocking in at all-time record levels for this time of year, especially in California, what effect will that factor have upon the official U.S. unemployment rate, which just clocked in at its lowest level since early 2009? Unfortunately, that's the wrong question to be asking today, because it takes roughly two years for a major change in the price of oil and gasoline to play out and fully impact the U.S. unemployment rate. The right question to ask today is: "what was the price of gasoline doing two...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Camille Paglia explains why she will be voting for Jill Stein, Green Party candidate, for president In a recent interview with salon.com, Camille Paglia explained why she will be voting for Jill Stein, Green Party candidate, for president. Paglia said:The biggest issue for me is the Obama administration’s continuation of endless war, war, war. I denounced the Iraq incursion before it even happened.In Obama’s defense, he did end the Iraq War. But he did do that Libya thing, which I oppose, just as I opposed it when Reagan did it.I have been revolted by the silence...

This week, I will campaign for Gov. Mitt Romney. I believe this election will and should be about moving America back from the edge of the abyss on which we stand, where our debt and spending threaten to overwhelm and drown us. Romney's belief in free markets, limited government and trade make him the clear choice to lead our country come January. I do not, however, support a call for intervention in Syria. And, if such intervention were being contemplated, it is absolutely necessary that Congress give any such authority to the president. No president, Republican or Democrat, has the...

The opening line of the Beatles’ iconic “Sergeant Pepper’s” album is echoing in my thought: “It was 20 years ago today…” Well, not quite to the day, but 20 years ago I published an article titled, “$4 Trillion and Counting.” In it, I despaired at the rapid increase in the national debt from its first-ever crossing of the $1 trillion mark during the Reagan presidency to four times that gargantuan amount in only a decade. Today, a mere two decades later, we have quadrupled the national debt again, to $16 trillion. (That figure represents the official national debt, but if...

Be afraid. Be very afraid. The America of 2012 is not the America of 2008. If Barack Obama wins this election, the America of 2016 will resemble the beaten and bankrupt countries of Western Europe more than it will the America we grew up in. This isn’t Chicken Little speaking. Take a hard look at the trends, and then drop everything else you had in mind for the next four weeks, and make sure everyone you know votes for Romney-Ryan. We have one last chance to save the republic. 1) Dependency on government handouts: As Dick Morris points out in...

Chattanooga-area evangelical church pastors may believe the Mormon faith is a cult and may not consider Gov. Mitt Romney a Christian, but they said that won't stop them from considering a vote for him in next month's presidential election. More than eight in 10 voters in a Pew Forum poll this summer said they were comfortable with the Republican nominee's faith or it didn't matter to them. Nineteen percent said they were uncomfortable with his faith. "We are electing a president, not a pastor," said Tim Shoap, co-pastor of Signal Mountain Bible Church. "I want the best and most effective...

If Mitt Romney is elected and secures Republican control of both houses of Congress, the U.S. could be poised for a vertiginous economic snapback. To understand how, consider that the Democratic explanation for our current malaise is utterly fallacious. Mr. Obama and his allies identify the "Bush tax cuts," "two wars that weren't paid for," and "deregulation" as the causes of America's present economic doldrums. But federal outlays as a percentage of GDP under George W. Bush averaged 19.6 percent. Under Obama, spending has ballooned to 24.1 percent of GDP. Much of Bush's spending was temporary (the two wars, one...