Free Republic

Aggregator extraordinaire Matt Drudge briefly linked to Gawker’s story that alleged ABC’s Robin Roberts “wasn’t enthusiastic” about landing her big gay marriage interview with President Obama because she was worried it would call attention to the “near-open secret that Roberts is a lesbian” this afternoon and the site took the opportunity to taunt him with an update. “Internet behemoth Matt Drudge, who has just directed his readers to this post, is also commonly understood to be gay,” the update said. Mr. Drudge removed his link to Gawker within a matter of minutes.

I'll be glad to see Gingrich go. He has never done anything to advance our American condition except to inspire bile and national hostility and divisiveness. He sees all disagreement as war. His life in politics has been a shadow of Civil War regional hostility advanced to other strategies. To paraphrase Clausewitz: To Gingrich, politics is war by other means. He has brought a mini-dark age to conservatism. When Gingrich first brought his childish shutdown stunt to Congress, it brought new relevance to militias. Advancing Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s initiative, Gingrich helped turn aspects of Christian religion into a hostile...

You’re a mean one Mr. Grinch You really are a heel. You’re as cuddly as a cactus, And as charming as an eel, Mr. Grinch! You’re a bad banana, With a greasy black peel! You’re a monster, Mr. Grinch! Your heart’s an empty hole. Your brain is full of spiders. You’ve got garlic in your soul, Mr. Grinch! Well, that’s a pretty good beginning at describing how most conservatives feel about Newt Gingrich these days. More of that later. Of course, many of us felt this way before the 2012 GOP presidential primary began, and have been vindicated as Newt...

You have got to be kidding me. This trashing of Newt by Erika Johnsen, who apparently just started blogging at HotAir, is so over the top: "Newt Gingrich’s decision to wait a week to officially drop out of the presidential race was kind of a non sequitur (but then, it fits with Newt’s normally quizzical attitude of 'you need to get on my level' pomposity, so… wash)…." "Here’s what you can do to help the Republican party, Newt: don’t. You overstayed your welcome in the presidential race by a long shot, frequently looked absurd, and constantly undercut the GOP’s credibility....

. . . of online media manipulation isn’t exactly new. In fact, it goes back well before Romney’s 2008 campaign got underway in earnest. It seems to date back to sometime in 2005, when RNC operatives arranged a meeting between Matt Drudge and Matt Rhodes — a highly placed operative in the Romney organization. Last year, a delegation of RNC officials flew to Miami Beach, where Drudge lives, for a dinner at the Forge steakhouse to introduce the Internet maven to Matt Rhodes, the party’s new opposition research director. Due to Drudge’s now-close friendship with Romney’s chief aide and longtime...

ANALYSIS/OPINION: You know you’re running a lousy presidential campaign when you get bitten by a penguin. The Newt’s presidential campaign has got to be one of the worst ever run in American history. Last May, when Newt was casually campaigning, as is his way, he found himself exhausted. He had, after all, been at it for weeks. So, he did what any pooped-out candidate would do: He split on a luxury cruise to the Greek Islands with Wife No. 3 (22 years his junior — he was already out of college when she was born). Newt rose during the debates...

There is a new national poll of Republican primary voters just out from Public Policy Polling which has some good news for Rick Santorum the ex-Pennsylvania senator who on Tuesday beat Mitt Romney in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado. -snip- The immediate worry for the Santorum campaign is that they are likely to be on the end of a furious negative advertising campaign ahead of the Arizona and Michigan primaries at the end of the month. That is how the Romney team dealt with others who threatened their position and what is likely to happen now.

Mitt Romney is in danger of losing his fourth straight state in Saturday's caucuses in Maine, where he and his allies have been all but absent from TV. That's no coincidence. Over the past month, he has won in states where he and an allied super PAC, called Restore Our Future, have pounded his rivals with millions of dollars in negative ads. But he has tended to lose big when he has stopped using his power to crush other contenders by spending a ton of money — particularly on TV.

The real story of the three results from Tuesday night is not that Rick Santorum picked up some wins -- though that is big. No, the real story is that three states held votes and nobody came. Almost nobody, that is. Consider that the total turnout for Missouri, Colorado, and Minnesota combined was barely over half of the turnout of South Carolina alone and -- worse yet -- barely over half the turnout for the same three states in 2008.

Mitt Romney acknowledged on Wednesday that his path to the Republican presidential nomination is not going to be easy after three shock losses to newly ascendant rival Rick Santorum. A day after Santorum beat him in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, Romney attempted to play down the results, saying his campaign did not devote a lot of time and money to the three state nominating contests and chose to compete strongly elsewhere.

Rick Santorum is about to see the kitchen sink up-close. So far he hasn’t been a threat, so he hasn’t faced much harsh scrutiny, much less the attacks that are about to come his way. His candidacy is for real, and Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney both know it. While Gingrich thought he could isolate Romney and become his lone real competitor, yesterday’s results, combined with a deflating Gingrich campaign, have allowed Santorum to leapfrog Gingrich as the more viable Romney alternative today. It’s not in Gingrich’s nature to give up. Attacking Romney hasn’t gotten him to where he thought...

As Rick Santorum counted up his victories Tuesday night, a senior adviser to Mitt Romney signaled the campaign would take a tougher approach toward his resurgent rival and portray him as a Washington insider.

Matt Drudge is the Howard Hughes of the Internet. Like Hughes, he lives in splendid isolation, communicating only through a small group of trusted friends. Like Hughes, his influence has quietly helped shape Republican politics for a generation. But while the eccentric Hughes used money to put his pals in the White House, Drudge has always relied on blogs and Tweets. The Drudge Report, which started life as an emailed gossip column, now receives millions of unique visitors per month. One study found that it drives more traffic than Twitter and Facebook combined. Drudge’s claim to be the authentic voice...

YOUR VOTE FOR REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

For many years, the Drudge Report has served as a clearinghouse for many conservatives about the news of the day. But according to the not-too-conservative Politico, Matt Drudge's news aggregation website leaves Gingrich "looking like a dangerous, anti-Reagan, Clintonian fraud." Matt Barber is director of cultural affairs at Liberty Counsel. He says it is obvious that Drudge is "all in" for Mitt Romney. "Matt Drudge has decided to completely sell out and has signed on with the moderate Republican establishment and is pushing the Mitt Romney campaign and is acting as the attack dog against Newt Gingrich," Barber comments. "And...

MIAMI — Facing the unthinkable here just seven days ago — a second loss in a row to Newt Gingrich — Mitt Romney’s campaign team hatched a two-part plan to win in Florida: make Newt mad and Mitt meaner. In a call last Sunday morning, just hours after Mr. Romney’s double-digit loss to Mr. Gingrich in the South Carolina primary, the Romney team outlined the new approach to the candidate. Put aside the more acute focus on President Obama and narrow in on Mr. Gingrich. Find lines of attack that could goad Mr. Gingrich into angry responses and rally mainstream...

The 2012 Republican primary race has passed well beyond the rabbit hole into some extra-dimensional bizarro world where up is down, black is white and the allies of the candidate who disavowed Reaganism would have us believe that the leader of the “second stage of the Reagan Revolution” is somehow insufficiently Reaganesque. It’s no secret that the GOP establishment backs Mitt Romney. The same folks who gave us John McCain and Bob Dole have picked their winner. When Mr. Romney is down, their panic shows. They start floating desperate ideas like late-entry candidates or a brokered convention. They also pull...

Its back.

"It not about winning here anymore," one Romney staffer told BuzzFeed. "It's about destroying Gingrich — and it's working."

After Gingrich Newt scored a surprise blow-out victory in South Carolina last week, the former Massachusetts governor not only unleashed a political broadside of epic proportions. "It not about winning here anymore," one Romney staffer told BuzzFeed. "It's about destroying Gingrich — and it's working." After two standout debate performances that put him up 9 points in recent polls, Romney is keeping the pressure on Gingrich, looking to score a blow-out victory of his own here. To that end, Romney has rolled out a team of surrogates in the Sunshine State to take the fight to Gingrich in person: from...