Free Republic

With just hours to go before the polls close on this historic election season, the candidates and their campaigns have made their closing arguments. Voters will soon render their verdict, and the choice seems starker than at any point in this race. Mitt Romney has offered America a path to a better future and a detailed, specific “Plan for a Stronger Middle Class.” His policies would create 12 million new jobs and increase take-home pay. They would restore fiscal sanity to the nation’s capital and opportunity to an economy that has lacked it for four long years. Mr. Romney has...

With a new American Future Fund poll showing Mitt Romney with a one-point lead in liberal Minnesota, Paul Ryan went to the state President Barack Obama won by more than 10 percentage points in 2008 and drew a crowd of nearly 9,000 people on Sunday. A source who was at the event told Breitbart News Minnesota GOP Chair Pat Shortridge announced 9,000 people were in attendance, and Ryan said another 1,000 people had to be turned away because the venue was filled to capacity. Ryan's campaign appearance in Minnesota represents how the Romney campaign is aggressively playing offense on Obama's...

Barack Obama's promise to cure the ills of our health care system was obviously an important factor in his 2008 victory over John McCain as well as that year's Democrat gains in the House and Senate. Most of the electorate favored some legislation that would slow rising medical costs and increase access to care. However, when Obamacare finally slogged out of the congressional slough, it was greeted with consternation and outrage. Instead of the reform they were promised, the voters got a grotesque government behemoth reeking of corruption. They were not amused. They appeared en masse at town hall meetings...

A judge has ordered an early-voting site in central Florida to stay open an additional four hours Sunday, following lawsuits filed by the state Democratic party. The judge ordered the polling site in Orange County to extend its hours because it was shut down Saturday while authorities investigated a suspicious package. Bill Cowles, the county’s elections supervisor, said voters who show up Sunday will be asked to use a provisional ballot because the Republican Party of Florida had appealed the decision. The Florida Democratic Party filed separate lawsuits to get four counties to offer more time for voting before Election...

ASHEVILLE, N.C., — Evangelist Billy Graham told Mitt Romney today that he would do anything he could to help his candidacy. The two met at Graham’s North Carolina home. Near the end of thirty minute meeting, Graham led a prayer for the Romneys and said, “I’ll do all I can to help you. And you can quote me on that,” according to a Romney aide who sat in on the private meeting. Graham is 93 years old and is in frail health — he was hospitalized over the summer after he came down with bronchitis. He has had prostate cancer...

Intensity, which translates into enthusiasm and therefore turnout, is an important factor in elections. One of President Obama’s fundamental problems is that, while his approval/disapproval ratings have hovered around 50/50 throughout his term, the intensity of those who disapprove of his performance has consistently been greater. We have noted this many times by referring to Scott Rasmussen’s Approval Index, which compares strong approval with strong disapproval. An incumbent who is in negative territory by this measure is likely in trouble. This graph shows Obama’s Approval Index from his inauguration to the present; currently he stands at -11. His strong approval...

Two days after President Obama flew into storm-ravaged New Jersey on Wednesday for a 90 minute photo op with Governor Christie, parts of the state have descended into what one local resident calls "an apocalyptic vision." On Friday, in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, this New Jersey resident described the situation there: New Jersey right now is experiencing an apocalyptic vision. Gas lines are a mile long. Hundreds are standing in line with gas cans. Fights are breaking out. Police and national guard have been called out. I've not had power or taken a shower since Sunday. Pray for...

The Justice Department said it does not object to a new round of legal arguments over President Obama's healthcare law. In a brief filed with the Supreme Court late Wednesday, the Justice Department said the court should clear the way for a possible new hearing in the lawsuit filed by Liberty University. Although the Supreme Court has already ruled that the healthcare law's individual mandate is constitutional, Liberty has asked for a new hearing because it challenged the mandate on different grounds. A lower court declined to rule in Liberty's suit because it said the challenge was barred by the...

Do not be seduced by the disproportionate emphasis on recent events with regard to Barack Obama's pending landslide loss. I submit that a more sober analysis indicates that November 2012 has been inevitable for at least four years. In some ways, it's been inevitable for even longer than that. You see, Barack Obama and his statist agenda have failed because they could not possibly succeed. In a way, electing Obama was liberal America's dash off a cliff -- and the 2012 election is merely the day they officially make contact with the ground. There has been no other outcome possible....

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Former presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that Missouri voters can send a powerful signal to "the moneyed Republican establishment" by electing congressman Todd Akin over Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.

A late surge of support and months of restrained spending have left the Republican National Committee flush with cash with little time to spend it — $68 million as of Oct. 17, which was nearly seven times the amount the Democratic National Committee had in the bank. Adding in the cash from other presidential campaign committees, the mismatch still was stark: $156 million for Mitt Romney and his GOP allies to $94 million for President Obama and his allies. State Republican parties also had 50 percent more cash than their Democratic counterparts, according to an analysis by The Washington Times....

Does anyone believe that when Barack Obama loses on November 6, he will go quietly? This election is shaping up to be a landslide loss for the president, and by the ever-present look of desperation on his face, he knows it. The nation should be preparing for how he might react when it happens -- there is nothing more dangerous than a cornered god. In 2008, Americans wholeheartedly bought the Obama dream. It's never easy to let go of a dream, but today, people have let go of Obama the dream -- and on November 6, they will let go...

CINCINNATI, Ohio -- Stormy weather wasn't enough to prevent George Cullen from canvassing for Mitt Romney this week. Monday, while Ohio was hit by cold wind and rain, the Clermont County resident knocked on 25 doors -- but that's about half his average daily total, and Cullen has been knocking on doors in the suburbs of Cincinnati for the past five weeks. While the conservatives he speaks to during his door-to-door visits are "energized," says Cullen, "A lot of them don't want to do early voting. They're traditionalists. They want to wait until Nov. 6." Republicans are encouraging early-voting, but...

Mitt Romney will resume campaigning Wednesday with a trio of events in Florida, while President Obama has canceled his election events to stay in Washington to monitor fallout from the storm the ravaged the East Coast. Romney's move effectively ends the temporary suspension in the presidential campaign triggered by the landfall of Hurricane Sandy. Even though Obama will be focusing on coordinating response to the storm, his campaign has shown an awareness of the fact the election is only a week away. The White House updated reporters early Tuesday morning with the president's work on response efforts to Sandy and...

Reuters) - Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney are scouting an unlikely path to the White House through the vast forests and blueberry barrens of northern Maine. President Barack Obama is expected to win the Pine Tree State easily in the November 6 election. Regardless, Romney allies are buying TV time with the hope of carrying the state's thinly populated interior and scraping out one electoral college vote in Maine that could edge their man closer to the 270 needed to win the White House. With polls showing a dead heat nationally, Republicans in the state are focusing their...

On Sunday's political talk shows, several Republicans criticized the Obama administration's response to the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. Here's Senator John McCain of Arizona on CBS's Face the Nation: You know, this administration is very good at touting and giving all the details like when they got Bin Laden. But now, we know that there were tapes, recordings inside the consulate during this fight, and they've gotten—they came—the F.B.I. finally got in and took those, and now they're classified as "top secret." Why would they be top secret? So the president went on various shows, despite...

WASHINGTON — They campaign in near anonymity, these third-party contenders who stand no shot at the presidency. Their supporters are castigated for wasting their votes. But don’t write them off just yet. In hotly contested swing states, their presence on the ballot may alter the course of the election. In Virginia, where Mitt Romney and President Obama are running neck and neck, former Republican congressman Virgil Goode’s crusade for the Oval Office could draw conservatives and tip the state away from Romney. In “live free or die” New Hampshire, Libertarian Gary Johnson, the former Republican governor of New Mexico, is...

Red alert, local Democrats: One week into early voting, Republicans are beating you in turnout. This analysis comes courtesy of fourth-day data from early voting sites across Bexar County, comparing turnout in 2008 to this year's numbers. Democrats, of course, swept elections in 2008, when Barack Obama won the presidency and, incidentally, beat John McCain in Bexar County by more than five percentage points. In predicting the political loyalties of voters at early voting sites, local geography plays a role, according to consultants. “Typically, Bexar County's North Side are the heaviest Republican-voting precincts,” says Christian Anderson, who runs campaigns for...

(CNN) -- All three presidential debates are now in the books and the race to the White House is taking its final shape. Looking back, the first debate was undoubtedly the watershed moment of this campaign and the most powerful inflection point in the race to date. President Obama regained some lost ground in the next two debates, including Monday night's event, but the damage had already been done. Mitt Romney now carries the momentum into the home stretch. Like in the second debate, Obama came out Monday night more aggressive and more provocative. He threw more punches and landed...

Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood says "when someone doesn't get the job done, you gotta hold them accountable" in a new ad from conservative super PAC American Crossroads. Eastwood famously endorsed Mitt Romney earlier this year at the Republican National Convention with an unconventional address. Watch the more serious 30-second spot below: "Obama's second term would be a rerun of the first, and our country just couldn't survive that," Eastwood says. "We need someone who can turn it around fast, and that man is Mitt Romney." The New York Times reports that the ad will be airing on TV in seven...