Free Republic

Gentry Collins, a former top aide to current Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele who resigned as political director of the RNC last month in protest of Steele’s leadership, officially announced his bid for chairman on Monday. “My campaign for Chairman is based on a plan for the future, not a critique of the past,” Collins wrote in a letter to committee members. “I have a plan to strengthen our party, reclaim the RNC's place as the premier political organization in the country, and raise the resources we need to compete with President Obama’s fundraising machine.” The announcement comes on...

"I don't want to sort of concede that we have to get used to this kind of thing because I think the majority of Americans don't want to put up with the blue bloods — and I say it with all due respect because I love the Bushes — but the blue bloods who want to pick and choose their winners instead of allowing competition to pick and choose the winners." -Sarah Palin A day after Former First Lady Barbara Bush made a comment that Sarah Palin should stay in Alaska, Her Husband, George H.W. Bush came out and stated...

<p>The civil war in the Republican Party takes another turn on Wednesday night when Sarah Palin basher Nicolle Wallace lends her name to a fundraiser for a pro-homosexual group called American Foundation for Equal Rights. Wallace, an adviser to the 2008 McCain for President campaign, figures prominently in Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue, as someone determined to get her on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric so that she could be sandbagged by the left-wing anchorwoman.</p>

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are preparing to roll out a series of changes at several privately owned immigration detention centers, including relaxing some security measures for low-risk detainees and offering art classes, bingo and continental breakfast on the weekends. The changes were welcomed by immigrant advocates who have been waiting for the Obama administration to deliver on a promise made in August to overhaul the nation's immigration detention system. The 28 changes identified in the e-mail range from the superficial to the substantive. In addition to “softening the look of the facility” with hanging plants and offering fresh carrot...

This is why Republicans lose elections: Crabill is trying to position herself as a conservative in the 99th House of Delegates district of Virginia, against a popular Democrat incumbant. But at the Northern Neck Republican website, the visitor is presented with Crabill at a Yacht & Country Club with elitist-looking old white women. At a formal tea party. Not the populist, conservative mass movement tea party rallies, but an elitist tea party of rich old white women.

Please stop. I've recently recommended FR to several people and if this is their first visit to FR well it makes me and everyone on here look like an ASS! Stop it already.

EXCLUSIVE The North Shore Country Club lost a third of its members after many victims of swindler Madoff couldn't afford the $16,000-a-year fee....."One member was hysterical, she cleaned out her locker and left." The club had to lay off 20 part-timers and six full-timers and is struggling to survive with a staff of 40....membership dropped from 175 to 110. Some say the club may be sold but has fees and commitments from weddings and other revenue to get through 2009......."We're 95 years old. We were hoping to make it to 100"......one source told reporters.

Just as soon as South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson announces that he’s running to chair the national party, a story is disseminated by his opponents (note: fellow Republicans) referring to his recent membership in a whites-only country club. Dawson left the club in August, days before he first suggested that he might be looking to the national stage. As usual, the story says more about backwards South Carolina than it does about Dawson. My absolute favorite part is where the reporter and some pundits do a little guessing on the reason for his separation from the club. “It’s...

On CNN last evening both David Gergen and Ed Rollins echoed the current mantra that the "old" noble McCain is gone-and a "new" nastier one has emerged, largely because of his attacks on Ayers, perhaps his planned future ads on Wright, and a few unhinged people shouting at his campaign stops. Recently Christopher Buckley endorsed Obama, likewise lamenting the loss of the old noble McCain. New York Times columnist David Brooks dubbed Palin a "cancer," and he suggested that Obama's instant recall of Niehbuhr sent a tingle up his leg as Obama once did to Chris Matthews as well. A...

An engineer at a nuclear power plant near Sacramento has been charged with sending threatening letters containing a powdery substance to the same Sierra foothills country club where President Bush will appear Tuesday for a Republican campaign event. Michael Lee Braun, 51, appeared Monday in U.S. District Court in Sacramento on two federal charges of sending threats through the mail. The FBI said he also is a suspect in mailing dozens of similar threats since shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks. The charges relate to two letters prosecutors said Braun mailed on Thursday to the Serrano Country Club and Serrano...

Whenever the media establishment's long knives come out for a politician, I figure the person is doing something right – that he or she is a legitimate threat, that he or she is effective and getting to the enemy. That's the conclusion I came to after reading an L.A. Times hit piece on Rep. Katherine Harris, now a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Florida. It was an amazing piece of "journalism." Here are some key excerpts: "She's called for a Christian theocracy so Congress won't 'legislate sin.' She's lost a dozen key campaign staffers in the home stretch, advertised...

Well, it seems as if the rank and file elitist Country Club Republicans are flexing their muscles in the High Desert, not to mention down the hill, too, when it comes to who backs whom for the 59th assembly district race and why. When it comes to the two most likely frontrunners in the Victor Valley—encompassing Hesperia and Apple Valley—longtime GOP grass-roots crusader and people’s champion, Barry Hartz, versus government bureaucracy insider and recipient of Supervisor (San Bernardino County First District) Postmus’ back-scratching political favors, Anthony Adams, the battle lines have clearly been drawn and it’s easy to see, when...

Back in 2002, two die-hard social conservatives fought for Minnesota's Republican gubernatorial nomination. Brian Sullivan was a successful entrepreneur backed by the Freedom Club, a group of "pro-growth" millionaires lifted straight from Central Casting. With his zeal for tax cuts and his privileged background, Sullivan was a Bush Republican down to his wingtips. His opponent was Tim Pawlenty, a state representative born on the wrong side of the tracks. Pawlenty embraced the state's populist tradition, insisting that Republicans "need to be the party of Sam's Club, not just the country club." And it was Pawlenty who ended up winning the...

A country club restaurant in Shreveport must allow women in, despite the fact that fellas are known to strip down and dine there naked, the Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled. The Southern Trace Country Club's (search) Men's Grille has been closed to the ladies because some of its male members lounge around in towels or in the buff, the Associated Press reported. But the court said that wasn't a valid reason to bar women from entering. Prohibiting women from a public dining area is unconstitutional, the court ruled, whether or not there's a locker-room atmosphere inside. On top of that,...

Lesbians Fight For Country Club Spousal Perks Court's Ruling Expected Within Six Weeks POSTED: 8:23 AM PST February 10, 2004 UPDATED: 3:47 PM PST February 10, 2004 SAN DIEGO -- A lesbian couple is fighting for the reinstatement of a lawsuit against the Bernardo Heights Country Club, which they say refused to extend them the same golfing privileges afforded to married couples. The attorney for the country club denied it was discriminating against gays, explaining it had a policy of allowing spouses of members to play golf for free, according to the Los Angeles Times. But the attorney representing...

BURLINGTON, Vt. - Presidential candidate Howard Dean is berating himself for saying he wanted to break into the country club of Democratic Party insiders. The remark to Vermont reporters Monday came several days after Dean's 17-year-old son, Paul, was charged with aiding in a burglary at the Burlington Country Club. Vermont's former governor cut short a campaign swing on Friday to return home after his son was picked up by police along with a group of his friends. Dean made the country club comment Monday just before formally kicking off his campaign for the presidency. Dean was asked how he...

<p>Posted on February 25, 2003 Southern Trace Country Club of Shreveport is indeed a "public" facility under the law, but the men-only policy in the club's Men's Grille does not violate the state constitution, a Caddo district judge ruled Monday.</p>

<p>Nearly three years of legal wrangling over who is allowed into what some claim is basically the extension of a locker room could finally come to an end in a Caddo Parish courtroom Wednesday.</p> <p>That's when the fate of a "men only" policy at the popular Southern Trace Country Club Men's Grille will be placed into the hands of Caddo District Judge Roy Brun.</p>