Free Republic

THE convention floor was abuzz all yes terday with the news of the CBS poll showing a dead tie (42-42) in the presidential race. And the poll, conducted through Wednesday, couldn't reflect the impact of John McCain's speech, or the full impact of Sarah Palin's late Wednesday night. It reflected opinions only after the Democrats' convention, Barack Obama's incredible speech, the Palin selection and the early, Gustav-depressed GOP gathering. That augers ill for the Democrats. Tonight's polling could bring evidence that the Obama candidacy is in big trouble. First, the GOP convention managed to disprove the central premise of the...

The dominant question at the GOP convention is: Will John McCain make the huge mistake of abandoning Sarah Palin? Some claim he made a mistake in choosing the Alaska governor. My bet is the reverse - that she'll turn out to be a big win. Even if I'm wrong, dropping her now would doom him in November. If McCain lets baseless, sexist smears set his course, he'd turn all the good Palin has already done for him, and should do in the weeks ahead, into a negative - demoralizing the GOP base and losing independents. Understand: Palin is under attack...

Or is he foretelling something important? The occasion of this article was a quick interview with Dick Morris on Fox News awaiting the Wednesday evening events at the Republican National Convention. Questions were focused on VP pick Sarah Palin. According to Morris, we have had elections that were about soccer moms and hockey moms, now this one is going to be about single moms. Well, I thought – somebody had to say it, but I had imagined it would be just another of those goofy feminist professors pretending to take an objective look at American politics. What could he...

Sarah Palin's selection will end up as a big win for John McCain. He has to stay with her and quell any talk of pulling an Eagleton (after the time when 1972 Democratic nominee George McGovern yanked the plug on Missouri Sen. Tom Eagleton, who had been his choice for vice president). McCain and Palin will confound their critics and gain good yardage in the presidential race. None of the criticisms of Sarah Palin amounts to any misconduct on her part. Her daughter got pregnant. Her husband had a DWI 20 years ago. Her sister married a bum -- a...

Republicans shouldn’t mourn the loss of the first night (at least) of their convention. Sarah Palin’s warm reception by the American people and the relative success of preparations to contain the damage of Hurricane Gustav seem to have given the GOP far more bounce than it would’ve gotten from a "conventional" first night in St. Paul. We’ll never know just how much Barack Obama gained in the polls from his magnificent acceptance speech. He spoke too late on Thursday for any post-speech polling to be effective — and John McCain announced his selection of Palin the next morning. So the...

Political analyst Dick Morris tells Newsmax that neither Hurricane Gustav nor the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s daughter will have a negative effect on Republican efforts as the November election draws closer.

It is incredible, but the designation of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate seems to have totally obliterated Barack Obama's bounce from his convention and after his magnificent speech. Zogby actually has McCain two ahead and Rasmussen's Friday only data shows Obama only three up! This confirms what we have suspected -- that the linkage of McCain and Bush was the weak link in Obama's convention. By showing how different he is and by taking the step of choosing an independent, outspoken, gutsy, reformist candidate like Palin as vice president, McCain has shown how much he is the un-Bush....

Alan said, "Don't you need somebody that's ready Day 1 to be President of the United States?" Morris responded, "Yeah, it would be nice if the Democrats nominated somebody like that..."

FARMINGTON - A Somers man is to be arraigned in Hartford Community Court Wednesday after he allegedly made about 900 lewd phone calls to employees of several stores at Westfarms mall, police said. Mark Batiste, 34, of Rye Hill Circle, told police he'd been belittled by a female employee of Banana Republic at the mall, police spokesman Lt. William Tyler said. In retaliation, police said Batiste used his cell phone to make 891 calls between July 5 and July 16 asking female employees if he could lick their feet and suck their toes. The victims were working at Banana Republic,...

McCain has reached for the stars and grabbed one. On a recent cruise to Alaska, I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon with Sarah Palin. She is brilliant and articulate and, in Alaska politics, is a breath of fresh air as an alternative to their corruption epitomized by Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens. Now Obama, who has spent two years preventing a woman from being president, will spend two months preventing one from becoming vice president – and hopes to do so with women votes. The entire premise of the Democratic convention was the fungibility of Bush and McCain....

But this year we saw an eloquent, sincere woman speaking of her dreams and aspirations. She gave a speech that sounded real with anecdotes that seemed genuine. Michelle Obama last night became a political plus, not a problem.

It doesn't take a political genius to realize that Barack Obama needed to nominate a woman for vice president. Obama's key problem is that there is no gender gap. In the most recent Zogby poll, he runs only 2 points better among women than among men. A Democrat should be running 10 to 15 points better among women. If Obama is to have a hope of winning, he needs to improve his performance among female voters. The Fox News poll indicates that only about half of those who backed Hillary Clinton in the primaries are voting for Obama and that...

Last week raised important questions about whether Barack Obama is strong enough to be president. On the domestic political front, he showed incredible weakness in dealing with the Clintons, while on foreign and defense questions, he betrayed a lack of strength and resolve in standing up to Russia’s invasion of Georgia. This two-dimensional portrait of weakness underscores fears that Obama might, indeed, be a latter-day Jimmy Carter. Consider first the domestic and political. Bill and Hillary Clinton have no leverage over Obama. Hillary can’t win the nomination. She doesn’t control any committees. If she or her supporters tried to disrupt...

LAST week raised important questions about whether Barack Obama is strong enough to be president. On the domestic political front, he showed incredible weakness in dealing with the Clintons, while on foreign and defense questions, he betrayed a lack of strength and resolve in standing up to Russia's invasion of Georgia. This two-dimensional portrait of weakness underscores fears that Obama might, indeed, be a latter-day Jimmy Carter. Consider first the domestic and political. Bill and Hillary Clinton have no leverage over Obama. Hillary can't win the nomination. She doesn't control any committees. If she or her supporters tried to disrupt...

Hillary and Bill have hijacked the Denver convention, making it into a carbon copy of what it would have looked like had she won until the last possible moment. ...

"Every speech should contain a line [saying that] you were born in the middle of America to a middle class family in the middle of the last century." On May 10, 2007, Time magazine reported that Hillary's stump speech included the lines: "I was born into a middle class family in the middle of the country in the middle of the last century." After Penn's memos were released to the media this week, Hillary's people spread the word that she did not take Penn's advice. But it is evident that she did. The strategy Penn recommended was ridiculous. He somehow...

HARDCOVER NONFICTION Top 5 at a Glance 1. THE OBAMA NATION, by Jerome R. Corsi 2. WHEN YOU ARE ENGULFED IN FLAMES, by David Sedaris 3. STORI TELLING, by Tori Spelling with Hilary Liftin 4. ARE YOU THERE, VODKA? IT’S ME, CHELSEA, by Chelsea Handler 5. FLEECED, by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

On Oct. 3, 1938, Adolf Hitler's armies marched into Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia. Germany said it was responding to separatist demands from the large German population that lived there and that she was merely honoring their desire for reunion with Germany. Hitler's tanks took over a vital part of an independent country that had largely rejected his overtures and allied itself with the West. Neither Britain nor France nor the United States did a thing to stop him. On Aug. 7, 2008, Vladimir Putin's armies marched into South Ossetia, a part of Georgia. Russia said it was responding to...

On October 3, 1938, Adolf Hitler’s armies marched into Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia. Germany said it was responding to separatist demands from the large German population that lived there and that she was merely honoring their desire for reunion with Germany. Hitler’s tanks took over a vital part of an independent country that had largely rejected his overtures and allied itself with the West. Neither Britain nor France nor the United States did a thing to stop him. On August 7, 2008, Vladimir Putin’s armies marched into South Ossetia, a part of Georgia. Russia said it was responding to...

Sen. Barack Obama has a long history of close associations with radicals, extremists, socialists, communists, and terrorists. When his long trail of these associates is encountered in bits and pieces, it is more easily dismissed. But when the whole pattern is viewed, it becomes more shocking and more devastating. That's why the three recent books on Mr. Obama are so important. They put all the pieces of the Obama puzzle together. And that's why those three books are must reading for any voter: Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, Fleeced; Jerome R. Corsi, Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of...

The electoral tide is beginning to turn against the most radical extremist and most inexperienced candidate ever nominated by a major political party. Despite the attempt of the mainstream media to sell Sen. Barack Obama as a virtual Messiah, the truth is finally beginning to leak through to the public. That truth is devastating and should prove to be fatal to his candidacy, showing the would be Democratic Messiah to be a world-class phony and fraud. Four factors started turning the election around: * First, Sen. John McCain shifted to hard-hitting and relentless criticism in the last week, and in...

When is the McCain campaign going to get serious? It seems to be marking time with softball ads, more appropriate to the soundbites campaign media spokespeople exchange with one another than to strategic paid media hits. One ad talks about how the media loves Obama. Another mocks him as a celebrity. Each throws pitty-pat punches, far short of the kind of knockout blows one would expect from a presidential campaign. Were I a donor to McCain's campaign, paying for these pathetic spots, I would demand a refund. Or sue for malpractice. Yet despite this softball nonsense, Obama remains vulnerable, no...

When is the McCain campaign going to get serious? It seems to be marking time with softball ads, more appropriate to the soundbites campaign media spokespeople exchange with one another than to strategic paid media hits. One ad talks about how the media loves Obama. Another mocks him as a celebrity. Each throws pitty-pat punches, far short of the kind of knockout blows one would expect from a presidential campaign. Were I a donor to McCain's campaign, paying for these pathetic spots, I would demand a refund. Or sue for malpractice. Yet despite this softball nonsense, Obama remains vulnerable, no...

I distinctly remember when my phone at my Washington hotel room rang at 1 AM during the spring of 1996. A distraught President Clinton was calling. “We’re getting killed on radio,” he blurted into the phone as soon as I picked it up. “What do you mean?” I answered blearily trying to get a grip on what he was talking about. “Hillary’s mothe r just drove here from Pennsylvania and all during the trip she heard them saying the most awful things about me on radio,” the president explained. “On whose show?” I probed. “Rush Limbaugh,” Clinton replied. “He’s been...

You've probably heard the story about the tycoon who wanted to bring out a new kind of dog food. He spent lavishly. He hired the best marketing person, the top PR firm, the best ad agency, the No. 1 packaging expert, the most powerful distributor -- but the sales were flat after six months. He summoned his consultants to a meeting and asked why the food wasn't selling. "The dogs won't eat it," was the answer that came back. And so it is with Mitt Romney. Despite outspending his rivals by huge margins throughout the primaries, the dogs won't eat...

IRAQI Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has cut the legs out from under John McCain by basically endorsing Sen. Barack Obama's troop-withdrawal plan. Just when McCain had Obama on the defensive over the Democrat's plan to surrender after we've won in Iraq, Maliki has made McCain look the naif for opposing a timetable for withdrawal. Unless McCain changes his approach, he's lost the use of this issue. He can't come out for staying in Iraq longer than the government we support wants. The Republican needs to shift the debate to Iraq's future. Neither Obama's belaboring of his previous opposition to the...

The shadow of the Iraq War still hovers over the 2008 presidential race. In deed, though it's the issue that made Barack Obama (giving him his running room to Hillary Clinton's left), it may now become his chief vulnerability. Weak on national-security issues, untried, inexperienced and (perhaps) naive, Obama can find the Iraq issue hard to handle - if John McCain plays it right. Obama has long since won the issue of Iraq-past - opposing the war before anyone and voting continuously and solidly against it when others waffled. Yet McCain is winning Iraq-present: A majority of Americans believe that...

THE shadow of the Iraq War still hovers over the 2008 presidential race. In deed, though it's the issue that made Barack Obama (giving him his running room to Hillary Clinton's left), it may now become his chief vulnerability. Weak on national-security issues, untried, inexperienced and (perhaps) naive, Obama can find the Iraq issue hard to handle - if John McCain plays it right. Obama has long since won the issue of Iraq-past - opposing the war before anyone and voting continuously and solidly against it when others waffled. Yet McCain is winning Iraq-present: A majority of Americans believe that...

After almost six weeks of a constant Obama lead, generally in the five- to seven-point range, Scott Rasmussen's daily tracking poll records two consecutive days of a tie race (July 12-13) and a one-point Obama lead on July 14. What happened to the Democrat's lead? Part of the slippage is Obama's fault and part is McCain's gain. Obama has carried flip-flopping to new heights. In the space of a month and a half, this candidate -- who we don't really yet know very well -- reversed or sharply modified his positions on at least eight key issues:

The list of issues on which Barack Obama has flipped now that the primaries are over is long and growing rapidly: # He says he believes in a Second Amendment right to bear arms. # He now opposes late-term abortion. # He suddenly is a devotee of using faith-based institutions to deliver public services. # He now says that he won’t raise Social Security taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. In the primary, he said he’d eliminate the threshold entirely, including on people making as little as $100,000. # He recently opposed the Fairness Doctrine for talk...

The list of issues on which Barack Obama has flipped now that the primaries are over is long and growing rapidly. • He says he believes in a Second Amendment right to bear arms. • He now opposes late-term abortion. • He suddenly is a devotee of using faith-based institutions to deliver public services. • He now says that he won't raise Social Security taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. In the primary, he said he'd eliminate the threshold entirely, including on people making as little as $100,000. • He recently opposed the Fairness Doctrine for talk...

The list of issues on which Barack Obama has flipped now that the primaries are over is long and growing rapidly. • He says he believes in a Second Amendment right to bear arms. • He now opposes late-term abortion. • He suddenly is a devotee of using faith-based institutions to deliver public services. • He now says that he won't raise Social Security taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. In the primary, he said he'd eliminate the threshold entirely, including on people making as little as $100,000. • He recently opposed the Fairness Doctrine for talk...

The campaign of 2008 started on July 1 when Obama launched his first national advertising buy of the season. How McCain responds and whether or not he does, will have a big impact in determining whether Obama can solidify or expand his current lead in the polls. As always, the media fails to cover the significant events of the campaign — but this is one of the most critical. The Obama ad, which introduces him as someone who worked his way through college, fights for American jobs, and battles for healthcare also seeks to move him to the center by...

The campaign of 2008 started on July 1 when Obama launched his first national advertising buy of the season. How McCain responds and whether or not he does, will have a big impact in determining whether Obama can solidify or expand his current lead in the polls. As always, the media fails to cover the significant events of the campaign -- but this is one of the most critical.

The nine august justices of the United States Supreme Court — or at least the five conservative Republicans — chose the wrong time to make a sea change in constitutional law, admitting the Second Amendment to our pantheon of civil liberties. By demonstrating how willing they are to toss aside decades of jurisprudence in pursuit of a conservative agenda, they sent a chill into the souls of women all across the nation and resurrected fears that Roe v. Wade is next on the chopping block.

MORRIS: that's a cape. Michelle Obama, that's a cape. Wesley Clark, that's a cape. The matador is Obama. And that's why in this book "Fleeced," we lay out what he'll do to cover illegal immigrants for health insurance. That issue alone could win McCain the election. The tax increases he's going to propose, the weakening of the Patriot Act. And you look at the specifics of what Obama proposes, and what he's going to do, and you have enough to defeat this guy, but nobody's doing it. MORRIS: The key question is going to come when John McCain, if he...

Why is the president of the United States entertaining Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Sheik Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan, at Camp David when his own State Department has singled out the Sheik’s homeland, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), for its continuing violations of human rights? Abu Dhabi is one of seven oil-rich — and anti-Israel states — in the U.A.E. Using its massive sovereign wealth fund of over $875 billion, Abu Dhabi has been gobbling up American assets, buying considerable stakes in U.S. businesses like Citigroup, the Carlyle Group, Advanced Micro Devices, and Toll Brother and is now bidding on...

On Tuesday’s "Today" show NBC's Matt Lauer confronted Dick Morris about anti-Obama rhetoric in his new book, as the "Today" co-host seemed disturbed by the political consultant's use of terms like "dangerously radical," to describe the Democratic presidential nominee. Lauer asked Morris if he was "fearmongering," and probed "Are you trying to scare people here?" Lauer then sucked up to the Obama campaign as he pondered that a lot of the "enthusiasm" for Obama is because "he's telling people he's gonna move away from exactly that kind of politics." The following is the full interview as it occurred on the...

John McCain has drawn first blood in the political debate following Barack Obama's victory in the primaries. His call yesterday for offshore oil drilling — and Bush's decision to press the issue in Congress — puts the Democrats in the position of advocating the wear-your-sweater policies that made Jimmy Carter unpopular. With gas prices nearing $5, all of the previous shibboleths need to be discarded. Where once voters in swing states like Florida opposed offshore drilling, the high gas prices are prompting them to reconsider. McCain's argument that even hurricane Katrina did not cause any oil spills from the offshore...

In a New York Times op-ed piece on June 8, Hillary Clinton’s former strategist Mark Penn blamed his candidate’s humiliating defeat on the failure of the campaign’s fundraising and budgeting operations. It’s hard to understand how a campaign that raised $200 million could seriously be described as falling short financially. Penn is definitely looking in the wrong direction. He should look in the mirror instead. There was only one major reason that Hillary lost: Her message of experience and inevitability, devised by Penn, was fatally flawed. To make things worse, on Penn’s advice, she stayed with the foolish strategy long...

The doubts Barack Obama faces are far more existential than the more superficial questions raised about most candidates. They go to his very core as a person and call into question his values, his worldview, and even his patriotism. He is a bit of a reach for the average American voter. Hard racial divisions have softened in America, but unfounded fears persist. Obama has a strange name. He grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia. He had a Muslim Kenyan father who left when he was a baby. He made his political career in the cesspool of American politics — the...

On his first day as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama has made his first clear, serious mistake: He named Eric Holder as one of three people charged with vice-presidential vetting. As deputy attorney general, Holder was the key person who made the pardon of Marc Rich possible in the final hours of the Clinton presidency. Now Obama will be stuck in the Marc Rich mess. If ever there was a person who did not deserve a presidential pardon, it's Marc Rich, the fugitive billionaire who renounced his U.S. citizenship and moved to Switzerland to avoid prosecution for racketeering,...

John McCain needs to go on the offensive against Barack Obama over the Iraq war. Polls tell us that his support for the Iraq invasion is one of voters' chief problems with McCain. Obama's chief credential, on the other hand, is his early, consistent opposition to the war. Even with recent successes in Iraq, the war remains a heavy negative for McCain. But he can turn that around; here's how. When it comes to Iraq, Obama is most comfortable living in the past. He wants to endlessly replay the day when he castigated the war as unnecessary and cooked up...

NO MÉNAGE-À-TROIS FOR OBAMA By DICK MORRIS Published on TheHill.com on June 3, 2008. Putting Hillary Clinton on the ticket for vice president creates a ménage-à-trois. Bill will be the unexpected roommate. Even if a President Obama can discipline Hillary and get her to play second fiddle, there is not the remotest chance that he can get the former president to accept such rules. Even if Bill Clinton wanted to rein in his newly prolific public expressions of rage and frustration, there is doubt that he is any longer capable of doing so. Hillary, who likely desperately wants to be...

The Bush administration is crazy for mounting so vigorous a defense to the McClellan book, talking about what an ungrateful sleaze he is. All this publicity is just helping book sales and leaving the average person with the impression that a top Bush official wrote a tell-all book saying that Bush was a phony on the war in Iraq. But the fact is that McClellan's book doesn't have anything in it. It makes NO important new revelations. It says Bush was negligent on Katrina. So the news? Then he used "propaganda" to convince us to invade Iraq - well, what...

In its final days, Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential cam paign has come to echo George Wallace’s 1968 run. Like Clinton, Wallace as a candidate stalked the Northeast exploiting white anger. Like her, he bypassed the nation’s more educated and liberal parts to focus squarely on those who felt left behind, rallying animosity against elites.

Everybody who has thought seriously about the Obama candidacy, including me and probably including the Senator himself, have reflected on the horrible possibility that he would be assassinated. One cannot think about Obama, the Kennedy-esque candidate without worrying about his safety. But we all observe the discipline of not raising the issue in public. We all worry that to do so would be to encourage some maniac to take a shot. Now Hillary has violated this unstated but heretofore universal taboo and brought up the possibility. That is not to say that she is hoping for a murder. But it...

While Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) hangs in there, locked in a tough race with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the Republican undercard is facing obliteration in the 2008 general elections for the Senate. Polling suggests that a massacre may be in the offing — and one that’s possibly even greater than the worst of previous GOP years: 1958, 1964, 1974, 1986 and 2006. Scott Rasmussen, whose site, www.rasmussenreports.com, follows these races closely, is producing truly hair-raising polling data. Of the open Republican Senate seats in contention, Democratic victory seems very likely in Virginia (Democratic former Gov. Mark Warner now has 55...

John McCain is America's favorite kind of candidate. With his record of extraordinary patriotism and his distinctive Senate tenure, McCain is a nominee whom voters from both parties — and independents, too — could easily support. But he has been dealt a terrible hand: a tanking economy, an unpopular war, a Republican incumbent whose approval ratings are at their all-time low and a gloomy national mood, with 82 percent of Americans saying in a Washington Post-ABC News poll last week that the country is on the wrong track. Political scientists add all that up and predict that the Democrats are...

President Bush is absolutely right to criticize sharply direct negotiations with Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Barack Obama’s embrace of the idea of direct negotiations is both naïve and dangerous and should be a big issue in the campaign. The reason not to negotiate with Ahmadinejad is not simply to stand on ceremony or some kind of policy of non-recognition. It is based on the fundamental need to topple his regime by increasing the sense the Iranian people have — that he has isolated Iran from the rest of the world, to its severe and ongoing detriment. The Iranian regime is almost...