Free Republic

Oh my gosh! I am so very mad I am still shaking. I called the RNC today to get the definitive answer on the Florida delegate count. I was transferred to a young man named Josh and what ensued was the most infuriating, while enlightening, conversation that I have had in a long while. I first asked my question about the delegates. His convoluted answer was basically that they couldn't impose two punishments, so the one punishment imposed was taking away half of their delegates. I asked him about that rule, was that in writing somewhere. He then proceeded to...

Mitt Romney says it's been a good night for Rick Santorum, but that he still expects to become the Republican nominee for president. After losses to Santorum in Missouri's non-binding primary and the Minnesota caucuses -- where he is in third place -- Romney is congratulating the former Pennsylvania senator but continuing to focus on President Barack Obama. Despite Tuesday's setbacks, Romney says he is ready to lead the Republican Party and is happy to compare his record on leadership to Obama's.

To date, the Republican presidential primary race has been the only place to have generated any useful contributions to America's collective understanding of current events in the Middle East. Last month, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich became the first major political figure in more than a generation to pour cold water over the Palestinian myth of indigenous peoplehood by stating the truth, that the Palestinians are an "invented people." As Gingrich explained, their invention came in response to Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement. Since they were created somewhere around 1920, the Palestinians' main purpose has not been...

In the spring of 2011, Donald Trump threatened to start a revolution within the Republican Party, appealing to the naive among Tea Partiers by promising to take on President Obama as no one else could. All too many members of the conservative media, including even some highly reputable ones, took his nonsense seriously.

Allen West has decided to switch to the newly proposed 18th district in Florida for reelection. Here is his statement below: “After much prayer, reflection and discussion with my close friends and family, I am announcing today my decision to seek reelection in Florida’s proposed 18th Congressional district. I have always believed the state of Florida would be best served by having both Congressman Tom Rooney and myself in the House of Representatives working to solve our nation’s most pressing problems. I have never waivered from my vision; to work to create jobs, restrain federal government spending, reduce America’s ever...

January 31, 2012 The Florida Smear Campaign Mitt Romney’s Fraudulent Attacks on Newt Gingrich. Thomas Sowell. The Republican establishment is pulling out all the stops to try to keep Newt Gingrich from becoming the party’s nominee for president of the United States — and some are not letting the facts get in their way. Among the claims going out through the mass media in Florida, on the eve of that state’s primary election, is that Newt Gingrich “resigned in disgrace” as speaker of the House of Representatives as a result of unethical conduct involving the diversion of tax-exempt money. Mitt...

Matt Strawn, the Iowa GOP chairman who has been embroiled in controversy since the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus results, is resigning, he announced Tuesday. “It is only because the Iowa GOP has returned as a strong and relevant voice in Iowa politics that I am now able to evaluate all the competing priorities in my personal, business and political life. The party is strong and has the resources in place for victory in November,” Strawn said in a statement. “Now is the time to transition to new leadership.” Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/72214.html#ixzz1l4EjaGAF

No, it’s not your imagination. Things are uglier than ever in the Sunshine State. A staggering 92 percent of the political ads run in Florida over the last week of the campaign have been negative. “For as long as I’ve been in politics, 14 years, journalists call me and ask if this is the most negative election ad atmosphere I've ever seen,” says Kenneth Goldstein, president of Kantar Media CMAG, which tracks content and targeting of political advertising. “And every year I say, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’" “But this year it's true. This primary season is the most negative it's ever...

1) He's not a conservative. There have been a lot of conservatives who've talked a good game during the primaries and then have let us down in D.C., but if Mitt Romney becomes the nominee and gets elected, some people seem to be hoping that he'll be the first Republican moderate to go to D.C. and turn into a fire-breathing conservative. Based on his record, if Mitt Romney is nominated, he will be the least conservative candidate since Nixon. >snip 2) He doesn't believe in anything politically other than Mitt Romney. What conservative cause has Mitt Romney ever fought like...

GOP voters are sending a clarion call to the party establishment, but it seems GOP leaders are not getting the message. The statement being sent to the GOP elite isn't about Newt, and it goes beyond even Romney. It is about a deep dissatisfaction that has been building for years within the Republican rank and file. With the proclamations of Bob Dole and others against Newt Gingrich recently, it is clear the GOP establishment fears a Gingrich nomination. In truth, however, it is the GOP establishment's own ineffectual leadership that led to the recent surge of the former Speaker of...

The RepublicanParty has a tenuous hold on the conservative movement in America. At present the only home for the 40 per cent of the electorate that identify themselves as conservative is the Republican Party, but it appears that those who are nominally identified as the "Republican Establishment" are doing all they can to alienate the vast majority of the current base of the Party. There is no office on ConnecticutAvenue in Washington with a sign reading "The RepublicanEstablishment" or the "The Democratic Establishment"; rather it is an amalgam of like-minded groups with one common interest: control of the government purse-strings....

Jacksonville,FL- After last night’s Republican Presidential debate, the candidates’ respective spinmeisters made their cases to the media as to why their guy won the debate. One of Governor Mitt Romney’s spokesmen was Florida Representative Will Weatherford, and during the course of his remarks in the “Spin Room�, he shed a very dim light on the ongoing redistricting process in the Florida Legislature. Over the past several weeks, many Republicans have voiced their disappointment towards the Republican legislature after the release of the preliminary redistricting maps. Much of the ire concerns the proposed boundaries of Congressman Allen West’s 22nd Congressional District...

The GOP establishment talking about going into smoke filled rooms & brokered conventions. Problem with that is, they're looking to come out of the smoke filled rooms with moderates like Mitch Daniels & Jeb Bush. My thoughts on this & also the dizzy upside down electorate. Sarah Palin appears on Fox Biz Tom Sullivan shows possibly why Palin never officially ran for president. Did she say what it would take for her to make a late entry? www.mrltavern.blogspot.com By the way where is the vaunted TP-Express endorsement?

If you asked me even a couple of weeks ago whether the Republican Party could heal from the wounds of this election cycle in time to unite against Obama, I would have said ”Yes.” I’m not so sure anymore. After the South Carolina primary the Republican establishment, and media supporters like Matt Drudge, launched Scorched Earth II on Newt, while pro-Romney pundits like Ann Coulter heaped scorn on the conservative and Tea Party voters who sided with Newt. It may just be “not-beanbag” to the Romney campaign and its supporters, but people hear them loud and clear. Two lines of...

LEWISTON, Maine — Against all odds, against all expectations, perhaps even against all reason, the Republican presidential nomination fight is centered in Florida this week and then moves to a hopelessly complex process here in Maine next week. This is a far different contest than the Republicans conducted a few weeks, a few miles, and a political lifetime away across the border in New Hampshire. Strip the cant from the 2012 Republican nomination fight and you have a front-runner who lost two out of the first three tests and now is barely entitled to the title; a challenger in the...

Realizing that most Americans certainly won’t care what I think, nevertheless, I am hereby endorsing Newt Gingrich for President. Of the remaining candidates for the Republican nomination, Gingrich is the only one who will fight to restore our country with the same degree of passion he gives to winning the presidency. This past week, I have been appalled at the Republican Establishment’s coordinated attacks on former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Their “schlock and awe” campaign has been unkind, unfair, untrue, and unprincipled.

Holy cow. Powerful start to Rush's show today. - Disclaimer: this information is provided as an imprecise, recollection second-hand of statements on Rush Limbaugh's broadcast this morning. No claim of accuracy is made, do your own due diligence please. - Yesterday, one of the most damning statements (as far as Newt's perspective would be) Rush made, as he was attempting on-air to make sense of the blizzard of Newt-hate yesterday from Drudge et al, was his thoughts about a rather nasty article by Elliot Abrams. The article claimed Newt Gingrich opposed Reagan's foreign policy toward the evil empire. Rush clearly...

All the members of the Republican Party who have been complicit and collaborative in the destruction of our nation in the past few decades always talking about smaller government while never fighting against the tide of creeping socialism have now come out against Newt Gingrich. Yesterday, at National Review, Elliot Abrams attacked Newt Gingrich for attacking Ronald Reagan from the right. Today, it is Bob Dole’s turn. Bob Dole, you will remember from George Stephanoupolos’s memoir of his time in Clinton’s White House, totally cut the legs out from under Newt Gingrich and House Republicans during the government shut down....

The Republican establishment mobilizes to prevent the nomination of Newt. By Major Garrett Updated: January 26, 2012 | 10:53 p.m. January 26, 2012 | 4:52 p.m. After arriving in Florida like a rolling ball of butcher knives, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is looking less edgy and more flabby by the hour. The last four polls in Florida now show Mitt Romney back ahead (the previous four had Gingrich up). That's at least in part because Republicans-–some conservative, some semiconservative, and some conveniently conservative–-are attacking Gingrich as a walking, talking party menace; a flu-like contagion who will lose the presidency...

MOUNT DORA, Florida -- After an appearance before several hundred Tea Party supporters at a lakeside resort, Newt Gingrich reacted to the latest wave of criticism directed at him from members of the Washington-based conservative establishment. Members of that establishment, he said, are "sitting around in a frenzy, having coffee, lunch, and cocktail hours talking about how do we stop Gingrich." I asked Gingrich to react to a new column by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., longtime editor of The American Spectator in which Tyrrell called Gingrich "conservatism's Bill Clinton" and hinted that Gingrich might be the subject of new allegations...

....Romney supporters have launched a last-minute attack on Gingrich seeking to impugn the former House speaker’s close working relationship with President Reagan and his dedication to Reagan conservatism. But efforts to cast Gingrich as anti-Reagan are doomed to fail, political observers say. “There is something truly obscene about the full-blown assault on NewtGingrich’s strong Reagan conservative history from and on behalf of Mitt Romney, who unabashedly ran away from the Reagan legacy and conservative principles in his 1994 Senate campaign and 2002 gubernatorial campaign,” William A. Jacobson, associate clinical professor at the Cornell Law School, writes on the Legal Insurrection...

The entire GOP establishment has unleashed on Newt Gingrich this week, and it looks like it is slowing his momentum in the polls. Almost all of the anti-Newt Gingrich material hitting the media is coming from conservative institutions: National Review, The New York Sun, and the Washington Times. Just look at the Drudge Report from last night and early this morning.:(Snip for graphic) The number one news source for many populist and conservative readers, looks like an anti-Gingrich pinboard. There are twelve anti-Gingrich links leading the site, with video of Gingrich trashing Reagan,

I’d like you to take a look at DrudgeReport. There is an all-out war on Newt Gingrich, not merely by the left-wing media, but particularly on the right side of the political divide. Drudge has run as many as nine negative articles about Gingrich simultaneously, but he is running few negative articles about Romney, and those he does run are only half-negative, so it’s becoming clear that Drudge is trying to manipulate the outcome in the direction of a result he prefers. I surely hope conservatives realize that nobody in media is pure, because everybody has biases. In the case...

Ok Here's the list: 1. "Kinder-Gentler" 2. "Read My Lips/No New Taxes" 3. The 1990 Budget "Deal" 4. The PATHETIC 1992 GOP Election "Campaign" 5. SQUANDERING the 1980s and Reagan's Gains 6. The EVEN MORE PATHETIC 1996 GOP Election "Campaign" 7. "Compassionate Conservatism" 8. "Patriot Act" 9. The ULTIMATE IN PATHETIC 2008 GOP Election "Campaign"

WASHINGTON—Mitt Romney says he'll release his tax 2010 tax returns and 2011 tax estimates Tuesday and says it was a mistake for his presidential campaign to hold off as long as it did in getting them out.

GOP Insider: “Guarantee You The Establishment” Will Ambush, Try To Replace Newt Cos “They Can’t Control Him” http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-U7DhuWhJAw

Why did the Iowa Republican Party decide to announce a Santorum victory, only a day before the South Carolina Primary? http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-21/santorum-declared-iowa-caucuses-winner-by-state-party-leaders.html# It requires no more than 4 days after the announcement of the initial results, to conduct a fully certified recount, because relatively few people vote in the Iowa Caucuses. The reason why they announced Santorum as the winner of Iowa at this time, is to get some supporters of Gingrich to vote for Santorum, in order to split the conservative vote and assure a victory for Romney. American elections have become as corrupt as the elections in Mexico, Colombia,...

Two prominent conservative columnists, Charles Krauthammer and Peggy Noonan, warn this morning that Republican infighting may do the party grievous damage for the 2012 election, with Krauthammer declaring that President Obama "could not have chosen more self-destructive adversaries." Here's Krauthammer on GOP candidates playing into Obama's message reboot: For the first few weeks, the class-envy gambit had some effect, bumping ObamaÂ’s numbers slightly. But the story was still lagging, suffering in part from its association with an Occupy rabble that had widely worn out its welcome. Then came the twist. Then came the most remarkable political surprise since the 2010...

Republicans running for the White House are racking up endorsements from GOP members on Capitol Hill. In 2008, Mitt Romney secured the most congressional endorsements in the GOP primary, but Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) subsequently won the nomination. The list below reflects publicly committed backers of 2012 presidential hopefuls. (Updates are already on the article page ~D) *More information at the link!

The Iowa Republican Party will certify this month's presidential caucuses as a split decision between former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, citing missing data from eight precincts, the Des Moines Register reported on Thursday. The party had previously awarded the contest to Romney, with an eight vote margin. The official certified caucus results are due out Thursday at 8:15 a.m. local time (1415 GMT). The Register said the new count put Santorum ahead by 34 votes. However, results from any one of the eight precincts with "missing data" could hold an advantage for Romney, the...

Mark Levin: Mark blasts the Republican Establishment and Explains Corporatism vs Capitalism

[SNIP leading up to the "advice" from a former GW Bush adviser] ....A win in SouthCarolina will be overwhelming proof that Romney is just “right” enough to win the nomination. If that were to occur, Romney would have won in the conservative Midwest, the more liberal/independent Northeast and the conservative South. Perry, Santorum and Gingrich need a win, place or show in SouthCarolina to continue to Florida. ...The real question will be one for Gingrich to answer. If Gingrich doesn’t come in a close 2nd or 3rd in South Carolina, will he engage in a “scorched earth policy” that if...

SOPA is only one reason I ask this. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like I see Lamar Smith coming up more and more, and not in a good way. For those who may have forgotten, here is what Trent Lott said: "We don't need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples," Lott said in an interview. "As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them." How successful do you think they've been?

Democrats have taken the lead in a generic congressional ballot for the first time since being washed out of office by Republicans in the 2010 election, according to a Democracy Corps survey released Friday. ... Fifty-three percent said they were increasingly displeased with Republicans in Congress, and the same amount said they were turned off by the increasingly contentious GOP presidential primary.

Have you ever thought about that? How many times have you seen establishment types posit about how beautiful it would be to have a Romney/Rubio ticket? Even after Rubio has made it clear he isn't interested, I keep hearing it. It can be summed up in one word: Hispanic. The republicans have absolutely nothing in common with a conservative like Rubio, yet every time they mention his name, they always go off on a tangent about how he can win the hispanic vote. Because of his skin color?!?! Yep. The republicans are that superficial. It's that simple. They're in full...

In 1980, George H.W. Bush was making much the same argument against Ronald Reagan that Mitt Romney is making this year. Bush argued that he was the most electable against hapless Jimmy Carter. The big money Republican establishment was behind Bush because they feared that Reagan was too radical to win, and would carry the entire party down to historic defeat, like Goldwater did. Reagan even lost Iowa to Bush on that argument. But Reagan carried forward the pro-growth economic message that ultimately swept him to the nomination, and then to landslide victory in the fall, his coattails handing the...

I was thinking about writing a novel about what might happen if a man who hates America and wants to bring it down is somehow elected president. What would he do? I sketched out a few plot elements, and you can decide whether this will fly. First, the Trojan Horse president would initiate unprecedented spending, driving the debt up by more than $4 trillion just in the first three years. Much of the money would go into the pockets of political supporters and people who donate heavily to his campaigns. He would ram through an unreadable law allowing the federal...

I’ve made a disturbing discovery: I am a member of the conservative “establishment.” I feel like Michael Douglas at the end of Falling Down: “I’m the bad guy?” Largely in response to the real and perceived excesses of the Bush years and the overreach of the Obama administration, the base has become more populist. In particular, the rank and file of the GOP and the conservative movement have become deeply disenchanted with what they see as the rubber-spined, foot-dragging quislings drinking from a trough of Chablis at some Georgetown party. The term “RINO” (Republican In Name Only) has become an...

<p>Sen. Dick Lugar said challenges by Tea Party candidates are partly to blame for the Republicans not having a majority in the Senate.</p> <p>“Republicans lost the seats before in Nevada and New Jersey for example and Colorado where there were people who claimed that they wanted somebody who was more of their Tea Party aspect, but in doing so they killed off the Republican chances for majority,” he said. “This is one of the reasons why we have a minority in the Senate right now.”</p>

Sen. Dick Lugar (Ind.) facing a primary contest from the right in his reelection bid said past Tea Party-backed challenges had “killed off” Republican efforts to take the Senate in the past and could undermine a GOP majority again in 2012. “A Republican majority in the Senate is very important, and Republicans who are running for reelection ought to be supported by people who want to see that majority,” Lugar said in an interview which aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “I think the majority of Tea Party people understand that too,” he added. Lugar who is facing...

"But because the Republican Party insists on insider moderates or at least gives the impression that's who they support, then it opens the door for all kinds of people to make headway because the Republican primary base is not interested in who the establishment is interested in. It's just that simple. I'll tell you something I've been saying here for the last couple, three weeks, maybe even longer than that, that Mitt Romney can't get higher than 30% anywhere. Other than New Hampshire, he gets 35. But in truth no other Republican does, either. When you get right down to...

With a little more than two weeks to go before Republicans begin voting in presidential caucuses and primaries, the GOP faces the possibility of a muddled result in Iowa; a primary race that may take months of bitter campaigning to resolve; and a large number of Republican voters who remain unhappy with the current presidential field.  Some of those voters are still hoping another candidate might enter the race. That is why a new article from former Florida governor Jeb Bush is likely to attract attention from voters and political analysts alike.  In the Wall Street Journal, Bush has written...

There's a good pull quote from this website that far too many revisionist republicans hope would be forgotten: When the administration proposed to abolish the Department of Education in 1981, Howard Baker, the first Republican Senate majority leader since 1954, actively opposed abolition.[x] Baker wanted to remain majority leader and was worried that getting rid of the department would alienate too many voters. I was reminded of this the other night when I was listening to Mark Levin's show and he mentioned this. It was on the (Direct MP3 Download)december 14th show, between 18-20 minutes in. Does anybody have further...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The long knives are out for Newt. I mean, everybody knows this. Everybody's looking at this. We saw it to one degree or another yesterday, last night in the debate. We've seen it in various publications. Most people, most average citizens -- people who pay attention to politics around election time and shortly after the election to see what's gonna happen. Most people's reaction of Newt Gingrich is not that he had anything to do with Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae. They don't know that. I mean, they're hearing about it now. They don't know what he did.

So it seems like Glenn has stirred up a little bit of a controversy among the GOP-leaning blogosphere because he is making conservatives question their excitement for Newt Gingrich. But rather than go on the air and apologize for asking tough questions, Glenn decided to do a monologue that he couldn’t do on cable news that takes the GOP establishment head on. What’d he have to say? First, watch Glenn lay out his confusion. He doesn’t understand why such a large percentage of the Tea Party sees Newt Gingrich as an acceptable candidate, and he doesn’t believe that “he’s not...

Actual Headline: Charles Krauthammer To Bill O’Reilly: Newt Gingrich Is ‘A Victim Of His Own Creative Intelligence’ As former House Speaker Newt Gingrich continues to gain a lead in the polls, much of the talk surrounding his run is the apparent opposition to his nomination from the Republican establishment. On tonight’s O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly asked Charles Krauthammer precisely this, and before getting a serious answer on Gingrich’s Achilles’ heel, received a bit of a ribbing on the definition of “establishment.”

I just returned from the belly of the beast, Washington, D.C. There is not a more parochial or insular city in the country. While there, I had a conversation with two members of what can be described only as the Republican establishment, one in the print media and the other a K Street lobbyist. In short order, the conversation turned to Newt Gingrich and his surge to the top of the ladder. There is no one more reviled in Washington than Newt. If anyone believes he is part of the establishment, he or she is mistaken. In fact, it would...

Newt Gingrich has at least one name on his list of potential running mates: GOP rival Mitt Romney. "I think Mitt Romney is a very admirable person, and I'm not going to pick a fight with Mitt Romney," Gingrich said in an interview Wednesday with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. When asked if he would ever ask Romney to be his vice presidential nominee, Gingrich didn't mince words. "I think the consensus is that he'd certainly be on the list, whether he'd want to or not," Gingrich said. "He's a very competent person. This is a very serious man. I would certainly...

On Tuesday morning, former Vice President Dan Quayle endorsed Mitt Romney, as did California Congressmen Jerry Lewis, Ken Calvert and Brian Bilbray. On Monday morning, Tennessee Congressmen Jimmy Duncan, Diane Black and Phil Roe announced their support. In the past month Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, New HampshireÂ’s Kelly Ayotte and John Thune of South Dakota have endorsed the former Massachusetts governor, as have 28 officials from Missouri, 15 from New Hampshire, 19 from Indiana, eight Nevada state senators, former Senator John Danforth, former Iowa Gov. Robert Ray and Representatives Charlie Bass of New Hampshire, IllinoisÂ’s Robert Dold and PennsylvaniaÂ’s...

The photograph above is, of course, one of former Speaker of the House and current Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. He was in town to sign his new book, A Nation Like No Other, along with his wife, who has a book of her own. But the most important part of his visit was a town hall forum held in the Hilton Garden Inn in Bloomfield, Staten Island, which was sponsored by the Staten Island Tea Party. There were a number of interesting aspects to this event, not the least of which was the decision to hold such an important...