Free Republic

ROCK HILL, S.C. — As Sarah Palin wonders whether to run for president, she might want to talk to people in places such as South Carolina. She'd find her star fading, and her prospects daunting. Republicans still like her, but now they openly question whether she could or should be nominated for president, let alone elected. At a recent gathering in South Carolina, the site of a crucial early presidential primary next year, party activists said the former Alaska governor didn't have the experience, the knowledge of issues or the ability to get beyond folksy slang and bumper-sticker generalities that...

There more things change the more things change the same. For the second year in a row, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex., emerged as the potential presidential candidate that an active group of conservative activists want to see at the top of the Republican ticket in 2012. Paul won this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll by a healthy margin, getting 30 percent of the vote. His nearest competitor was former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who won 23 percent of the vote. Most of the other possible candidates wound up in the low single digits. Still, Romney's finish was relatively...

Long before the tea party movement grabbed half a dozen Senate seats, before its early proponents ever even dreamed of wearing Colonial-era garb in public, there was longtime Texas Republican Ron Paul, the one guy in Congress trying to abolish the Federal Reserve and shrink the government into near nonexistence. Paul won a devoted-bordering-on-cultish following during his 2008 presidential run, one which, obviously, didn't work out. But now Paul is telling the Times that "it’s at least 50-50" that he'll try again in 2012, and this time, with the movement built largely on his libertarian philosophy now a real force...