Free Republic

North Dakota’s House race saw several debates between the half-dozen candidates pre-convention, but now that the field has been narrowed to two candidates for the primary election I thought it would be useful to have them sit down and engage one another again. Both Kevin Cramer and Brian Kalk were gracious enough to join me for what was supposed to be 30 minutes of questions and discussions but turned out to be more like an hour. Here’s the result: For all the rancor that some perceive as surrounding this race, both candidates were very cordial and agreed on most things...

The favorite in the Republican race is Randy Weber, 58, a two-term state representative from Pearland and the former owner of an air-conditioning company he started in 1981. Weber, who has been endorsed by Gov. Rick Perry, touts a 2009 poll sponsored by the Texas Conservative Coalition that rated him the most conservative member of the Texas House. Paul, who represented the district for 24 years, though not consecutively, endorsed Weber's two campaigns for the Texas House, but so far has not endorsed a successor. A Beaumont base Weber has raised $282,000 for the race and had the second-highest amount...

IÂ’m not going to tell readers that IÂ’m Senator Orrin HatchÂ’s biggest fan, but I can tell you, I certainly understand why Sarah Palin has endorsed him, and agree with her 100%. After breaking the news on GretaÂ’s show, Governor Palin eloquently laid out her reasons for backing Senator Hatch on Facebook. Watch the video and read her note here. As Sarah notes, Orrin Hatch has consistently been the strongest, loudest voice, championing Conservative nominees to the Supreme Court. This is a big deal, as the next president will likely appoint two or as many as three new Justices to...

Competing radio ads spotlight wealthy Stanford physicist Charles T. Munger Jr.'s deep-pockets support for incumbent Assemblywoman Beth Gaines against challenger Andy Pugno in a Placer County-based Assembly district. Spirit of Democracy, an advocacy group funded largely by Munger, has poured more than $175,000 into a radio and mail promotional campaign for Gaines this month. Pugno is attempting to create a backlash by painting the GOP activist as a liberal. Munger is a major GOP donor and was a key financial backer of redistricting reform. He has pushed to moderate the Republican Party by downplaying divisive issues such as abortion, gun...

Why now? Because Team Obama is proving itself to be too smart by half, and too incompetent by three-quarters. There is a way to do Bain, but I’m done giving that advice. Rehashing old news, which already has been out for months, isn’t going to do the trick. (VIDEO AT LINK) Cory Booker stuck a fork in the balloon, putting Obama and AxelPlouffe on the defensive, but Booker didn’t say anything that already wasn’t percolating to the top anyway. Yet Think Progress already is going after Booker; they’re eating their own! And AxelPlouffe seems surprisingly tongue tied: (VIDEO AT LINK)...

Nine prominent Catholic leaders have joined the Media Research Center to voice outrage over the broadcast networks deliberately withholding news of the momentous 43 Catholic entities suing the Obama administration for violating their religious freedoms. They represent major organizations including the Acton Institute, Cardinal Newman Society, SBA List and others. More are coming in every hour. There are 60 million Catholics in the US. The Catholic vote will be the most important swing vote this year. So it’s not just a major policy issue, it is one with massive political implications. Yet, 19 seconds of news coverage remains the only...

In a survey of 6,000 likely voters, including a special sample of 1,500 swing voters, taken May 5-11, I probed how Obama’s attacks on Romney were likely to play in the general election. As the economy declines and his chances for victory fade, President Obama is resorting to a virtually wall-to-wall negative campaign in a desperate effort to win reelection. It is vital that the Republicans answer these charges as they surface –one by one — but what rebuttals will work? Bain Capital Obama’s first broadcast negative ad attacks Romney for cutting jobs at Bain. The polling shows Romney can...

The Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund is hopping into the Nebraska Senate race and has supported the pro-life candidate who is looking to take the seat currently held by Ben Nelson, who upset pro-life voters with his Obamacare support. The national pro-life political action committee today announced its endorsement of Deb Fischer for U.S. Senate in Nebraska. “Deb Fischer is a fighter for unborn children and their mothers. Her record in the Nebraska state legislature is one of fighting passionately for pro-life, pro-woman policies,” said Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “On the other hand, the...

On his show Tuesday night, Ed Schultz took on birthers — specifically those in Iowa and Arizona who have brought President Barack Obama‘s eligibility for office back into headlines recently. He asked, isn’t this just racism? The Iowa GOP chairman, Don Racheter, and Arizona’s secretary of state, Ken Bennett, have recently questioned Obama’s natural-born citizenship (though Bennett said he’s not a birther, he sought verification of Obama’s birth certificate from Hawaii, saying it’s possible he’d take Obama off the ballot otherwise). Schultz asked his guest, Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson, “Is this just another form of racism being played...

(VIDEO AT LINK) With just a week left until the Texas Senate primary, underdog Ted Cruz is hitting the airwaves with a new TV ad that closes with a pitch for support from Sarah Palin. "I'm Sarah Palin. Join me. Choose Cruz for Senate," Palin says, in what sounds like an audio recording of a robo-call. Palin, who backed now-GOP nominees Deb Fischer and Richard Mourdock in the lead up to the Nebraska and Indiana Senate primaries endorsed Cruz earlier this month. The ad also appears to be an implicit rebuttal against ads frontrunning Lt. Governor David Dewhurst and his...

Liberal activists organized by CREDO SuperPAC are planning to protest outside a fundraiser that House Speaker John Boehner is holding Wednesday on Portola Road in Woodside with Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Gold River. The event with Boehner, R-Ohio, costs up to $35,000 a plate or $5,000 for a photo opportunity, and is occurring just six miles from the Atherton home in which President Obama is scheduled to hold a $35,800-a-plate fundraiser at about the same time.CREDO SuperPAC says it has launched a campaign against Lungren with four full-time organizers and a Carmichael field office to mobilize local voters to defeat a...

Appearing on Monday’s Hannity, Sarah Palin minced no words by saying nothing was “off the table” when it comes to vetting Barack Obama. There was a group that wanted to revisit Obama’s past associations, including Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the radical Marxist preacher whose church Obama sat in for 20 years, and now claims was pressured to stay quiet about Obama. Mitt Romney, Speaker of the House John Boehner, and many other GOP establishment leaders have chastised those who would talk about Wright. Never mind the democrats are already raising money off this issue. As Sarah notes, nothing can be left...

Yesterday, I wrote about a few of the variables that can affect the accuracy of polls. Polls conducted of just adults, for example, deliver a huge seven-point bias in favor of Democrats. Notwithstanding this bias, it is simply silly to report political polling results of a sample of adults, since a large part of that sample won't actually be voting. It can, however, be useful if you want to make a partisan political point. This is exactly what the Tennessean newspaper and other media outlets have done. Yesterday, the state's biggest paper splashed across its front page the breathless headline...

It’s not getting a lot of attention, but the end of the embattled GOP primary fight has led to a broad poll bounce for Mitt Romney that is starting to scare Obama advisors. To name a few: -- CBS News/New York Times has Romney over President Obama by a margin of 46 percent to 43 percent. In their new poll Romney also now leads among women by 2 percent and has seized independents 43 percent to 36 percent. -- Gallup has Romney’s favorability rating jumping from 39 percent in February to 50 percent. Among independents he’s seen an 11 percent...

Political analyst Dick Morris said the policies of President Barack Obama will spell his defeat in this year's general election. The best-selling author and FOX News contributor also predicted key U.S. Senate seats held by Democrats, including that of Bob Casey, D-Scranton, will fall to Republicans. "We will win a majority back in the U.S. Senate," Morris told area political, community and business leaders at Tuesday's Manufacturer & Business Association Central Division event at the Genetti Hotel. Morris laid out what he claimed have been mistakes of the Obama Administration, including the president's push for stimulus spending and mounting debt....

She didn’t see it coming. One day, Oprah Winfrey turned around, and her nationally syndicated show was sliding in the ratings, and her audience was fleeing en masse. And it happened soon after a day she thought was one of the best in her life. Isn’t that how all the giants fall? When they least expect it? It was the day Oprah announced she was backing the African-American candidate, then-senator Barack Obama, over the highly qualified and experienced woman candidate, then-senator Hillary Clinton. It was the first time that Oprah put her brand on a political candidate. And her audience...

The Jeremiah Wright “Goddamn America” controversy came to a close when then-Senator Barack Obama and his family left their long-time church during his successful presidential campaign in 2008. But Mr. Wright has been resurrected from the dead by right-wing conservatives again, The Washington Post reports. A super PAC has on the table a proposal that may bring the controversy back to light. Billionaire Joe Ricketts was suppose to back the proposal, but has now backed off of it. “The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big,...

If you need proof that President Obama's team will run a formidable ground game in Virginia, consider this: At the 2012 kickoff rally in Richmond, organizers say they signed up 1,500 new volunteers from the 8,000 people in the crowd. But in addition to obvious dangers like a struggling economy, Obama’s team will face a new threat -- a better-prepared Republican Party coming off three years of victories in the state. That wasn’t the case in 2008, when John McCain’s campaign figured Virginia would follow its long-established trend of voting Republican in the presidential race. He ended up losing by...

U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown has made herself one of the central figures in the George Zimmerman case. The Democratic congresswoman got involved when the shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, became national news. Soon after, the Department of Justice launched its probe into whether Sanford police mishandled the case, and Sanford police Chief Bill Lee stepped aside. Earlier this month, Brown — whose district spans from Jacksonville into Central Florida — got involved in another criminal case. She attended the sentencing of Marissa Alexander, a black defendant from Jacksonville who Brown said was unfairly sentenced to 20 years...

LINCOLN — Deb Fischer ran a stealth campaign. The state senator from Valentine who scored one of the biggest upsets in Nebraska political history Tuesday started to surge in the polls at the perfect time — early enough to win and too late for her opponents to respond. Fischer, who raised a paltry $440,000 to front-runner Jon Bruning’s $3.6 million, is now in position to become the second woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate from Nebraska, if she defeats Democrat Bob Kerrey in the fall. A third was appointed. She took her first poke at Kerrey shortly after taking...

Immediately after former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s endorsement, “the phones lit up like a Christmas tree,” and over 1,000 donations poured in over the next 48 hours, U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz said during an interview with LaDonna Hale Curzon, host and executive producer of Sarah Palin Radio. Like Fischer and Mourdock before him, Cruz is the underdog candidate competing against those who have more money and deep connections to the GOP establishment. Her endorsement has given the Cruz campaign such a boost that the power behind it has been dubbed “the Palin Effect.” “It has been absolutely incredible! The...

Like I said yesterday, given his liabilities on the economy, I think The One’s reasonably comfortable with nearly any change of subject. Even this subject: Campaign manager Jim Messina sent out a fundraising appeal Thursday night saying that the proposal, submitted to (and rejected by) a Republican super PAC, “shows in vivid and gruesome detail what the President and all of us are up against.” He adds, “This is going to be worse than we could have imagined … Pitch in today to fight these attacks and show them this only makes us stronger.”… These Democratic efforts to promote this...

After a poll released this week showed President Barack Obama only beating his Democratic primary opponent John Wolfe Jr. by seven points, 45 percent to 38 percent, in Arkansas's Fourth Congressional District, state Democrats moved to practically disenfranchise Arkansas voters. "[D]elegates Wolfe might claim won't be recognized at the national convention," national party officials are telling state Democrats. Wolfe is being accused of not following the party rules. “They want a coronation,” Wolfe tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD. “They’re conflating [Obama] with the party. Are we supposed to call him ‘Dear Leader’? Is this some kind of North Korea thing?” Wolfe...

For months, President Obama has been focused on courting the American woman. This week the latest CBS News/New York Times poll shows that she is not returning the love. In fact, it appears that she is seriously thinking about breaking up with him. In the last month, Romney has managed to close the gap with women voters and according to the CBS/New York Times poll now leads President Obama among women voters 46-44%. While poll numbers will fluctuate through November, and the actual significance of the ballot question will start to be clearer after Labor Day, Romney’s growing strength with...

Former Lt. Governor Andre Bauer and Horry County Council Chair Tom Rice hold a substantial lead in the race for the Republican nomination for the new 7th Congressional District seat according to a new poll commissioned by Francis Marion University and SCNOW.com. But the overall temerity of the campaign has left many voters still scratching their heads less than a month before the June 12 primary. Bauer leads the nine-person field of Republican candidates with 22 percent of the 641 likely GOP primary voters polled, followed closely by Rice with 21 percent. Chad Prosser is third with 8 percent. A...

A Palin-backed underdog snatches the GOP Senate nomination from the favorite, and Mama Grizzly's endorsement may very well have put Fischer over the top... The Republican establishment was reeling in Nebraska this week, after a little-known but respected state senator, Deb Fischer, pulled off a stunning upset in the GOP Senate primary. Fischer became the instant favorite in her red state over Democrat Bob Kerrey, a former senator and governor. Until just days before the Tuesday vote, Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning was expected to cruise to the GOP nomination, and his only apparent threat was from state Treasurer Don...

Life is really about the moments and whether we’re ready to take advantage of them. We can meet someone and have a wonderful connection, then back off because of fear or preexisting plans and hope another moment comes along. But many times, when that moment or person is gone, we never have the opportunity again. The same holds true in politics. During the last few weeks of the presidential campaign, I have seen two of those "moment" opportunities having surfaced. President Obama and his campaign bypassed one key moment, while Sarah Palin took advantage of the other. It kind of...

Jack Hoogendyk has received another endorsement from a conservative Political Action Committee. The Madison Project endorsed Hoogendyk this morning. In a press release, Madison Project Political Director Drew Ryun said: Fred Upton’s 26-year career has been marred by fiscal and social liberal votes that are too numerous to count. Perhaps, the most egregious aspect of his career was his involvement in anti-free-market energy policy, most notably, his lead role in the 2007 energy bill that banned the incandescent light bulb. Amazingly, Upton has been granted the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the most important domestic policy panel....

President Obama is making a targeted effort to court the votes of military veterans and their families, believing the constituency is in play for November and could make a difference in key battleground states. The Obama campaign today kicked off a grassroots organizing effort — dubbed “Veterans and Military Families for Obama” — led by retired Naval officer and Iraq war veteran Rob Diamond. “It’s no secret to anyone where our military bases are in this country and where our veterans and military communities are located,” Diamond said of the strategy on a conference call with reporters. “And the goal...

The four candidates vying for outgoing Congressman Tim Johnson’s seat — Jerry Clarke, Rodney Davis, Erika Harold and Kathy Wassink — presented their platforms to Champaign voters at a public forum Saturday evening. The forum was led by Champaign County Republican Party chair Habeeb Habeeb, one of the 14 Republican Party chairmen who will decide May 19 which finalist will be the GOP’s candidate for the 13th district race that Johnson pulled out of soon after the March primaries. “I really care about winning the race,” said Habeeb, who estimated the attendance at 250 people. “(This district) leans slightly Democrat,...

At the very least, the Republican Party base’s revolt against its own establishment cost the GOP a 50-50 Senate tie in 2010, with primary voters forcing unelectable nominees on the party in three races that it had otherwise been on course to win. A decent case can be made that the uprising actually cost Republicans outright Senate control. And now the same thing may be happening all over again, with Nebraska joining a growing list of unexpected 2012 Senate battlegrounds – at least for the moment. The impetus is the surprise victory of Deb Fischer, a little-known state legislator, over...

FreedomWorks announced its support for three upstart Republican House candidates today, pitting the conservative grass-roots group against local elected officials in each state. The group endorsed Public Service Commissioner Kevin Cramer in North Dakota’s at-large seat; Lewis County Judge Executive Thomas Massie in Kentucky’s 4th district; and former state Sen. Sam Aanestad in California’s 1st district. All three candidates are running in open-seat races. FreedomWorks’ support is notable because it’s backing the underdogs in each race and, in one case, going against the state party’s endorsement. In North Dakota, the state GOP endorsed Public Service Commissioner Brian Kalk at its...

The notion has been kicked around in the media for more than a year, and pooh-poohed by both the secretary of state and the Obama campaign. But as the 2012 race heats up, the possibility of an Obama-Clinton ticket is likely to be given renewed consideration. Hilary Clinton looks refreshed these days, with a new hairstyle and bounce in her step — so perhaps she's studying the polls that show the president in a neck-and-neck race with Mitt Romney. She's also aware of her standing as the most admired woman in America. According to Gallup, no other woman has been...

A political advocacy group funded largely by wealthy Stanford physicist Charles T. Munger Jr. has poured $83,000 this week into an independent push to re-elect Republican Assemblywoman Beth Gaines. Gaines, of Rocklin, is running against attorney and fellow Republican Andy Pugno in the 6th Assembly District, a newly drawn district based in Placer County but extending into Sacramento and El Dorado counties. Democrat Reginald Bronner of Lincoln rounds out the field. A radio advertisement and campaign literature supporting Gaines was funded by Spirit of Democracy, whose coffers consist of $727,000 from Munger and $150,000 from the California Dental Association, records...

President Barack Obama faced a stiff challenge from an unlikely opponent in the Democratic presidential primary in West Virginia on May 8. A federal inmate in Texas drew 42 percent of the Democratic vote in the Mountain State — about 52,000 votes to Obama’s 70,000. While the President squeaked by with a victory in West Virginia, he could lose an upcoming Democratic primary in Arkansas where he faces an opponent who polls show is running a competitive race. Tennessee attorney John Wolfe, who is an official candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2012, is drawing a surprising amount of...

If “Julia” taught us anything, it’s that the Democrats' agenda — a set of cradle-to-grave policies designed to “protect” women and keep them under the auspices of government control — is doomed to fail come November. Yesterday’s CBS/New York Times poll that found that women support Romney over Obama 46-44, revealing that playing gender politics actually doesn’t win you women’s — or men’s — votes. The fact is this “gender split” really just mimics the general vote split, suggesting that these ideas are widely unpopular. As I’ve written before, the “War on Women” narrative is risky business, as women are...

Joseph Curl's analysis in Sunday's Washington Times on Barack Obama's gay marriage flip-flop nicely sums up the president's motive. Actually, the headline sums it up: "Team Obama panics, and it's only May." That's right. President Barack Obama -- that Everest of integrity -- and his paid hacks are in full panic mode. As Curl observes, it's mid-May, and the president is focusing on shoring up what should be a base constituency -- gays. Previously, Mr. Obama was trying to drive wedges between the GOP and women, Hispanics, and young voters to shore up support from these cohorts. A president up...

On a balmy night in early June of 1986, a successful business executive and two-term Congressman named Ed Zschau won the GOP nomination for US Senate in California. Seen by professionals as the rising star of California Republican politics, Zschau defeated a divided primary field of more conservative candidates. It was widely expected in political circles that he would go on to defeat incumbent Sen. Alan Cranston in the general election. The very next night, the Cranston campaign unleashed a sustained, weeks-long negative campaign advertising attack on Mr. Zschau. The idea being that if Zschau was given time to regroup...

The latest CBS News/New York Times poll shows President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in a dead heat in the race for the White House. Given that Obama has had a relatively good week and Romney something of a bad one, this poll is a real shocker. Asked for whom they would vote were the election held today, 46 percent of the nearly 600 registered voters surveyed said Romney while 43 percent said Obama. Given that the error margin is plus or minus four points, it looks like the race is all tied up. Actually, Romney may...

The Washington Post has put North Dakota atop its list of “The 10 House districts that might surprise you.” The report today aims to showcase 10 House races that are “surprisingly competitive” in an election year, where not only is partisan control at stake but where redistricting has changed the game for seats across the country. North Dakota is the only state on the list where redistricting wasn’t a factor in the competitive nature of its House race. (North Dakota is a single at-large district, so there is no redistricting here.) Republican Rep. Rick Berg won North Dakota’s House seat...

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough was flummoxed by a new CBS News/New York Times poll that shows Obama’s support among female voters plummeting five points over the last two months, from 49% to 44% with Romney up 3 from 43% to 46%. “Remember the gender gap, Mark Halperin? What happened?” Scarborough asked. “Romney had the latest CBS/New York Times poll, you look inside the numbers, 6% more of the respondents were Democrats than Republicans. This poll was tilted Democratic. Still, more women supporting Romney right now!” Halperin surmised that Obama’s crashing numbers among women may have included red state...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — President Barack Obama’s shift to support gay marriage is energizing young Hispanic voters who have been working side-by-side with gay activists in their push for immigration reform. The alliance has been growing across the country, helping dispel what many say is an outdated notion that Hispanics are less tolerant of gays than the general public. “My members are telling me that we need to learn from the gay community,” said Dee Dee Garcia Blase, founder of the Phoenix-based Somos Republicans. She is now head of the Tequila Party, which she formed last year with the goal of...

Via BuzzFeed, here’s O hitting the eternal Democratic talking point that Republicans who no longer pose a threat to them were pretty sensible in hindsight but the new guy who might just beat them at the polls is the most radical wingnut yet. One thing both campaigns can agree on this year: Neither wants the public to perceive Romney as another McCain. Many of the current [Romney] strategy discussions are centered on not falling into the traps McCain did: looking wobbly as a leader and weak on the economy in the final weeks of the campaign. The private discussions include...

There has been a subtle shift in the polls for President Obama — whose approval rating has dropped to 46% in the most recent polling conducted by Gallup and Rasmussen Reports – with disapproval at 53% in the Rasmussen poll and 47% in the Gallup survey. The President’s approval numbers are mirrored in the most recent head-to-head data for General Election: Obama vs. Romney. The President is currently trailing Governor Romney by four points according to polling conducted by Rasmussen Reports between May 10-May 12th, with Romney leading 48%-44% — while the latest Gallup numbers show the race effectively tied...

Former MSNBC contributor and conservative author Pat Buchanan appeared on Fox’s America Live with Megyn Kelly on Monday where he said that President Barack Obama’s recent embrace of gay marriage imperils his presidency. He said that gay marriage rights is the “heart of the cultural war” and that Republican voters are “right now riding to the sound of the guns” to get behind Republican candidate Mitt Romney as a result of Obama’s support for same-sex marriage rights. RELATED: Pat Buchanan To Hannity: Liberals ‘Use Terms Like Bigot… To Set Up An Inquisition’ What the President has done is forfeit –...

CNBC’s John Harwood shares details from the fundraiser hosted by Ricky Martin, which is expected to bring a large sum of money to the Obama reelection campaign. >> i believe we have grown to marriage equal. >> that of course is south carolina congressman jim clyburn adding his support. he is the third ranging democrat in the house and one of the highest ranking african-american elected officials in this country. in a few hours, president obama will attend an lgbt fund-raiser hosted by openly gay entertainer ricky marine. it will be the first such event since endorsing marriage equal last...

Mitt Romney, a job-killing economic "vampire"? That's the message of a new ad by President Barack Obama's re-election campaign, which aims to turn the presumptive Republican nominee's business record into a liability as voters worry about the struggling economy. A two-minute version of the new video will run in Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Virginia. A six-minute version is available on a new Obama campaign site that is specifically devoted to criticizing Romney's approach to economic issues. Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said the former Massachusetts governor welcomed Team Obama's "attempt to pivot back to jobs and a discussion of their...

Is Barack Obama using the “Republican playbook” to run against Mitt Romney? The Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman thinks he is and outlines why in fascinating piece. I agree with him but have two other thoughts as well as we head into Election 2012. Here are some chunks from Fineman’s post, but it needs to be read in full. His intro: As he tries to become only the second Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt to win reelection, Barack Obama is adopting much of the strategic playbook Republicans have developed and used for 40 years. Of course, on the core substance of...

Prominent social conservatives are claiming that President Barack Obama's endorsement of gay marriage could be the fuel Mitt Romney needs to unite the right in November. Rick Santorum, the former Republican presidential candidate, is on record urging Romney to use this "potent weapon" against the president in the general election. And Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Sunday called the president's announcement a "missing piece of intensity" for the presumptive GOP nominee. Though gay marriage was not an issue that factored prominently into the 2012 election season until last Wednesday, when the president made his historic announcement, the clear...