Free Republic

In an interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC Thursday, billionaire Santorum backer Foster Friess said that debates over the candidate's personal objections to contraception are overblown, adding that, in his day, "gals" used aspirin as birth control.

(TheDailyCaller.com) Has Sarah Palin just announced her candidacy for president? On Wednesday night she told Fox Business host Eric Bolling that she still has the fire in her belly and is still game to run for office. More telling, however, is what she said about the current GOP nomination battle and the possibility of a brokered convention.

Republicans Sens. Tom Coburn (Okla.) and Richard Burr (N.C.) today unveiled a plan to revamp Medicare that would accelerate a transition to private insurance, raise the benefit eligibility age and up the premiums paid by middle-class and upper-income seniors. (Avik Roy calls it "the best Medicare reform proposal yet.")Coburn said it best when he explained to The Washington Times why they decided to release the plan in an election year, when it's unlikely to actually go anywhere: "All of us in Congress are running around fixing everything except our biggest problem. If you don’t start fixing Medicare, you can't save...

When Romney's neo-con supporters make Romney win through voting fraud his neo-con supporters poison the well and make everyone lose.  The only way I can seen to wash the taint of criminal ambition out of the Republican Party in time to save the 2012 election is for a truly open transparent convention beginning with a proper invocation, followed by the the US Pledge of Allegiance, the Republican Creed and an every member oath/affirmation of there duty as it currently obligated by law.  The National Republican Party must formally man-up to their duty or lose. Many Republicans now look for a hero/ine to arise from the convention...

By now, it is clear that the Maine caucuses were a complete mess. Evidence is mounting that Mitt Romney's 194-vote victory over Ron Paul was prematurely announced, if not totally wrong. Washington County canceled their caucus on Saturday on account of three inches of snow (hardly a blizzard by Maine standards), and other towns that scheduled their caucuses for this week have been left out of the vote count. Now, it looks like caucuses that did take place before Feb. 11 have also been left out of final tally. As the full extent of the chaos unfolds, sources close to...

It's his birthday party, and he'll sing if he wants to.

I’m not into the Ron Paul, but Ron Paul actually winning the Maine caucus instead of Romney and the GOP hiding it, I’m starting to believe. According to the Daily Caller, the Maine Republican Party has updated and additional votes “accidentally” omitted from last day’s Maine caucus. However Maine’s state party man Charlie Webster said those votes won’t be publicly released. Why? Do they have something to hide? “We don’t want any more drama,” Webster told TheDC. “I’ve already got death threats and 1,800 emails.” Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was declared the victor in Maine over the weekend, claiming...

Did you ever think that perhaps “conservat­ive enough” by Sarah Palin’s standards might be too far right for the rest of us Republican­s and independen­ts? Most of us are not wealthy and are neither racist nor homophobic. We are not all evangelica­l Christians. We are merely commonsense people, most of whom have faith in God, but respect people who do not share our faith (we pray for them rather than judge them); we believe strongly in fiscal restraint, less government intrusion in our lives, a fair taxation system and an agenda that is not only without discrimination but also includes...

(Reuters) - Republican leaders in the House of Representatives on Monday dropped their demand for spending reductions to pay for extending a tax cut for 160 million American workers, setting up a likely breakthrough for agreement with Democrats. The about-face cleared the way for the Republican-led House to vote this week to renew for 10 months the tax cut set to expire on February 29. The Democratic-led Senate would likely support the payroll tax extension as laid out by the Republicans, even though they prefer including in the deal provisions on jobless benefits and payments for doctors treating Medicare patients...

Out on the campaign trail, Fed head Ben Bernanke is an unpopular guy. Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have both said they would replace Bernanke, not reappoint him. Rep. Ron Paul would swap the whole Federal Reserve monetary system for a gold-linked dollar, making the yellow metal legal tender. And it was Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, before he dropped out of the race, who said more quantitative easing by the Fed would be "almost treasonous." Republicans in Washington are equally unimpressed by Bernanke. Rep. Paul Ryan recently criticized the Fed for bankrolling our huge budget deficits and thereby accommodating...

We’ve all heard the axiom, “as goes Ohio, so goes the nation”. In fact, no Republican has ever won the Presidency without winning Ohio. And for this year’s GOP presidential primary, Ohio is the top prize in what is turning out to be a critical Super Tuesday on March 6th. In fact, just yesterday analyst Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics identified Ohio as the key state between a Romney runaway and the possibility of a brokered convention. So the viability of a three-way split probably comes down to Ohio, which has a fair number of evangelicals, though not to...

Republicans gathered in St. Joseph Saturday night regarded differences within their party not as fractiousness but a sign of good health leading to this year’s elections. Gathered at the annual Buchanan County Lincoln-Reagan Dinner at the St. Joseph Country Club, GOP officeholders and office-seekers called the party energized statewide and nationally. The fact that so many races have produced hard-fought primaries only means a broader base of support for the general elections against Democrats, they said. Missouri U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt said primaries prove a testing ground for candidates at all levels. “I think we’ll see that in the (U.S.)...

Despite a hard-charging speech over the weekend that suggested dissatisfaction with the Republican presidential primary frontrunner, Sarah Palin said Sunday that Mitt Romney "is a great candidate." But the 2008 vice presidential candidate and Tea Party darling isn't yet convinced Romney is "instinctively" a constitutional conservative. "I am not convinced and I don't think that the majority of GOP and independent voters are convinced," Palin told "Fox News Sunday." "And that is why you don't see Romney get over the hump. He's still in the 30-percentile mark when it comes to approval and primary wins and caucus wins. He still...

Ms. Palin, who frequently offers her take on the race as a commentator on the Fox News Channel, did not rule out making her preference known as the campaign moved forward. “My contract does not prohibit me from endorsing, thank goodness,” Ms. Palin said. “So I’m just like 60 percent, 70 percent of Americans still trying to decipher who’s best.”

Frank Gaffney has written in FrontPage magazine an article that is much needed and long overdue: "A Troubling Influence," about the extensive ties that conservative activist Grover Norquist has with radical Islamic elements. This is a lengthy and exhaustively documented piece about a man who has stood as a singular obstruction to efforts to alert people to the gravity of the threat from radical Islam. All of it should be read carefully, but here are a few highlights: The association between Grover Norquist and Islamists appears to have started about five years ago, in 1998, when he became the founding...

The Republican Party has a moral responsibility to offer alternatives to governing in Washington, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan said Friday. Speaking to members of the Journal Sentinel editorial board, as well as reporters and editors, the Janesville Republican said that the country is in a precarious state economically and that it's not enough to just win an election. "I don't like the direction the president is taking," Ryan said. "I should criticize those. I also should offer alternatives. It's not enough to run against somebody. We have a moral responsibility to offer alternatives . . . Our country is in...

Rick Santorum has backtracked from his 2008 endorsement of Mitt Romney by saying he was for “anyone put McCain.” But in this 2008 interview with Laura Ingraham Santorum praised Romney at great length — contradicting some of what he says today. In the interview, Santorum calls Romney a “true conservative” and says he “is someone we can trust.”

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...

Jay Cost did a little mythbusting Monday regarding conservative support for Mitt Romney: The conventional wisdom is that conservatives are dissatisfied with Romney, whose electoral coalition is comprised mostly of moderates and even liberal voters. That might be true of conservative media elites, but the broader electorate of conservatives have been much more amenable to Romney. No doubt, Romney is dominating among moderates and liberals, but his haul is just as strong among “somewhat conservative” voters. It is only among the “very conservative” that Gingrich has a lead – although even this is much less than what one might have...

Rick Santorum — a man who lost his last election in his home state by eighteen points — is suddenly threatening the frontrunner status of Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination. He, not Newt Gingrich, is emerging, at least for the moment, as the conservative alternative to Romney, having won decisively in three state contests this week. I say “for the moment,” because only a dopey pundit like me would assert that this race is over, as I did immediately after the Florida primary. Nevertheless, things are looking good for Santorum. Events, again “for the moment,” are swinging his...

The real story of the three results from Tuesday night is not that Rick Santorum picked up some wins -- though that is big. No, the real story is that three states held votes and nobody came. Almost nobody, that is. Consider that the total turnout for Missouri, Colorado, and Minnesota combined was barely over half of the turnout of South Carolina alone and -- worse yet -- barely over half the turnout for the same three states in 2008. Thus, after South Carolina's record-setting primary turnout, the Republican Party has now seen a total of five events in a...

Rick Santorum’s trio of victories ...is shifting the Republican presidential contest into a state-by-state fight for delegates that could last much longer than initially anticipated. The battle appears to be breaking down along regional lines, with Santorum gaining momentum in the Midwest, Newt Gingrich resonating in the South and Mitt Romney faring best in the Northeast and elsewhere... For now, all four candidates are on a hunt for delegates, each with an incentive to stay in through the next several contests. Gingrich and Ron Paul were already pledging to stay in the race for the long haul, and both have...

If Democrats are concerned about the lopsided Senate playing field this cycle, just wait until 2014. An early scan of next cycle’s Senate landscape paints a favorable picture for the GOP, which will defend 13 seats to Democrats’ 20. There is a noticeable dearth of competitive Republican seats, while several Democrats will be automatic targets based on geography.

Federal workers' union criticizes $260B House GOP transportation planBy Keith Laing - 02/08/12 02:31 PM ET A union that represents employees of numerous federal agencies accused Republicans in the House of Representatives of cutting benefits to fund their $260 billion surface transportation bill. The Washington, D.C.-based National Treasury Employees Union sharply criticized H.R. 3813, the Securing Annuities for Federal Employees Act of 2012, arguing the legislation would divert savings from spending less on federal employees' pensions to the Highway Trust Fund. The bill, which was sponsored by Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.), was approved Tuesday by the House Oversight and Government...

Rick Santorum may have swept all three states Tuesday in the latest Republican presidential contests, but the big winner might have been Democratic President Barack Obama...

Way before the first caucus in Iowa, conservative have been concerned that the "Republican establishment" would propel the decidedly un-conservative Mitt Romney to the GOP nomination. The mainstream media has been happy to play along, practically writing the obituary of the tea party movement and discounting conservative contenders. The president's reelection campaign has focused almost exclusively on Mr. Romney as its de facto opponent. And yet somehow, despite all the collective firepower against them, those conservative voters are making their voices heard. They may not achieve an absolute victory for a conservative candidate via the primary process, but they are...

His candidacy all but dismissed just days ago, Rick Santorum won the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses and a nonbinding primary in Missouri on Tuesday, an unexpected trifecta that raised fresh questions about Mitt Romney’s ability to corral conservative support. With his triumphs, Mr. Santorum was also suddenly presenting new competition to Newt Gingrich as the chief alternative to Mr. Romney, the front-runner. Where Mr. Gingrich has won one state, South Carolina, Mr. Santorum has now won four, including Iowa...

Here at Broomfield High School to attend GOP Caucus. Caucus hasn't started yet. Listening to candidates speaches. Polite. Quiet. Filling up. Expect over 700 attendees. I will update throughout the evening. Regards, TS

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The California Republican Party will host presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich during its convention later this month. Party Chairman Tom Del Beccaro said Tuesday that Gingrich will address the twice-annual gathering in Burlingame on Feb. 25th. Del Beccaro calls Gingrich one of the most dynamic figures in GOP politics in the last 50 years....

Dick Morris was practically CRYING on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program about how we need to stop attacking Mitt Romney, especially the three conservative candidates in the race. Ann Coulter was up next on Hannity where the two of them played out a charade that almost looked rehearsed. Coulter was just fawning over the very thought of Romney saying how we “should all be celebrating because we have a conservative candidate” and she even blasphemously compared Romney to Reagan. There’s a hole in Ann’s theory. Maybe Mitt can smile like Ronald Reagan and even make a half decent speech. The...

Much like the good son in the biblical parable, thin-skinned Rick Santorum has shown a fair amount of open resentment over the embrace conservatives have given prodigal Newt Gingrich upon the latter's return to the conservative scene..... Consider: the main reason Santorum and his supporters put forth to support Rick is because he is "the true conservative" in the race. Along these same lines, he defines his massive eighteen-point loss in his last Senate race as one where he at least went down swinging and fighting for the right things. He uses this to chide Mitt and Newt for their...

Nothing more to say. The photo says it all.

The GOP has made it very, very clear that they don’t actually need the Conservative vote. They merely trade on our dislike for the Democrat label and thus rightly discern that we will go along with the GOP label. And we go along with it because it’s easier to maintain our expectations of the GOP than to face its realities: it IS the Left. . . in drag. So, why should I vote? The GOP has all the votes their ideology needs, regardless of who wins. **** A heretical question: Is actively withholding one's vote in protest a sign of...

Sometime late last night or early this morning Eastern time, the final results in Nevada were released: Romney........16,486......51.1% Gingrich......6,959.......21.1% Paul..........6,175.......18.8% Santorum......3,277.......10.0% Romney came in with a 1% lower percentage of the vote than in 2008, but more significantly, both Romney’s actual number of votes and Republican participation in the caucuses was way down from 2008. Over 44,000 votes were cast in 2008 to just under 33,000 in 2012. Romney received 22,646 votes in 2008 versus 16,486 in 2012. Spin away.

First, he called Adelson to convince him to stop adding financial support of Gingrich via his SuperPAC. When that didn’t work, he piled on some more of his own money, and those who fund the SuperPacs advocating on his behalf or at least slamming his competitors. When that didn’t work, some shills in the press dropped the conspicuous rumor that Newt’s “…hold a press conference after the Nevada Caucus on Saturday, raising new speculation about his future in the race,” implying he would get out Saturday evening. This was solely to try to undermine the vote in Nevada in Romney’s...

Just before the Florida primary on Tuesday, a wag predicted that it would be won either by the guy everyone hates or the guy no one likes. It was an easy prediction because the election was guaranteed to be won either by Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney. However, although Romney won a crushing victory over Gingrich, whose victory in South Carolina boosted his campaign enormously, it did not erase doubts about his viability as the GOP standard-bearer this fall. This is not to say that anyone really believes that Gingrich would run better against Barack Obama in the general election...

Republican actual Delegate Count (Not inflated by propaganda or “Super Delegates” or Republican establishment wishes) After Iowa: Santorum: 14 Romney: 12 Gingrich: 0 Paul: 0 After New Hampshire: Santorum: 14 Romney: 19 Gingrich: 0 Paul: 3 After South Carolina: Santorum: 14 Romney: 21 Gingrich: 23 Paul: 3 After Florida: Santorum: 14 Romney: 71 Gingrich: 23 Paul: 3 After Nevada: Santorum: 16 Romney: 81 Gingrich: 27 Paul: 6 My Count differs from the Wall Street Journal because I take only the actual delegates earned in the contests that have occurred so far. My point in this is if you are counting...

The GOP Establishment we keep hearing about is real, and it is also doomed. That will not change whether the Establishment’s candidate Mitt Romney wins in November or not. After the election, the battle really starts; what is happening now are just skirmishes in a fight for control of the Republican Party. Not the soul of the party – if it had one, it auctioned it off long ago – but the mechanism of the party. The Grand Old Party matters only as a vehicle to carry our banner forward. To do that, we need to seize control, and we...

Three Republicans, including an Englewood rabbi, are seeking the GOP nomination to run in the new 9th Congressional District. The three are vying for a chance to compete against Rep. Steve Rothman or Rep. Bill Pascrell, both Democrats, are engaged in a primary fight for the redrawn 9th District. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a talk show host and author of books including “Kosher Jesus” and “Kosher Sex,” told Bergen’s Republican Organization he wants to be the nominee, according to a report on politickernj.com. The congressional run is Boteach’s first bid for public office. Boteach and Rothman, a former Englewood mayor, were...

Both President Barack Obama and a representative of the Republican Party used their weekly addresses to encourage their political opponents to pass legislation they claimed will improve the economy. The difference is the House's American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act would generate revenue to pay for infrastructure by expanding energy production while the president's proposed housing plan is just another expensive gimmick. In today's GOP weekly address, Congressman Pat Meehan (R-Pennsylvania) said, "Instead of more earmarks or new taxes, our bill will remove barriers to job growth by expanding American energy production - which will help lower gas prices -...

Romney gaffes alarm GOPBy Cameron Joseph - 02/02/12 08:20 PM ET Congressional Republicans are worried Mitt Romney’s propensity for verbal gaffes will hurt him in the fall. The former Massachusetts governor has had a series of foot-in-mouth moments that have set off alarm bells for the GOP and brought on gleeful attacks from Democrats. The latest came the morning after his decisive win in Florida’s primary, when he told CNN he’s “not concerned about the very poor.” Republicans say the normally disciplined Romney needs to get back on message, and avoid handing Democrats sound bites that can be used in...

Today's unemployment news gave the Obama administration a bit of good news for the upcoming election — and really just a bit — but Gallup had already provided a big dash of cold water yesterday. In their look at partisan trends on a state-by-state basis, there has been a dramatic shift in favor of the Republican Party over the last four years. In 2008, when Obama won his first term, 18 states were solidly Democratic while only four were solidly Republican. It’s now 12 to 10, and that’s not even the extent of the bad news for the White House:...

Welcome news on the merits, but I doubt Obama cares much. If he wins, then the Cordray and NLRB appointments are vindicated constitutionally, which will give him political cover to be even bolder with his executive power grabs. If he loses, then instead of whining endlessly on the campaign trail this year about the conservative “do-nothing Congress� (only half of which is controlled by conservatives, of course), he can whine about the conservative “do-nothing Congress� and the conservative courts that are allegedly rubber-stamping their obstructionism. All the more reason to re-elect him and let him appoint more judges. Which is...

Rick Santorum is on the verge of being left off the ballot in the the Indiana primary, three sources told BuzzFeed Friday. The former Pennsylvania senator is more than 30 signatures short of the 500 needed in the 7th Congressional district, which includes Marion County, where Indianapolis is located, a source close to the Santorum campaign said. The Marion County chief deputy of voter registration on the Democratic side, Scott Carr, confirmed that Santorum had not submitted 500 valid signatures. An Indiana Republican source said Santorum is "a couple dozen" signatures short, but that Newt Gingrich will be on the...

Mike Vanderboegh is drinking Diet Mountain Dew in the cafeteria of the Rayburn building on Capitol Hill, and he is pissed. Not because his flight from Alabama was almost “as bumpy as [his] first marriage,” nor because he almost got into a physical altercation with an “idiot street urban adventurer” outside the National Archives who said Vanderboegh looked like Newt Gingrich. The former militia man turned gun rights blogger is angry because he thinks the Republican “sons-a-bitches” on the House Oversight Committee put on the “ultimate display of public limp dickery” during a Thursday hearing in which Attorney General Eric...

Just before the Florida primary on Tuesday, a wag predicted that it would be won either by the guy everyone hates or the guy no one likes. It was an easy prediction because the election was guaranteed to be won either by Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney. However, although Romney won a crushing victory over Gingrich, whose victory in South Carolina boosted his campaign enormously, it did not erase doubts about his viability as the GOP standard-bearer this fall. This is not to say that anyone really believes that Gingrich would run better against Barack Obama in the general election...

The earth has become small, and on it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small. His species is ineradicable as the flea; the Last Man lives longest. -- Nietzsche So it seems it will be Mitt. And good thing he won't be offering his main rival the second spot on the ticket. "Mitt & Newt" sounds like the name of a comedy act or a network sitcom. Not right for something epic or tragic. Which is to say… not right for the times. Not even close.

..Mr. Romney has captured the Republican flag and will carry it into battle this Fall. If he loses, those people who believed devoutly that the times require something more than a standard-issue Republican for whom all things political are negotiable and to whom there is no dispute that cannot be settled by compromise … those people will be saying, "Never again." If, on the other hand, Mr. Romney wins, what then? Does anyone expect that when he gets to Washington and starts running the government like a business, entitlements will reform themselves, the deficit will shrivel on its own accord,...

* Leading with the chin. ** By: Larry Walker, Jr. *Mitt Romney argued haphazardly, in the January 26th GOP Debate, that he is pro-immigrant, because his father was born in Mexico. Ah, so that’s it. He shouted, "Mr. Speaker, I'm not anti-immigrant. My father was born in Mexico...” That little proclamation was worse than his implication that Swiss and Cayman Island bank accounts somehow help create jobs in America. When I heard the former, my first thought was, ‘what does that have to do with being pro-immigrant’? And upon hearing the latter, I laughed out loud.Was Romney’s father a Mexican...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday criticized President Obama for opposing the GOP effort to repeal a key portion of the 2010 healthcare law. McConnell noted in his criticism on the Senate floor that the Obama administration itself decided the program is not financially viable. The House today is expected to vote to repeal the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) program, a voluntary, long-term health program that the Department of Health and Human Services said in October had no viable path forward. “Yet for some reason, the president is unwilling to follow through on that conclusion...