Free Republic

Last Sunday, in an appearance on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” conservative columnist and author Ann Coulter took what some have seen as a swipe at former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, saying that the eventual Republican candidate shouldn’t pick “a novelty candidate” as their vice presidential nominee because it “would ring too much like Sarah Palin.” Conservative blogger and commentator Michelle Malkin challenged Coulter’s characterization, suggesting in a post on Monday that Coulter was part of the “war on conservative women” Malkin had opined on a month ago. If Coulter is indeed waging a war on conservative women by...

Kristi Noem, a Republican candidate for next month's elections to the U.S. House of Representatives, spent last weekend doing what she loves doing best - leading a party of hunters. Kristi is running in the state of South Dakota, a vast expanse of bleak, undulating prairie that is so thinly populated it has only one Congressional seat. Around here, the start of the pheasant-shooting season is a pretty big deal. For Kristi, however, pheasants are second-best. 'I know that she really wanted to spend some time going after elk,' says Josh Shields, her campaign manager. 'But that would have taken...

In 1992, the feminists in the media rejoiced at what they called "The Year of the Woman," when 10 Democratic women (and one Republican) ran for the Senate in the aftermath of Anita Hill's unproven sexual-harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas. Just two years before, seven Republican women (and two Democrats) ran, but the media just yawned. In 1992, the evening newscasts aired 29 stories exclusively devoted to female Senate candidates. In 1990, there was one ... on election night. In 1992, the morning shows interviewed female Senate candidates on 26 occasions. In 1990, there were zero. This was all about...

We routinely lambaste liberals for manufacturing false scandals, rumors, and scuttlebutt about Gov. Palin. Liberals do not hold the monopoly on this type of activity, as evidenced by the vitriol spewed by some whose favored candidates did not receive an endorsement from Gov. Palin over the past few weeks. Arguably, some of Gov. Palin’s worst enemies are fellow Republicans. Andrea Stone unwittingly points this out in her hit piece on Gov Palin, “Alaskans Ready to Move on From Palin Mania.” Stone’s article features a who’s who of Gov. Palin’s detractors and was written to build a case that she “cared...

GOP women: A minority in a minority By: Erika Lovley May 10, 2009 07:01 PM EST Women make up almost 51 percent of the U.S. population but less than 10 percent of the House and Senate GOP — a gender disconnect that could make the Republicans’ climb back to power even steeper than it would be otherwise. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) notices that she’s part of a shrinking minority every time she heads to the Senate floor for a vote. Republican women in the House say they feel the problem — literally — when their male colleagues nudge them to...

Mark Penn, a senior strategist and pollster for Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign, made news recently by suggesting that Clinton could win up to 24% of the votes from Republican women in Election 2008. Recent Rasmussen Reports polling data from match-ups against top Republican candidates offers some support for that claim—it shows Clinton attracting an average of 18% support from Republican women. However, there is another side to the gender gap story. The same surveys show that while Clinton is attracting 18% of Republican women, she is losing an average of 20% of Democratic men to the Republicans. These results come...