Free Republic

Campaigning in former President Reagan's hometown before last week's Illinois primary, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum asserted that he was the only candidate "who stands on the pillars of what Ronald Reagan built as the modern Republican Party."Speaking in the shadow of a statue of Reagan, Santorum proclaimed: "Let the voice of Reagan be heard across this land."And it isn't just Santorum: During the GOP presidential debates, Reagan's name was invoked nearly 250 times by the GOP field.But many historians argue that if Reagan had a true heir, he or she might raise taxes, compromise with Democrats and put aside...

A Recap Of the CRP Platform Committee Activity At the Convention There is much to be said about the California Republican Party’s Fall Convention held in downtown Los Angeles last weekend. Presidential candidates and a straw poll, great workshops and townhalls, tributes, speeches and more. The better part of a thousand GOP activists, donors and leaders descended on the L.A. Live! Marriott-Ritz hotel, across from the Staples Center (we were the pre-show for the Emmy Awards, I guess). This column, however, is devoted to only one aspect of the convention – the ongoing process of the quadrennial adoption of the...

oday the campaign of conservative State Senator Sam Aanestad will announce their endorsement by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association PAC -- a major and significant endorsement in any race for public office in California, but an especially powerful one in a Republican primary. This imminent endorsement should not come to a surprise to anyone who even remotely follows California politics because there are only two candidates running for the GOP nomination -- conservative Republican Sam Aanestad and liberal Republican Abel Maldonado. There is no need for us to lay out the case for why HJTA is backing Aanestad in this...

There isn't much point in my expending a lot of time this morning chastising Senate and Assembly Democrats for their plans, this morning, to try to stick Californians with billions of dollars in new taxes, using some scheme where they brazenly attempt to navigate around the State Constitution's requirement for a 2/3 vote to raise taxes. Through sleight of hand and bizarre terminology, Democrats are planning to hike the state's income, gas, and car taxes (and that's not all) -- and do it with a majority vote (Republican legislators have appropriately and boldly said NO to any tax increases to...

There's plenty of hand wringing in the press about why the state still doesn't have a budget six weeks into the fiscal year. But one member of the media is delighting in the standoff and playing an oversized role in keeping it going: a 39-year-old conservative blogger who spends hours of his workday in bed typing away on an aging Dell laptop, hundreds of miles from the Capitol. Jon Fleischman has never aspired to be a reporter. "Fair and balanced" is decidedly not his thing. "I don't pretend to be objective," the longtime GOP activist said last week in his...