Free Republic

In September, I posted another vanity (linked below) in which I observed that the historical trends in this election favored Fred Thompson. Since then, his RCP average has dropped from about 22% to 16-17%. In the more volatile Rasmussen daily tracking poll, he has also dropped to 16%, about a 10 point drop from his post announcement high. In light of the above poll numbers, is it time for me to issue a mea culpa? No. This is not at all inconsistent with the hypothesis of my previous post. Neither of the successful insurgent candidates in modern times, Reagan or...

<p>The rapid escalation of the U.S. anti-immigration hysteria fueled by ratings-hungry cable-television hotheads and leading Republican presidential hopefuls is a dangerous trend: It may lead to a Hispanic intifada that may rock this nation in the not-so-distant future.</p>

Hillary Clinton -- and the other Democrats running for president -- couldn't possibly have assumed that they would forever skate around the issue of illegal immigration. That notion came to an end in the most recent debate, when the New York senator badly slipped over a question about her state's controversial plan to issue driver's licenses to illegal aliens. Did she think no one would ask? Democrats had better start dealing with this. Polls show a large majority of Americans, including Democrats, opposed to illegal immigration. They also find that most Americans favor some sort of amnesty for many illegals....

October 2007 may turn out to be the month that immigration became a key issue in presidential politics. It hasn't been, at least in my lifetime. The Immigration Act of 1965, which turned out to open up America to mass immigration after four decades of restrictive laws, wasn't one of the Great Society issues Lyndon Johnson emphasized in 1964. The Immigration Act of 1986, which legalized millions of illegal immigrants but whose border and workplace provisions have never been effectively enforced, was a bipartisan measure unmentioned in the debates between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale. There was no perceptible difference...

Shortly before a Republican presidential primary debate in Columbia, South Carolina, this last May, several conservative activists in the state received mysterious envelopes in the mail. The letters arrived anonymously, each one containing an eight-page document, a typewritten manifesto with a pseudo-academic title: "Mormons in Contemporary American Society: A Politically Dangerous Religion?" The letters depicted Mormonism as based on "hoaxes" and ridiculed the church's founder, Joseph Smith, as a "gold digger turned prophet." The mailing also provocatively dubbed Smith "the Mohammed of the West." "Like the prophet of Islam," it said, "Smith founded his religion upon prophecies and revelations which...

The big news on Fred Thompson's site is the endorsement of Tom McClintock, a popular and conservative state senator. Nothing on Hillary's comment in the debates last night, although his immigration and border security plan is still high on the front page. I think this is another example of Thompson's strategy of choosing to not do the things the media think he should be doing. Romney and Giuliani were quick out of the box to jump on Hillary's statement and denounce driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. Today, that'll show up in every story; the dominant story of the day is...

The Senate rejected Wednesday an attempt to move ahead with a bill to allow illegal immigrants under age 30 to remain in the United States and gain legal status if they attend college or join the military. The vote to move ahead on the Dream Act (the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act), got 52 votes, eight short of the 60 needed. Among those voting against moving ahead with the bill were eight Democrats, even though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid appealed to his majority to back him. But this was yet another case when the Democratic majority...

And, the Paulies wept. Duncan Hunter doubled the totals of the next-closest candidate, garnering 534 of approximately 1,400 votes cast. Fred Thompson came in second with 266 votes, and Paul rounded out the top three with 217 votes. Here are all the results: Duncan Hunter: 534 Fred Thompson: 266 Ron Paul: 217 Mike Huckabee: 83 Rudy Giuliani: 78 Mitt Romney: 61 Ray McKinney: 28 John Cox: 10 John McCain: 8 Sam Brownback: 6 Tom Tancredo: 6 Hugh Cort: 3 Thompson had a very good showing, especially considering the Fred Head presence was fairly modest, and there were no campaign surrogates...

In five days most Americans will begin enjoying their long Labor Day weekend - the traditional end of summer - in the usual way: barbecuing, a final trip to the beach and watching sport. A strange group of nearly 20, however, will fan out across Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states in the presidential nominating process. They will trudge through cornfields and scamper from diners to town halls and school gymnasiums. They will lavish praise on their audiences and tell voters in each state - two of the whitest and least populated in America - why they are...

Will the execution-style murder of three young students in Newark, N.J., finally turn the tide in the immigration enforcement debate? Will we at last abandon the deadly, chaotic, lawless sanctuary nation experiment and restore America's lost status as a sovereign nation under the rule of law? The death of six innocent men and women and the injury of more than 1,000 at the hands of several illegal alien 1993 World Trade Center bombers wasn't enough to convince politicians in New York and across this country to end illegal alien sanctuary policies. The death of nearly 3,000 innocent men, women and...

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Fred Thompson let another silk drift gently to the straw-covered ground of the Iowa State Fair on Friday as he continued his Dance of the Seven Veils toward declaring his candidacy for president. “If things play out the way I’ve got in mind, we’ll be seeing a bit more of each other” in the next couple of months, Thompson said at the end of a low-key, 20-minute speech to a crowd of supporters, the media and the curious. It wasn’t anywhere near the outright declaration of candidacy the Fredheads in the throng were hoping for, but...

Last week's Iowa straw poll got a lot of national attention -- historically it's known to be something that could make or break a presidential candidate. On Thursday, Illinois got in on the action, with its first-ever straw poll. The polls were open at the state fair, and voters chose a candidate for president. But it's not Election Day -- its the first straw poll in Illinois. "You felt the enthusiasm in that room -- here it is, it was pouring rain at the time, and people were literally standing in the rain waiting to vote,” said Illinois State Republican...

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Wednesday that the issue of illegal immigration angered people unlike no other, including the unpopular war in Iraq, and sparked unprecedented death threats against him. "It is unbelievable how this has inflamed the passions of the American people," the Arizona senator said in remarks at The Aspen Institute, a public policy forum. In an interview, he declined to elaborate on the threats he had received. Still, McCain said, he continued to support a temporary worker program for the 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Derided by critics as amnesty, the program was...

Among male Republican voters, Mitt Romney is in a dead heat for 1st place in the national GOP race. Rudy Giuliani gets his advantage with women but Romney can likely close that gap if McCain continues to slip. McCain polls 19% among female voters (just 8% among males). Romney is the only candidate that will be able to parlay his success from the Ames Straw Poll to the national scene immediately. Huckabee may have exceeded expectations that will catapult him into relevance in Iowa but he is still unknown nationally outside of Iowa (and Arkansas). Romney has made himself the...

Greenville, S.C. For nearly three decades, South Carolina has been a make-or-break state for Republican presidential candidates. None has become the national nominee without a victory – often a decisive one – in this first-in-the-South primary. But six months before the primary here, the state is giving up few secrets about the direction of the race, reflecting a level of disarray in the Republican ranks rarely seen in years past. GOP leaders and conservative activists here say that the war in Iraq and immigration policy are splintering upstate evangelical voters, a large voting bloc that has typically united around litmus-test...

WASHINGTON - Republican presidential hopeful John McCain on Thursday backed a scaled-down proposal that imposes strict rules to end illegal immigration but doesn't include a path to citizenship. The move away from a comprehensive measure is an about-face for the Arizona senator, who had been a leading GOP champion of a bill that included a guest worker program and would have legalized many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. It failed earlier this year. "We can still show the American people that we are serious about securing our nation's border," McCain said in a statement,...

Many Republican faithful, from the grass roots to the Capitol, have concluded that Fred Thompson, the preternaturally avuncular actor and former Senator from Tennessee, is the cure-all for their party's ills. Thompson has yet to enter the presidential race, and yet Thompson already shares front-runner status with former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani in some national polls of gop voters. Thompson will spend the rest of the summer raising money, which he was scheduled to do conspicuously at a donor event in Washington on July 28. Another advantage to waiting: the longer he remains an unofficial candidate, the longer...

Republican governors say it's too soon to worry about the absence of a clear favorite for the GOP presidential nomination. The muddled picture could even be a blessing, some said in interviews during the weekend meeting of the National Governors Association. The candidates' scramble to break from the pack and speculation about possible new entries such as former Sen. Fred Thompson are keeping the race in the headlines. "I don't subscribe to the notion that we have to have an identified front-runner candidate early on," said Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, chairman of the Republican Governors Association. "The longer you stay...

<p>He's hiring staff, raising money, making public appearances, and doing nicely in the polls – all without announcing even an exploratory committee for his presidential campaign. In fact, Fred Thompson might consider never formally entering the 2008 presidential sweepstakes, he's doing so well – or at least wait "until after he's wrapped up the [Republican] nomination," quips pundit Stu Rothenberg. But in the end, the former senator from Tennessee, lawyer/lobbyist, and TV actor does, by many press accounts, plan to announce in early September that he is running for president; he may formalize an "exploratory" phase before then. One point is already clear: GOP nomination race 2.0 has begun. "It's down to three [candidates]. Some would say 2-1/2. I would say three," says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The half-candidate would be former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who still leads in national polls, but whose numbers have been falling steadily for several months – in direct proportion to the steady, upward trajectory of Mr. Thompson's, according to Pollster.com. The campaign of Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona, once seen as the GOP heir apparent, is nearly bankrupt, and with Thompson entering the race, that makes his money chase all the more difficult. Mr. Giuliani could remain strong if there's continued national focus on terrorism – and especially if the US is attacked again before the primaries. But failing that, the race may well boil down to Thompson and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, analysts say. Despite Giuliani's longstanding position at the top of the GOP heap in national 2008 presidential polls, political experts have attributed that lead to name recognition. As conservative base voters have learned about Giuliani's liberal positions on abortion and gay rights, the former mayor's overall support has declined.</p>

The candidate who seems to have been running forever and the one who has yet to enter the race are leading their respective nomination contests in a national preference poll by Zogby International. The latest Zogby survey shows New York Sen. Hillary Clinton with a 37 percent to 25 percent lead over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards is a distant third at 12 percent, while New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson leads the also-rans with 4 percent. Clinton’s edge over Obama has shrunk slightly since late May - she has lost two points and Obama has...