Free Republic

As I’ve been noting here, one key metric to determine whether the prolonged GOP nomination process is damaging Mitt Romney’s general election prospects is his standing among independents, many of whom remain sour on Obama’s economic performance. Today’s new Pew poll offers another installment. The topline is striking enough — it finds that Rick Santorum is surging among Tea Partyers and conservatives, again suggesting that they just can’t come to terms with Romney as the nominee.

Over the last few weeks, Washington conventional wisdom has begun to coalesce around the idea that Sarah Palin won't run for president. A number of news outlets and commentators have pointed out that she isn't doing the sorts of things that serious candidates usually do at this point in the calendar, hiring veteran staffers in the key early primary states, visiting those states regularly, and delivering speeches that begin to lay one's "vision" for the country. Roger Ailes of Fox News pointedly did not suspend her contract, as he did those of two other candidates, because, he said, she has...

What's wrong with No Labels? E.J. Dionne Jr. December 16, 2010 | 12:00 am WASHINGTON—The "No Labels" group that held its inaugural meeting this week in the name of the political center fills me with passionate ambivalence. My attitude is moderately supportive and moderately critical—accented by a moderate touch of cynicism. Who can disagree with a call to put aside "petty partisanship" and embrace "practical solutions"? Let's cheer the group's insistence on "fact-based discussions." Too much political talk these days is utterly disconnected from what's actually true. Fact-based always beats fantasy-based. The No Labelers are also right to be repulsed...

The expected Republican upset at the voting booth today is bound to leave many inside the Beltway confused. What on earth do the American people want? After all, just two years ago they threw out the Republicans, and now they are throwing out the Democrats. What Americans want is a government that stays out of their pocketbooks and out of their private lives. Under Presidents Bush and Obama, we've gotten just the opposite: government program after government program created with our money to socially engineer the economy. Evidence of voters’ desires lies in the huge swing we are seeing in...

GOP Not Fully Embracing Their Candidate for Congress Rosanna Pulido is the GOP's candidate in the race to replace Rahm Emanuel in Congress, but her own party hasn't given their full support. I will have to call RUSH LIMBAUGH!

(KRT) - Maybe it happens this way in most elections. But it really seems the middle's getting squeezed in this presidential election. The angry idealists are going at it from the left and right, leaving the practical middle wondering which way it should go. I found myself in this predicament recently in New York, where I moderated a 45-minute exchange between Gary Bauer of the evangelical right and Joseph Hough of the Protestant left. The two went after it over matters like how you treat the poor. Even though it was barely 9 in the morning, the interview grew so...