Free Republic

Did Tuesday’s results matter? Nowhere near as much as the results from Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida mattered. But primary campaigns rarely reach stasis; momentum shifts, ebbs, and flows, and the trio of contests yesterday offered a few hints that the storyline will change once again.Rick Santorum is on the verge of overtaking Newt Gingrich as the anti-Romney alternative.Santorum began this contest as the man of the hour, the little engine that could in a sweater-vest who challenged and beat the much-better-funded Mitt Romney . . . and yet he has, at the moment, an entire three...

The Case for Romney - A president who owes you is better than one who owns you. [BIG snip] Let me try to offer some solace. Even if Romney is a Potemkin conservative (a claim I think has merit but is also exaggerated), there is an instrumental case to be made for him: It is better to have a president who owes you than to have one who claims to own you. A President Romney would be on a very short leash. A President Gingrich would probably chew through his leash in the first ten minutes of his presidency and...

DECEMBER 12, 2011 Newt Is the Problem On health-care entitlements, Newt has moved left. Newt Gingrich’s rise to the top of the GOP polls is fueled, in part, by Republicans’ mistrust of Mitt Romney. Romney’s signature Massachusetts health-care law, the model for Obamacare, leads many to wonder whether Romney can challenge the president on this most important domestic issue. But any conservative who opposes Romney because of Romneycare should oppose Gingrich with thrice the intensity: Newt Gingrich is one of the principal abettors of the exploding health-care entitlement state we face today. Indeed, it’s not clear what would be worse...

June 18, 2011 4:00 A.M. Romney’s Religion Problem Andrew C. McCarthy Mitt Romney is said to be the early frontrunner in the GOP presidential sweepstakes. One rival, Newt Gingrich, is perceived as floundering in a swirl of unforced errors and staff insurrection. Yet when it comes to Islam, which will continue to matter mightily in the next administration, the frontrunner could learn a thing or two from the flounderer. The issue is not religion. It is the seditious Islamist political program. Most Americans, myself included, would prefer not to have to think about Islam at all. Muslims forced their beliefs...

Here’s the long-form birth certificate, so birthers can get to work on explaining why we now need a photograph of President Obama’s parents standing in front of Kapiolani hospital with a copy of the August 4, 1961 edition of the Honolulu Star Advertiser  in one hand and a complete genome in the other. Here’s White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer’s full statement on the matter: In 2008, in response to media inquiries, the President’s campaign requested his birth certificate from the state of Hawaii. The state sent the campaign the President’s birth certificate, the same legal documentation provided to all...

Send In the ClownsYippee! We've all got a front-row seat at the three-ring Stupid Party circus. Am I the only potato who levitated from his couch last week when my favorite cartoon character, Mr. Newt, announced to a breathlessly waiting world that he and his running mate, Callista, were forming an “exploratory committee” for a possible presidential run next year? There he was, waddling along and grinning from ear to ear, good old SpongeBob SquarePants himself, coyly flirting with the wingnut electorate like an aging Sally Rand who left her fan collection back at the Casa di Riposo. I was...