Free Republic

But the press has not had to invent controversial remarks by Santorum, who has supplied them himself. He has said that Satan is undermining America, in part by corrupting mainline Protestantism; that liberal versions of Christianity are distortions of the creed; that as president he would speak out against birth control, and that states should be free to prohibit it; and that John McCain “doesn’t have any” religious views. Some of his comments are indefensible, and even some of Santorum’s defensible assertions would have been better left to someone else — someone not seeking the presidency — to say. Santorum’s...

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...

A number of recent developments — the dropout of several high-profile candidates, the GOP’s special-election defeat in New York’s 26th congressional district, and the emergence of the future of Israel as a national campaign issue, among others — have greatly clarified the landscape of the 2012 Republican presidential campaign. As recently as April, a Gallup poll had Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump tied for the lead among Republican and Republican-leaning independent voters. Today, Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin are alone in Gallup’s first tier. Romney leads at 17 percent, with Palin at 15 percent. Palin has embarked on what appears...