Free Republic

The Obama-Biden campaign bus tour rolling through Pennsylvania this week, about four months before Election Day, illustrates that the road to re-election runs through the Keystone State. Many political analysts believe that President Barack Obama cannot win without Pennsylvania, so it would seem self-evident that the state should get considerable attention from both campaigns in the upcoming election. Instead, Pennsylvania has been downgraded by some pundits and may have been dropped from the list of top-priority swing states by the Romney campaign. We believe that's a mistake, and that Pennsylvania instead is poised to become the Ohio or Florida of...

President Barack Obama is ramping up a fresh phase of his re-election bid with a bus tour next week, focusing more on direct engagement with voters and less on ritzy fundraisers. Obama's two-day road trip through Pennsylvania and Ohio, two key battleground states in the November election, kicks off July 5, a campaign official said. It will be the president's first bus tour of the 2012 campaign. The bus trip also will coincide with the release of the monthly nationwide jobs report, a key economic indicator that could directly affect the president's re-election prospects...

When Erie County Democrats cast ballots in the Pennsylvania primary, 17 percent either didn't vote for President Barack Obama or wrote in someone else's name. In Crawford County, 23 percent of Democrats at the polls declined to vote for the president. And the website www.PoliticsPA.com recently reported that in 27 of the state's 67 counties, primarily in central and southwestern Pennsylvania, more than 30 percent of the Democratic voters failed to vote for Obama on April 24. Does that translate into a battleground-state problem for Obama against presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney in the Nov. 6 election? Bill Cole, Erie...

My election Shaman paid me a surprise visit today. He was standing just outside my front door as I retrieved the mail. He rattled his beaded stick a couple of times and then said: "Focus on the cost!" He then vanished in a puff of blue smoke, leaving behind only a damp bar napkin with some smudged charts scribbled on it and a few peanut shells clinging to its corners. I thought at first that he might have been talking about campaign finance or the pension plans in San Jose. After reflection, I am pretty sure he was talking...

York County Commissioner Chris Reilly has a slight lead over state Rep. Scott Perry in the Republican race to replace Todd Platts representing the 4th U.S. Congressional District, according to a poll commissioned by The York Dispatch newspaper. However, the poll of 400 registered voters found that 57 percent of the voters are still undecided. There are seven Republicans in the race for the seat, which covers the West Shore of Cumberland County, part of Harrisburg and all of York and Adams counties. In the poll, Reilly was favored by 17.8 percent of voters while Perry was favored by 12.6...

After tonight, Newt Gingrich has to be considered finished. You don't get to be the nominee if you don't win primaries, and if Gingrich can't win Alabama and Mississippi, it's hard to imagine any other state in the country where he can win. While Gingrich may remain some kind of factor, in almost every remaining state, this race devolves to a Romney-Santorum battle. That's great news for Santorum, who has been hoping and yearning for a two-man race. It's acceptable news for Romney, who knows that party donors and insiders dread a Santorum candidacy as likely to lead to a...

Livonia, Michigan—Rick Santorum is running on fumes. His is the curse of insurgent presidential campaigns—too much passion and too little sleep. You could hear it in his voice Monday morning talking to a Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Livonia as the decibel level grew higher, the diction grew muddier, and the logorrhea grew more obvious. An open-ended question on Social Security prompted a nine-minute Santorum monologue. Challenged from the audience about whether he was too conservative for the general election, Santorum out of nowhere unleashed a vicious non sequitur: “They mock conservatives, that’s what the media does. They mock the...

On Monday, America Live host Megyn Kelly invited a panel made up of radio host David Webb and Gotham Ghostwriters president / Democratic strategist Dan Gerstein onto the show to discuss candidate Rick Santorum‘s recent comments concerning Barack Obama‘s values and faith. You may recall that, while speaking at a Christian conference on Saturday, Santorum criticized Obama’s moral compass and suggested the President’s agenda was based on a “phony theology” not based on the Bible. The next say, Santorum appeared on Face the Nation, where he clarified that he hadn’t been talking about the President’s faith, nor about religion convictions...

Mitt Romney, once seen as a sure bet to win the Michigan Republican presidential primary, now appears locked in a surprisingly tight race with challenger Newt Gingrich. Michigan is home turf for the former Massachusetts governor. His late father, George Romney, was a popular governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, and the younger Romney grew up in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. But with the state’s primary approaching on Feb. 28, Mr. Romney’s lead remains small, given his home-court advantage. A poll released last week by the Detroit Free Press/WXYZ-TV found that 31% of likely voters supported Mr....

HARRISBURG — A Chester County entrepreneur won the endorsement Saturday from Pennsylvania’s Republican Party in what could be a bruising, four-way primary election for the nomination to contest Democrat Bob Casey’s re-election bid for U.S. Senate. The endorsement was won by Steve Welch after an extraordinary show of power by Gov. Tom Corbett, who began calling state party officials to tell them of his support for Welch less than two weeks ago. (snip) The endorsement of Welch will be viewed by grassroots party members “as a poke in the face,” Rohrer said. Welch has been criticized by his rivals for...

With little hope of performing well in Florida next week, Rick Santorum may be cutting his losses. The Republican primary, as predicted, has become solidly a two-man contest between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. Santorum is struggling to compete in a state that is much larger, much more expensive and has a more diverse electorate than the previous three contests. The former Pennsylvania senator told reporters in Florida that he was leaving the state after Thursday night's debate for a fundraiser in Pennsylvania and to prepare his tax records to make public at home in Virginia, according to an NBC...

U.S. Rep. Todd Platts, R-York, announced this afternoon he will not seek a seventh term in office. During his time in office, Platts developed a reputation as a political moderate, who strongly supported the military and veterans. He routinely advocated more transparent government. In 2010, Esquire magazine named him one of the top-10 members of Congress. In the last year, Platts has drawn fire from the York 912 Patriots, a Tea Party group that criticized Platts for supporting the bank bailouts and the stimulus program. Platts, 49, is stepping away before a new district map for the state goes into...

IN the five days since his almost-victory in the Iowa caucuses, Rick Santorum’s critics have tried out an unusual line of attack against the former Pennsylvania senator. Not content with the many targets that Santorum’s record presents, they’ve gone after the way he and his wife, Karen, handled the premature delivery and death of their fourth child, Gabriel, in 1996. At 19 weeks of pregnancy, Gabriel was found to have a potentially fatal fetal abnormality. After a risky intrauterine surgery, Karen Santorum came down with an infection that ended up triggering labor. The baby lived for just two hours, and...

On Wednesday’s edition of Now with Alex Wagner, the eponymous host asked MSNBC commentator Meghan McCain if her party was in crisis. McCain trashed the Iowa caucus and dreaded the rise of surging Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum. “My father did not become the nominee having anything to do with the Iowa caucus. I find it completely irrelevant. If Rick Santorum becomes the nominee of this party, I mean, it is going to be bedlam and hysteria like you have never seen.” With her over-the-top prognostication for the pending apocalypse in that scenario, McCain appeared to be channeling Bill Murray...

In Monday afternoon Fox News interview, ex-Alaska Guv praises Santorum again and adds "Donald Trump has a lot to offer." Palin: "I did praise Rick Santorum and I'll praise him again...

Mitt Romney's top ten is made up of Goldman Sachs, followed by Credit Suisse (Switzerland), Morgan Stanley, Barclays (UK), Bank of America and JP Morgan. In contrast Romney's co-frontrunner in Iowa, Ron Paul, has a top three donor list made up of the US Army, US Navy and US Airforce.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) - A new poll shows Pennsylvania Republicans favor Newt Gingrich as the GOP Presidential nominee. In the Susquehanna Polling and Research poll released Tuesday, the former House Speaker has a 17-point lead over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. In a hypothetical match-up with Republican voters, Gingrich leads the race with 35 percent, followed by Romney with 18 percent. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum was the favorite among 18 percent of voters, while eight percent said they planned to vote for former Texas congressman Ron Paul. Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachman received six percent of the vote and Texas...

Rick Santorum, a former Pennsylvania Senator, is getting some love from conservative luminaries Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck as he struggles to win the hearts of voters in Iowa weeks before the presidential caucuses there. "If voters start shifting gears and deciding they want ideological consistency, then they're going to start paying attention to say, Rick Santorum," the former Alaska governor said as a guest on Fox News Thursday evening. Palin continued with praise for his "hard-line" positions on cutting taxes, dealing with Iran and abortion. Santorum, understanding the implications of her remarks, immediately tweeted his appreciation. "Thank you @SarahPalinUSA...

Rick Santorum‘s bid for the Republican presidential nomination is not going well. While rivals such as Rep. Michele Bachmann, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and now businessman Herman Cain enjoy bursts of popularity, the former Pennsylvania senator can’t seem to get his campaign out of the gate. Endorsements from leading Republicans – say, Sarah Palin - would certainly help. “Her being out of the race and potentially getting involved in a campaign with somebody else could be a big lift,” Santorum said on ABC’s ‘Top Line.” “We’d like your endorsement by the way,” he joked, staring straight to the camera. Palin...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Here's Josh in Pittsburgh. Welcome, Josh. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Hey, Rush. I am in ninth grade, and I'm a very active Tea Party member. I'm involved with some local congressmen, and when I heard about Ryan Rhodes' comments to the president -- RUSH: Yes? CALLER: -- I was very encouraged to see that I am not alone as a young Republican when it seems that most people my age are very, very liberal and Democratic, and it was nice to see that. But. Then when I heard about the elder...