Free Republic

All over Cambridge, Brookline and Jamaica Plain, the self-satisfied set is beyond appalled. Herman Cain, a black guy, is the new darling of the Tea Party — the very party that liberals have labeled racist since it was born. How to explain this disturbing turn of events? How will liberals deride Tea Partiers now? And since so many felt so good about themselves after voting for Barack Obama (who is biracial), how good might white independents feel after voting for Cain (who’s 100 percent black?) Cain’s just a black poster boy, a plant to deflect racist charges aimed at the...

After Palin, I've been leaning towards Cain. My only problem with him is that he's much more comfortable attacking Perry than Romney. I'm no fan of the bumbling debator from Texas who says his base has no heart, but this cozying up to Romney by Cain is concerning. Herman Cain remains my favorite, but he needs to show he's not running for VP. He needs to go after Romney on Romneycare tonight. If he doesn't, it may be time to look elsewhere. The one thing Rick Perry has going for him is that he's shown he's not afraid to take...

[snip] Interviews with a dozen advisers, including those inside campaigns and those aligned with outside groups, show lines of attack likely to emerge...... While Mr. Romney’s position as an early leader in the race has been shaken by Mr. Perry, it will almost certainly not be Mr. Romney who engages Mr. Perry first. He is already the subject of criticism from other rivals, including former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who questions Mr. Perry’s credentials. “We’ll see how conservative Rick Perry really is,” Mr. Santorum said. Here in Iowa, where the caucuses start the nominating contest, Mr. Perry is placing...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry called in to Mark Levin's radio show and the two had a wide-ranging conversation. Levin ended by saying, while he is not endorsing anyone yet for the GOP Nomination, Perry is "up there with candidates acceptable to me."

WASHINGTON Rick Perry, like other conservatives, has lots of complaints about the Supreme Court: The justices, he says, have meddled in social policy, stepped on state power and generally run amok. One solution the governor embraces is to end lifetime tenure - a cornerstone of the Constitution, whose drafters worried far less about activist or senile judges than about meddling tyrants and political pressure. The idea isn't original, and it's not limited to conservatives. Some scholars on the left have also embraced the idea as a correction for judges serving too long. It began to percolate in the 1980s and...

Sure, he polls well, but can he debate? The polls keep looking better and better for Rick Perry, despite this week’s provocative headline in Politico, “Is Rick Perry Dumb?” Dumb or not, it sure seems to be working. On Monday, a CNN/ORC International poll of Republicans and independent voters who lean Republican found that Perry’s still on top, with 27 percent of Republicans nationwide supporting him for the nomination. Romney’s in second with 14 percent. A poll released Tuesday from Public Policy Polling showed Perry leading among likely Republican primary voters in South Carolina with 36 percent, a full 20...

Even as Texas Gov. Rick Perry moves into the lead as Republican voters’ preferred presidential candidate, a Fox News poll released Thursday shows that voters are more likely to view him as “too extreme” than former frontrunner Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney. In addition, most American voters -- including a majority of Republicans -- think former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin should stay out of the presidential race.

Herman Cain and Rick Perry generate the strongest favorable images among Republicans familiar with them, and have separated themselves from the remainder of announced GOP candidates.

Texas Governor Rick Perry has been among the most vocal critics of President Obama’s health care reform initiative, and of Mitt Romney’s preceding health care program in Massachusetts. But in 1993, while serving as Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Perry praised the efforts of then-first lady Hillary Clinton to reform health care, a precursor to Obama’s health care reform efforts. In a letter to Clinton, who is now U.S. Secretary of State, Perry wrote: “I think your efforts in trying to reform the nation’s health care system are most commendable.” “I would like to request that the task force give particular consideration...

Phoenix-based Nuestros Reconquistos claims that there will be a war very similar to the Civil War fought in the next five years. “La Raza and MEChA have already talked to Latinos and Phoenix and explained that Latinos need to arm themselves for war,” says Nuestros Reconquistos President Manuel Longoria. Cecilia Maldonado of Chicanos Unidos Arizona isn’t hoping for any sort of war, but believes it may be unavoidable. “For generations, our people have prepared us to take back the lands of the Southwest that were stolen from our Mexican ancestors. Because of the bad economy and many racist laws, Latinos...

Myrtle Beach on Monday, Sept. 5. Following the format of his previous town halls with presidential candidates, Rep. Scott will take questions from the live audience as well as from online Facebook followers, allowing as many voters as possible to ask Gov. Perry a question. “I am proud to welcome Gov. Perry to Myrtle Beach to meet our voters,” said Rep. Scott. “Since his announcement speech in Charleston just over two weeks ago, the governor has excited our electorate, and I look forward to continuing that conversation.” “I am thankful to Rep. Scott for inviting me to participate in such...

Mitt Romney is going into the lion’s den today. Romney is neither a veteran nor a Texan, but he is heading to San Antonio, Texas to address the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention one day after Gov. Rick Perry, who is both a veteran and a Texan, fired up the crowd with a patriotic paean to American exceptionalism. But with poll after poll showing Romney slipping into Perry’s wake, the former Massachusetts governor is keen to show that he’s not backing down. The latest CNN survey has Perry nearly doubling Romney among all candidates running or considering a run and...

This morning Politico ran a story titled "Is Rick Perry dumb" by columnist Jonathan Martin. In the second paragraph, after ridiculing his accent in the opening paragraph, the writer asks: "Is he dumb -- or just "misunderestimated?" Martin goes on to question Perry's "intellect." Rush Limbaugh responds on his Monday program: "This is a recycle, same thing they tried against Ronaldus Maximus back in 1979/1980. 'Is Ronald Reagan dumb?' "It's amazing. Nothing new. Media cycles, media templates being repeated, being recycled."

I just read the text of Rick Perry's remarks to the Border Summit on Aug, 21st 2001. How in the hell is this stuff slipping through the cracks without a single mention in the conservative press? If this had been Obama, Sean Hannity would have been talking about it 24/7 during the last presidential campaign. There are many passages in the speech that are of great concern to me, but this one really caught my attention. ...Legislation authored by border legislators Pat Haggerty and Eddie Lucio establishes an important study that will look at the feasibility of bi-national health insurance....

We are adults and most on FR are very intelligent persons. I think we can decide if a candidate is right for us. How about stop repeating the same Gardasil, Texas corridor, immigration stories over and over and over. Most have seen them by now if they have been paying attention. Most have judged the stories and condemn Perry to hell for them or they think that a president just might have different priorities than a state governor. Screaming at us in all caps isn't going to change any minds. FR isn't the entire universe of voters. We are a...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Texas Gov. Rick Perry has asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for nearly $350 million to cover the costs incurred detaining illegal immigrants in state prisons and county jails. In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Perry criticized the federal government hasn't been doing enough to secure the border with Mexico, thereby allowing illegal immigrants to enter the U.S. and use taxpayer-funded resources, including prisons and jails. It's a claim the Republican governor has made many times before. The letter was dated Aug. 10, three days before Perry formally announced he is running...

Opinion L.A. 2012 Campaign: Rick Perry And A Uniquely Anti-Gay GOP Field? August 24, 2011 You might think as much following the revelation by reporter Mark Benjamin that Republican front-runner and Texas Gov. Rick Perry once compared, in writing, homosexuality to alcoholism. Benjamin writes at Time magazine's Swampland blog: Since leaping into the GOP presidential race, Texas Gov. Rick Perry hasn't been asked if he thinks gays are born or made. But in a little-noticed passage in his first book, "On My Honor," a encomium on the Boy Scouts published in 2008, Perry also drew a parallel between homosexuality and...

As he enters the Republican presidential race, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is striking some red-meat notes on the subject of immigration. Border security, he says, is a federal responsibility -- and immigration reform will have to wait until the border is secured. Invoking his beloved 10th Amendment, he proposes that in the meantime states should have some latitude to set their own course on the subject. As for Texas, he suggests, unauthorized immigration will not be treated lightly; earlier this year he called for a state law to abolish sanctuary cities, although the bill never made it to his desk....

A new poll by Public Policy Polling puts Texas Gov. Rick Perry in the front of the GOP presidential field in Iowa and shows just how much Perry’s entrance into the race scrambled the contest for the Republican nomination. The poll, released Tuesday (.pdf), shows that 21% of the poll respondents would support Perry in the Iowa caucuses next February, outpacing the two other Republican frontrunners Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney. Romney’s campaign has been focusing on New Hampshire, a state that is considered a must win for his campaign. If the contest were simplified to a three-way race between...

A couple of caveats are in order before we start looking at this poll. First, it comes from PPP, a Democratic pollster which has had its fair share of difficulties in sampling Republicans. It’s also early in the race, as Rick Perry just starts getting vetted and Sarah Palin hasn’t yet begun to campaign, if in fact she decides to campaign at all. Still, this is a rather dramatic result: The race is pretty close four ways in Iowa but Rick Perry is the new favorite among Republican voters in the state. Among announced candidates he’s at 22% to 19%...