Free Republic

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s decision to run for reelection as a write-in candidate has been greeted by conservative activists as the latest outrage in an ongoing struggle between establishment Republicans and the GOP’s activist base. Murkowski’s move ends the 2010 primary season about where it started: With a Republican legislator, well regarded within the Beltway, effectively bolting the party to look after their own fortunes. In the spring of 2009, it was Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter switching to the Democratic caucus in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to get reelected. Now, it’s Murkowski making a long-shot effort to win another term...

Honest to goodness, the man just does not get it. He might be forced to pull a Palin and resign before his first term is over. He could go off and write his memoirs and build his presidential library. (Both would be half-size, of course.) I am not saying Obama is not smart; he is as smart as a whip. I am just saying he does not understand what savvy first-term presidents need to understand: You have to stay on message, follow the polls, listen to your advisers (who are writing the message and taking the polls) and realize that...

It's no secret that POLITICO is a biased news organization. The online polictical blog is as progressive as they come. Very agenda driven. In our reporting we have already addressed the fact that Journolist members are solidly entrenched inside POLITICO's upper levels. Something Roger Simon, who calls the website home, tried to downplay. John Nolte over at Big Journalism isn't buying it, and has a simply marvelous retort: You say MSM, I say Politico. You say corrupt, I say Politico. Today, Politico’s Roger Simon was kind enough to almost scold JournoList for its lasting effect on his precious little profession...

One of the delights about the Internet is watching new people use a new technology to make the same old mistakes. Consider the admissions by Politico and Greg Sargent that they regularly run items on Sarah Palin simply to drive traffic. From Politico: “More traffic comes from an item on Sarah Palin’s ‘refudiation’ faux pas than from our hundreds of stories on the complexities of health care reform or Wall Street regulation.” Perhaps if Politico were as vigilant in its coverage of health care reform and Wall Street regulation as it is every slip by Sarah Palin readers would be...

On Wednesday, the same day President Barack Obama ousted his humiliated Afghanistan commander, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs walked into the Oval Office with more grim news: The cap on the gushing oil in the Gulf had been dislodged. “What?” Obama replied incredulously. “Well, why did it do that?” A remotely operated vehicle had knocked the cap right off, he was told, leaving oil rushing out as furiously as ever. “Let me get this straight,” Obama later told senior adviser David Axelrod. “A robot knocked off the Top Hat? Come on, guys. Are you kidding me?" Welcome to what...

Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin on Friday encouraged her supporters to read an article comparing the BP escrow fund to Nazism. “This is about the rule of law vs. an unconstitutional power grab,” Palin tweeted, urging her followers to “Read Thomas Sowell’s article.” The article Palin points to was published on Monday and was widely criticized for writing that, like Adolph Hitler, President Barack Obama is stripping away the freedom of his citizen without mass protest. “When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately...

Nikki Haley may have been the big winner in South Carolina Tuesday, but she isn’t the only Republican whose star is rising in an early state that is key to winning the GOP presidential nomination. Both Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, and Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, were also winners in the 2012 sweepstakes. They got behind Haley at critical junctures in her campaign for governor while the rest of the potential GOP presidential field either endorsed another candidate or stayed out of the fray completely. . . . . . . Former Arkansas Gov. Mike...

Spill challenges small gov't message By: Kenneth P. Vogel and Giovanni Russonello June 15, 2010 03:33 PM EDT In the battle for messaging advantage over the BP oil spill, President Barack Obama and his allies are pressing a counterattack on conservative critics that has people like Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, on the defensive. Call it the hypocrisy argument, articulated by Obama last week when he said that “Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying ‘do something’ are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs...

The tea party movement exploded onto the political scene in 2009 as a backlash to the agenda pushed by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, but a little more than a year later, a POLITICO survey found tea party activists unhappy with many of the biggest names in the Republican Party. And that could complicate GOP plans to harness the energy of the tea parties as they head into the November midterm elections with hopes of rearranging the balance of power in Washington. In a survey of more than three dozen grass-roots tea party leaders from 29 states, the party’s...

Thursday’s health care summit wound down with President Barack Obama making clear he couldn’t sign on to the Republican plan for reform, wouldn’t abandon reconciliation and had no intention of scrapping his own plan – capping the six-plus-hour session with a dig at Republicans for pitching a bill that covers just a fraction of the uninsured. “Those steps don’t get you to the place people need to go,” Obama said of the Republican plan. Republicans said the same thing in their closing comments that they said at 10 a.m. – start over. Obama won’t. So the parties walked out of...

POLITICO’s Andy Barr reported earlier that Meg Stapleton, spokesperson and top adviser to Sarah Palin resigned to spend more time with family. Now CNN’s Peter Hamby follows up on the news and writes how not only did McCain campaign staffers and Palin insiders grumble about Stapleton’s handling of Palin, but also journalists. Members of the political press corps have also long been frustrated with Stapleton, who was the primary conduit between Palin and members of the media since the end of the 2008 presidential race, but rarely responded to phone calls or e-mails. When Stapleton did, they were often terse...

Is Mitt Romney getting all the pieces together for another run at the White House? What seems to many as a forgone conclusion may soon become a reality, with the announcement of Matt Rhoades as executive director for Romney's Free and Strong America PAC. According to an article in Politico, Rhoades, who has served on other presidential campaigns and at the Republican National Committee was communications director for Romney's 2008 run. With the upcoming release and tour for Romney's new book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, Romney's 2012 intentions may be one of the worst kept secrets in...

Why Cheney attacks By: Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei February 13, 2010 03:09 PM EST Former Vice President Cheney will appear on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, and it’s a safe bet what he will say: President Barack Obama projects weakness to terrorists and puts American lives at risk. It’s the kind of brutal charge — nuance-free and politically explosive — that has become a Cheney specialty since he left office 13 months ago. Cheney’s broadsides on Afghanistan policy, detention and surveillance policies, and Obama’s general philosophy about the U.S. role in a dangerous world inevitably dominate the news. No...