Free Republic

<p>Donald Trump’s campaign and top Republican Party officials plan what one person called a “come to Jesus” meeting on Friday in Orlando to discuss the Republican nominee’s struggling campaign, according to multiple sources familiar with the scheduled sit-down.</p> <p>Though a campaign source dismissed it as a "typical" gathering, others described it as a more serious meeting, with one calling it an "emergency meeting." It comes at a time of mounting tension between the campaign and the Republican National Committee, which is facing pressure to pull the plug on Trump’s campaign and redirect party funds down ballot to protect congressional majorities endangered by Trump’s candidacy.</p>

At least two senior Donald Trump aides were fired by the campaign Monday in what three sources described as a shakeup. Both aides — Ed Brookover and Jimmy Stracner — had worked for the presidential campaign of former Trump rival Ben Carson, who endorsed Trump after dropping out of the race. Brookover, a longtime GOP strategist, had been working as a political adviser. He played a role in helping to organize this month's GOP convention. Stracner, had been working as the Trump campaign’s western regional political director.

Imagine the absurdity of reporting on supporters of Richard Nixon during the Watergate hearings with no mention of the White House Plumbers who performed the break-in at the complex. Such is the case now with Politico reporting on groups of Hillary Clinton supporters who will be defending her during the Congressional Benghazi hearings which makes absolutely no mention of the Sharyl Attkisson's report about how Hillary's aides at the State Department scrubbed the Benghazi documents of possibly incriminating information. To get an idea how ridiculous it is for Politico to avoid the Benghazi elephant in the room, let us first...

For America gave Politico reporter Ben Smith a 2010 planning memo for a profile he was writing on the liberal advocacy group. But Smith curiously withheld key parts of the 89-page document when he published his story, “Media Matters’ war against Fox,” in March 2011. The Daily Caller became aware of this after obtaining the same document while reporting the series “Inside Media Matters,” which debuted here late Sunday night. It’s not clear why Smith, who recently left Politico for the website BuzzFeed, didn’t include more specifics from the lengthy document in his March 2011 story if he had the...

President Barack Obama’s deficit strategy is a combination of audacity, hope and — in the eyes of Republicans — chutzpah. Obama, vilified by opponents for ducking the debt debate earlier this year, has seized the opportunity to portray himself as the champion of a $4 trillion “grand bargain” on tax and entitlement reform. This, after Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who spent months pushing the president in that direction, pulled out of any attempt to “go big” over the weekend. “Obama wants $4 trillion in debt reduction, while GOP wants only $2-$3 trillion,” wrote veteran Democratic pollster Geoff Garin. “[It] seems...

News site Politico.com admitted Friday that it made an "error" in attributing a nasty quote about Rep. Michele Bachmann to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The article said: "Palin's bus tour had some of the hallmarks of a primal scream: 'I built this constituency, not Bachmann, not anyone else,' she said. Looking at it through her eyes, she has a point." However, Palin never said that. Her political action committee promptly issued a statement urging the media to "quit making stuff up." "An absurd opinion piece in Politico includes a quote attributed to Governor Palin that is a total fabrication...

Politico knew they likely wouldn’t get a quote from Sarah Palin for the latest hit piece they published so they made one up. One of the authors is the former chairman of the Democratic Party of Virgina.Politico wrote: Will Sarah Palin’s intensifying rivalry with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) cause the former Alaska governor to run for president?The first female Republican vice presidential nominee clearly believes she is the one who has paid the heavy dues by bearing the brunt of the “liberal elite” attacks to help build the tea party, social conservative wing of the GOP.Palin’s bus tour had some...

Among the New Hampshire electorate as a whole, Palin is viewed favorably by just 28 percent, according to a recent survey by the Democratic automated pollster Public Policy Polling. In PPP surveys in 31 states over the last six months, just three states had smaller proportions of Palin fans, and all were in the northeast: New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. (Though the firm is partisan, its results generally track with polls by other organizations. PPP’s results were used in this analysis in the interest of consistency across different states.) Continue Reading Text Size -+reset Listen Palin’s highest ratings, in...

And so it finally happened. Obviously troubled by the fact that Donald Trump’s questions surrounding Barack Obama’s birth certificate are starting to gain some real traction, Ben Smith at the left-wing Politico finally panicked and fired off the Race Card. Hilariously, Smith did so using my favorite brand of agendized journOlism, what I call the “Some Say” tactic. How it works is very simple. In order for Smith to hide behind his dishonest and arrogant veil of objectivity, he simply finds others saying what he wants to say and abuses his position to amplify the charges directly

Any news junkie will tell you that Politico has been on a steady decline in journalistic standards for the past few years. They have taken it to new levels with the latest piece of hackery by the leftist mouthpiece Jonathan Martin and Kendra Marr entitled "For Michele Bachman, a pattern of getting facts wrong." This story, the top "news item" last night on politico.com was a hitpiece entirely about some verbal miscues Michele Bachmann apparently made in New Hampshire. Martin said: "For Bachmann, who leads the House Tea Party caucus and champions a return to the Constitution, to get such...

Mike Huckabee is going against the grain of conservative pundits and potential 2012 rivals who are merciless in attacking the Obamas, taking a softer tack as he defends the first couple on issues like healthy eating and the president’s citizenship. While conservative talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh trashed First Lady Michelle Obama’s healthy-eating initiative — one of her few forays into public policy — as an effort to have a government-run food program, Huckabee went the other way. “I do not think she's out there advocating that the government take over our dinner plates,” Huckabee, who’s been open about...

Sarah Palin used to pronounce Mitt Romney's name "M-I-L-T." In one of the many embarrassing anecdotes about the former Alaska governor, former aide Frank Bailey writes in a leaked manuscript that Palin actually argued with some of her staffers about how to correctly pronounce Romney's name. During her own 2006 campaign for governor, when Romney was chairman of the Republican Governors Association, Bailey writes that Palin didn't seem to know much about the then-Massachusetts governor. “During the campaign for governor, when Romney was in the background of our Republican Governors’ mess, Sarah didn’t even have a clear idea who he...

President Obama has earned the trust of most Americans on his handling of Egypt’s political crisis, but not by much, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Around 58 percent of respondents said they believe the protests in Egypt won’t affect the United States very much, and around the same number believe the Obama administration has handled the protests well. Obama gets positive marks from a majority of Democrats and independents in the survey, but only 43 percent of Republicans believe he’s done well.

Palin’s putting the safety catch on her references to weapons in the wake of Rep. Giffords's shooting. Continue Reading Her speech last night to the Safari Club in Reno was closed press, but thanks to the Reno Gazette-Journal's David Jacobs putting his ear to a closed door, we’re hearing the former Alaska governor’s new line. Palin dropped the "reload" phrase from her routine, telling the audience of hunters "don't retreat, stand tall" — a shift from her now infamous and well-known "don't retreat, reload" line that played on a loop on cable in the after the Tucson shooting.

And Politico effectively joins Barack Obama's re-election campaign. Politico's increasingly leftward lean has finally caused it to fall over entirely. The sheer volume of anti-Palin stories over the last week was breathtaking. It's clear that they have targeted Palin. To wit: First they were critical of Palin for not saying anything: Tucson shooting presents 2012 test Their widely divergent reactions — from Tim Pawlenty’s subtle distancing from his beleaguered rival, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin; to her virtual disappearance; to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s feeding of the right-wing base — are telling for what they show about the...

In the span of a single news cycle, Republicans got a jarring reminder of two forces that could prevent them from retaking the presidency in next year. At sunrise in the East on Wednesday, Sarah Palin demonstrated that she has little interest — or capacity — in moving beyond her brand of grievance-based politics. And at sundown in the West, Barack Obama reminded even his critics of his ability to rally disparate Americans around a message of reconciliation. Palin was defiant, making the case in a taped speech she posted online why the nation’s heated political debate should continue unabated...

After making attacks on what she memorably labeled “the lamestream media” one of her signature issues, Sarah Palin has begun to experiment with a new strategy toward the press – engaging it. The former Alaska governor has started cautiously cooperating with some of the same media outlets she and her supporters have accused of unfair and inaccurate coverage they feel has caricatured her as a flaky lightweight – a narrative her team seems determined to rewrite as Palin openly weighs a bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. “This is just about getting the press to characterize the governor accurately,”...

One prominent Republican calls on his party to drum Palin out of the 2012 race. Here's why he'll be disappointed. "Morning Joe" Scarborough earned a splash of attention within the politerati this week with a Politico column calling on the Republican Party to "man up" and denounce Sarah Palin. His main point is that Palin is poison for the Grand Old Party: The most-talked-about figure in the GOP is a reality show star who cannot be elected. And yet the same leaders who fret that Sarah Palin could devastate their party in 2012 are too scared to say in public...

With Sarah Palin denouncing my colleagues for veiling the Republicans who want to stop her in anonymity, POLITICO executive editor Jim VandeHei responds: We have promised since the earliest days of POLITICO to pull back the curtain on how Washington really works and to let readers inside the conversations taking place among the people in power. Sometimes that requires extensive use of anonymous sources. This is what GOP insiders in this city are talking about and their concerns are widely known, if not publicly discussed. None of these Republicans would speak on the record for obvious reasons: they fear the...

Glenn Beck: Politico Piece On Gov Palin Is An “Out And Out Lie,” Demands Retraction – Courtesy of PalinTV