Free Republic

That's quite some smirk on Mitt Romney's face as he walks away from the podium in Jacksonville, Florida, having just woven in criticism of Barack Obama to his reaction to the murders in Benghazi. The photograph was taken by Charles Dharapak of the Associated Press, and I suspect it's going to be one of the most significant images of the campaign. Maybe Mr Romney was just unlucky, but on the other hand… are you surprised? Honestly?

Today, ABC News/Washington Post released a poll showing a virtual dead heat between Obama and Romney. The survey was conducted September 7-9 among adults with subsamples of registered and likely voters. Obama does show a convention bounce gain among registered voters, with a 6% advantage over Romney. In other words, Obama has more support among voters who are probably not going to vote. A more accurate assessment of likely voters have the candidates tied with no bounce: Obama registers with 49% of the vote and Romney at 48%. Unfortunately, the topline results are based on a sample of registered voters,...

The American public may be divided on "Obamacare," but when faced with choosing a candidate to care for them if illness struck, President Obama is their man. By a 13 point margin - 49-36 percent - registered voters polled by ABC News chose the president over Mitt Romney to nurse them back to health. When asked who they thought "would make a more loyal friend," the results were about the same. By a 50-36 percent count, respondents said Obama was more likely to stick with them through trying times. As for suppertime, still more ugly numbers for Romney. Fifty-two percent...

I’m frankly a little puzzled by the kerfuffle over Mitt Romney’s statement Sunday morning that his version of health reform would also make sure people with pre-existing conditions had access to coverage. Lots of political reporters and analysts have taken this to be some kind of new position, or a concession, or a backing away from the commitment to repeal and replace Obamacare.........For as long as Romney has had a campaign web site with a section on health care, for instance, it has listed among the elements of his proposal to replace Obamacare “Prevent discrimination against individuals with pre-existing conditions...

“Truth is the new hate speech.”—“Creeping Sharia” “We [the people] own this country.”—Clint Eastwood I feel like I ought to start out each of my articles anymore with a disclaimer, or caveat saying something along the lines of “WARNING: The contents of this article are to be considered null and void in the event of a “Reichstag Fire,” false flag event, and/or an invasion by Russian Spetsnaz in collusion with Northcom,“or words to that effect. My intent is not to make light of such concerns, as God knows we have reason enough to be more than a bit edgy these...

Paul Ryan's speech to the Republican National Convention last week was so effective, and presented such a stark contrast to the gauche maunderings of his Democrat counterpart, that it clearly panicked an already-nervous Obama White House. Thus, the word obviously went out to the President's many media partisans that Ryan had to be taken down.... The scariest of these "lies," from the perspective of the White House, was Ryan's charge that $716 billion was stolen from Medicare to pay for Obamacare. They know this charge is particularly dangerous for the President because it is a direct appeal to seniors, the...

Kathleen Parker wrote a column lamenting the Republican party’s lack of racial diversity. I don’t have any quarrel with her thesis — I’d like the party to do a better job of attracting blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, too — but I found one remark of Parker’s puzzling. >>>>Republicans can honestly boast of having once been the party of firsts. The first Hispanic, African American, Asian American and Native American in the Senate were all Republicans. But that was before the GOP went south, banished its centrists and embraced social conservatives in a no-exit marriage.<<<< In 90 percent of political commentary,...

President Obama and the Democrats are converging on Charlotte, N.C., next week for their three-day national convention, but Republicans aren’t ceding the spotlight in the swing state. The Romney campaign said Saturday that vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan has scheduled a campaign stop Monday at East Carolina University in Greenville. The Democratic National Convention kicks off a day later at the Time Warner Cable Arena across the state in Charlotte. Vice President Joseph R. Biden had planned to campaign in Florida during the GOP convention in Tampa, but that trip was canceled because of concerns about the proximity of then-tropical...

..........The British have never been especially keen on enthusiasm, either in its modern sense, or in the older meaning of ‘seized by religious fervour’. Americans – ideological descendants, in many ways, of those regicides – differ from us perhaps more in this than in any other regard. .....One after another, friends and colleagues of Mitt Romney lined up to tell us about the many acts of kindness which he had performed unremarked. Parents choked back their tears as they recalled the time he had spent with their dying children. Former employees spoke of his humility, his industriousness, his quiet charity....

When "Dirty Harry" interviewed "Invisible Obama" at the Republican convention Thursday night, Clint Eastwood gained a new kind of fame, as the butt of jokes all over the Twitter-verse. "Idea for a cable drama: Clint Eastwood is a hard-boiled cop that sees his dead partner in every empty chair. It's called 'La-Z Boys in Blue,'"read one tweet. "Give Clint Eastwood a break. ...The RNC asked him to speak about ObamaCare and he thought they said ObamaChair," read another. The actor's mock interview of an empty chair purportedly representing President Obama turned into one of the most-talked-about events of the entire...

...Clint is a brilliant actor, and a superb director of other actors (and I don’t just mean a quarter-century ago: in the last five years, he’s made eight films). He’s also, as Mr Gavin observed, a terrific jazz improvisor at the piano – and, in film and music documentaries, an extremely articulate interviewee. So I wouldn’t assume that the general tenor of his performance wasn’t exactly as he intended. The hair was a clue: no Hollywood icon goes out on stage like that unless he means to. John Hayward writes: >>>The intended recipient was not Mitt Romney, the convention delegates,...

Paul Ryan had never before struck me as an inspiring speaker. I mean, I like the fellow: he has sound ideas, he's charming and he has a demotic, boy-next-door quality which is unusual among cerebral politicians. But his chief appeal has always been as a policy specialist rather than an orator. Until last night. Ryan's speech to the Republican Convention in Tampa was a masterpiece. As Roger Kimball observes, 'His manner is open, confident, but somehow also humble. There is nothing swaggering, nothing of the braggart or narcissist about him. He seems impressed, not by the sound of his own...

TAMPA — The heat, the chanting, the marching: It was all becoming too much. Protesters, who were scheduled to occupy companies owned by Mitt Romney's Bain Capital empire all day Thursday, were having a tough time mustering the gusto. The plan was to start at a Domino's Pizza, about two blocks away from unofficial RNC protest headquarters Romneyville in downtown Tampa. But after lunchtime, the tents were looking pretty cozy. It didn't sit well with one Occupy Wall Street protester, a 21-year-old woman who would only identify herself as Ducky.

Some of the Republican faithful responded to Paul Ryan’s rousing acceptance speech for vice president last night as if it was the second coming of Ronald Reagan. And in a sense it was. Paul Ryan is the most Reaganesque political figure to reach the national stage since the Gipper himself. Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin was even seen crying during it — and this is a guy who just survived 18 months of siege warfare stoically. Indeed, Ryan’s speech made an understated bow towards Reagan’s political message with a signature passage. “The right that makes all the difference now is...

It was one line --- a total of nine words --- in a lengthy speech in Roanoke, Va. As he tried to make a point that successful people have received help in various ways, President Obama said, "If you've got a business --- you didn't build that." But more than a month later, with Republicans rallying in Tampa at their national convention, that line has become a centerpiece of the GOP's campaign to try to oust Obama in November. Speaker after speaker has portrayed the line as an affront to people who have built businesses and as evidence that the...

TAMPA, Fla. — The Texas delegation at the Republican National Convention is, for the most part, backing the candidacy of Mitt Romney. But that doesn't mean everyone here is enthusiastic about the former Massachusetts governor. Romney, who is expected to accept the nomination tonight, was not the first choice for many members of the Texas delegation, several delegates said this week. Gov. Rick Perry, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum each sent their backers to Romney after they dropped out of the race. And like good party soldiers, the converted supporters see Team Romney...

“There seems to be a movement on the local and state level,” Scott said, of black Democrats who want “to align with their values” rather than with their history as Democrats. “We’ll continue to see that shift.” Artur Davis, a former Democratic congressman from Alabama, has been a Republican for only a few months. But his speech tonight at the Republican convention is important because he reflects a major theme of Mitt Romney’s campaign against President Obama and another theme promoted by the GOP. The Romney theme is that it’s okay to have changed your mind about Obama. Davis, an...

Monday 2:00 p.m. Chairman of the RNC Reince Priebus Call to Order/Start Debt Clocks 2:10 p.m. Announcement of Recess Tuesday 2:00 p.m. Chairman of the RNC Reince Priebus [SNIP] Roll Call for Nomination of President of the United States Roll Call for Nomination of Vice President of the United States [SNIP] Remarks by Speaker John Boehner [SNIP] Remarks by former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum Remarks by Host, U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers 8:00 p.m. Remarks by U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte (NH), accompanied by Jack Gilchrist Remarks by Governor John Kasich (OH) Remarks by Governor Mary Fallin (OK) Remarks by Governor...

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The discredited notion that a woman's body can resist conception in a sexual assault has persisted in anti-abortion circles for decades, largely because of the efforts of a Cincinnati obstetrician who is considered a godfather of the movement. Dr. John C. "Jack" Willke founded the National Right to Life Committee and wrote the influential 1971 "Handbook on Abortion," which has shaped the thinking of generations of anti-abortion activists.

What’s more important than ensuring that children get a better education? For most Americans this election cycle, it’s the federal budget. As President Obama continues to assail the Republican presidential ticket for pushing a budget blueprint that could cut education spending, polling data that emerged Wednesday shows that the vast majority of Americans think getting the U.S. back on solid fiscal footing trumps increasing school funding. A survey by Gallup and the Phi Delta Kappa International education association finds that 60 percent of Americans think it’s more important to balance the federal budget than to “improve the quality of education.”...