Free Republic

~EXCERPT~ Get ready for a tsunami of Hispanic votes in November's general election: If Super Tuesday primary results were any indication, angry Latino voters will flood the polls, energized by what many see as a growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the country. Latino voters turned out in record numbers on Tuesday, especially to back Democratic candidates. In California, Latino turnout nearly doubled, while in some states such as Connecticut and Missouri, it increased even more significantly. "It was huge, and it will be huge in November," says pollster John Zogby, referring to the Hispanic voter turnout. "The issue of illegal immigration...

Super Tuesday arrived this week with many voters unable to take part due to deadly tornados in the south, snow in Illinois, a lack of ballots in California and "Invisible Ink" confusion in Chicago. Also in Chicago, at least one woman who arrived early to vote was told by her precinct that she wouldn't be able to because only one of five election judges was present. Rachel Waymire was about to head home when she was stopped by Oprah Winfrey, who happened to be at the precinct next door, reports ABC News. The talk show host and Barack Obama supporter...

New Mexico Democratic officials still don't know who won the Super Tuesday presidential caucuses -- and may not for days. New Mexico is the only state of the 22 in Tuesday's primaries and caucuses without a declared winner. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., led Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois by 1,123 votes statewide Thurday, the Albuquerque Journal said, with results hinging on nearly 17,000 provisional ballots. The Democrats may start counting those Thursday. Provisional ballots are issued to voters who show up at the wrong site or have problems confirming their registration and vote by affidavit. There were problems at the...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Democratic Sen. Barack Obama has raised $7.2 million for his presidential campaign since the first polls closed on Super Tuesday night, his campaign said Thursday, a remarkable figure that is causing concern among supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Meanwhile Thursday, the Clinton campaign asked Obama to debate once a week, but he demurred. Obama, riding a wave of fundraising from large donors and small Internet contributors, also raised $32 million in January. Clinton acknowledged Wednesday that she loaned her campaign $5 million late last month as Obama was outraising and outspending her heading into Feb....

It took until a day after Super Tuesday, as it happened, for the tsunami to strike: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is now the underdog in the Democratic presidential fight -- and that is very much not by design (Mark Penn's spin notwithstanding). Feb. 5 -- the day that was once expected to seal the nomination for the Candidate Formerly Known as "Inevitable" -- was at best a duel to a draw, at worst the beginning of an erosion of Clinton's carefully constructed delegate lead. Feb. 6 brought the stunning news that the Clinton campaign is essentially broke, running on a...

CASTALIAN SPRINGS, Tenn., Feb. 6 -- The searchers had already gone over the field once. It seemed unlikely that anything else would turn up. It was dark and rainy, and amid the awesome wreckage left by the tornado that had just passed here they had already found three dead. Some of the bodies had been flung hundreds of feet from their homes, landing in tangles of branches and across the roadway. Then they stumbled upon Kyson. The 11-month-old, dressed in a T-shirt and diaper, was lying as silently as any piece of debris in a field of tall grass about...

Our book, The Death of Talk Radio?, warned about the threat posed by liberals trying to pass into law the so-called Fairness Doctrine. Little did we know that its viability would be in jeopardy from conservatives upset over major figures in talk radio playing favorites in the Republican presidential race. The conservative talk-radio assault on John McCain and Mike Huckabee has backfired in a big way. Supporters of Huckabee are so angry that they have launched a "Send it Back" campaign, asking people who have copies of books by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to send them back to their...

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney plans to meet with his congressional supporters Thursday, it was reported. The former Massachusetts governor's meeting comes after his disappointing showing in the Super Tuesday nominating contests, in which he lost most pivotal states to Arizona Sen. John McCain, The Hill reported Wednesday. The Washington newspaper reported Romney will meet with the members of Congress who endorsed his candidacy. The meeting will take place at the Capitol Hill Club after Romney addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference's annual convention. Romney's campaign spokesman Kevin Madden neither confirmed nor denied Thursday's meeting, The Hill reported. He said...

If Limbaugh, Dobson and the rest are not going to vote Republican because they might not like Republican nominee does this mean they are going to move out of the country if and when Hillary/Obama are elected - like Alec Baldwin promised to do when Bush was elected? http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=19268477&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=638428&rfi=6

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- About the only thing the Feb. 5 "Super Tuesday" primaries made clear is that religious voters are as conflicted as the general electorate over who the next president should be. By the afternoon of Feb. 6, with results in from almost all of the states that held Republican and Democratic contests on the largest primary day in American history, neither party had a candidate with a prohibitive lead in delegates. Moreover, according to exit-poll data, no GOP candidate had a clear advantage among self-described evangelical voters, and no Democrat had a clear advantage among those who attend...

At nearly every diner and ballroom Mitt Romney stormed in a 60-hour campaign sprint before Super Tuesday, he declared that the fight for the Republican nomination was now a two person contest. After the results from all 22 states are in, it appears declaring it does not make it so. Romney's final campaigning failed to produce a first or second place finis in the bulk of the states he visited. In Tennessee, Missouri, Georgia and Oklahoma, Romney trailed Mike Huckabee, the man he tried to write out of the race. Romney also lost California, which he visited Monday, to McCain,...

Fox News projects Hillary Clinton and John McCain the winners in California primaries.

Tuesday, Feb 05, 2008 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASECONTACT: Kevin Madden (857) 288-6390Boston, MA – Today, Americans from across this country went to the polls and cast their vote for conservative change in Washington. Tonight, as we await the results from Western states, Governor Romney made the following remarks to supporters, volunteers and the American people: "Ann came to me and she said, 'You know, the one thing that's clear tonight is that nothing's clear.' But I think she's wrong. One thing that's clear is this campaign's going on. I think there are some people who thought it was all going to...

On the Republican side, the final Zogby poll showed former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney with a growing lead and 40 percent of the vote, followed by Sen. John McCain at 33 percent. But once the votes started being tabulated Romney was actually substantially behind McCain, who appears on his way to nearly sweeping the state's 170 election delegates. Current balloting results show McCain with 42.1 percent of the vote and Romney with 33.9 percent. That, along with other wildly inaccurate pre-election polls, caused GOP strategist and Romney adviser Rob Stutzman to tell The Bee's Amy Chance on Tuesday night, "Kill...

So, did the “Obama Girl” actually vote for Barack Obama on Tuesday? Actually, no. Last summer, the amateur music video “I Got a Crush on Obama” was a Web hit, splashing a seductive performance by a 26-year-old model named Amber Lee Ettinger across millions of screens and prompting deep thoughts about candidates and sex appeal, the YouTube generation of voters, viral marketing and so forth. On Tuesday night, City Room ran into Ms. Ettinger at an election-watching party in Greenwich Village and asked how things went at the polls. “I didn’t get a chance to vote today because I’m not...

Mitt Romney is committed to barreling ahead in his bid for the Republican nomination, despite the odds being stacked against him, said his son, Tagg, a senior campaign adviser, in an interview today. **snip** In a measure of just how dire the situation is for the campaign, Mr. Romney’s advisers have been discussing the existence of three different categories of delegates: those that have been already been awarded and bound to a candidate; those that have been promised to someone but are not technically bound; and those that have not yet been allocated. They are mapping out a farfetched possibility...

California 21 (all of Tulare County and the eastern half of Fresno County) Mitt Romney, 18,477 (36.1) John McCain, 18,261 (35.7) California 49 (much of Northern San Diego County and southwestern Riverside County) Mitt Romney, 24,264 (38.8) John McCain, 23,608 (37.7) California 52 (parts of Imperial and San Diego counties) Mitt Romney, 30,034 (40.3) John McCain, 27,844 (37.4) District 25: Romney down 1.9% (91% reporting) District 26: Romney down 7.4% (83.8% reporting) District 41: Romney down 5.7% (76.5% reporting) District 42: Romney down 0.2% (97.6% reporting) District 43: Romney down 11.2% (68.4% reporting) If things stay this way, the tally...

ATKINS, Ark. — Residents in five Southern states rose Wednesday to widespread clusters of destruction caused by an unusually ferocious winter tornado system. At least 54 people were killed, and scores more were injured. Many had spent a harrowing Tuesday night punctuated by breaking glass and warning sirens as the tornadoes tossed trailer homes into the air, collapsed the roof of a Sears store in Memphis, whittled away half a Caterpillar plant near Oxford, Miss., and shredded dorms at Union University in Jackson, Tenn., where crews rescued nine students trapped in the rubble. Arkansas and Tennessee were the hardest hit,...

Spokesman Howard Wolfson emails: Late last month Senator Clinton loaned her campaign $5 million.The loan illustrates Sen. Clinton’s commitment to this effort and to ensuring that our campaign has the resources it needs to compete and win across this nation. We have had one of our best fundraising efforts ever on the web stoday and our Super Tuesday victories will only help in bringing more support for her candidacy.

After his disappointing showing in South Carolina, Mike Huckabee was supposed to be a spent force. The former Arkansas governor's triumph in the Iowa caucuses would be relegated to the history books and deemed no more significant than Christian evangelist Pat Robertson's defeat of George H.W. Bush in the Hawkeye State two decades before. But Huckabee stormed back into the race yesterday with wins not just in his home state of Arkansas but also in Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and West Virginia, complicating the race for the Republican nomination all over again. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who had expected to emerge...