Free Republic

March 16, 2012 Parker: Republican race is just getting started By STAR PARKER, Scripps Howard News Service After Rick Santorum's victories in Tuesday's Alabama and Mississippi primaries, Mitt Romney told Fox News, "We're not going to go to a brokered convention." But those who put their money where their mouths are, buying contracts on the Intrade.com online prediction market, assess the picture much differently. The latest Intrade.com probability that the Republican nominee will be selected in a brokered convention is 21.5 percent. This same probability stood at 5 percent in early February. Ed Rollins, the veteran campaign manager and consultant...

PALATINE, Ill.--Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on late Wednesday expressed frustration with both the news media and the Republican establishment for failing to understand his “large ideas” for transforming American politics. As calls for Gingrich to bow out of the race grew louder after his second-place finishes in Mississippi and Alabama--two states he said he had a chance to win--the candidate seemed to be in low spirits and offered a grumpy analysis of the state of the GOP primary to a crowd that gathered for a Lincoln Day dinner in this northwestern suburb of Chicago. “The thing I find most disheartening...

As Rick Santorum desperately tries to make a dent in Mitt Romney’s formidable delegate lead, he faces an unlikely obstacle on the primary calendar: his home state of Pennsylvania. Yes, Santorum is currently favored — though hardly a lock — to win the popular vote in the state he represented in Congress for 16 years. But Pennsylvania’s non-binding primary rules for distributing delegates raise the prospect that Santorum, who has said he’ll win the vast majority of the state’s delegates, could actually come away from next month’s primary empty-handed at a time when he can ill-afford it. Which means the...

It was unbelievable: As soon as Newt Gingrich failed to win both Alabama and Mississippi in the GOP race for president, most members of the mainstream media and political strategists with whom I talked readily admitted, off the record, that he was the most qualified among the Republican candidates to serve as president. Now these are objective pros that have been around presidential politics for years. I have no doubt they were telling me the truth because these folks only tell you this stuff when it is relatively clear that the candidate is no longer a viable alternative. The Gingrich...

Gingrich Calls Political System Stupid, Vows To Stay In The Race By NBC's Alex Moe PALATINE, Ill. – Hours after finishing a disappointing second place in both the Alabama and Mississippi primaries, Newt Gingrich marched his campaign onward, vowing he is “staying in the race.” Campaigning in Illinois on Wednesday, Gingrich made little mention of the two contests he had hoped to win in the South. He instead focused his speeches on the big ideas that drive his campaign, explaining that many people just don’t understand what needs to be done to help change the country. “The thing I find...

MARCH 16, 2012 Tampa Tempest Newt Gingrich Plots Convention Chaos. By Robert Costa As he waited for the returns on Tuesday, Newt Gingrich didn’t pay much attention to the soft flicker of Fox News. Instead, as he sat with his family and a few aides in a suite at the Wynfrey Hotel in Birmingham, Ala., he was quietly glued to his BlackBerry, thumbing his way through e-mails. He was mostly cheerful, according to those in the room. He reminisced about campaigns past with his daughters. He reviewed his schedule; he bantered with his wife, Callista; he settled on a purple...

GOP being Punk’d? We know that Democrats are crossing over in open primaries, such as Mississippi and Alabama, in order to vote for Rick Santorum, a big union candidate, their votes intended to throw the Republican National Convention into a contested balloting process. This tactic was written up at the Daily Kos. Big union money has even invested for the Santorum campaign. Pardon me for not having all the pertinent facts and I confess I don’t even have time to search for them all, today, to say nothing of presenting and formatting them, here. Can you help? Place further information...

Unbelievably, Shep Smith just felt it necessary to push out some exit poll data that he says indicates that among those who only recently made their decision, those voters are going for Romney or Santorum. And this is with the polls still open. I have to ask, why is he pushing out exit polling data that clearly could have a negative effect on one candidate's turnout? This is even worse than CNN's coverage of exit poll data. CNN has only been breaking it down by Conservative/Evangelical/income levels, etc.

Thankfully, former Speaker Newt Gingrich is every bit a social conservative as the former senator from Pennsylvania, and so would have that historical advantage that, along with the “It’s the economy, stupid” rule, regularly results in the election of Republican presidents and congressional majorities. So how did the young whippersnapper who previously won our Super Tuesday endorsement by avoiding anti-Bain venture capitalism-pile-ons while also contrasting his unblemished record against individual health care mandates as opposed to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts RomneyCare and 2009 advocacy for the individual mandates in ObamaCare? Unprompted, he essentially took the economy off the table for the...

Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich on Friday called on Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to resign, rebuking him for telling a congressional panel that the U.S. would “seek international permission” before intervening in the ongoing bloodshed in Syria. “I have been told that the secretary of defense has suggested that international agreements override the Congress,” Gingrich told supporters in Gulfport, Mississippi. “If he believes that, he should resign tonight.” Responding to a statement that the U.S. was placing military resolutions of the United Nations, NATO and the Arab League ahead of those made by Congress, Panetta told the Senate Armed Services...

(CBS News) BILOXI, Miss. - The four main candidates for the Republican nomination for president say they're committed to staying in the race right up to the convention this August in Tampa, Fla. There's just one problem: If they do, it might turn out that no one gets the number of delegates needed to win the nomination outright. Stumping in Birmingham, Alabama, Mitt Romney continued his Southern charm offensive, celebrating an endorsement from the country band Alabama. "Wouldn't you love to hear them sing 'Sweet Home Alabama'? Wouldn't that be wonderful?" he asked a crowd at one campaign stop. In...

(CNN) – Newt Gingrich is edging out his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination in Mississippi, according to a new poll. The American Research Group survey of likely Republican primary voters released Friday showed Gingrich with 35% support, followed by Mitt Romney with 31%, Rick Santorum with 20% and Ron Paul with 7%. Gingrich's margin over Romney increased slightly among those who said they will definitely vote in the March 13 primary, 37% to 30%. Santorum garnered 17% support and Paul received 5% among the same group. The poll was conducted after Super Tuesday, when each of the GOP White...

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum hoped to lock down a victory in Kansas' GOP caucuses with two rallies Friday but faced grumbling from tea party activists for skipping their big rally in the state's largest city................. Some tea party members were frustrated that Santorum wouldn't attend their rally. They spent $25,000 to rent the Century II arena in downtown Topeka and expected 1,000 to 3,000 people to attend. "It seems like it is counterproductive to show up for an event that is going to have 300 people in an airplane hangar instead (of) 3,000 people in...

Does the Tea Party now support politicians who favored bailouts and the ObamaCare individual mandate? Such a statement sounds like an oxymoronic joke, about as likely as a pacifist who backs war or an atheist for Jesus. But the answer, according to exit polls from New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida primaries, is an emphatic “yes.” According to each of these exit polls, the vast majority of self-identified Tea Party supporters have backed either former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (left) or former House Speaker Newt Gingrich over anti-bailout candidates such as Texas Congressman Ron Paul, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum,...

As a journalist who covered Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania for years, I can understand the Tea Party’s infatuation with him. It’s his anger. It is in perfect synch with the constituency he is wooing. Even at the height of his political success, when he had a lot to be happy about, Santorum was an angry man. I found it odd. I was used to covering politicians who had good dispositions — or were good at pretending they had good dispositions. Santorum was different... People who don’t know him — and just see the angry Rick — don’t realize what a...

There is a perception lingering about NewtGingrich that he was a critic of PaulRyan's budget plan and therefore a critic of conservative fiscal policy in the House of Representatives. Is that conclusion true? Or is it an oversimplification? Like many misconceptions floating around during a heated political season, it is not true. Let's examine the facts. On April 5, 2011, Representative PaulRyan, the HouseBudgetCommittee chairman, introduced the Republican budget for 2012. Included in that budget was a premium support model for Medicare. This budget was based on a similar plan previously laid out by Ryan called TheRoadmapforAmerica'sFuture. That document had...