Free Republic

I don't know what happened between November of 2010 and January of 2012, but from the looks of things the Tea Party died. How else do you explain it? Rewind to November of 2010, race after race, congressional seat after congressional seat, Governorship after Governorship. Only a little more than eighteen months after President Obama had packed the mall in Washington for his historic inaugural, the Tea Party held it's historic event in which nearly the same size audience had attended--according to maps supplied by the USA Today. That event catapulted a state by state tsunami-like momentum where grassroots, low...

TAMPA - Two years ago in the midterm elections, the Tea Party dominated the conversation -- and the results at the polls. But this time around, with the presidency at stake, the Tea Party is making very little noise. And that's making some people wonder if the Party's over. With Sarah Palin at the helm, and a legion of newly energized voters, the Tea Party wielded enormous clout in 2010, sending favored sons and daughters like Rand Paul of Kentucky and Nikki Haley of South Carolina to Congress. The defeats of Sharon Angle and Christine O'Donnell show that they didn't...

Remember Sara Palin's prediction in 2010 that a Tea Party "revolution" would sweep America? Now we are observing their overreach in Iowa. Republican candidates for President have to be ultra conservative to win the nomination but when the general election rolls around these candidates will be seen as too polarizing for Independents and many establishment Republicans. Isn't it obvious to Republican candidates who bear hug the Tea Party too tightly in order to win the primary that it will cause those candidates serious issues in the general election. A couple of small favorite moments for me were watching Brian Schwetzer,...

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - The 2012 GOP primary between Sen. Richard Lugar and challenger Richard Mourdock is still more than six months away, but you can get a sense of what kind of battle it will be in this week's WISH-TV/Franklin College Poll. Lugar has a big advantage in some areas. When it comes to name identification, more than nine out of 10 voters recognize him, while Richard Mourdock's name registers with only two-thirds of the voters. Lugar also has a high favorability rating at 59 percent. Mourdock gets a positive response from just 17 percent. Yet if you place Mourdock's...

Well, what a relief. Just in time for the holidays, Congress showed us it can work in a spirit of bipartisan cooperation to pass a two-month extension of a popular tax cut. On its own! With perhaps a small amount of prodding. The payroll tax cut bill zipped through Congress on Friday... --snip-- No, I think the moral here is pretty clear. We have talked for nearly three years about how the Tea Party is terrorizing the Republican establishment, until the old country-club, deal-making model was verging on extinction. But it now appears that if the new populist right does...

I just started a new facebook page as a place for grassroots conservatives to urge Virginia to allow the leading Republican contender for the presidency onto the Virginia ballot. Gingrich is the Republican leader nationwide and in Virginia! It's absolutely ludicrous, if not criminal, for Virginia to deny the conservative base and tea party favorite a spot on the ballot while they promote their elite ruling class RINO! Do not allow Virginia to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of conservative grassroots voters who would mark their ballots for Newt Gingrich! Adding insult to injury, they don't even allow write-ins on their...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich leads the pack of Republican presidential hopefuls in a survey of Virginia voters released Wednesday. But former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would fare better than Gingrich in a general election contest with President Barack Obama, according to the Quinnipiac University poll. Gingrich leads Romney by a margin of 30 percent to 25 percent among Republican voters, with none of the other GOP candidates topping 9 percent. In a head-to-head test, Gingrich tops Romney by a margin of 47 percent to 39 percent. Virginia will hold its presidential primary March 6. More than half of the...

~~snip~~ "A Gingrich campaign official prior to the move by the Republican Party of Virginia said the problem is how the rules are set up, arguing that the party is, for apparently the first time, cross-checking the addresses that signature-givers gave against the electronic voter database file for accuracies. A name without a proper address match was tossed, the official said."

In Partial Defense of Newt Gingrich December 21, 2011 11:15 A.M. By Ed Whelan I’ve vigorously criticized Newt Gingrich’s proposal to abolish judgeships, and I also agree with Andy McCarthy’s critique of Gingrich’s idea that Congress should subpoena federal judges (and arrest them, if necessary) to explain their rulings to members of Congress. That said, I think that some of Gingrich’s other ideas have been subjected to unfair attack, and I’d like to sketch a brief defense of them here: 1. Gingrich is correct to contest the myth of “judicial supremacy.” As his “white paper” explains, he is not challenging...

2012 Republican Presidential Nomination Polling Data on December 18, 2011 Poll Date Sample Gingr. Romney Paul Bachmn. Perry Santm. Hunts. Spread RCP Average 12/07 - 12/17 -- 30.5 22.5 9.8 8.0 7.0 3.5 3.0 Gingrich +8.0 Gallup Tracking 12/12 - 12/17 1000 RV 28 24 10 7 6 4 2 Gingrich +4 Reuters/Ipsos 12/08 - 12/12 443 RV 28 18 12 10 12 4 5 Gingrich +10 Associated Press/GfK 12/08 - 12/12 460 A 33 27 9 9 6 3 2 Gingrich +6 Pew Research 12/07 - 12/11 504 RV 33 21 8 6 4 3 3 Gingrich +12

First there was the Reagan Revolution, then Newt's Republican Revolution, and now the Tea Party Revolution. In each successive revolution, the lovers of liberty threw off a bit more of the yoke of the oppressive ruling class to reestablish some vital part of our God given liberty and freedom. Pro-life, small government, big defense Ronald Reagan set and accomplished the goal of bringing down the socialist Soviet Union as a threat to the world and reestablished free America as the dominate superpower. He rescued America from the hapless Jimmy Carter who had dragged the nation down into to the depths...

I respectfully dissent from National Review’s Wednesday-evening editorial, which derided Newt Gingrich as not merely flawed but unfit for consideration as the GOP presidential nominee. The Editors further gave the back of the hand to the bids of two other prominent conservatives, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann — a judgment that is simply inexplicable in light of the frivolousness of its reasoning and of the Editors’ embrace of Jon Huntsman, a moderate former Obama-administration official, as a serious contender. The editorial surprised me, as it did many readers. I am now advised that the timing was driven by the editorial’s...

Surging Newt Gingrich is taking criticism from conservative pundits such as George Will, Peggy Noonan and Charles Krauthammer, who fear he can't beat Barack Obama. If former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is to maintain his place at or near the top of Republican presidential polls, it will be no thanks to the assistance of America's conservative political commentators. Columnists and bloggers of the right have been torching Gingrich with unusual abandon in recent days — charging that the long-tenured politician can't be trusted to adhere to conservative ideals or to stay on message if he is unleashed in a prolonged...

The tea party is still pining for Sarah Palin. The grassroots conservative movement has yet to throw its support behind a Republican presidential candidate because “we don’t have the female Ronald Reagan running — and that’s Sarah Palin,” said Amy Kremer, chairwoman of the Tea Party Express. “We haven’t engaged in presidential politics yet because the movement hasn’t coalesced around anybody, so we’re just sitting back and waiting,” Kremer added. Predicting that a good slice of the country’s conservatives will not make up their minds until they are standing in front of the ballot box, Kremer singled out the former...

The hottest argument in Republican circles these days isn’t about immigration, taxes or even health care policy. It’s about New Gingrich and whether nominating him as the party standard-bearer would be disastrous or providential. The pundits and professional consultants have weighed in on the question in a largely negative manner but many of the Republican candidates seeking election to Congress next fall don’t appear to share the concerns the GOP establishment seems to have about the impact Gingrich would have on downballot races as their presidential nominee. A dozen of the GOP’s top recruits to run for Congress, part of...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia is leading former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential race by 20 points—41 percent to 21 percent--among self-professed conservatives, according to a new Gallup poll released Thursday. By contrast, Romney is leading Gingrich by 10 points—27 percent to 17 percent—among self-professed liberals and moderates in the poll. The poll, conducted Dec. 5-11, surveyed 1,665 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who are registered voters. Among all poll respondents, Gingrich led Romney 33 percent to 23 percent, with Rep. Ron Paul of Texas at 9 percent, Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota at 6 percent,...

Actual Headline: Charles Krauthammer To Bill O’Reilly: Newt Gingrich Is ‘A Victim Of His Own Creative Intelligence’ As former House Speaker Newt Gingrich continues to gain a lead in the polls, much of the talk surrounding his run is the apparent opposition to his nomination from the Republican establishment. On tonight’s O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly asked Charles Krauthammer precisely this, and before getting a serious answer on Gingrich’s Achilles’ heel, received a bit of a ribbing on the definition of “establishment.”

A survey of 12 swing states that Barack Obama carried in 2008 now finds the president losing to both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich there. USA Today-Gallup -- polling registered voters in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin -- found Obama trailing Romney 43-48, and Gingrich 45-48. Because Obama is expected to hold the big states of California, New York and Illinois, he maintains a popular-vote advantage nationwide, where he leads Gingrich 50-44, and edges Romney 47-46. But the Electoral College math would deliver the White House to Republicans if...

The Illinois African American Libertarian Alliance (IAALA) is home to hundreds of Chicago African American conservatives and has decided to endorse Newt Gingrich for the upcoming 2012 election. “Newt Gingrich represents the values of many conservatives—White, Latino, or Black. He is honest about who he is and is the perfect person to turn a falling country around,” says IAALA President David Lemar.

President Obama's attack dogs have a new target — Newt Gingrich. The Democratic National Committee on Sunday released a campaign ad that tags Gingrich as the “original Tea Partier.” The ad hit the Internet less than four hours after Gingrich showed he could take the heat as the latest Republican front-runner during Saturday’s GOP primary debate in Iowa. Gingrich’s foes warned his temper would erupt under a combined grilling from his opponents and the media. But he didn’t self-destruct, and so became the latest target of the Obama re-election campaign, which until now had reserved its ammo for Mitt Romney....