Free Republic

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)There are 65 prominent people who might run for president in 2016. The Democratic and Republican fields contrast sharply. Hillary Clinton is the clear front-runner, while there is no front-runner on the Republican side. Twenty-three Democrats have been mentioned as a candidate or are eyeing a bid, according to an analysis by The Hill. The GOP side has 42. Most of the people on this list won’t run, and some have adamantly claimed that they’re not interested. But many politicians have changed their minds on seeking the White House. Before mounting his 2008 bid, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said he...

Five counties out of the 16 in the 4th Congressional District could determine whether U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais' razor-thin lead holds up or whether state Sen. Jim Tracy can overcome. The number of valid provisional ballots in 11 counties had been accounted for late Tuesday, said Blake Fontenay, spokesman for Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett. That left just Bedford, Grundy, Maury, Rutherford and Sequatchie. Their yet-to-be-counted provisional ballots are keeping election officials quiet -- and the candidates in limbo.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)It didn't take long for Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) to embrace amnesty again. As soon as he won his Senate primary election against conservative Joe Carr, Alexander said it was "embarrassing" that Republicans have not yet passed a bill. Never mind that Alexander spent nearly his entire primary campaign trying to convince voters that he was against "amnesty" and would never dare to embrace it before the primary election. “I don’t know how it will affect our politics in the near term," Alexander told Politico of a comprehensive immigration bill. “I think it’s embarrassing for us not to deal with...

Allahpundit touched on this idea briefly this week in an article primarily to do with Mitt Romney in specific and the general question of whether or not there are second acts for losing party nominees in the 21st century. But apparently the idea has taken root in a few places, and as he noted in the article, the Daily Caller (or at least Mark Halperin) talked about it without being entirely tongue in cheek. Mark Halperin, the senior political analyst for “Time” magazine, appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Thursday and boldly reiterated his Wednesday Twitter assertion that Al Gore —...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has yet to endorse a candidate in the Tennessee primary, but incumbent Sen. Lamar Alexander has already recruited him for an event in his state. The two senators will host a healthcare roundtable discussion in Nashville on June 30 with Tennessee healthcare executives and professionals to discuss the effects of Obamacare. Although the discussion is closed to the press, the two senators will hold media availability after the event. As he faces primary challenger Joe Carr in the fall, Alexander has touted his work with Sen. Paul in campaign ads – particularly on the Freedom to...

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) has just unleashed his latest endorsement for re-election. It comes from former Gov. Mike Huckabee. Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and 2008 presidential candidate, has a strong following of social conservatives and activists drawn to his populist political message. "He's been your governor, university president, America's secretary of education. He brought the automobile industry to Tennessee," Huckabee explains in the ad. "Lamar Alexander is now a remarkable senator that Tennessee needs to return to office." (VIDEO-AT-LINK)Alexander has released a series of endorsements in recent days, including that of country music star Kix Brooks and former...

Weather concerns are prompting the Sevier County Tea Party to move a high-profile bash next week that will include Sarah Palin to the Sevierville Convention Center. The June 26 event, originally scheduled to take place outdoors at Smokies Stadium, marks the one-time GOP vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor’s first public appearance in the region since she testified at the trial of an email intruder four years ago. Mindful of the possibility of rain, the event is shifting indoors, said Sevier County Tea Party Chairman Steve Osborn. Also set to appear is former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former New York...

There’s one candidate who would make a whole lot of sense—and he’s got history and plenty of experience in his favor.Do you share with me a deep sense that we haven’t spent nearly enough time covering the 2016 presidential race? Oh, sure, Nexis tells is that there have been 520 stories written between January and March, compared with 176 stories at this time four years ago. OK, the National Journal looked at TV coverage, and found that there were 69 mentions between January and March on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, and the PBS News Hour, compared with 31 in...

Today, the Joe Carr for Senate Campaign began a statewide radio buy that continues the campaign’s effort to draw sharp contrasts between Senator Alexander’s liberal record and the strong conservative leadership offered by State Representative Joe Carr. The ad will run on over a dozen stations, over the next few weeks, at a cost of approximately $45,000. Listen to the ad here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emEocXAby1k Excerpts: Lamar says we should be patient about fixing the debt. Joe Carr says the debt bomb must be defused now…. Lamar voted with Democrats to protect Obamacare from conservative Sen. Ted Cruz. Joe Carr stood with...

As some Newtown families, props being used by the very gun grabbers who have set up the kinds of gun-free shooting galleries in which their children were slain, held hands and prayed for more than 60 votes (having been flown in at taxpayer expense to lobby our representatives to take away our natural rights), it occurred to me that, with 16 Republicans voting that a debate on amending an unalienable right is perfectly in keeping with the Constitution, the Republican party then and there died. Went t*ts up. Ceased to be. If John McCain and Lindsay Graham and Lamar Alexander...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Buoyed by overflowing campaign accounts, redrawn legislative districts and an unpopular Democratic president at the top of the ticket, Tennessee Republicans are expecting to add to their already considerable advantage in the state House on Tuesday. While seven Republican incumbents were defeated in the August primaries, there is little reason to expect any spillover into the general election. Gov. Bill Haslam on Friday predicted "a good night for Republicans," with the GOP picking up supermajorities in both chambers. The two-thirds majority would give Republicans the ability to overcome any procedural challenges by Democrats, and prevent the...

Ali A. Akbar@ali 1 Nov 12 BREAKING: RT @rsmccain: Fred Thompson Calls Benghazi 'Biggest Cover-Up in American History' spectator.org/blog/2012/11/0… … Robert Stacy McCain@rsmccain It was weird: @ali and I were the only media in the room. I was nodding off until -- BOOM! Fred makes news. spectator.org/blog/2012/11/0… 1 Nov 12 Reply Retweet FavoriteFred Thompson speaks in West Chester, OhioBLUE ASH, Ohio News happens in weird ways. While we were driving to today’s Americans for Prosperity event in West Chester, Ali Akbar mentioned an article he’d just seen at Foreign Policy about the Benghazi attack. Meanwhile, CBS News was reporting that...

NASHVILLE — Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey says there's a good chance Democrats will be left with just seven seats in the Tennessee state Senate after the Nov. 6 election. House Speaker Beth Harwell's most optimistic Republican scenario has the minority party with just 24 representatives remaining. They and other Republican leaders say there's virtually no doubt that the GOP will hit a new high-water mark in the 2012 elections by gaining a two-thirds "super majority" in both chambers of the Legislature. There is considerable confidence in Republican ranks that they will go beyond that to what some are calling "a...

Breaking with a long tradition of endorsing Democratic candidates for president, The Tennessean (the state of Tennessee's largest daily newspaper) endorsed Mitt Romney today. The normally left-leaning editorial page cited Obama's ram-rod approach to healthcare reform and inability to control spending as reasons to deny the president a second term. For all his efforts, ranging from the stimulus package to green-energy development, to bring us out of recession, he has never found the key. He has generally made poor choices of the people needed to get the job done, such as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. And the number of jobs...

Today was the first day of early voting in Tennessee...a state that will be easily won by Romney. I live in Marsha Blackburn's district. She will also easily win in this very conservative district. So why is this important? Even thought the R's will win easy here, early voters turned out in huge numbers in Williamson County. In fact, the poll workers were not able to take a break all day because people just kept coming in. Again, this is a very Republican district with the outcomes already known. Me thinks there is a tidal wave of enthusiasm on our...

When the Obama campaign released its much-anticipated Dashboard platform last May, it was touted as a potentially revolutionary organizing tool that would connect supporters, and merge online activism with real-life grassroots campaigning. It can also be used as a platform to launch whispering campaigns, as one user proved this week. On Monday, a "team member" named Laurence De Palma, who lists his location as East Nashville, presented volunteers with some talking points to convince Southern Christian voters they shouldn't vote for a Mormon. The message was available under "Resources" and tagged "persuasion." "I'm thinking that even though we don't LIKE...

A federal judge this week refused to void the Tennessee Democratic primary for U.S. Senate won by an anti-gay candidate the party has disavowed. --snip-- The petition contended that the party committed fraud because it could have kept Clayton off the ballot by meeting an April deadline to tell the state he wasn't a bona fide Democrat under the party's by-laws. The lawsuit also claimed the state's alphabetical arrangement of candidates' names on the ballot creates an unfair advantage for some candidates. The petition noted Clayton's 2008 Senate race, in which he lost to former state Democratic Party chairman Bob...

A four-term member of the state House has been unseated by political newcomer Courtney Rogers who enjoyed the backing of the National Rifle Association. Incumbent Debra Maggart lost the seat after an outside campaign to defeat her. Maggart became a target after she went along with Republican leadership and helped scuttle a bill allowing gun owners to store weapons in their car while at work. The NRA and the Tennessee Firearms Association spent a combined $100,000 on ads attacking Maggart. They were ultimately effective, at least on Hendersonville voter Peggy Shoaf. “You know I want to have my gun in...

Republicans can thank President Barack Obama for the party's solid control of the Tennessee Legislature, starting with his appearance at the top of the national Democratic ticket in 2008 — after losing the state's presidential primary even among Democratic voters — and continuing in more dramatic fashion in 2010. The GOP has used advertising that linked many Democratic state legislators, even some who were staunch fiscal and social conservatives, to the evil national Democrats. "You'd think Nancy Pelosi was my high school sweetheart and I played golf with Barack Obama every weekend," grumbled state House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Turner...

Yesterday, I wrote about a few of the variables that can affect the accuracy of polls. Polls conducted of just adults, for example, deliver a huge seven-point bias in favor of Democrats. Notwithstanding this bias, it is simply silly to report political polling results of a sample of adults, since a large part of that sample won't actually be voting. It can, however, be useful if you want to make a partisan political point. This is exactly what the Tennessean newspaper and other media outlets have done. Yesterday, the state's biggest paper splashed across its front page the breathless headline...