Free Republic

The circling of wagons against former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been quite a spectacle. Establishment dinosaurs like former Sen. Bob Dole, the Reaganite grande dame Peggy Noonan, the moderate agoniste David Frum, the reclusive Web guerrilla Matt Drudge, even the flame-throwing Ann Coulter—rarely do you see such a diverse array of establishment and movement conservatives in such united opposition to someone who's at least nominally conservative. Myself, I'd rather see former Gov. Mitt Romney crushed under those wagon wheels. And so, apparently, does former Gov. Sarah Palin. In an interview with Fox News Business Network, Palin opined: "Look at...

We have witnessed something very disturbing this week. The Republican establishment which fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today has adopted the tactics of the left in using the media and the politics of personal destruction to attack an opponent. We will look back on this week and realize that something changed. I have given numerous interviews wherein I espoused the benefits of thorough vetting during aggressive contested primary elections, but this week’s tactics aren’t what I meant. Those who claim allegiance to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment should stop and...

On the heels of Newt Gingrich’s trouncing of Mitt Romney in the South Carolina primary, Republican Party brass are privately expressing deep concerns that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s high unfavorable rating in national polls could prove catastrophic to the so-called “down ballot”–the House and Senate races under the presidential race–and may even threaten the Republican Party’s control of the House of Representatives...

Sarah Palin’s husband is endorsing Newt Gingrich for president, Todd Palin told ABC News today. But Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and John McCain’s 2008 Republican running mate, has yet to decide “who is best able to go up against Barack Obama,” Todd Palin said. Palin said he has not spoken to Gingrich or anyone from the former House speaker’s campaign. But he said he respects Gingrich for what he went through in the 1990s and compared that scrutiny in public life to what Sarah Palin went through during her run for the vice presidency.

GOP political consultant Steve Schmidt, one of the toughest guys in the business and the guru behind the 2008 John McCain presidential campaign, said that early polls suggest Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann are likely no longer “plausible” candidates after tonight. And he told MSNBC it increasingly looks like former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum “may well emerge as the chief alternative to Mitt Romney.” With Santorum showing strong in early exit polls, Schmidt — an MSNBC analyst — told the network moments ago that Santorum is “going to have to make a lot of decisions very quickly if he comes...

Tuesday, January 3, 2012 Editorial by John Ziegler Sarah Palin: Selfish, Hypocritical, Sellout 1/3/2012 As surreal as it may be, after spending over two years and several thousand dollars defending Sarah Palin at great personal cost, I now find myself in the bizarre position (three years to the day from starting the journey to Wasilla to do the interview of record on her 2008 VP run) of being perhaps the only conservative commentator willing to point out that Palin has now clearly revealed herself to be a selfish, hypocritical, sellout. While she was doing her presidential tease (an act that...

COMMENTARY | The ABC News "20 20" special with Diane Sawyer that chronicled the struggle of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to regain her faculties after a brain injury as the result of a shooting in January was-for the most part-heart-warming and inspirational. The documentary, which also contained the first public interview with Giffords since the shooting, was ruined by a gratuitous attack on tea party opponents of health care reform and on Sarah Palin toward the end of the one-hour special. A short segment showed Giffords confronting an angry crowd of constituents at a town hall meeting. Palin was shown briefly,...

Sarah Palin wasn’t ever really going to run for president, was she? That’s Donald Craig Mitchell’s guess. In an Op-Ed that discusses Palin’s decision not to run, Mitchell says she’s long prioritized her celebrity career over her commitment to public office, reminding us of Palin’s lucrative deals that followed after she quit as Alaska’s governor, including a seven-figure contract with Fox News. After three years of tweeting, hinting and eyelash-batting, on Wednesday Sarah Palin announced that she was not running for president. Her Facebook friends are disappointed. But for Sarah-watchers in Alaska like me, the announcement was long expected, old...

Ever since the National Enquirer leaked salacious details from The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin before the book was published, author Joe McGinniss has been embroiled in controversy. First, the tabloid revealed his book’s more lurid accusations against Ms. Palin: An alleged affair with her husband’s business partner, a pre-marital sexual encounter with former NBA player Glen Rice and snorting cocaine. Then The New York Times said Mr. McGinniss used his summer living next door to the Palins in Alaska to “chase caustic, unsubstantiated gossip.”

The quote in the headline is from is an interview conducted by Chicago mag.com with a Harvard Law School, named Joel Pollack, who is currently employed as the Editor-in-chief at Breitbart.com. Here it is in context: CF: When we will have the first Jewish president?  JP: I think if Sarah Palin runs, she’ll be the first Jewish president. CF: What? JP: Sarah Palin is treated as Jews have been treated for generations: no matter what she does, she’s wrong. She’s either too religious or not religious enough; she’s a housewife who can’t function as governor, or she’s the governor...

"What is the most damning allegation against me? 'Sarah Palin doesn't deserve to be President because before she was married she has sex with a black man?' What's funnier is that liberals think they should be congratulated for crossing the color line."

Gosh darn it! How long does it take for God to make up his mind whether he wants Sarah to run for President? He’s had plenty of time. Sarah has talked with him often, so he’s had ample opportunity to bring up the subject. What’s wrong with him? Is He scared or intimidated by her? Is he afraid that Todd and his buddies will beat him up?From the minute the election of 2008 was over, God should have been considering all options. What was he thinking? Tim Pawlenty declared his intention to run in March 2011.That should have been a...

WASHINGTON - Author Joe McGinniss says some of the people quoted by name in his controversial book on Sarah Palin have been threatened since its release last week."A couple of them have already gotten some blowback," McGinniss said Thursday in a telephone interview from Toronto, where he was in town promoting "The Rogue: Searching For The Real Sarah Palin.""One guy was even told he'd better watch his back because it's going to be a long winter; he might not see the end of it because he has such a big mouth." After months spent fending off similar threats when he...

Sarah Palin’s family attorney John Tiemessen has written a letter to Maya Mavjee, the publisher of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, that Palin may sue her, the company, and the book’s author Joe McGinniss “for knowingly publishing false statements” in his book released last week, “The Rogue,” ABC News has learned.READ THE ENTIRE LETTER HEREThe book was widely panned by critics for using unnamed sources to criticize Palin and her family. Tiemessen cites an email they have access to in which McGinniss writes that attorneys from Crown Publishing told him “nothing I can cite other than my...

Attorneys representing former Alaska governor Sarah Palin have written to Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, serving notice of possible litigation for defamation in connection with Joe McGinniss’s recent anti-Palin biography, and warning the company not to delete or destroy relevant documents. The letter (see below) reads, in part: Enclosed is an e-mail by your author Joe McGinniss. In this e-mail, Mr. McGinniss admits that your own lawyers instructed him that “nothing I can cite other than my own reporting rises above the level of tawdry gossip.”….Indeed, Mr. McGinniss admits that the allegations are false unless he can find...

Joe McGinniss complained to lefty blog Firedoglake yesterday that almost everyone is canceling interviews in which he was to have discussed his book, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin: Terry Gross [of NPR's Fresh Air] has declined to have me on her show. As have all other NPR shows. My fifteen seconds as part of a report on All Things Considered is all I get from NPR. I’m told they are scared of losing more federal funding if right wing Congresspeople complain that they are “promoting” my book. FYI, both Morning Joe and Keith Olbermann had me booked for...

Hmmmmm.....

The awful launch week for the over-hyped, expected bestseller The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, by controversial author Joe McGinniss, just got worse. Much worse. After a week of universally scathing pans from the reflexively anti-Palin establishment media, McGinniss now faces the fight of his literary life: the accusation that he seems to have knowingly submitted a book to his publisher, Crown/Random House, that was filled with unproved “tawdry gossip” and rumors that lacked “factual evidence.”

Check this picture out that The Daily Caller is spreading around on the internet. Tucker must be really proud tonight of his employee who doesn’t get what was wrong with his vile and disgusting posting and so is now, but posting this picture, suggesting my interview with Tyson was like his posting – trash. My interview was not trash. I actually know the difference. I interviewed Mike Tyson about his life and boxing. Frankly, in many years on the air, I have interviewed all sorts of people including murderers – what I have not done is used them as a...

Desperate. That's what critics and detractors of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin are getting, and she hasn't even announced she's running for president yet. Can you believe these people are playing, of all things, the Glen Rice card? Here's how this bit of non-news got started. Author Joe McGinniss wrote a book entitled "The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin." It's supposed to be an expose of the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate. In the book, McGinniss claims that Palin had an affair with one of her husband's business partners. According to various news reports,...

The New York Times trashed his book on Sarah Palin. Politico noted that it had united Palin with her fiercest antagonists - the dreaded "lamestream media" - in opposition to its prurience and spiteful tone. But now Joe McGinniss is defending himself. The muckraking author of The Rogue spoke to Lloyd Grove of Newsweek about his Palin tome and the reaction to it, which has primarily consisted of denunciations of the most salacious details he revealed about Palin. (Denouncing salacious gossip being, of course, the best excuse for repeating it.) McGinniss "dismisses the notion that his unremitting hatchet job on the...

I really don’t understand my friend Tucker Carlson.  He owns the website The Daily Caller and it currently has on its front page the most vile story — referring to a sex act with Governor Sarah Palin as a “womb shifter.”  It is even the headline.  Do you know what that means?  Figure it out  It is really vile.  It is not just smut…this is violence against women. The “womb shifter” reference reported in the story is only the tip of the ice berg in terms of the vile nature of the posting.  I am sparing you the details.  To...

Joe McGinniss, who was a sportswriter for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and was a one-time, long-time resident of Swarthmore, has written a book that is causing much pain in a family and might very well destroy a decent person who has much to bring to the political discourse. The book is, well, there's not really a good reason to name it. But SayAnythingBlog.Com has an article by Rob Port with a first hand description of the style of "journalism" for which McGinniss has become known.

Sarah Palin doesn’t deserve this. Neither does any other similarly situated public figure, whether on the political right, left or in the middle. But worthiness has nothing to do with this, not when there’s a chance of driving up book sales and bringing down the celebrity you despise at the same time. Enter Joe McGinniss. His new book, “The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin,” claims that the former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate had a tryst in 1987 with basketball star Glen Rice when he was in Alaska to play in a tournament with his University...

RUBES: The REAL Sarah Palin Haters © 2011 By Anthony James There’s a new book out, purportedly an “exposé” on the “real” Sarah Palin, by noted Palin hater Joe McGinnis. Joe is as well known for his questionable sources and frequently unattributable accusations as he is for his creepy fixation on all things Sarah. This is the guy who actually went to Wasilla last summer and rented the house next to the Palins so he could spy on them and be an aggravating thorn in their sides as he concocted his latest hit piece on America’s favorite Governor. Released on...

Sarah Palin, the darling of a pro-life party that cheers Texas executions at presidential debates, has made an insanely lucrative career out of being famous, a Kardashian sister of American politics. This week she becomes even more famous because of a new book written about her by Joe McGinniss, who became famous for writing a book called "The Selling of the President 1968." One of the stars of that book was Roger Ailes, who runs Fox News, where Palin has been a pinup girl since the last campaign, even if there was never a chance she was going to run...

[ Joe McGinniss interview on The Today Show 9/16/11 ]Sometimes, I think it’s a public service to sit through some of this garbage so that you don’t have to.The Today Show calls Joe McGuinness “longtime political author� — but I can think of a few better descriptive words more apt for a man who moved next door to the Palin family to stalk them and peep into the windows of young girls, the way McGuinness did last summer. “Longtime political author� is not the word I’d use to accurately convey the disgust his behavior generates.I have no idea what this...

The allegations about the former Alaska Governor, who has been pursued by the tabloid press since running for the Vice Presidency in 2008, were originally published in the National Enquirer, which quoted publishing sources close to the book.

With her recent attacks on "corporate crony capitalism" and the "permanent political class," Sarah Palin is telling supporters she is indeed running for president. But in 2016, not 2012. There is likely no mileage in running a late-entry campaign now. And Palin believes that Republicans could lose in 2012. The reason? The party's indebtedness to those crony capitalists and their retainers in the political class. Her recent speeches make the case why the GOP leaders for the nomination -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney -- are too tied to this problem to be the solution...

Sarah Palin bedding a budding NBA star, snorting coke and cheating on the First Dude? You betcha. The scandalous details are revealed in the highly-anticipated tell-all "The Rogue: Searching for The Real Sarah Palin," written by best-selling author Joe McGinniss. Palin bedded future pro hoops player Glen Rice while he was playing at the University of Michigan, the National Enquirer reports about the McGinniss book. The sharp-shooting Rice - who spent one season with the Knicks - was playing in the annual "Great Alaska Shootout" while Palin was a sports reporter with Anchorage television station KTUU, the Enquirer said. Their...

<p>In “The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin,” Joe McGinniss’ soon-to-be-published book for former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate, one tidbit, passed along by the National Enquirer, concerns former NBA player Glen Rice.</p>

Complete Headline: Sarah Palin snorted cocaine off 55 gallon oil drum and had affairs with NBA star and husband's business partner: Sensational claims in new book Sarah Palin snorted cocaine off a 55 gallon oil drum while snowmobiling with friends and had elicit affairs with a top NBA star and one of her husband's business partners, a new book sensationally claims. In revelations which could strike a devastating blow to the controversial politician's hopes of joining the 2012 presidential race, Mrs Palin is said to have snorted the class A drug off an oil drum with her husband. Joe McGinniss's...

The Chicago Tribune has decided to pull the daily comic strip "Doonesbury" for the entire week from its newspapers and website. The controversy is over a week-long series of satirical material that makes fun of Sarah Palin, the failed Vice-Presidential candidate and the Alaskan Governor who quit her job after just over two years to become a conservative pundit & Tea Party icon. Facing hefty amounts of criticism and charges of censorship, Chicago Tribune's Senior Vice-president and Editor Gerould W. Kern released a statement, which will be printed inside of tomorrow's newspaper. The statement reads: "This week we are not...

I guess that makes me a Scientologist, because I’ve posted repeatedly that Palin holds a special position because there is no one — not even George W. Bush — who has been the subject of the Democratic, mainstream media and left-blogosphere smear machine to the extent Palin has. So yes, I do take it personally when conservatives lash out at Palin not because of her policy positions or what she’s done or not done in her career, but with personal invective. It’s not religion, its a cold hard understanding of what is to come, and how those who call Palin...

"...During the exchange, Palin is seen taking questions from the rally's host about Obama care. Regurgitating her infamous 'death panel' analogy, Mrs Palin then takes a question concerning the Tea Party, but is interrupted by Broomfield, who shouts 'are you going to take any questions from the floor'. After being told there is 'no time', he then shouts, 'Do you think your political career is over?'. Palin pauses to take a sip of water, before turning to the crowd and saying 'why don't you ask these people'. After the crowd settle down, two rally staffers appear and ask him to...

<p>Sarah Palin said some amazing and terrific things the other day — and nobody who wasn’t there heard about them. From, believe it or not, The New York Times, in which a columnist points out that we’re so used to goofiness coming from Palin that we missed some really interesting things at the Tea Party meeting last week — something that even liberals would have found compelling. Read past the jump for Anand Giridharadas’s summary of the great things Palin said. A hint, to get you to read further: “Ms. Palin may be hinting at a new political alignment that would pit a vigorous localism against a kind of national-global institutionalism.”</p>

The Sarah Palin “Cult” I’ve been trying for awhile to get my mind wrapped around all this, and would like to offer these thoughts going into this election cycle…. I first stumbled across Free Republic when checking out Obama's eligibility issues prior to the 2008 election. I first experienced the Drudge Report after listening to Rush during the Lewinsky scandal. When I really got into FR I felt like I had found the mother lode of conservatism; an eclectic group that regularly mixed it up over issues I hadn’t thought of as issues before. For instance, I had never considered...

Ann Coulter​ appeared on Fox News Tuesday night to discuss the uncertainty surrounding Sarah Palin​’s presidential ambitions with Laura Ingraham. Neither of them thought much of Palin’s chances. (VIDEO AT LINK) Judging the fortunes of political candidates from polls is a tricky business, especially those who have not formally declared yet. Is it a sign of strength or weakness that non-candidate Sarah Palin shows up in third place behind Rick Perry​ and Mitt Romney? Whatever that says about Palin, it’s probably a more significant data point for the declared candidates chugging in behind her. Personally, I would not find the...

Even as Texas Gov. Rick Perry moves into the lead as Republican voters’ preferred presidential candidate, a Fox News poll released Thursday shows that voters are more likely to view him as “too extreme” than former frontrunner Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney. In addition, most American voters -- including a majority of Republicans -- think former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin should stay out of the presidential race. Perry receives the support of 26 percent of GOP primary voters in the new poll. That’s up from 13 percent in early August and enough to edge out Romney as frontrunner. Currently Romney captures...

It’s been three years since former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made her splash onto the national stage as Sen. John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election. And since then she has acquired a very loyal following. But is that helping or hurting her? On Tuesday’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” conservative columnist and author of “Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America,” Ann Coulter expressed her concern over the Palin phenomenon. She was asked by substitute host Laura Ingraham if Palin can maintain her status as a tea party favorite by stringing people along about her potential 2012 candidacy....

Interesting segment, not because Coulter’s advancing any new criticisms of Palin but because she’s willing to acknowledge openly the political risk on the right in criticizing her in the first place. According to Coulter, conservatives refuse to challenge Palin publicly because they don’t want to deal with the hate mail from her supporters. That’s part of it, I’m sure — by now, all columnists and bloggers know what awaits after criticizing Palin or, say, Ron Paul — but I suspect the better part is that there’s simply no faster ticket to RINOville among some grassroots conservatives than uttering a discouraging...

A coy Sarah Palin talked a lot yesterday about the type of leader this country needs, but in what is turning into an extended national tease, she stopped just short of saying she will be that leader. "I don't know yet," Palin, the former Republican vice presidential candidate turned best-selling author, told the Herald yesterday after her rousing midday speech at a Tea Party Express rally. A fed-up Victor Luebker of the Armed Forces Tea Party Patriots [team stats] - a group of former military men and women who support the Tea Party's platform - said he's tired of Palin's...

Republican activists in early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire generally speak of Sarah Palin’s presidential prospects in encouraging terms. She’s a star, they say. If she decides to run, she’ll shake up the field. Lately, the praise has been tempered with warnings about how her time is growing short. But on Monday, the day Palin appeared before a large and very enthusiastic crowd at a Tea Party Express rally here, and two days after her much-anticipated speech to the Tea Party of America in Indianola, Iowa, a plugged-in New Hampshire Republican said he believes her window has already...

On Laura Ingraham's show, Dick Cheney gave this barbed answer on whether Sarah Palin was the right choice for vice president in 2008: “Well I’ve never gotten around the question of her having left the governorship of Alaska midterm. I’ve never heard that adequately explained so that I could understand why, how she decided in her first term to step down and still be—I’d like to know more about that.” The comment followed a longer reflection from Cheney on the need for a vice president to have "thick skin."

While Sarah Palin continues to stoke the fires and keep people guessing about her Presidential intentions, Republican voters seem to be speaking loud and clear: All in all, most voters — 74 percent — think Palin should stay on the sidelines in 2012. Just 20 percent think she should run for president. The groups most likely to support Palin running are white evangelical Christians (30 percent) and Tea Party members (28 percent). Still, majorities of those groups do not think she should run (62 percent and 66 percent respectively). In addition, 72 percent of conservatives, 71 percent of Republicans and...

Sarah Palin will swoop into Iowa and New Hampshire to speak at tea party rallies this Labor Day weekend, whipping up talk she will announce her candidacy for president. After all, this coming Saturday will mark the third anniversary of her acceptance speech for vice president at the Republican National Convention – a speech which established her as both a conservative icon and a magnet for criticism. Her supporters are certainly encouraging talk she will be a 2012 candidate. Peter Singleton, her Iowa political organizer, told National Review’s Robert Costa last month: “I believe she will run. Labor Day will...

Sarah Palin is giving indecision a bad name. Not only can't she decide whether to run for president, this week she even waffled over whether to keep a date to speak at a "tea party" rally in Iowa on Sunday, a Sarah-palooza her devotees have been organizing for weeks. Every other serious Republican presidential hopeful has already decided, one way or the other. But Palin? The former Alaska governor surfaces without warning every month or so, like the Loch Ness monster, to let her supporters know she still exists. She insists that she has what it takes to run for...

After a dizzying day that saw members of her inner circle threaten to pull Sarah Palin's participation in a rally Saturday in Indianola, Iowa, a source close to Palin confirmed to RCP that the former Alaska governor will in fact attend the Tea Party of America event, as scheduled. "We had some long discussions with the organizers; we talked about our concerns and worked them out, and they stepped up their game today," the Palin source said. Two sources close to the former vice presidential candidate had told RCP earlier Wednesday that Palin’s involvement in the rally was “on hold,”...

RealClearScott Scott Conroy BREAKING: Palin's participation in Saturday's Tea Party of America rally is "on hold," 2 sources close to Palin tell RCP 4 minutes ago

David C. Kernell, 23, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison for intentionally accessing without authorization the e-mail account of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and obstruction of justice, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney William C. Killian for the Eastern District of Tennessee. U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Phillips also imposed a three-year term of supervised released. In imposing the prison sentence, Judge Phillips recommended service at Midway Sanction Center, but noted that the Bureau of Prisons would decide where Kernell would serve his sentence. On April 30,...