Free Republic

She is the Tea Party diva who lit up the 2008 Presidential campaign. But four years later Mitt Romney is facing one of the most vexing questions of his campaign: what to do with Sarah Palin? In an increasingly uncomfortable stand-off, he has not invited her to next month’s Republican national convention whilst she has failed to give him her full backing. Palin has also not appeared with the Romney on the campaign trail and prefers to use her Facebook page to bash Barack Obama. The result is that the Republican presidential candidate is left without the endorsement of a...

'I’M SURE I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE ACCEPTING CONSEQUENCES FOR CALLING OUT BOTH SIDES OF THE AISLE FOR SPENDING TOO MUCH MONEY, PUTTING US ON THE ROAD TO BANKRUPTCY, AND ENGAGING IN CRONY CAPITALISM,' THE CONSERVATIVE FIREBRAND SAYS

"Somehow, the summer of national economic discontent morphed into the summer of when Mitt Romney left Bain Capital and how many years' worth of tax returns he's released to the public. Along the way, Romney has lost control of his campaign message, and lost perhaps his best opportunity to define himself to undecided voters."

[T]he Romney campaign has not asked Palin to speak at the convention nor contacted her about even attending the party’s marquee event in Tampa. Queries to the Romney camp about any possible Palin role at the convention meet with a stony silence. Palin does not seem surprised. “What can I say?” she responded in an email from Alaska, when asked by Newsweek about the convention, just before heading to Michigan to deliver an Obama-thumping speech. “I’m sure I’m not the only one accepting consequences for calling out both sides of the aisle for spending too much money, putting us on...

I have to wonder if all the Romney haters on this site were the same people who ran home to mom when they lost at games as kids. I did not vote for Romney in the primaries. If you asked anyone that knows me, they would say I am right of Reagan. What I don't understand is all of you that love this country,which I truly believe you do, that are willing to not vote for Romney and potentially allow this country to fail by re-electing Obama!, how does that make sense?

If only the Democrats had decided to socialize the food industry or housing, Romneycare would probably still be viewed as a massive triumph for conservative free-market principles -- as it was at the time. It's not as if we had a beautifully functioning free market in health care until Gov. Mitt Romney came along and wrecked it by requiring that Massachusetts residents purchase their own health insurance. In 2007, when Romneycare became law, the federal government alone was already picking up the tab for 45.4 percent of all health care expenditures in the country. Until Obamacare, mandatory private health insurance...

Sarah Palin’s name is often floated for all sorts of potential projects, especially since she has yet to determine whether she will run for president next year. But here’s a new project: Ann Coulter, still dismayed that her first choice for 2012, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, refuses to run, told Sean Hannity today that she nonetheless does not want to see Palin run for president but, instead, make a Senate bid– in the state of Arizona. Coulter had plenty of good things to say about the current crop of 2012 candidates– though still lamenting that Christie has refused to...

I'm no mittens fan, but have to give his campaign credit for putting good ads together. This one simply nails Obama - inviting people to judge him after being in office three years. The ad would be useful to whomever wins the GOP nomination, in my opinion.

Who are they, these Palinistas? Some, of course claim to know them. Palinbots, wingnuts, cultists….the list could go on and on – and that is just from some of the comments critical of Palin and her supporters at Hot Air, a leading conservative internet hang out. From the left, of course, a more nuanced critique of the Palinistas from Chris Matthews

Former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin has reportedly packed in her bus tour...halfway through. Real Clear Politics is reporting that Palin and her family have returned to Alaska from their "One Nation" bus tour, despite tentatively scheduled stops in Iowa and South Carolina. From Scott Conroy at RCP: Though Palin and her staff never announced a timeline for the remaining legs of her trip, aides had drafted preliminary itineraries that would have taken her through the Midwest and Southeast at some point this month. But those travel blueprints are now in limbo, RCP has learned, as Palin and her family have...

<p>Less than a month after she appeared poised to shake up the Republican presidential campaign, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has once again receded from the 2012 limelight. When Palin launched her "One Nation" bus tour on Memorial Day amid a swirl of media attention and excitement from her fervent fan base, many political observers who had once dismissed her were reminded of the jolt that her candidacy could provide to what has thus far been a relatively sleepy GOP nominating fight.</p>

John McCain and Sarah Palin have long insisted things are all good between them, even after their losing 2008 presidential effort wound up with a nasty bout finger pointing between loyalists to the two former running mates. But the family members of both candidates are not being so publicly amicable. As ABC News's Sheila Marikar reports, Bristol Palin trashes the McCain clan in her new upcoming memoir, "Not Afraid of Life: My Journey So Far." It's unclear from Marikar's report whether the 20-year-old Palin daughter e specifically mentions her mother's running mate, her book does slam McCain's wife, Cindy, for...

It is a truism of political dynasties that there is a chosen heir - the one who should or would or could have been next. It is certainly apt of the Bush family. Jeb Bush is the son who was groomed for the presidency. He was the one most Republicans expected to succeed his father into the Oval Office. And today, looking at their, let's be frank, lacklustre field, many Republicans still wish he would do just that. "It's very flattering to be asked that regularly," Jeb tells me in his office at the Coral Gables Biltmore Hotel. "I don't...

Mitt Romney holds an eight-point lead over his Republican rivals for the White House in a survey of California voters released Monday by the Field Poll... Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani... second with 17 percent... Sarah Palin came in third... with 10 percent support. Fifty-four percent of registered California voters approve of President Obama's job performance (37 percent disapprove). Further, nearly half (49 percent) of voters there support his re-election bid...

Palin’s approval numbers are continually all over the place because, thanks to the fact that she is so polarizing, they fluctuate dramatically based on the nature of the sample. However, there has never been a legitimate poll where Palin is even in real striking distance of Obama head-to-head. And it is critical to point out that since we are not yet in a general election and Palin has been safely ensconced inside the cuddle of Fox News, the big guns have not been fired on her by an Obama team (and mainstream media) that lusts after the chance to run...

The same night “Dancing with the Stars” finalist Bristol Palin got drunk for the first time, she also lost her virginity. According to the Associated Press, the reality television star reveals in her new memoir, “Not Afraid of Life: My Journey So Far,” that she slept with ex-boyfriend Levi Johnston during a camping excursion. The 20-year-old, who now has a little boy named Tripp, claims to have woken up all by herself in the tent with no memory of what had happened. Palin, a Candies Foundation abstinence spokesperson, says former squeeze Johnston “talked with his friends on the other side...

Sarah Palin, the woman who put enough sizzle in McCain's 2008 presidential bid to make Republicans think they were finally cooking, now finds herself a few matches short of stoking her own political fire.  Palin has managed to maintain the conservative and national spotlight for three years since that failed White House bid.  She has won over the Fox News Channel, Rush Limbaugh, the Tea Party, and Glenn Beck.  Yet a coveted demographic in her camp continues to elude her: the conservative woman.Sarah Palin is smart, pretty, and adventurous -- a strong red-white-and-blue conservative.  Truth be told, conservative women...

From dynamic presidential hopefuls such as Rep. Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain to rank-and-file party activists from across the country, Republicans who gathered in New Orleans Friday all pledged their fealty to the cause of defeating President Barack Obama in 2012. But Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former national party chairman, delivered a stern warning to Republican Leadership Conference delegates: Don't look for perfection in the potential nominees and don't even think about drafting a third-party candidate when the nomination fight is done. "Don't get hung up on purity," he said. "In politics, purity is a loser. ... In this...

NEW ORLEANS -- Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told a crowd of conservative activists at the Republican Leadership Conference Friday that they should not "get hung up on purity" when it comes to the Republican nominee for president. "In politics, purity is a loser," said Barbour, a well-connected GOP insider who earlier this year decided to forgo a presidential run in 2012. (snip) Barbour said that this was the first time in his decades in politics that people are regularly telling him that "I'm afraid my children and grandchildren are not going to inherent the same country I inherited." "Those are...

On the day of the release of “Undefeated”, the new Sarah Palin movie, The Stakes are high indeed It’s an amazing, somewhat frightening time that we live in today. We are witnessing the slow but steady collapse of the US economic system that’s been in place since the end of WW2. Does anyone really think that gas prices won’t continue to rise? Energy prices won’t “necessarily skyrocket”? Housing prices won’t continue to crater? Foreclosures won’t continue to blight the entire housing market? On the World stage, the Arab Spring has become a scary echo of Europe circa 1938, with Jews...