Free Republic

Beleaguered Bay State and U.S. taxpayers coughed up a staggering $35.7 million this year in free emergency health care for more than 52,000 illegal aliens in Massachusetts, sparking outrage from candidates and critics who back a tougher line on immigration. The figures — released by Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration under an order for the Secretary of State’s office and after more than a month of ducking questions — show illegal immigrants who belong to MassHealth Limited received $33.8 million in taxpayer-funded in-patient hospital care this year. They also made 6,160 visits to the state’s overburdened emergency rooms in the fiscal...

BOSTON (AP) -- A hard-fought Massachusetts gubernatorial race has morphed into a courtroom thriller, complete with charges of espionage, conspiracy and subterfuge. Republicans have believed for more than a year they had a chance to unseat Gov. Deval Patrick, a marked man as a fellow Democrat, friend and political ally of President Barack Obama. But their work to narrow the campaign to a two-man race against GOP nominee Charles Baker has been thwarted by the persistent candidacy of independent Timothy Cahill. Now, in an eleventh-hour, scorched-earth lawsuit, Cahill is charging that Baker and the Republicans have gone too far. Cahill...

BOSTON - Independent gubernatorial candidate Timothy Cahill suffered another high-level defection Friday, as his running mate Paul Loscocco announced he was abandoning his campaign for lieutenant governor and instead endorsing Republican Charles Baker.

President Obama is blowing more tax dollars on a television propaganda campaign featuring Andy Griffith telling seniors that “Medicare just got stronger.” (Youtube.com) President Obama's most frequently repeated health care reform claim -- "If you like your present health insurance, you can keep it" -- sounds about as credible these days as the finger-wagging Bill Clinton did when he said, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." On Tuesday, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care in Massachusetts dropped its Medicare Advantage program, leaving 22,000 senior citizens to find other coverage to take care of expenses not paid by Medicare....

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care has notified customers that it will drop its Medicare Advantage health insurance program at the end of the year, forcing 22,000 senior citizens in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine to seek alternative supplemental coverage. The decision by Wellesley-based Harvard Pilgrim, the state’s second-largest health insurer, was prompted by a freeze in federal reimbursements and a new requirement that insurers offering the kind of product sold by Harvard Pilgrim — a Medicare Advantage private fee for service plan — form a contracted network of doctors who agree to participate for a negotiated amount of money. Under current...

With just five weeks to the election, Republican Charles D. Baker has pulled even with Governor Deval Patrick in a gubernatorial race shaped by anti-incumbent sentiment and unusually high excitement among Republican voters, according to a new Boston Globe poll. The poll results also suggest that independent Timothy P. Cahill is pulling voters equally from Baker and Patrick, raising questions about the conventional political thinking that his candidacy is undercutting Baker’s chance to defeat the governor in the Nov. 2 election. In the Globe poll, taken last week, Patrick, a Democrat, won support from 35 percent of likely voters, compared...

Top strategist quits, fears re-election of Deval Patrick Treasurer Tim Cahill’s floundering gubernatorial bid suffered another huge blow last night when his top strategist quit, saying the independent candidate’s slim hopes are only hurting Republican Charlie Baker’s chances. “We have to deal with reality as it is and not the way it ought to be,” said John Weaver, a national GOP powerbroker who quit Cahill’s campaign last night. “I would prefer Tim Cahill be the next governor. That’s not going to happen.” Weaver, who helped orchestrate U.S. Sen. John McCain’s 2000 presidential bid, told the Herald the move was “not...

Incumbent Democrat Deval Patrick remains slightly ahead of his Republican challenger Charlie Baker in the race for governor of Massachusetts. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the Bay State finds Patrick earning 45% support, while Baker picks up 42% of the vote when leaners are included. Democrat-turned-Independent candidate Tim Cahill runs a distant third with five percent (5%), and five percent (5%)more favor some other candidate in the race. Two percent (2%) are undecided. This race now moves from Leans Democrat to a Toss-Up in the Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 Gubernatorial Scorecard. Two weeks ago, when...

The latest poll in the governor's race shows Gov. Deval Patrick and Republican challenger Charlie Baker running neck-and-neck. But when the poll expands to included so-called "leaners" it's bad news for independent Tim Cahill. According to the new Rasmussen Reports survey, Patrick leads Baker 42-to-38 percent. Cahill is a distant third with 11-percent. But, when pollsters asked the undecided voters which candidate they're "leaning" towards, the numbers change. Patrick leads Baker 45-to-42 percent, while Cahill loses more than half his support and drops to 5-percent. The poll of 500 likely voters was conducted Wednesday, September 15. The margin of error...

Howie thread for the week starting with his Sunday Herald column

Republican gubernatorial hopeful Charlie Baker is surging in the race for the Corner Office, pulling within 2 points of Gov. Deval Patrick when voters "leaning" to his campaign are counted, according to a poll released today. The Rasmussen Reports telephone survey found the race tightening when those crucial “leaners” are added up. That group are voters who have not definitively decided who to back, but are pointing toward a particular candidate. Patrick holds 44 percent of the vote and Baker picks up 42 percent when the leaners are factored in, the poll said. Independent Timothy Cahill has eight percent. Overall,...

Last week we announced Keith Davis as a write-in candidate for Lt. Governor, against Richard Tisei. This week we are urging people to write in Scott Lively for Governor, against Charlie Baker. Scott Lively lives in Springfield and is known as a major pro-family figure not only in the U.S. but internationally. He is an attorney, pastor (with a PhD in theology), pro-family activist, and author of several books. He also spent time as an international consultant on family issues with more than twenty years of ministry opposing the "gay" political agenda around the world.

This past Tuesday evening Brian Camenker of MassResistance addressed the Plymouth Rock Tea Party in Pembroke. Also making speeches were several well-known politicians and candidates. Two days earlier, on Sunday, a Tea Party on the Lexington Battle Green was shut down by "fiscal-only" Republicans who were upset that "social issues" would be discussed if Brian Camenker of MassResistance were present. Almost immediately after that, a member of the Plymouth Rock Tea Party (which has recently merged with the Cape and Islands group) contacted Camenker and said, "We heard what happened. Come on down and speak at our event on Tuesday."...

Is it possible for the Mass. Republican Party to get any further left on pro-family issues? State Sen. Richard Tisei, the Massachusetts Republican Party's candidate for Lt. Governor, has done an interview for the upcoming issue of Boston Spirit magazine, an "upscale" yet hardcore homosexual magazine. Tisei -- who publicly "came out" as a homosexual earlier this year -- is unopposed in the primary and was the hand-picked choice by Gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker, who is also staunchly pro "gay rights." In the interview, you can get a taste of what life will be like under a Baker-Tisei regime. Tisei...

In the wake of over $1,000,000 in negative ads from the Republican Governor's Association Massachusetts Treasurer Tim Cahill has crashed in the Rasmussen poll released today. In the same poll released on April 7th showed Patrick 35%, Baker 27%, Cahill 23%. The net swing over the past 5 weeks has been Patrick +10%, Baker +4% and Cahill -9%. Tim Cahill has also dropped into 3rd place among unenrolled voters showing Baker 36%, Patrick 28%, Cahill 21%.

Charlie Baker gets very upset when asked if he's a "social conservative."

Two weeks after independent Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Tim Cahill attended the big tea party on Boston Common, he's getting hit with a seven-figure attack ad from the Republican Governors Association. The RGA's strategy, as the Boston Globe points out, is to do what it did to Chris Daggett, the 2009 independent candidate for governor of New Jersey, and inform voters that Cahill is even worse than the Democratic incumbent, Gov. Deval Patrick (D-Mass.). The problem is that Daggett ran generally to the left of now-Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.). Cahill is running to the right of the field in Massachusetts, gunning...

WHICH CHARLIE Baker is running for governor? The one who picked “a gay fella’’ as his running mate? Or the one who ran from a bill sponsored by the “gay fella’’ the moment conservatives turned up the political heat? Baker, the GOP candidate who hopes to topple Governor Deval Patrick, was once famously described as the smartest man in state government. So far, he isn’t running the smartest campaign. As a candidate, he seems stiff, unsure, and overly defensive. And, now, Baker is starting to look far too eager to please the Sarah Palin crowd. Consider the clumsy turnaround he...

Needham — State Treasurer Tim Cahill said Thursday he “would not leave anything off the table” in potential budget cuts if elected governor, and that he would lay off state workers — though he can’t say who or how many positions he’d cut until he gets into office. The independent candidate also said that he supports “most” of the just-passed House casino bill and thinks its outline “makes sense financially,” but he has been too busy campaigning to read the legislation. Asked why he has yet to read it, Cahill said, “I’m running a campaign, and I just haven’t had...

Shuns challenger who promised "pro-family" judges. Conservatives sell out in droves. The Massachusetts Republican Party has nominated the most extreme pro-homosexual, anti-family candidates for Governor and Lt. Governor ever to run as Republicans for a state's top offices. Predictably, the results were greeted by cheers in homosexual blogs and websites across the country.  The delegates to the Massachusetts State Republican Convention last Saturday overwhelmingly nominated Charlie Baker for Governor and his hand-picked running mate Richard Tisei for Lt. Governor. As some observers put it, the RINO takeover of the Massachusetts Republican party is now complete. Vast numbers of social conservatives...