Free Republic

In a sign that Mitt Romney's campaign team plans to adjust following growing criticism from fellow Republicans, CBS News has learned that Romney campaign senior adviser Kevin Madden will soon be taking on a larger and more visible role within the campaign. Sources tell CBS News that Madden will be spending more time on the road with Romney and is likely to become a more public presence as a TV spokesperson for the candidate. He will hit the road with Romney next week, following Romney's New Hampshire vacation. This move to make Madden a more public face of the campaign...

The Newt Gingrich campaign found itself in a state of confusion Friday night when reports surfaced that Gingrich would cancel all of his stops in North Carolina next week, fueling suggestions that Gingrich would be suspending his campaign. But the campaign says nothing is happening. Two people close to the Gingrich campaign told ABC News they were contacted and told all of Gingrich’s North Carolina stops had been canceled, although R.C. Hammond, communications director for the campaign, said there was a “communication glitch.” “There was confusion, but we will maintain our North Carolina schedule next week,” Hammond said. One person...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – There is increased speculation Friday evening about the political future of Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. Sources told NewsChannel 36 Gingrich has canceled all of his appearances in North Carolina next week. Gingrich was scheduled to make multiple appearances throughout the state, including a visit to Lincoln Charter School in Denver next Wednesday. Fourth graders planned to present him with an American history project. “We are disappointed that the Gingrich camp has decided to cancel the entire NC tour,” said Lincoln Charter School Chief Administrator Dave Machado. “We were looking forward to the opportunity to showcase the...

Questions Surface On Gingrich Campaign Travel Payments By Luke Rosiak February 17, 2012 When Newt Gingrich’s campaign disclosed in October it planned to pay the candidate $70,000 for travel expenses in the third quarter, the transfer was an anomaly among presidential campaigns. But weeks ago, the former House speaker revised his third-quarter bill: He actually expected to personally receive $115,000 of the funds donated to his campaign to reimburse himself for expenses during that period. The campaign would not explain how the candidate forgot about $45,000 in receipts, what they were for or why the campaign wasn’t simply paying the...

The Democrat-leaning Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is trying to revive the so-called "scandal" that the Democrats trumpeted during their successful campaign to unseat Rick Santorum in 2006. Other news outlets are starting to pick up the Post-Gazette's claims. For example, in an article published on February 14 and linked to by the Drudge Report ("Santorum's Electability Pitch Undermined by 2006 Senate Reelection Loss"), Bloomberg reports: Santorum's 2006 loss came after he was accused by Democrats of being hypocritical for moving his family to suburban Virginia, yet still claiming a property tax deduction and tuition reimbursement in Pennsylvania. The school district where his...

(CNN) - A trio of Missouri surrogates for Mitt Romney took aim at Rick Santorum on Tuesday, saying the former Pennsylvania senator has misled voters on his fiscal conservative record. "He certainly has been outspoken on social issues, and we honor his record in that regard. But when you get outside those issues…his record shows he's been in the liberal wing of the Republican Party," former Sen. Jim Talent said on a call with reporters. -snip- Also on the call was Rep. Billy Long of Missouri and State Auditor Tom Schweich, both of whom praised Romney's credentials in the private...

H.R. 796, which Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich voted for, was intended to preserve the right of pro-lifers to protest at abortion clinics. In 1993, President Clinton proposed a law, supposedly to protect abortion clinics from violence. In reality, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act has been used to prevent pro-lifers from coming anywhere near abortion clinics, stifling their first-amendment rights. Pro-life Republicans and moderate Democrats (they existed back then) attempted passage of H.R. 796 to head off this threat to constitutional liberties. The bill would still create a federal law to prevent the physical obstruction of clinic...

Monday, a writer for Glenn Beck’s website The Blaze, took upon himself to trash Governor Palin for writing that beautiful article that was published over the weekend on the Daily Beast. Quite frankly, Beck’s writer shocked me with his tone and lack of reason for posting the piece. So why did The Blaze host this nauseating garbage? Why did Beck’s editors permit someone (a small man who writes just like a “progressive™” btw) to attack Governor Palin in this fashion, on this website?

Sure, Mitt Romney just had a huge win in Florida—but his favorability ratings have been sinking miserably since the New Year. Andrew Romano on why the GOP’s long primary race in 2012 won’t mirror the Dems’ in 2008. Plus read more Daily Beast contributors on what Romney’s Florida victory means. On stage last night in Ballroom C of the Tampa Convention Center, Mitt Romney, the winner of the 2012 Florida Republican primary, tried his darndest to simulate the emotional state that Homo sapiens refer to as “happiness.” “Our opponents in the other party ... like to comfort themselves with the...

Former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) sharply criticized the Republican Party “establishment” for using what she called a “Stalin-esque rewriting of history” to tar Newt Gingrich as he fights for the GOP presidential nomination. Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, posted a nearly 1,400-word statement on her Facebook page on Friday in which she accused Republican party elders of employing “tactics of the left” to derail the Gingrich campaign. “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...

Mitt Romney Leading Polls in Florida Mitt Romney has pulled ahead of Newt Gingrich in Florida with a nine-point lead, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. 'I think if Romney wins this, it's over for Newt,' one pollster says. Fearful GOP leaders pray Newt Gingrich can be stopped in Florida By Paul West January 27 — After months of gyrating front-runners and inconclusive voter tests, a victory by Mitt Romney in the looming Florida primary would send the 2012 campaign down a well-worn path — pointing the most established GOP contender toward a highly competitive race against President Obama in...

As Ronald Reagan used to say: Well... Yesterday we took note of former Reagan State Department official Elliott Abrams' piece over at NRO that went after Newt Gingrich on his relationship with Reagan. While voting regularly with Reagan as a young congressman from Georgia, Gingrich, claimed Abrams, "often spewed insulting rhetoric at Reagan, his top aides and his policies to defeat Communism." Abrams then goes on to cite " a famous floor statement Gingrich made on March 21, 1986." Or sort of cites it. In fact, I'm sorry to say, what appears to be going on here is that Elliott...

On his radio show today, Rush Limbaugh highlighted an article in The American Spectator by Jeffrey Lord that picked apart and called misleading Elliot Abrams’ article in National Review about Newt Gingrich. The article prompted Limbaugh to conclude Abrams must have been “spoon-fed” the material about Gingrich’s after-hours speeches on the House floor in the 1980s by rival Mitt Romney’s campaign. Read more on Newsmax.com: Rush: Romney Camp Behind Anti-Gingrich Stories

Democrats to others they disagree with, especially if it deals with an Obama political policy: "you are a racist." McCain: Gingrich is "dangerous." Romney: Gingrich is "erratic." Lots more where that came from, too. Especially from Romney. Romney during the last debate: Santorum is "angry." Gov. Christie: Newt is embarassing to the GOP. Get ready....soon Romney and his supporters will be calling Gingrich a "racist"? There will be nastiness, but Romney started it all with his vicious ad-hominem laced ads in Iowa, and neither Gingrich, Santorum or Paul have even come close to taking the hurling of personal insults to...

What Gingrich's S.C. Romney-Stomping Means For FL's 'Battle Royale' Gingrich crushed once-mighty Mitt Romney in South Carolina’s first-in-the-South primary, in a victory that transformed Florida’s upcoming vote from a snoozer into a dogfight. “This sets the stage for a battle royale in the Sunshine State,” said Nelson Warfield, a political consultant for former Rick Perry’s recently ended campaign who’s also a member of Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s inner political circle. “Newt Gingrich changed the narrative of this race,” Warfield said. “Before South Carolina, Romney was the slow, inevitable candidate. And Florida was going to be his coronation. Now Romney has...

John Roco argues that a pattern of increasing power enabling access to a female 'of more desire to him' has defined Newt Gingrich for the election, debates, presidential race of 2012, as well as leaving a wife when she was 'baggage' of being ill, and seemingly not to serve his purposes. John Roco also argues of Newt Gingrich's attack ability at debates, whether South Carolina, Florida or future, actually becomes an extreme deficit of one who would want to be leader of our nation, needing to 'contain' outbursts and expressions of ego empowerment. Admiral Patrick Walsh is mentioned as one...

Rick Santorum accused rival Mitt Romney on Tuesday of running a “dirty politics” robocall campaign in South Carolina to discredit the former Pennsylvania senator and mislead voters in the state’s fiercely contested Republican presidential primary Saturday. Campaigning at the Yorktown aircraft carrier museum in Charleston Harbor, Santorum slammed the former Massachusetts governor for an automated call that plays a tape of Santorum endorsing Romney’s 2008 run for the GOP presidential nomination. “Gov. Romney, out there playing a recording from four years ago, and suggesting that I’m endorsing him, is another example of Gov. Romney misleading the public about my record...

Which Newt Gingrich would show up? That was the question on most people’s minds — OK, mine — as we waited for him to appear at a town hall event at St. Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics Wednesday evening. Would it be the calm, above-the-fray political sage that Gingrich has lately tried to will himself into being? Or the partisan bomb-thrower of yore that we all know from the 1990s? After his fourth-place finish in Iowa the night before and his subsequent concession speech/declaration of war on Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, my own expectation was on the...

Dear Iowa Caucus participants, You have been told for the better part of year now who it is that you must choose. Beltway insiders have insisted upon thrusting establishment candidates upon you. Libertarian anarchists have swopped into your state shouting that you must support Ron Paul, while toking on the marijuana they soon believe President Paul will make legal. You've been openly mocked by Governor John Huntsman from Utah--who ironically seeks your support. Ann Coulter has defied every conservative principal she's ever espoused by trying to brainwash you into thinking that Mitt Romney is the best that you have to...

In an interview with ABC News, Newt Gingrich accused his Republican opponents of lying in their negative ads and offering “no hope they will be any good as president.” “Politics has become a really nasty, vicious, negative business and I think it’s disgusting and I think it’s dishonest,” Gingrich told ABC News aboard his campaign bus in Iowa. “And I think the people who are running the ads know they are dishonest and I think a person who will do that to try to get to be president offers you no hope that they will be any good as president,”...