Free Republic

The insiders are largely agreed: Sarah Palin isn’t really running for president. She is more interested in making money and getting publicity. So her movie, bus tour, and poll numbers mean nothing. Zero. Nada. The best example of this is probably found in Byron York’s column today: “The bottom line is Sarah Palin is not going to run for president,” says a Republican adviser close to front-runner Mitt Romney. “She’s making money, she’s moved on, she’s kind of an entertainer rather than a politician. She still has some sway with the grass roots, but she is not going to run.”...

As evidence against my skepticism of Sarah Palin’s supposed front-runner status for 2012, I give you the latest round of Public Policy Center polls: PPP’s newest batch of 2012 Republican primary polls conducted right before last week’s election finds Mitt Romney ahead in the critical early state of Florida, Tim Pawlenty surprisingly weak in his home state of Minnesota, and Sarah Palin posting leads in Texas, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and Maine. All of her leads are relatively slim, but the fact that she’s ahead of Huckabee in Texas and West Virginia is notable, and her leads in Maine (by 23...

To understand why Democrats ever picked Mondale, you have to understand where the party — and where the country — was in 1982 and 1983, when the nation’s verdict on Reagan and his policies was far less positive. In those days, with unemployment surging over 10 percent and the president’s popularity slipping to sub-Carter levels, Democrats mistakenly assumed that the ‘80 election had been a mirage. The electorate, they figured, had acted in haste and was rapidly returning to its senses. The results of the 1982 midterms, when Republicans (who had begun the cycle with claims that they’d win...

DETROIT—The childhood home of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in northwestern Detroit was torn down Tuesday as part of an effort to level thousands of vacant properties in the city. Wrecking crews leveled 1860 Balmoral Drive, the boyhood home of Mr. Romney, following the removal of several large trees that had delayed the home's demolition for weeks.......following years of complaints from neighbors, Wayne County declared it "a public nuisance and blight"...

Many parallels can be drawn from the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney and the seating of Sen. Reed Smoot in Congress at the beginning of the 20th century by looking at ways the media reported on the men and how they were perceived by the public at large. In a paper published in May issue of The Journal of Media and Religion, Sherry Baker, with the BYU Department of Communications, and the MMO examine the interplay between the LDS Church, the media, and other factors in society that influence public perceptions about Mormons and the church. Among other things, the...