Free Republic

In the past few weeks we’ve seen the media scrambling to promote a cat fight between Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. As the UK’s Telegraph recently wrote: The first shots have been fired in what could become an ugly battle between Sarah Palin and her potential rival Michele Bachmann for the Republican presidential nomination. [...] A Republican consultant who declined to be named because he is aligned with a rival camp, said: “The claws are out. It’s the cat fight everyone has been waiting for – Queen Sarah being taken on by the Palin mini-me.” This is all obviously designed...

As a Candidate whom Many Pro-lifers Would Like to Support: her actual abortion record and rhetoric is shocking to the conscience in that Sarah Palin: - happily appointed in 2009 a Planned Parenthood board member to the Alaska Supreme Court - indicates that chemical abortifacients that kill the youngest children should be legal - distinguishes between her "personal" and public pro-life views (personally pro-life means officially pro-choice) - rather than fighting for protection, Sarah indicates support even for public funding to kill some unborn children - whitewashes other candidates misleading millions to believe that pro-choice politicians are pro-life - allows...

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.”...

During the 2008 election cycle, Mitt Romney was often accused of treating politics more like a consumer-focused business than an exercise in leadership. “My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo,” he said, radiating the sense that if primary voters wanted something, anything, he’d be willing to sell it. His strategists obsessed about creating and selling “Brand Romney.” To many, these efforts made him look like a crass twit, a market researcher’s caricature of the perfect Republican candidate, even as he came in second-place for the GOP nomination. This election, however, Romney may have to compete with Donald Trump.

According to the latest polls, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s political popularity trajectory is heading south. It was inevitable given our 24/7 fame-obsessed culture which feeds on new personalities and controversy to fuel the celebrity media machine. Once Sarah Palin resigned from her office as Alaska governor, she left that respected “higher platform” reserved for our elected leaders and crossed over into celebrity jungle. There, she willingly subjected herself to the unforgiving forces of media pop culture, where the masses are easily bored. And now, without a new hit show, movie, book, clothing line, charity cause, or fragrance, Palin is...

I am getting sick and tired of people making and posting all these shallow ad hominem attacks on Sarah Palin. She threatens business as usual in Washington, period. The next time some so called"expert" in the media, ex Bush, ex Mccain establishment types attack someone like Palin , ask the question what part of her policy stances are they criticizing? The answer will always be the same NONE. Reason being, they know she sides with the American people on the major issues and if they were to be honest about why they come on these shows and write what they...

And Politico effectively joins Barack Obama's re-election campaign. Politico's increasingly leftward lean has finally caused it to fall over entirely. The sheer volume of anti-Palin stories over the last week was breathtaking. It's clear that they have targeted Palin. To wit: First they were critical of Palin for not saying anything: Tucson shooting presents 2012 test Their widely divergent reactions — from Tim Pawlenty’s subtle distancing from his beleaguered rival, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin; to her virtual disappearance; to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s feeding of the right-wing base — are telling for what they show about the...

Biden, Scarborough and Brzezinski all laugh at Palin for saying she can beat Obama in 2012. During yesterday’ s usually pitiful edition of Morning Joe on MSNBC, the insane bias on that little-watched cable network was taken to new heights (or is that lows?) when guest Joe Biden was asked about Sarah Palin’s comments in a recent interview with Barbara Walters. In said interview, Palin stated that she thought she could beat Obama in 2012. Now, while it is understandable for Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough (failed Republican) and Mika Brzezinski (hardcore Democrat) to get the sitting vice-president’s opinion on...

Sarah Palin, the biggest loser. That seems to be the consensus of the grandees inhabiting Washington and New York and pockets of glitter beyond. There is a variety of interpretations of the midterm Republican wave emanating from the wine bars of upper Manhattan and the salons of Georgetown, but most include the notion that for Sarah Palin, this election was the political equivalent of the hit ABC show "The Biggest Loser." When push came to shove, she stood on...principle? Media and political elites may disagree on the many consequences of what the president called a "shellacking" by the voters, but...

Rove is right. He predicted how O'Donnell would flop and hinted that it could cost the GPO additional senate seats.... In my personal opinion, he was thinking about Alaska, Nevada, Colorado, Washington, etc. All of these should have been captured by the tea party. Personally, I think O'Donnell cost real conservatives senate seats. Say what you will... but Rove was right. Don't hate the messenger.

Does this really surprise anyone? Currently, the liberal psuedo-news site the Huffington Post has a gigantic picture of former VP candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and a 99 font size (and all capital letters) "GOTCHA" on the front of their website: The picture, which intentionally tries to mock Palin, links to an article by the Huffington Post that states that Palin "misquoted" a story in the Wall Street Journal. However, if you wade through the article and past the liberal slant, you would realize that Mrs. Palin is telling the truth. If you read the article, Palin stated that...

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." The Republican establishment would do well to learn from William Congreve's famous line in "The Mourning Bride" (1697) and even more from the accurate reading of his line: "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned." "Stop Sarah Palin" is the battle cry of establishment Republicans, according to Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei in Politico: "Top Republicans in Washington and in the national GOP establishment say the 2010 campaign highlighted an urgent task that they will begin in earnest as soon as...

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) cost the GOP control of the Senate, a powerful House Republican said. Rep. Spencer Bachus (Ala.) said that Tea Party-backed candidates whom Palin endorsed underperformed against their Democratic rivals, costing the GOP key pickup opportunities. "The Senate would be Republican today except for states [in which Palin endorsed candidates] like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware," Bachus said at a local Chamber of Commerce event last week, the Shelby County Reporter wrote Sunday. "Sarah Palin cost us control of the Senate." Bachus' is one of the most visible Republicans to criticize Palin for her political activity...

For many Republicans, the bright, golden haze of Election Day is marred by a thunderhead on the horizon -- the increasingly erratic political interventions of Sarah Palin. In the past, Palin embodied the populist style of the Tea Party movement while espousing a fairly mainstream Republican ideology. On economic, social and foreign policy, Palin seldom strayed from a simplified, popularized Reaganism. The mama grizzly may have been ferocious, but her talking points came from the Heritage Foundation instead of from darker corners of the right. But this election season has called that perception into question. Palin's endorsement of Christine O'Donnell...

Karl Rove, the former senior adviser to George W Bush, has cast serious doubt on Sarah Palin's viability as a White House candidate, questioning if the American people thought she had the "gravitas" for the "most demanding job in the world". Expressing the strongest public reservations about the conservative star made by any senior Republican figure, Mr Rove said it was unlikely that voters would regard someone starring in a reality show as presidential material. In two weeks, the former governor of Alaska launches a cable television series exploring her home state's wilderness. "With all due candour, appearing on your...

Republican political strategist Mark McKinnon – veteran of McCain and Bush presidential campaigns – acknowledged in an interview with David Frum that a third-party presidential effort for 2012 was not far off, and hinted at his involvement in one. In the podcast interview, McKinnon, who was discussing his recent Daily Beast column “A Centrist Manifesto”, lamented that “there’s nobody that gets rewarded for bipartisan behavior, [and] in fact they get punished.” To that end, he said, “there is a very real possibility for a legitimate third party effort for 2012 … American voters are so hungry for more voice, and...

In the past week, two hit pieces have been written against Governor Palin. The first was the piece by Jonathan Martin that was been thoroughly debunked as "flat out lies" by practically every source he identified by name. This was followed yesterday by a second hit piece in the New York Daily News that, hilariously, claimed that it will be Governor Palin's fault if the GOP doesn't take back the Senate. Whitney discussed this silliness in a post last night. To Whitney's analysis I would add that the GOP establishment has no idea how thin the ice is upon which...

C’mon. Would it do any good at all? “I guarantee that, at the top of everyone’s list on how to differentiate your guy from Mitt Romney, the top of the list is health care — until and unless he takes the opportunity to say, ‘We tried, and it didn’t work. The individual mandate at the heart of Obamacare and Romneycare was wrong,’” said Bill Pascoe, a Republican strategist who wrote a post on his blog earlier this year titled “Say Goodbye to Mitt.”…An apology from Romney, or even an acknowledgement that the Massachusetts law has faults, could play into the...

<p>Squirming like a flounder and blushing a terrible shade of crimson, Eliot Spitzer made his debut as a CNN talk-show host last night, looking as rushed and uncomfortable as a john on an austerity budget.</p> <p>I haven't seen a man look so embarrassingly awkward in the presence of a woman since the day I saw Eliot and his wife, Silda, together at a press conference.</p>

Once-hooker-happy Eliot Spitzer made his TV talk-show debut last night -- interviewing a guest who, like him, allegedly patronized prostitutes. Spitzer -- who resigned in disgrace as New York governor in 2008 after being exposed as a john with a frequent hankering for hookers -- conducted the bizarre interview along with his TV partner, conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, for their CNN show, "Parker Spitzer." One of the unlikely pair's guests was Hollywood screenwriter Aaron Sorkin -- who allegedly once shared Spitzer's infamous passion for call girls. Sorkin -- who penned the TV series "The West Wing," the flick "A Few...