Free Republic

Plenty of politicians promise on the campaign trail to restore an intangible "American Dream," but one outsider Senate candidate is putting his money where his mouth is and offering to make it a reality for a few lucky supporters. John King, a Knoxville businessman and long-shot candidate in Tennessee's Republican Senate primary, is looking to bring attention to his campaign to unseat incumbent Lamar Alexander with an "American Dream Giveaway." Conditional on a highly improbable King victory in the Aug. 7 primary, entrants into the contest could win one of 18 prizes, including a home-starter package, luxury SUVs, and 4x4...

The 2,500-seat Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts sold out March 31 for an appearance by Jon Huntsman as part of the Philadelphia Speaker Series. Two days later, Huntsman filled Boston Symphony Hall. Another Huntsman appearance at UCLA later this month is sold out. Without the benefit of incessant media attention some early 2016 prospects have been receiving, Huntsman’s visions and his authentic, inspiring way of conveying them has been attracting, and resonating with, capacity audiences. At the Kimmel Center, Huntsman drew laughs in lowering his hand slowly to the floor, a metaphor for the impact on his 2012 primary...

A top campaign advisor to Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic challenger to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, scoffed at the notion McConnell is "invincible" in a new memo set to be released Friday.... after The New York Times published a lengthy analysis of the unprecedented nature of a potential McConnell loss. The memo delves into the details of why the Grimes campaign believes McConnell is more vulnerable than ever. First, McConnell is devoting precious time and energy to a challenge from the right in Republican Matt Bevin, with the primary on May 20. Hurst also argues Grimes has...

Plutocrat and former third party presidential candidate Ross Perot donated $1 million to Planned Parenthood of Texas, to help fill the gap left by the state’s defunding of the Women’s Health Program. “For nearly 100 years Planned Parenthood has helped to educate men and women regarding family planning and general family health,” said Margot Perot, speaking for the Perot Foundation of Dallas. “Our family has supported this nonprofit for many years because we are impressed with the work they do—providing birth control; scientifically based education; breast health exams; and basic, life-saving healthcare for women who cannot afford services otherwise.” In...

GO AWAY already It's over dude... As you've most likely already heard, the TEA Party right has declared all-out war on Karl 'Boss Hogg' Rove in the wake of numerous recent (expen$ive) GOP disasters in which 'The Architect' played an inglorious starring role. The final straw was likely his lack of willingness to take responsibility for an almost complete lack of success in the 2012 election cycle, instead pointing fingers and making excuses like an Italian cruise ship captain. Rove's flat-out whiffing in almost every race he backed -on top of improbable Romney defeat- would be enough for any sensible...

National Review Online has confirmed that Michele Bachmann will endorse Mitt Romney tomorrow at a campaign event in Virginia.

When Rick Santorum ended his presidential bid on Tuesday, he spoke about the illness of his three-year-old daughter, Bella, and expressed a desire to spend more time with her as a parent. But on Thursday, the former Pennsylvania senator suggested the decision largely came down instead to a simple reality: He was out of cold, hard cash. After losing Wisconsin's April 3 primary to rival Mitt Romney by seven points - a contest, Santorum said, that his campaign viewed as necessary to win in order to do well in his home state of Pennsylvania - his fundraising dried up. "For...

Foster Friess, the retired investor who spent nearly $1.7 million boosting Rick Santorum’s presidential run, is ready to help Mitt Romney. “I’m obviously going to be of help in whatever way I can,” Friess told POLITICO Tuesday afternoon, hours after Santorum suspended his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, cementing Romney’s status as the party’s presumptive nominee. Friess, who was in Washington to accept an award from the Horatio Alger Association, said he had yet to discuss his planned shift in allegiance with Romney’s campaign campaign or the Washington-based super PAC supporting it.

Newt Gingrich's campaign has asked the Tennessee Republican Party....to not seat Knoxville state Sen. Stacey Campfield as a Gingrich delegate at the national convention. Campfield, who served as a state co-chair for Gingrich's campaign, abruptly switched his support to Santorum days before the March 6 "Super Tuesday" election. "Please be advised that Stacey Campfield does not have the consent of the Newt Gingrich for President Campaign to be seated as a delegate at the Republican National Convention," wrote John Fluharty, the campaign's director of delegate access, in a Thursday letter to the state GOP committee. "As a matter of information,...

Newt Gingrich said today he would be willing to be second on a Mitt Romney ticket. “No, I wouldn’t say no,” Gingrich said on Fox News Channel’s Your World with Neil Cavuto about what he would do if he was asked to become Romney’s vice president. “I can’t imagine him offering.” He also blasted Obama’s remarks caught on mic to Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. “The question it raises is how many countries, whether it is Iran or somewhere else has he had a similar conversation with?” said Gingrich. “You know, let me pretend I’m tough long enough to get reelected,...

Americans Elect is a new group desperately trying to gain attention to run a presidential candidate who is, we are told, a  "bipartisan choice." Color me skeptical.  After reading Michael Warren's piece in The Weekly Standard, I was already sensing that the group -- with its disparate choices for president -- wasn't about any real policy ideas; "bipartisanship," after all, is about process (how one arrives at a decision) rather than about substance.  It sounds good, but doesn't mean anything on its own -- whether one favors bipartisan consensus depends on one's views on any given subject (i.e., pro-choicers and pro-lifers...

Rick Santorum could be the worst thing to happen to the GOP — ever. Worse even than George W. Bush. And that’s saying a lot. Bush did so much damage to the GOP brand, he almost destroyed the party forever. It was George Bush who brought us Barack Obama. Few Americans voted for Obama, they just voted for ABB (Anyone But Bush). Now the GOP has a golden opportunity. Obama has wrecked the U.S. economy from sea to shining sea. He has turned off voters by the millions. By historical standards, based on the current disastrous economic and unemployment numbers,...

I am a reluctant Democrat. Hell, I’m even a little embarrassed to call myself a Democrat. I’m not a fan of budgets increasing that should be decreasing. I am not a fan of coddling labor unions. I am not anti-union, but it seems like most unions are anti-hard work and I am certainly against that. But looking at my voting record, Team Dem has had my solid support over the years. Clinton got my vote twice; while Gore, Kerrey and Obama all got my vote, although the Kerrey vote earned me a trip to the ER for a panic attack....

U.S.English Chairman Mauro E. Mujica this week contacted former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, calling for the two Republican Presidential candidates to demand an English language requirement should Puerto Ricans elect statehood this coming November. Expected to make appearances in Puerto Rico this week, Romney and Santorum have not yet spoken out in support of requiring English as an official language in order for Puerto Rico to be granted statehood status. Romney has previously expressed support for statehood, should Puerto Ricans favor that in an upcoming plebiscite.

(CBS News) BILOXI, Miss. - The four main candidates for the Republican nomination for president say they're committed to staying in the race right up to the convention this August in Tampa, Fla. There's just one problem: If they do, it might turn out that no one gets the number of delegates needed to win the nomination outright. Stumping in Birmingham, Alabama, Mitt Romney continued his Southern charm offensive, celebrating an endorsement from the country band Alabama. "Wouldn't you love to hear them sing 'Sweet Home Alabama'? Wouldn't that be wonderful?" he asked a crowd at one campaign stop. In...

In Mississippi, Santorum Makes Case For Two-Man Race By NBC's Andrew Rafferty JACKSON, Miss. -- Rick Santorum called on Mississippi voters to deliver the knockout blow that would end Newt Gingrich's candidacy and make it a two-man race between Mitt Romney and the former Pennsylvania senator for the Republican nomination. "You have an opportunity here in Mississippi to narrow this race, narrow this race to a conservative versus the insider moderate. I ask you here tonight to stand with me," Santorum told a crowd of 300 at the Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Museum on Wednesday. "If we win Mississippi, this...

America's long-slog presidential campaigns are a process of discovery. Candidates, voters and the press criss-cross a complex nation trying to discover where the public mind will be the first Tuesday in November. No candidate has had a more interesting journey through 2012's campaign frontier than Rick Santorum. Few are going to forget Sen. Santorum in the early debates, stuck in the left-field bleachers, begging to be heard over such center-ring heavyweights as Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain. In August, no one thought this guy would be toe-to-toe with the Romney machine in March. What happened? I went to...

March 8 Republican Split Decision Romney had a good night but Santorum has cause to fight on. If Republican poohbahs were hoping that Super Tuesday's 10 contests would settle the Republican primary contest, they woke up Wednesday disappointed. While Mitt Romney had a good night and stretched his lead among delegates, Rick Santorum did well enough to more than justify staying in the race. The good news for Mr. Romney is that he won easily where he had to—in New England and Virginia—and went on to win narrowly the crucial showdown in Ohio. The pundits made much of the large...

One of the many problems with ObamaCare is discovering that a self-bought policy is government run. What is the problem with a government policy? Well...it's government run. They get you coming and going. There's a pretend choice that is no choice, and even that non-choice is eventually forced out of business so that all is subsumed under the reality of a bureaucrat deciding if you get a heart bypass or a quick sendoff to the great beyond. Fake choices abound when dealing with politicians. That's why one simply must wonder about the Gingrich/Santorum splitting of the conservative vote. Who benefits?...

Rick Santorum indicated that Newt Gingrich should drop out of the presidential race, arguing -- as Gingrich did during his surge -- that splitting the "anti-Romney" vote helped Mitt Romney win the Michigan primary and Washington caucuses and contributes to his overall success so far. "It's always harder when you've got to conservative running in the race as we have seen in Washington and we've seen in other states," Santorum said on Fox News Sunday. "We have the anti-Romney vote, if you will. Both Gingrich and I are slugging away." Santorum stopped short of calling for Gingrich to exit the...