Free Republic

Republicans are bracing for a political annihilation of epic proportions after losing a special election this week in a solidly conservative district in Mississippi — yes, Mississippi. We can call this "a harbinger." And Republicans not only deserve the flogging, they should be praying for more. We can call this "creative destruction." When Democrats claim that Republican presidential candidate John McCain would mean a third term of the Bush presidency, they're not kidding. The GOP offers no coherent policy, no leadership, no imagination, no principles and, most important, it offers no choice. The Democrat-run Congress now carries an approval rating...

Reacting to the decision of the California Supreme Court to ignore Proposition 22, which declares that “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California," and was passed with a whopping 61 percent of the vote, an outraged Michael Reagan urged California voters to join him in refusing to vote for any ballot measures in the State of California in the 2008 November election since the courts can simply nullify their votes whenever they want to. Reagan, whose father Ronald Reagan served two terms as California’s governor before winning the presidency in 1980, said "I...

SAN JOSE, Calif. - After running one of Silicon Valley's powerhouse companies for six years, Carly Fiorina now has her sights set on the White House. Not for her — not yet, at least. But for John McCain. Fiorina, 53, joined the Republican senator's presidential campaign this spring. She brings with her a long list of wealthy friends and supporters and intimate insight into how some of the largest corporations work, having been at the helm of Hewlett-Packard Co. and before that, senior management at AT&T Inc. and its spinoff Lucent Technologies. While the new gig is her first in...

There are many ironies associated with “Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment,” but perhaps the greatest irony of all is that this outdated Republican Party maxim didn’t originate with the Gipper. Those famous words “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican” were actually conceived by former California GOP Chairman Gaylord Parkinson, largely to spare Reagan’s 1966 gubernatorial campaign from the same liberal Republican attacks that sank the 1964 presidential bid of Barry Goldwater. Yet nearly a half century later, with an increasing number of Republicans wandering further than ever off of the “Reagan reservation,” the Eleventh Commandment has not only...

Could Bob Barr become this year's Ralph Nader, helping to "spoil" the White House ambitions of John McCain. The former Georgia Republican congressman announced he was seeking the Libertarian nomination for president this week, and immediately disputed that he is spoiling things for anyone. "The American voters deserve better than simply the lesser of two evils," he said as he outlined his platform to freeze discretionary spending and withdraw from Iraq. [Snip] Still, Republicans claim they aren't concerned by Mr. Barr's possible appearance on all those state ballots. But they should be. You can bet cable TV producers who are...

Fans of HBO's "The Wire" know fictional Baltimore Mayor Tommy Carcetti. The reformer spends his first days in office screeching through every public-works unit, railing about an abandoned car here, a leaking hydrant there. Shocked city administrators ask their angry new boss: Where is the abandoned car? Which leaking hydrant? The mayor won't specify. In fear, they mobilize their forces to pick up all the abandoned cars, to fix all the hydrants. The beat-down citizens of Baltimore cheer. Mayor Carcetti smiles. The state of the union is angry. Citizens are furious about gas prices and health-care costs, broken schools and...

I must admit that I had just about given up on the notion that a Republican could win the White House this year. With an unpopular war in its sixth year and an economy heading into a recession, the political landscape had all the earmarks (excuse the expression) of a country that was ready to put another party in power. Additionally, with the history-making candidacies of the first woman and the first African-American with a serious chance to become the nation’s Chief Executive, it looked like curtains for the GOP. Add to that scenario the fact that conservative groups were...

The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They're busy being born. Terry Shoffner Clarke Reed The Republicans? Busy dying.

Pity Party Big picture, May 2008: The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They're busy being born. The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at...

Date: May 15, 2008 Listening this morning to Sen. John McCain outlining his plans as president, should he win the November election, I wanted to shout things like, “Drill in Anwar, you moron!” and “Liberals are liars – we don’t want you to work with these leftist lunatics!” It has become clear that, like President George W. Bush, instead of leading the country into true conservative policies, Sen. McCain is another wimpy Republican who tries to combine radical social engineering politics from the left with a few watered-down Republican, conservative principles. Some Republicans have been calling people like Bush and...

The political climate couldn't be much more favorable for Democrats in their efforts to take back the White House this year, but that doesn't necessarily mean they will, two national political observers said in Columbus today. President Bush is unpopular, more people consider themselves Democrats than Republicans, and polls show Democrats enjoy a clear advantage on issues Americans care about, pollster Peter D. Hart and columnist Mark Shields said. Also, the economy is near or in recession, the nation is mired in an unpopular war, and for the first time in many generations, a majority of Americans don't think the...

Things are so ugly for the members of the GOP right now, it’s worth pondering their political mortality: Put bluntly, can this party be saved? We talked to some of the smartest minds in Republican politics, and their prognosis is pretty grim. They think it will take pretty big changes — and possibly many, many years — to repair a Republican brand sullied by excessive spending, an unpopular war and an even more unpopular president. Republicans are deeply divided over how dramatic changes should be and how precisely to change things. But there appears to be an emerging consensus on...

. . . Democrats will control Congress. If they also control the White House, we will have a series of legislative packages that will make the Great Society look like a libertarian government. . . . The country is in trouble. We have forgotten our founding principles, and we move inexorably toward a European style socialist state, with the only winners being an enormous bureaucracy. This will accelerate the economic decline. The argument is to give the Democrats their head, and pick up the pieces after the inevitable crash. I think that overlooks the resilience of tax and tax, spend...

Stunned House Republicans vowed campaign changes Wednesday and debated the wisdom of attacking Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama in congressional races after their third straight election defeat in once-friendly territory. "The political atmosphere ... is the worst since Watergate and far more toxic than the fall of 2006 when we lost 30 seats," Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia wrote the leadership in a bluntly worded memo. "Clearly, I think we've got to do a better job" going into the November elections, said the Republican leader, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, one day after Democrat Travis Childers won a Mississippi congressional...

Well .. seems a bit late, don't you think? The Republicans, knowing that they're in a huge heap of trouble in this year's election, are looking for a new message that will light a fire under the voters. House minority leader John Boehner says "We have to show Americans that we can fix the problems here in Washington." Hey, John. A little late there. If the Republicans want to make a bold move to stop the bleeding they're going to have to go beyond slogans. As you'll read below, they just participated in the passage of a huge, bloated and...

Soul searching Republicans are turning to an unlikely savior, one-time party heretic and now presumptive White House nominee John McCain, as they try to stave off an electoral disaster. Stung by the Democratic seizure of three staunch conservative seats in Congress, Republican lawmakers fear a shellacking in November's general election, after losing control of both chambers of Congress in 2006. The rise of McCain as their champion is not without irony, since the 71-year-old Arizona senator has quarreled with his own party for years on issues as diverse as immigration, campaign finance reform and global warming. But it is precisely...

For the past 18 months, ever since the 2006 elections, congressional Republicans have been like a hospital patient trying to convince visitors that he is not really all that sick: a bit under the weather; actually feel better than I sound; should be up and about any day; thanks for asking. Suddenly — belatedly — all pretense is gone. The Republican defeat in Tuesday’s special election in Mississippi, in a deeply conservative district where, in an average year, Democrats cannot even compete, was a clear sign that the GOP has the political equivalent of cancer that has spread throughout the...

Every decade or so the people who control the way we see the world anoint some American politician the Redeemer of a Troubled Planet. In the late 1960s the media placed the halo on Robert Kennedy, the tragic dynast whose antiwar and civil rights credentials made him in life - as he remains to this day in death - a kind of devotional figure for most political journalists. Kennedy at least had charisma and intelligence. But to prove that these were by no means necessary preconditions for the honour, it was conferred a few years later on Jimmy Carter, the...

Republicans Discount Global Warming McCain, Bush At Odds With Most Of Party POSTED: 2:15 pm EDT May 15, 2008 UPDATED: 2:46 pm EDT May 15, 2008 The proportion of Americans who say that the earth is getting warmer has decreased modestly since January 2007, mostly because of a decline among Republicans, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. That puts most Republicans at odds with their standard-bearer, President George W. Bush, and with GOP presidential contender Sen. John McCain. Both men said this week global warming is real and must be addressed. Republicans are increasingly skeptical that...

Today in the "Politico," Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen offered "six ways" the GOP could "save itself." There are a couple of good ideas; there's a lot of junk. Here is the link (sorry, I'm html-handicapped): http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=E9CE165D-3048-5C12-0076A085B3FE4630 PREFACE: Let me begin by saying I think that for too long we have avoided being blunt because of a (false) view that we have to be "sensitive" and because people don't want "partisanship." I think people DO want partisanship and combat, only will never say so. But it is very clear from their voting behavior that when one side fights and the...

Senator Joseph Lieberman, a stalwart backer of John McCain who calls himself an "independent Democrat", could face punishment from the Democratic party if he is asked to speak at this summer's Republican convention. Lieberman has said he would appear at McCain's nominating convention if invited by the Republican, fuelling frustration among US liberals already angered by his support for the Iraq war. Democrats revoked his superdelegate status earlier this year. The onetime vice presidential nominee of Al Gore has played a pivotal role in maintaining Democrats' narrow control of the Senate. But party leader Harry Reid today left the door...

What about Al? There is a rumor among those close to the Obama camp that this weekend will bring a big endorsement for the Illinois Senator. We can scratch John Edwards off that list, he is yesterday's news. Probably the only thing 'bigger' than Edwards would be former Vice-President Al Gore -- who will be in Pittsburgh this Sunday (May 18) to give the commencement speech at Carnegie Mellon University. Gore, after his unsuccessful run for president in 2000, took an environmental path, rather than political, and has become a cult-like figure among the left and environmentally correct.

From the GOPNation.com Editors: GOP voters need to realize this: unless GOP leaders in Congress are replaced, the best we can hope for this year is a President McCain with large Democratic majorities controlling both sides of Capital Hill. And let’s be frank: even a McCain election is an uphill battle at best. Consider this: In three recent special House elections, strong GOP seats (one belonging to the last GOP Speaker of the House) have gone to the Democrats, two of those in the Deep South. Plus, at the latest count, 25 GOP representatives will retire at the end of...

It won’t do any good. At this point, who would believe them? Look on the bright side: It only took six years to get from the Watergate wipeout to Reagan. What could go wrong? (Audio)

John McCain, looking through a crystal ball to 2013 and the end of a prospective first term, sees "spasmodic" but reduced violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden dead or captured and government spending curbed by his ready veto pen. The Republican presidential contender also envisions April’s annual angst replaced by a simpler flat tax, illegal immigrants living humanely under a temporary worker program, and political partisanship stemmed by weekly news conferences and British-style question periods with joint meetings of Congress. In a speech being delivered Thursday, McCain concedes he cannot make the changes alone, but he wants to...

HOBBS -- Sen. Pete Domenici will be featured speaker at a national energy policy conference May 27 at the Lea County Event Center titled "The Making of Energy Policy: Where Are We Going?" The conference is sponsored by New Mexico Tech, the Economic Development Corporation of Lea County, and the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy. Co-sponsors are the United States Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute. NMCEP, operated by New Mexico Tech, is organizing the conference, the group said in a news release. Registration will begin at 10 a.m., followed at 11:30 a.m. by a welcome and...

Tuesday's election results highlighted challenges for both Democrats and Republicans. Republicans received a hard shot in Mississippi. Greg Davis (for whom I campaigned and who was a well-qualified candidate) narrowly lost a special congressional election in a district President George W. Bush carried four years ago with 62% of the vote. Democrats pulled off the win by smartly nominating a conservative, Travis Childers, from a rural swing part of the district who disavowed Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and hit Mr. Davis from the right. This blow to the GOP came after two other special congressional election losses...

If there is such a thing as a useful election defeat, then Tuesday's Republican loss in a special House election in Mississippi would qualify. Maybe this thumping in a heretofore safe GOP seat will finally scare the Members straight, or at least less crooked. Democrats won with 54% of the vote in a district that a Republican won with 66% in 2006 and that President Bush carried in 2004 by 25 points. It was the GOP's third special election loss this year, and it has Democrats predicting that November will be another rout of 2006 proportions. Oklahoma's Tom Cole, who...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sensing trouble in the fall, the House GOP leadership on Wednesday addressed recent losses in special Congressional elections by unleashing a new agenda aimed at changing that party's image. House Republican leaders pushed the retooled message, which they call "Change You Deserve." They rolled out the first version Wednesday, which focuses on working mothers and military families. "This agenda is a reflection of House Republicans' commitment to providing American families with the change they deserve: common-sense solutions to the challenges they face in their daily lives," according to the agenda provided to CNN. "Today's families face challenges...

Special election races for Congress have arguable value as bellwethers for upcoming general elections. Mostly these races get decided on local issues rather than national themes, as in Louisiana, where the Republicans ran a lousy candidate, considered the only person who could have lost the seat. They do demonstrate the strength of national party efforts, though, and when one party loses three special elections in districts previously thought safe, that sends a message — and rightly has Republicans worried about their chances in November: A Democrat won the race for a GOP-held congressional seat in northern Mississippi yesterday, leaving the...

RUSH: I've been waiting for this, and I am prepared for this. I just got an e-mail, not a subscriber. This is in the general e-mail account at ElRushbo@eibnet.com. It's from a woman called Sandy Bose. I guess that's how you pronounce it. BREAK TRANSCRIPT "Dear Rush: Since Operation Chaos, the GOP has lost three congressional seats. I'm a conservative. I have nothing. I have no candidate for president. I have no national party unit, and no Rush, who is consumed with Operation Chaos. Enough is enough. Sandy Bose." I've been waiting for this. I've been waiting for somebody to...

Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate to become the next US president, is prone to uncontrollable fits of rage which those in his camp worry could be a liability, both in November's election and the job itself. His wife has defended his outbursts as signs of "passion". But even some of his friends and supporters worry that displays of irrational anger could prove disastrous if he became the most powerful man in the world, with a thermonuclear arsenal at his fingertips. A member of one of Washington's most respected Republican families told Sky News: "Everyone in Washington's political circles has...

All Republican leaders must resign Written by Viguerie on Wed May 14 11:48:26 -0400 2008 Republican leaders in the White House, the Congress, and the Republican National Committee and its affiliates, along with most Republican leaders at the state level, have failed – or outright betrayed – the conservative voters who put them in their positions.The result is that the party’s “brand� has become a negative, to an extent greater than in the Watergate era, perhaps worse than in the days of Herbert Hoover. The number of new Republican voters is flat while Democratic voter registration is skyrocketing.Contributions to GOP...

On Tuesday night, Republicans lost a Republican congressional district in a special election in Mississippi. Party insiders fear the loss may be just another sign of a coming bloodbath for congressional Republicans this November. Democrat Travis Childers’ victory over Republican Greg Davis in Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District yesterday dealt the GOP its third straight loss of a solid Republican district to insurgent Democrats in this year’s special elections. With nearly all precincts reporting, Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Childers held a 54 percent to 46 percent lead over Southaven Mayor Davis. The seat was vacated by Republican Roger Wicker when he...

In a major blow to national Republicans, a Mississippi congressional seat that once voted for President Bush by a twenty-five point margin elected a Democrat on Tuesday. Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers beat out Republican candidate Greg Davis, the mayor of Southaven, by a 54%-46% margin, a spread that several Republican strategists on Capitol Hill characterized as a startling wake-up call for a party in dire straits. Voters cast ballots for the fourth time in three months for the seat, vacated when Republican Roger Wicker was appointed to fill the remainder of Senator Trent Lott's term. After winning the...

"GIVE ME a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen." So said Bill Clinton in New Hampshire of Obama's claim to have been a constant opponent of the war. Clinton cited Obama's voting record, which was the same as Hillary's in his early Senate years. Yet, for this, the ex-President, designated by Toni Morrison as "our first black President," was charged with playing the race card. Clinton spent days explaining the "fairy tale" remark. Came then the morning of the South Carolina primary, where Barack was rolling up a smashing victory. Bill volunteered: "Jesse Jackson...

In the last presidential election, leftist special interest groups and socialist billionaires like George Soros waged war with an unprecedented tsunami of negative TV attacks on the Republican incumbent, suggesting he was a draft dodger that knowingly lied us into war. Adding fuel to the fire, Hollywood uncorked nasty -- and equally distorted -- documentaries like "Fahrenheit 911." The Bush-bashing wave was so big Byron York wrote a whole book about it called "The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy." This year, our "objective" media turned their eyes on the November race, but they're seeing only one negative side of the street...

This month a colleague of mine takes a job in another part of the state. Unfortunately, I was only able to work with him for about a year. However, I reflected upon our many conversations and realized that he had raised a number of interesting points, which caused me to write this week's column. During the past 14 months (give or take what seems more like 14 years), I have discerned an alarming trend on the part of the major campaigns. This appears to be the season for identity politics. Not ideas mind you. Specific policies? No way. Demographics are...

2008-05-13) — A day after Republican presidential candidate John McCain unveiled his cap-and-trade plan to defeat the imminent threat of global warming, a coalition of conservative voters announced it would enthusiastically support his proposal by refusing to burn fossil fuels on November 4, 2008. “We’re eager to live out Sen. McCain’s conservative vision for the earth,” said the group’s unnamed spokesman, “by keeping millions of Republican-owned SUVs and pickup trucks in their garages on election day.” The coalition said the symbolic move would not only “cut carbon emissions by thousands of tons,” but it would also “put a president in...

CNN just reported Childers beat Davis. Dick Cheney campaigned for the Republican candidate in that district. GOP ran commercials tying Democrat to Obama and Reverend Wright. Thrid straight special Election where long held GOP seat is lost. This in MISSISSIPPI. WOW! This is not good news by any means.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton coasted to a large, but largely symbolic victory in working-class West Virginia on Tuesday, handing Barack Obama one of his worst defeats of the campaign but scarcely slowing his march toward the Democratic presidential nomination. The Associated Press made its call based on surveys of voters as they left the polls. Obama looked ahead to the Oregon primary later in the month and the general election campaign against Republican John McCain, but the defeat underscored his weakness among blue collar voters who will be pivotal in the fall. "This is our chance to...

Oh, dear Lord. The hapless Republican establishment has gone and made a public embarrassment of itself again. Can your hearts take much more of this? Mine can’t: Hoping to get things moving in a positive direction, House Republicans will on Wednesday begin rolling out their own policy agenda, trying to showcase their differences with Democrats on issues such as health care, the economy, energy and national security. In a memo to be sent to Republican members today, the leadership hints at a new slogan building on the change message that has already been shown to have political resonance with a...

WASHINGTON - The Senate has rejected a Republican energy plan that calls for opening an Alaska wildlife refuge and some offshore waters to oil development. Supporters of the measure couldn't get the needed 60 votes to overcome a Democratic-led filibuster threat. Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said more domestic oil production is needed to keep prices in check and to reduce U.S. dependence on oil imports. Opponents said areas such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and coastal waters that have been off limits to drilling for 25 years ought to remain that out of bounds to oil companies....

quietly, largely under the radar of most people, the forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in St. Paul at the beginning of September. Paul's presidential candidacy has been correctly dismissed all along in terms of winning the nomination. He was even excluded as irrelevant by Fox News from a nationally-televised GOP debate in New Hampshire. But what's been largely overlooked is Paul's candidacy as a reflection of a powerful lingering dissatisfaction with the Arizona senator among the party's...

"I HAVE a much broader base to build a winning coalition on" than Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton has told USA Today. She cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me." "There's a pattern emerging here," said Hillary. "These are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that." The Democratic Party can't win with just "eggheads and African-Americans," Paul Begala added helpfully....

DC Comics has just announced that it's sending its characters into the most terrifying parallel universe yet: the American political system. At a comic-con last week, the publisher's executive editor talked about its upcoming "DC Decisions" series, in which members of the DC universe will declare their partisan affiliations. "Everyone’s talking politics; it’s an elections year, and we’re going to try to see how the characters of our universe react to that," he said, which I think means that his writers have completely run out of material. So now that superheroes are going to start meddling in domestic politics, which...

Many Americans were startled to learn that the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, whose campaign is built on an uplifting message of national unity and racial reconciliation, belongs to a church in Chicago where a very different view of America is preached by its longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Mr. Wright, who just retired after decades in the pulpit, has argued that the "United States of White America" is still sharply divided between an oppressive white power structure and oppressed African-Americans, that God should "damn America for treating our citizens as less than human," and that the 2001 terrorist...

My friend and colleague David Karki is about as devoted to the United States Constitution, along with its principles of limited government, as anyone I’ve ever known. And unlike the Ron Paul types who have tumbled from this perch headlong into international isolationism, Dave still recognizes and respects the blessing of American exceptionalism and our need to maintain a strong international presence – including in Iraq, where he steadfastly supports American victory. Now that’s what I call a real conservative. So why is David Karki OK with the prospect of Barack Obama becoming the 44th president of the United States?...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- John McCain, who has spent the last two months trying to consolidate right-wing support as the Republican candidate for president, has a problem of disputed dimensions with a vital component of the conservative coalition: the evangelicals. The biggest question is whether Mike Huckabee is part of the problem or the solution for McCain. An element of the Christian community is not reconciled to McCain's candidacy but instead regards the prospective presidency of Barack Obama in the nature of a Biblical plague visited upon a sinful people. These militants look at former Baptist preacher Huckabee as "God's candidate"...