Free Republic

Freedom through Regulation Those of us sitting on our hands with tape over our mouths trying not to distract attention from the Democratic Convention in Denver are in awe of the obvious. Catholics take exception to the abortion policies of the Dems. Soldiers don’t like the cut and run ethic that has only recently been watered down by the Democratic Party. Businesses don’t want to hear any more of the taxation policies being proposed. The NRA is against the over-regulation of firearms that has become a tenet of faith to the Dems. Christians have had it with the pro-homosexual policies...

Former Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani will speak at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., FOX News confirmed Thursday. The former New York City mayor is scheduled to make a primetime address on Sept. 2 — the second night of the convention.

John McCain's admission to the Weekly Standard's Steve Hayes ("Shayes" to friends) that he would consider the possibility of choosing a pro-choice running mate is rightly seen as a trial balloon to gauge reaction among conservative base voters to such a move. "I think that the pro-life position is one of the important aspects or fundamentals of the Republican Party," McCain told Hayes. "And I also feel that -- and I'm not trying to equivocate here -- that Americans want us to work together. You know, [former Pennsylvania Governor] Tom Ridge is one of the great leaders and he happens...

IN A WIDE-RANGING INTERVIEW aboard his campaign plane this morning, John McCain said that he is open to choosing a pro-choice running mate and named former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge as someone who merits serious consideration despite his support for abortion rights. McCain also criticized Barack Obama's presidential campaign for attempts to "politicize" the debate over Georgia and criticized President Bush for failing to recognize the true nature of Vladimir Putin. "I think that the pro-life position is one of the important aspects or fundamentals of the Republican Party," McCain said. "And I also feel that--and I'm not trying to...

Battle for the ’Burbs How Republicans can compete for the upper middle class ROSS DOUTHAT & REIHAN SALAM It was only four years ago that conservatives — and a great many liberals — were convinced that the Democratic party was doomed to become a purely regional institution: “a national party no more,” to borrow the title of Georgia Democrat–turned–Bush supporter Zell Miller’s 2003 memoir. Pundits brandished county-by-county maps showing blue enclaves drowning in a sea of red; they talked up the growth of GOP-leaning regions and constituencies and the daunting demographic gaps (God, babies) facing the Democratic party; they murmured...

Last week Democrats tried to kill the economy in the name of solving a problem that doesn't exist. Republicans should hang this bill around their necks in every district where an incumbent voted for the woefully misnamed and deservedly DOA Climate Security Act, technically S.3036. Asking Americans to pony up even more at the pump with already record gasoline prices creeping higher almost daily seems offensive enough. But compelling such burden under the guise of moral imperative to curb global warming at a time when the planet is actually cooling rings downright obscene. And thatÂ’s why last weekÂ’s cavalcade of...

...Condoleezza Rice described herself as "mildly pro-choice." ...(T)here is nothing "mild" about having your arms and legs ripped off your body in that "choice" we call abortion. ...Washington Times correspondent Bill Sammon pressed Rice, "But it sounds like you do not wish to change the laws that now allow (abortion). ..." Rice responded, "Well, I don't spend my entire life thinking about these issues. … What I do think is that we should not have the federal government in a position where it is forcing its views on one side or the other." ...Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, summarized...

Mort Kondracke got one thing right: Rush Limbaugh would go Krakatoa . . . The resident moderate of The Beltway Boys has counseled John McCain to offer the VP slot to Christie Todd Whitman. Mort made his move during the show-ending "Buzz" segment. MORTON KONDRACKE: Two new McCain Veep ideas: first, he should offer the Vice-Presidency to Colin Powell, who may well not take it. If not Powell, then Christie Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey. Rush Limbaugh would go Krakatoa but independents will like it, women will like it, and so will African-Americans, the whole package.

... If there's a single thread that runs through the e-mails I receive from peevish Republicans, it's that none of the current candidates possesses the conservative purity of Ronald Reagan. One could almost get the idea that Dutch was betrayed by Pontius Pilate and crucified on Calvary. But that wasn't exactly the case. The fact of the matter is that Gov. Reagan gave Gov. Jerry Brown a run for his money – or should I say our money? – when it came to raising taxes here in California. But, in spite of the additional revenue, he was responsible in large...

I have very good news for liberals who are convinced that armies of theocrats have seized complete control of the Republican Party. At least, I think it’s good news. It seems that the theocrats have vanished, according to the Washington Post Style section. Then again, it could be that the theocrats are so powerful that the Style section doesn’t even have to mention them anymore, when writing about the deep divisions inside the GOP about the nomination of Sen. John McCain for president. Oh my, maybe there there is another option. Perhaps the theocrats have taken control of the Style...

I just got back from the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C., where conservatives began lining up behind a man who’s been sticking it to us for years. By a process of self-hypnosis, many have managed to convince themselves that McCain is actually one of us. Not for nothing did Benjamin Disraeli call conservatives the stupid party. What part of John McCain do we not get? McCain-Kennedy, McCain-Feingold, McCain-Lieberman, McCain-Edwards -- among other socialist, anti-speech, open-borders, enviro-Marxist measures he’s co-sponsored with the hardcore left of the Democratic Party over the years. If Il Duce had served with...

I know that many people are extremely frustrated with politics these days and the current state of the Republican party. Many people are sad that their first-choice candidate dropped out, then their second-choice, and they keep having to compromise more and more until we get to the point where we feel pressured to vote for a liberal, open-borders, unconstitutional insider politician who we ordinarily would never dream of voting for. But have you asked yourself: how is it that we find ourselves in this predicament? And is there anything more to it than meets the eye? I know that anything...

On "30 Rock" last year, Tina Fey confessed that she is going to "tell all my friends I'm voting for Barack Obama" - then "secretly vote for John McCain." So John McCain is a Tina Fey Republican. Democrat Joe Lieberman and The New Republic editor Franklin Foer like McCain too. Strange stuff, but not as strange as what's happened to Rush Limbaugh. He's become a Ralph Nader Republican. Limbaugh told the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz last weekend that if McCain is his party's nominee, he would rather Democrats retake the White House: "If I believe the country will suffer with...

RUSH: I went to Washington last night for dinner, and I told the staff, I didn't tell you people this, but I told the staff when we finished the program I had to record the Morning Update, and I said, "I gotta scram. I gotta go to Washington for dinner," and they didn't say anything. I got back about two in the morning, and my 16 gig iPhone had arrived yesterday, I'm thinking, "God, I want to get back and activate this thing." So I went to my library about 2:30 to start activating it and after a half hour,...

If there was ever any question as to how diverse the Republican Party is, this campaign season has answered it. The reason there are so many viable candidates in the Republican presidential primary this year is because each candidate hails from a different part of the Republican base. That Republican diversity earns a special New Year’s Look. Rudy Giuliani hails from the liberal wing of the Republican Party. The Republican liberals are regionally based in the Northeast. They think that women should have the right to choose abortion, support destructive embryonic stem cell research, and generally support homosexual rights. They...

Wealthy Republicans have a new political nightmare that may be scarier than Hillary Clinton: Mike Huckabee. The former Arkansas governor has surged in Republican presidential-preference polls, winning the support of Christian fundamentalists while peppering his campaign rhetoric with jabs at the financial industry. He calls himself the candidate who isn't a ``wholly owned subsidiary'' of investment banks, decries large executive-pay packages and says the party needs to shift its focus from Wall Street to Main Street. In doing so, he threatens the uneasy if effective coalition Republicans have counted on for three decades: abortion opponents and other social-issue activists supplying...

(AP) INDIAN WELLS, Calif. -- Governor Schwarzenegger warns the Republican party must move back to the political center or risk losing voter support. Schwarzenegger spoke Friday night at the California GOP party convention in Indian Wells. He says the state party’s percentage of voter registration has been shrinking, and to reverse it the party must tackle issues with broad public appeal, like climate change and building highways, railroads and tunnels. He recently proposed distilling the state GOP platform into as little as a single page focusing on lowering taxes, limiting the size of government and building a strong national defense....

SOMETIMES tragic occurrences force us to stop and think – those are the moments that crystallize our perceptions of human relations. I found myself in such a state with the passing of a constituent, friend and fellow conservative who also happened to be gay. Our conversations convinced me that my beliefs in limited government can be shared across the chasms that liberals and conservatives perceive to separate us – ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. That conclusion is not popular on either side of the left-right spectrum: Liberals don't believe gays should be conservative and conservatives don't believe gays can be...

THE WASHINGTON TIMES - The Republican Party must temper its emphasis on moral issues like abortion and same-sex "marriage" if the party is to regain seats lost during the 2006 congressional elections, a new poll says. Fifty-three percent of Republicans say the party "has spent too much time focusing on moral issues such as abortion and gay marriage and should instead be spending time focusing on economic issues such as taxes and government spending." "The results of this poll confirm what we have long believed — that what holds the GOP together is a belief in core economic principles," said...

My Dear Feepers, It’s not just on Free Republic alone, the rift within the GOP perhaps more properly described as the rift between the GOP and one its constituents---Conservatives---has caught the attention of virtually all the major political prognosticators. It’s a painful thing to endure, and likely it will not enhance our effectiveness as a party, as a political movement or in winning elections. And, at it’s current rate of development and the sometime nastiness of the invective on FR, I think it’s going to get worse long before it’s going to get better. Think about this as a possible...

WASHINGTON — In recent years, the Republican Party aimed to broaden its appeal with a "big-tent" strategy of reaching out to voters who might typically lean Democratic. But now a debate is growing within the GOP about whether the tent has become too big — by including gays whose political views may conflict with the goals of the party's powerful evangelical conservatives. Some Christians, who are pivotal to the GOP's get-out-the-vote effort, are charging that gay Republican staffers in Congress may have thwarted their legislative agenda. There even are calls for what some have dubbed a "pink purge" of high-ranking...

Moderate Republicans in California, having watched their party become increasingly dominated by conservatives as it sunk deeper and deeper into minority status, had big hopes after Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor in 2003. A new leader had arrived, one who because of a lightning strike of political good luck did not have to subject himself to the ideological litmus test of a statewide Republican primary. Just maybe, they thought, he could lead them out of the political wilderness. Schwarzenegger, as they saw it, was their kind of Republican: supportive of abortion rights, receptive to gay-rights issues, tough-minded on taxes, sensitive...

Again, mature topic, recommended for sophomoric viewers only. :-) See for example this thread first. Which side will the DUmmies come down on? All Dems agree on saving the environment, but given the number of gender feminists, and sandal-clad, effeminate Euroweenies in the party, the purported side effects of pesticides might be too good to pass up! I just read a frightening report that pesticides can make men, ..."short". Enviros are mad but fem'nists are glad Politics, strange bedfellows, I retort!

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Raising money for local Republicans even as he ponders his own political future, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Monday that Republicans must increasingly be "a big party" that accepts divergent views. Giuliani said that broad-brush themes, like limited government, ought to define the Republican Party -- not hot-button social issues like abortion and gay rights. "The major thing that we organize around as Republicans is government that puts more reliance on people than government," Giuliani said. "They (Democrats) tend to think of government solutions as most of the answers." Giuliani was in Iowa...

DES MOINES, Iowa - Raising money for local Republicans even as he ponders his own political future, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Monday that Republicans must increasingly be "a big party" that accepts divergent views. Giuliani said that broad-brush themes, like limited government, ought to define the Republican Party — not hot-button social issues like abortion and gay rights. "The major thing that we organize around as Republicans is government that puts more reliance on people than government," Giuliani said. "They (Democrats) tend to think of government solutions as most of the answers." Giuliani was in Iowa...

SACRAMENTO — A television ad campaign portrayed as an independent effort to help Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been bankrolled partly by a group with deep ties to his political operation. An official with the New Majority, a Southern California Republican group at the core of Schwarzenegger's fundraising apparatus, said its members have given about $1 million to the Washington, D.C., business group that is the public face of the ads: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. By pumping the ad money through the chamber, well-heeled New Majority members have bypassed requirements that their donations be publicly disclosed. And they skirted the...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Republican Main Street Partnership today praised Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) for his decision to vote against Judge Samuel Alito's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court and blasted his critics for "playing politics" with the Senator's decision. Senator Chafee showed incredible courage by weighing long and hard Judge Alito's outstanding legal qualifications and judicial philosophy against Chafee's own principles (...)

Warwick, R.I. -- Liberal Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee refused to support President Bush in the last election, opposed the GOP tax cuts and was the only Republican to vote against the use of military force in Iraq, a war he has likened to Vietnam. So why, a year before the election, is the GOP embracing Chafee and spending close to $200,000 on television ads aimed at undercutting his conservative rival in the Republican primary, Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey? Like him or not, Republicans consider Chafee their best chance to win in heavily Democratic Rhode Island.

I have been talking to people about the Republican Liberty Caucus, but I have been having a hard time explaining the issue to people. Our statements of principle have always centered around smaller government and proptecting our rights. A surprisingly small majority of Americans support these two principles, but it's enough to form a political movement. The RLC has its own statement of principles, and its own conventions. Members are not expected to tow the party line, especially for RINO's. I believe that we should sell the RLC as a separate political group that supports libertarians, constitutionalists, reform party members,...

Neoconservatism's Big TentHow distinctively neoconservative is President Bush's foreign policy? by Paul Mirengoff 07/11/2005 8:00:00 AM FOR LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE CRITICS of the Bush administration, it is an article of faith that neoconservatives have hijacked American foreign policy. The neocons accomplished this, the theory goes, by selling their half-baked ideology to a president too unschooled, dim-witted, or panicked to resist it. Yet, as Charles Krauthammer noted in his excellent essay The Neo-Conservative Convergence, none of the president's most influential foreign policy counselors--not Dick Cheney, not Donald Rumsfeld, not Condoleezza Rice--was considered a neoconservative prior to 9/11. Rice, in fact,...

AP Senator Sam Brownback has put a hold on the White House's nomination of a prominent abortion-rights supporter to a diplomatic post. The Kansas Republican, a strong abortion opponent, says he has concerns about Julie Finley's nomination as ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Brownback is chairman of the Helsinki Commission, an independent U.S. government agency that formulates policy for the diplomatic organization. Finley is a longtime Bush supporter and Republican fundraiser, and also a founding member of the WISH list, a political action committee that raises money for female Republican candidates who support abortion rights....

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) has placed a "hold" on President Bush's nomination of Julie Finley as ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Mrs. Finley is well qualified. She has been a strong and active advocate in Washington for the expansion of NATO, the integration of Turkey into the European Union and the spread of democracy to countries of the former Soviet Union. But on the grounds that Mrs. Finley is pro-choice on abortion, Senator Brownback has exercised the Senate's "Polish" procedure and figuratively cried "I oppose". One senator can hold up a nomination by just noting...

SAN JOSE - Despite Democratic dominance in the past four presidential contests and overwhelming Democratic majorities in the state's congressional delegation and Legislature, Republicans aren't giving up on California. In the color-coded map of contemporary American politics, California looms as the largest and bluest state of all -- frustrating Republicans as they seek to solidify their status as the national majority party. But Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman insists prospects are improving, thanks to demographic changes and the star power of the state's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. ''There's tremendous opportunity here because of the governor and his leadership, and...

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Despite Democratic victories in the last four presidential contests and overwhelming Democratic majorities in the state's congressional delegation and Legislature, Republicans aren't giving up on California. In the color coded map of contemporary American politics, California looms as the largest and bluest state of all - frustrating Republicans as they seek to solidify their status as the national majority party. But Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman insists prospects are improving, thanks to demographic changes and the star power of the state's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. "There's tremendous opportunity here because of the governor and his...

About Us: Our vision is a Republican Party that is unified by the basic tenets of fiscal responsibility and personal freedom, but that allows for diverse opinions on social issues by its members. IMP-PAC is chaired by Christie Todd Whitman, a lifelong and loyal Republican and a leader of the party’s moderate wing, who served in the Bush cabinet as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from January 2001 to May 2003. Prior to that, she was the first female elected governor of New Jersey, serving two terms from 1993 to 2000. Advisory Board: Congressman Mike Castle (R-DE) Susan...

COULD this be the same Republican Party that was on such triumphant display after President Bush's re-election just four months ago? Republicans and conservatives are quarreling over Congress's intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, and the rising influence of Christian conservatives. Some Republicans in Washington and statehouses are balking at federal tax cuts in the face of deficits or spending cuts, while a few are worried that the war in Iraq will lead to more foreign entanglements. Republicans are beginning to whisper in the past tense as they discuss Mr. Bush's signature second-term measure, the revamping of Social Security. Conservative...

The 'Kickoff Rally' for George Fassitt, the Republican Candidate for the Biloxi City Council's newly created Sixth Ward and potentially the first African American GOP member was held this morning at the Biloxi Beachfront Hotel, in Biloxi, Mississippi. Several press outlets, including local television stations were in attendance, and Mr. Fassitt gave a thoughtful, yet rousing campaign speech about the needs, as he sees them, for Biloxi's newest ward. During his talk, Fassitt announced that his campaign's website http://www.georgefassitt.com is now in operation (click to view) Mr. Fassitt's kickoff speech was followed by a prayer and then a light luncheon...

Whitman: Let's Get Moderate WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 2005 This story was written by Linda Feldmann. It was a vision of big-tent Republicanism: At a panel discussion held around the GOP convention last summer, Christine Todd Whitman sat comfortably near Newt Gingrich - a standard-bearer of the middle engaging in measured discourse with a standard-bearer of conservatism. When asked about the GOP's longstanding drift rightward, Ms. Whitman was polite. The former New Jersey governor and EPA administrator stressed the breadth of the Republican coalition and noted that some of the biggest names to address the convention in prime time - Arnold...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some Republican Party backers of abortion rights are upset with their party's new chairman, Ken Mehlman, for planning to host a salute next week to those who favor banning abortion. "This crosses the line," Ann Stone, national chair of Republicans for Choice, a political action group with about 100,000 members nationwide, said on Friday. Mehlman has scheduled an event on Monday to honor those who participate in the march that day against the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. our party's fight to protect the sanctity of life."

--snip-- President Bush's broad re-election victory and Republican gains across the country reflect the fact that through a structural realignment, the GOP has now become the majority party in the country. Noted political scientist Walter Dean Burnham, the nation's leading theorist on realignment, says the 2004 election "consolidates" what began in 1994 when Republicans shattered the 40-year Democratic grip on Congress and statehouses. Since then, the GOP has held its gains, adding to them in 2002 and 2004. --snip-- Republicans are also riding the crest of a "big tent" movement that threatens to leave an increasingly ossified Democratic Party behind....

BERLIN (AP) - A German reporter who interviewed California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says the governor did not say the Republican Party should "move a little further left" as his newspaper reported. What Schwarzenegger said in the interview with Sueddeutsche Zeitung was that the Republicans reach "all the way from the right to the center" and "I'd like the Republican Party to cross that center line," according to a transcript released Thursday by the governor's office. But reporter Marc Hujer said Schwarzenegger never talked explicitly about a need for the party to edge toward the left, even though the remark appeared...

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested in a German newspaper interview, that the US Republican Party should move "a little to the left", a shift that he said would allow it to pick up new voters. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has taken an unorthodox approach since winning office last year - standing by a promise to toe a conservative line on fiscal matters while veering leftward on social issues such as gay rights and the environment. In an interview with Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily, Schwarzenegger said: "The Republican Party currently covers only the spectrum from the right wing to the middle, and...

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promised voters he would govern from the middle, and he did just that in his first end-of-session round of bill signings. The action hero-turned-governor leaned left on social issues and right on business and budget matters. "What we saw is what we're getting," said Ken Khachigian, a veteran GOP strategist who once worked for former President Reagan. "This is who he told us he was." California's Democratic-majority legislature sent Schwarzenegger 1,265 bills this year - many of which were intended to force the popular governor to choose sides. He finished dealing with bills Thursday, signing...

The gay Log Cabin Republicans, backed by such GOP allies as New York Gov. George E. Pataki and Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), said Sunday that the party has been "hijacked by the radical right" and demanded that President Bush square his actions with his rhetoric of inclusiveness or risk losing their endorsement. At a "Big Tent" rally in a park blocks from Madison Square Garden, about 450 Log Cabin members from across the country -- and some of about 50 openly gay GOP convention delegates and alternates -- hailed Pataki, Specter and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg for their...

THE BIG TENTGeorge Will NEW YORK -- Barry is back. Four decades after a Republican convention in San Francisco nominated Sen. Goldwater, sealing the ascendancy of conservatism within the party, his kind of conservatism made a comeback at the convention here. That conservatism -- muscular foreign policy backing unapologetic nationalism; economic policies of low taxation and light regulation; a libertarian inclination regarding cultural questions -- is not fully ascendant in the party. But the prominent display and rapturous reception of Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger demonstrated that such conservatism is not an insurmountable impediment to a person reaching the party's...

<p>The first one is a protest of Planned Parenthood's Republicans for Choice "Big Tent" Extravaganza on Monday August  30th, 2004,  at 7:30 PM at the Beacon Theatre. 2124 Broadway, 74th Street & Broadway,  New York City.</p> <p>The other protest is Tuesday Aug. 31st starting at 5:30 pm.  Another "Big Tent" deal. The Republican Big Tent Celebration is a gathering of pro-abort Republicans at The Sky Club - 200 Park Ave., 56th Fl. at 45th between Vanderbilt and Lexington.  We will be gathering at the Vanderbilt entrance.  I will have signs & T-Shirts available.</p>

NEW YORK (Aug. 26) - In a few words meant to speak volumes, Republicans have extended a welcome to party members who disagree with elements of their platform, a strongly conservative statement of beliefs that includes an endorsement of constitutional bans on abortion and gay marriage. Party leaders working with platform delegates on both sides of the abortion issue settled on a declaration Wednesday night that Republicans "respect and accept" that party members can have deeply held differences. This was a step up from merely recognizing the existence of dissenters, as the initial version of the 2004 platform stated. But...

New York, NY (LifeNews.com) -- In addition to their efforts to overturn the Republican Party's pro-life position on abortion and to include a unity plank into the platform, leading abortion advocates are planning to hold their largest fundraiser ever. The shindig will receive support from some key Republican notables. Jennifer Blei Stockman, co-chairman of the Republican Majority for Choice, a pro-abortion political action committee, says her group will hold its biggest fundraising effort on the second night of the convention at a club in New York City. Stockman told the Greenwich Time newspaper that she expects 450 people to attend,...

This ConservativePetitions.com Alert is a special message from RightMarch.com for [Tolerance Sucks Rocks]: ALERT: Well, the Republican Party is asking for input from you and I to help set the party's agenda. That's right, it's time once again to write the GOP Platform -- the foundational document that declares to the world, "THIS is what Republicans stand for!" This is also where the "trench warfare" takes place every four years, between the conservative base of the party, and the "big tent" of liberals, neocons, and good ol' "RINOs" - Republicans In Name Only. If you've never experienced the passion and...

An internal Republican Party struggle over outreach to blacks is playing out with bigwig endorsements in the 8th Congressional District. Both former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp have endorsed Dylan Glenn, making the same argument: Attracting black conservatives is crucial to the party's future. U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss and four Georgia congressmen -- John Linder, Charlie Norwood, Max Burns and Jack Kingston -- have endorsed his opponent, State Rep. Lynn Westmoreland. This particular runoff is in a congressional district that stretches south from Douglas and Fayette counties in metro Atlanta to Troup (LaGrange) and...