Free Republic

Documentary filmmaker and radio host John Ziegler debates Jesse and callers about Donald Trump. He's a "Never Trump" guy, because he believes Trump's not qualified, not conservative or Republican, and has no chance against Hillary... He says there's no path for Trump to get 270 votes in the electoral college, unless the polls are catastrophically wrong on an unprecedented level.

I on Newt by John Taylor The impression I have of GOP dynamics at the moment is that many conservative activists fear nothing more than Mitt Romney's election. In a second term, President Obama would be a lame duck almost immediately. A President Romney would marginalize conservatives with business-friendly, relatively moderate policies appealing to a congressional coalition of center-right Republicans and centrist Democrats. To avert the wholesale reinvention (some would say restoration) of what it means to be a mainstream Republican, activists backed Palin, then Bachmann, Perry, and Cain. Intentionally or not, they're now flirting with the unthinkable: Nominating...

I'm writing to offer my resignation from the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace Docent Guild. While the decision was tough, the reason is simple: The president, who admirably redeemed himself in the sunset of his life from the monstrous shadow of Watergate, is now being enthusiastically dishonored at his own library by a "Manchurian" figure, Dr. Timothy Naftali, director of NARA. Naftali is so driven by his personal ideology that none of his unquestioned brilliance and tireless audacity is now capable of producing an ounce of basic common sense. What is that basic common sense? That presidential libraries are built,...

Library Throws Book at Nixon by Brian Calle Some controversy over the recently revised Watergate exhibit at the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum in Yorba Linda has provoked some questions over presidential libraries, their value, purpose for public consumption and their role in the remembrance of past presidents. One docent at the Nixon library, my Register colleague Will Alexander, opted to resign in protest of the new exhibit after 10 years of volunteer service. And friends and former colleagues of Richard Nixon have been critical of the museum's new director, Timothy Naftali. Some critics have even suggested that the...

The New Watergate By Anne Walker Where I stand depends on where I sit . . . . or in this case . . . . where I used to sit. It is so true. Those of us who lived through the days of what came to be known as “Watergate”, the days of reading about our pals in the Washington Post every day, seeing them accused and vilified, hauled in front of a grand jury for countless hours while their legal bills sky rocketed, go to trial, and be convicted of perjury, not wrongdoing, and end up in...

It Feels Drafty By John H. Taylor My cousin and fellow Episcopalian and blogger, Bebe Bahnsen, believes it's time for rich and poor to share the burden of defending our country. For one thing, she thinks we'd all pay more attention to decisions about where, when, and how military force is used: And I believe it should be a universal draft—men and women. The new draft I envision would require one or two years of service from all young Americans. Many would probably be in the military but there might be other ways to perform required service—teaching or assisting...

Mitch, Mitt, And The Race They Can Win By John Taylor Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana is, according to current criteria, a moderate Republican, which is to say an authentic Reaganite. His mentors include respected centrists such as William Ruckelshaus and Richard Lugar. Now David Brooks and Andrew Sullivan want him to run for president in 2012. I'm a little confused about why fans of a more pragmatic conservatism would feel that way. Assuming an incumbent's advantage in a recovering economy, President Obama will probably be reelected. Why waste a candidate who could win in an open year? Presidential...

Substance Still Sells, Sarah Writing about Sarah Palin's bizarre Thanksgiving Day defense of her North Korea gaffe, Andrew Sullivan makes the point people used to make about Richard Nixon after his rocking, socking congressional and senatorial campaigns and especially the Alger Hiss case: There is a meanness, a disrespect, a vicious partisanship that, if allowed to gain more power, would split this country more deeply and more rancorously than at any time in recent years. And that's saying something. Ironic, yes. Determinative, no. Though he was a divisive, highly partisan figure whom a significant number of Americans always loathed,...