Free Republic

It has been 130 years since James Garfield became the only President to ascend directly from the House of Representatives. There have been other serious presidential contenders from the House, including Dick Gephardt and Jack Kemp in 1988. But perhaps no modern presidential candidate from the lower house has risen higher, faster than Michele Bachmann, who represents Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District. Bachmann’s rise is a result of a combination of attributes unique among the GOP presidential contenders: charisma, competence, and credibility with the GOP’s two most important constituencies, religious conservatives and the Tea Party. But can she win the nomination?...

Certain Republicans with national aspirations continue to advance the idea that America’s ballooning budget deficits should be the party’s sole focus in the run-up to the 2012 elections. But President Obama and the Democrats are vulnerable on a broad range of issues, including, now more than ever, marriage and energy issues. Last week Obama announced that his administration will abandon legal support of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in certain court cases. DOMA, which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman for federal purposes, denies federal recognition and benefits for married same-sex couples. It also...

Surely this was not what Jon Stewart had in mind. Three days after the comedian performed before some 200,000 liberals at the Rally to Restore Sanity on the National Mall, 90 million Americans rallied to their polling stations to make his theme a reality. Young people (though conspicuously few minorities) came out in droves for the clown-fest. But very few of them (approximately half as many as in 2008, by one estimate, and fewer than in the 2006 mid-terms) bothered to show up on Election Day. It seems that liberals would sooner listen to smug comedians parody conservatives than to...

I agree with President Barack Obama and the current liberal view that our democratic elections are imperiled by the influence of “foreign entities.” But the menace has nothing to do with allegations that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups are illegally funneling foreign money into U.S. political campaigns. The real foreign influence scandal concerns the number of non-U.S. citizens unlawfully registering and voting in U.S. elections — and the apathy with which this crime is often met. It is a federal crime for non-citizens to vote in any federal and most state elections under the 1996 Illegal Immigration...

Having failed to find a campaign message that resonates with voters, President Obama and congressional Democrats have settled on a bizarre closing argument: that Democratic candidates and American democracy are imperiled by the infusion of funds from undisclosed and foreign entities. Obama’s attacks on campaign spending by pro-Republican groups are a transparent attempt to distract voters from his failed legislative agenda. They also highlight Obama’s increasing tendency to pick fights with political opponents, to demonize and smear his critics and generally to exhibit some of the most unpresidential behavior this side of Watergate. The argument that foreign money is undermining...

Perhaps the most basic measure of a country’s character is whether people, when given the chance, flood into the country or risk life and limb to escape from it. By this measure, Muslims are flourishing in America. Meanwhile, though Christianity predates Islam by centuries in the Middle East, intensifying persecution has prompted a mass Christian exodus from that region. The New York Times recently published a piece with the headline, “American Muslims ask, ‘Will we ever belong?’” And Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Ground Zero mosque’s would-be imam, defended the mosque on ABC’s “This Week,” saying, “My major concern with moving...

Imagine if an inside-the-Beltway consultant met with national Republican leaders and presented an innovative strategy to develop a new political movement that would add millions of voters to the Republican coalition. And what if that consultant assured those GOP leaders that their party would not have to alter its views in order to capture and retain those voters. Presumably, Republicans would gladly pay that consultant a fat fee and wonder at their good fortune. Or perhaps they wouldn’t. The Tea Party movement has attracted millions of new voters (as well as millions of formerly disaffected Republican voters) to the GOP....

The 60-day sprint to Election Day is underway, and many Republicans are making the familiar argument that the election should be about one thing and one thing only: the economy. With unemployment still rising and GDP growth still slowing in response to the Democrats’ failed economic policies, Republicans would be remiss not to focus on the economy. But they should reject the advice to focus only on pocketbook issues. Instead, Republicans should highlight the Democrats’ dreadful record in all policy areas, including on the values issues that continue to inspire and motivate millions of voters. At a recent event sponsored...

The Obama Administration’s approach to foreign policy requires a passionate embrace of moral equivalence. Nowhere is that approach more demonstrably corrupt than in the administration’s actions on the United Nations Human Rights Council. The Obama State Department recently sent the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights its Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which is essentially a human rights audit that all UN members must conduct every four years. The 30-page report touts all the steps the administration has taken to help America become “a more perfect union,” by which the administration means steps it has taken to help America become more...

That Barack Obama has a strong affection for Islam is now indisputable. What’s less apparent is why he has such an affinity for Islam. Polls show roughly one-in-five Americans believe their President is a Muslim. But Obama’s Islamophilia is driven by ideology not theology. Obama’s left-wing progressivism varies with Islamism on many issues. But their adherents find common cause in a common enemy: the Judeo-Christian worldview at the heart of Western democracy. At first glance, it would seem an unlikely alliance. Progressives theoretically want to move us forward, while Islamists wish to take us back to 7th Century-style theocracies. Progressive...

Like many Americans, I am horrified by the brutality many illegal immigrants encounter when they flee atrocious living conditions in their home countries. But, unlike the Obama Administration and certain federal court judges, I am not confused about where this brutality takes place: not in Arizona or other American states, but in a diverse group of countries, including those with the gall to berate America for its fair and just immigration laws. Consider Mexico, where, until 2008, illegal immigrants were handed prison sentences of one-and-a-half to ten years. Though that law was reformed, Mexican police are still required to check...

Statistically, it’s been a rough few years for the abortion-rights crowd. The numbers of abortions, abortion providers and abortion facilities have declined, and numerous polls have discovered a majority pro-life America for the first time in decades. Perhaps worst of all, the number of medical students training to perform abortions has plummeted. As Susan Hill of the National Women’s Health Foundation told the Washington Post last year, “Our doctors are graying and are not being replaced. …The situation is grave.” Not that pro-lifers believe this is any time to relax. Abortion remains the most common surgical procedure for American women....

According to conventional wisdom, anti-abor- tion advocates are vulnerable to charges of being anti-woman and anti-science. Pro-lifers subordinate dispassionate scientific inquiry to irrational religious belief, many people believe, and their "fetus fetish" blinds them to the plight of women in crisis pregnancies. But two novel laws passed recently in Nebraska explode those myths by highlighting how pro-lifers have embraced women and seized the mantle of science by revealing exactly what it is those who abort are choosing. On July 15, the Women's Health Protection Act will take effect. The law will require women seeking abortions to be screened for mental...

Rashad Hussain, President Obama’s special envoy to the Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC), last month named his boss America’s “educator-in-chief on Islam.” That wasn’t surprising given the President’s Muslim roots and his affinity for some Islamic traditions (he once wrote that the Muslim call to prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth”). Obama clearly takes this title seriously, as recent events have shown. But Hussain’s designation was ironic because the more Obama talks about Islam, the clearer it becomes that he doesn’t seem to understand its most devout adherents. Obama refuses to acknowledge that radical Islamists are...

President Barack Obama won in 2008 with the vigorous support of young voters. Four years after the Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) won voters 29 and younger by just nine percentage points, Obama won them by 34 points — 66 percent to 32 percent. Given how enthusiastically young voters embraced Obama, many assume that his policies have had largely positive effects on America’s youth. But a closer look reveals that Obama’s agenda harms many young Americans in important ways. In fact, many may be beginning to feel that they literally cannot afford to be as exuberant about the...

In introducing his last Supreme Court nominee 13 months ago, President Obama gushed forth like an out-of-control oil spill about what he saw as Sonia Sotomayor’s main qualification—her “wisdom accumulated from an inspiring life's journey.” Obama lavishly praised her “distinguished career,” which included having worked “at almost every level of our judicial system.” All this courtroom time, he assured us, provided Sotomayor “with a depth of experience and a breadth of perspective that will be invaluable as a Supreme Court justice.” “Walking in the door,” he continued, “she would bring more experience on the bench and more varied experience on...

Anti-abortion advocates have long contended that abortion produces two victims: the unborn child, and his or her mother, who, a mounting body of research affirms, risks physical and emotional injury. But there is evidence that abortion often involves a third victim, one who is typically dismissed when he is acknowledged at all: the child’s father. Postabortion syndrome, a variant of post-traumatic stress disorder, is a subject of considerable controversy. Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocacy groups maintain that the emotional effects of abortion are “largely positive.” But it is now beyond dispute that after having an abortion, many women experience...

It is often said in politics that if both sides are angry with you, then you must be doing something right. If you’re being assailed from the Right and the Left, then you can probably take pride in having avoided the demands of the extremes and arriving at the pragmatic center. That’s the narrative many Democratic spinmeisters no doubt would like us to believe about President Obama and his congressional allies. But it doesn’t apply. Yes liberal activists are noisy, and the Tea Partiers are upset. But so are many other Americans across the political spectrum. Liberal outrage only underscores...

British journalist Melanie Phillips discusses the West’s civilizational crisis. Could you explain the “Princess Obama” syndrome? Phillips: Yes, it comes from the fact that I look at two phenomena, the cult that surrounded Princess Diana in Britain and the cult that surrounded Barack Obama when he was running for president. Of course the shine has come off Barack Obama, but I was looking at this extraordinary hype that surrounded him when he was running for president. In both cases it seemed to me that the reason for the hysteria and the hype was that the public was projecting onto both...

At the nexus of the Democrats’ two most urgent policy priorities — reducing CO2 emissions and immigration reform that includes amnesty for 12 million illegal immigrants — lies an uneasy reality: Enactment of the latter may prove to be the key obstacle to achieving the former. The economic and national security implications of open borders have been examined in depth. Less study, however, has been devoted to the possible environmental impact of immigration. People migrate to the United States to improve their standard of living. But the liberal wish of immigration amnesty may have deleterious effects on the environment, as...