Free Republic

Now that global warming has been tamed by record breaking cold spells across the nation, former Vice-President Al Gore is looking for new worlds to conquer. That new world appears to be the establishment of a “national policy on food.” “Under current rules, what a person eats is largely left up to each person to decide,” Gore pointed out. “Judging from the rates of obesity, it seems clear that the idea that letting individuals choose what to eat is not working. It is way past time that experts in the field of nutrition be given the authority to determine healthier...

DEMOGRAPHICS is not enough. For years now, it’s been an article of faith among Democrats that the future belongs to them, thanks to the country’s changing demographic mix. The rising percentage of voters who are women, Americans of color and especially Latinos were always about to turn the country deep “blue.” I never believed this — largely because I have been hearing it since 1971. That was the year the 26th Amendment passed, lowering the voting age to 18. Democrats had already been the dominant political party since the 1930s, and now with young people getting the vote, a permanent...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) adamantly denied that the trouncing her Democratic Party took at the polls last week constitutes a mandate for a different direction for government. “The problem is that our Party’s underlying message was drowned out by incessant GOP hammering on irrelevant crises and scandals,” she contended. “All the stories about ISIS beheadings, Ebola outbreaks, the flood of immigrants, IRS abuses, NSA spying, government waste and corruption masked the critical point that the Democratic Party is the Party of free stuff. Voters inundated by fears that their lives might be in danger, that their government might...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The fate of a little-noticed ballot measure in strongly Democratic Oregon serves as a warning to President Barack Obama and his party about the political perils of immigration policy. Even as Oregon voters were legalizing recreational marijuana and expanding Democratic majorities in state government, they decided by a margin of 66-34 to cancel a new state law that would have provided driver's licenses to people who are in the United States illegally. Obama is considering acting on his own, as early as this week, to possibly shield from deportation up to 5 million immigrants now living...

DES MOINES, Iowa — If you’re a die-hard Democrat in New York hoping to overcome the disappointment that was Nov. 4, you’re worried. But here in Iowa, where the first-in-the-nation caucuses are a mere 14 months away, some are breaking into a cold sweat. Most party leaders here will assure you all conversations about the 2016 presidential nomination still begin and end with Hillary Clinton. The former first lady and secretary of state is a sentimental favorite. Though she has not formally announced her candidacy, her well-oiled super PAC may be the most deeply rooted ever at this stage in...

Former President Bill Clinton said Saturday that Democrats lacked a "national advertising campaign" in the recent midterm elections and that he's surprised many Senate races were not closer. Clinton said in an interview with Politico that Republicans were helped by a larger bloc of voters who felt more strongly about the elections than members of his party. Democrats could have benefited from a national message that reinforced the party's positions on refinancing student loans and promoting equal pay for women, he said. "The people who were against us felt more strongly than the people who were for us. The people...

“trib·al·ism noun: loyalty to a tribe or other social group especially when combined with strong negative feelings for people outside the group” (Merriam Webster Dictionary) It’s been 151 years since the end of slavery in America. That end, we should understand, came at the cost of 629,000 lives lost in a civil war, the vast majority of those deaths white – not black – soldiers. While some of black America seem to have gotten the word, a whole lot of others haven’t. Isn’t it time America asked itself, “Why is that?” Well, one of the reasons is that there is...

Like other remaining Democratic candidates around the country, U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu knows she must increase her support among black and white females to emerge victorious on Dec. 6. That’s why Norma Jane Sabiston, Kristin Palmer, Angele Wilson and others are again reaching out to 5,000 key women supporters statewide to build Mary’s Army, highly committed grassroots warriors who will knock doors and work phones non-stop for the next three weeks. Armed with pink t-shirts and lists of likely voters, these women clearly understand the campaign’s success rests largely on their ability to persuade voters one person at a time....

After the GOP’s 2014 midterm election triumph, Republicans are still celebrating that the good guys (and girls) won and our nation has been saved. Finally, the American people wised up and threw the bums out. Six years after the election of Barack Obama, the midterm tsunami over the bluest of blue states filled Republicans with “hope and change,” mixed with heaps of vindication. And after winning control of Capitol Hill, Republicans hope that bold actions and good governance will follow over the next two years and will motivate a majority of 2016 voters to send a Republican candidate to the...

The party’s economic populism doesn’t reach that far.The Democratic Party styles itself a fighter for the working class. But a substantial part of that class—the white part—wants nothing to do with it. If we count the white working class as whites without college degrees, then congressional Democrats lost them by 30 points in last week’s elections, contributing to losses in states as diverse as Iowa, Maine, Colorado, North Carolina, and Florida. But then none of this is new. Democrats lost working class whites by a similar margin in 2010, with almost identical results: A wipeout of Senate seats, House districts,...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday unveiled data showing that many Americans with health insurance bought under the Affordable Care Act could face substantial price increases next year — in some cases as much as 20 percent — unless they switch plans. The data became available just hours before the health insurance marketplace was to open to buyers seeking insurance for 2015. An analysis of the data by The New York Times suggests that although consumers will often be able to find new health plans with prices comparable to those they now pay, the situation varies greatly from state...

Seven years ago I was talking to a longtime Democratic operative on Capitol Hill about a politician who was in trouble. The pol was likely finished, he said. I was surprised. Can’t he change things and dig himself out? No. “People do what they know how to do.” Politicians don’t have a vast repertoire. When they get in a jam they just do what they’ve always done, even if it’s not working anymore. This came to mind when contemplating President Obama. After a devastating election, he is presenting himself as if he won. The people were not saying no to...

Do you remember the Louisiana Senate runoff election of December 1996? Conservative Woody Jenkins sure does. He was the Republican Senate candidate who got mugged out of a Senate seat by Mary Landrieu. Flashback to 18 years ago — reporting in the December 23, 1996, and February 10, 1997, issues of National Review — Rich Lowry tells the story of how Mary Landrieu won ‘The Big Sleazy’ Senate runoff election of 1996. Now just 2 1/2 weeks away from the the 2014 Louisiana Senate runoff, Lowry’s investigative reports from nearly two decades ago are a sober reminder of what can...

On Friday, an overwhelming majority of House members passed legislation sponsored by Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) which approved construction of the long-delayed Keystone XL Pipeline. By 252 to 161, the House opted to send the measure to the U.S. Senate, where it will face a vote from the upper chamber next week which could, for the first time, force the president to determine whether to approve or veto the oil transit route. 31 Democratic representatives voted with every Republican member of Congress save Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), who voted present, to approve construction of the pipeline. It is an...

A Republican congressman known as a pit bull in Washington said Thursday that he doesn't support the idea of impeachment proceedings against President Obama because winning that fight would elevate the vice president to the Oval Office. 'Have you met Joe Biden?' South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy asked during a Fox News Channel interview. Impeachment talk has swirled around Washington since the president announced that an executive order overhauling America's immigration system is imminent. But some in the GOP see Biden as Obama's hedge against removal from office, since much of his public exposure has come in conjunction with a...

I suppose part of the not-breaking news here is that Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth (D – Illinois 8th) is pregnant. She is expecting in the near future, and her doctor has advised her not to travel in the final weeks of her pregnancy. Unfortunately, that meant that she would miss some key Democrat caucus votes as they settle on their new leadership for the next term. In order to get around this problem, she asked to be allowed to vote by proxy. As National Journal notes with great umbrage, the answer was no. Rep. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who is expecting...

Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) is crosswise with President Obama over the proper sequence of events regarding amnesty for illegal immigrants. “I have implored the President to forestall taking any executive action to legalize these undocumented residents until after we get Republican cooperation on next year's budget,” Reid said. “My advice has been to get the money first. Then he can do whatever he wants on amnesty. There'd be no way the GOP could stop him.” Reid complained that “all my sensible arguments seem to be falling on deaf ears. The President says he doesn't need Congress to...

Elizabeth Warren - 42% Bernie Sanders - 25% Hillary Clinton - 24% Robert Reich - 3% Joe Biden - 2%

There were 60 Democrats in the Senate on Christmas Eve 2009, when they voted in lockstep to pass the Affordable Care Act. Soon there will be 46 Democrats in the Senate, or perhaps 47, if Sen. Mary Landrieu manages to eke out a win in Louisiana. In plain numbers, the post-Obamacare trajectory has not been good for Senate Democrats. The 46 or 47 Democrats in the next Senate are a bit different from the group that passed Obamacare. Sixteen of them took office after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. They never had to vote for it and...

Usually presidential campaigns don’t have infighting and meltdowns until at least a few weeks after the campaign officially begins. Hillary Clinton’s throngs of potential consultants and officials couldn’t wait a few weeks to begin jockeying for power in the Great Coronation March (New And Improved Edition). According to ABC News, someone on the inside of a private listserv has leaked e-mails in an attempt to kneecap two other potential campaign leaders: For the past five years, a prominent Democratic operative who is a leading contender to manage a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign has maintained a private email listserv for...