Free Republic

I'm told that the public is "angry" at today's politicians. Eighty-two percent disapprove of the job Congress is doing. So will Tuesday's election bring a big shakeup? No. Congressional reelection rates never drop below 85 percent. The last big "wave" election was 1994, when Democrats lost control of both houses. The media called it a "revolution," and the late Peter Jennings from ABC likened Americans to 2-year-olds throwing a tantrum. Even that year, the reelection rate was 90 percent.Matt Kibbe of the group FreedomWorks and Hadley Heath Manning of Independent Women's Forum came on my show to say they don't...

COLUMBIA, SC — THE GOOD THING about Brad Hutto is that he doesn’t try to convince us that Lindsey Graham is a liberal. Which is to say that, unlike the six opponents Mr. Graham easily swept aside in the Republican primary, and unlike the reality-show self-promoter who is self-financing a quixotic independent campaign against him, Mr. Hutto is not unhinged from reality. To the contrary, Mr. Hutto has had a respectable career in the state Senate, where, despite being part of an ever-dwindling minority party, he has had a significant amount of influence on public policy — sometimes for good,...

NEW YORK — Soaring inflation. A collapsing dollar. Bubbles in financial markets that would soon pop. One presidential candidate even suggested that the Federal Reserve chairman should be roughed up. Over the past five years, as the Fed has pumped ever-more money into the financial system, critics have warned that it would lead to all kinds of disasters. Yet the central bank kept extending its bond-buying program, known by the wonky name of quantitative easing, or QE. It was an unprecedented effort aimed at lowering borrowing costs, encouraging spending and reviving a dormant economy before it could slip back into...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, this story about black activists trashing and dumping the Democrat Party, it's out of Chicago. It is Chicago activists. It's a video. It's just been posted by Drudge on his home page, and I've got the eager staff working on putting that video together so I can share it with you. But here are some quotes from the video. All I know is, these are Chicago political activists, and they're fed up. They're fed up with the Democrat Party. "My life has been hurt by Democrats. Everything wrong in our community is under Democrats. Black leadership's...

The great boxing champion Joe Louis once said about one of his opponents, who was known for his speed: “He can run but he can’t hide.” In the Congressional elections this year, many Democrats are running away from Barack Obama, but they can’t hide their record of voting for Obama’s agenda more than 90 percent of the time. Now that the Western democracies have learned the hard way what the consequences are when you admit all sorts of people into your country — including people who hate both the principles and the people of your society — will that cause...

I live in North Carolina where, for months now, the airwaves have been filled with attack ads. If you believe Kay Hagan’s ads, victory for her Republican opponent, Thom Tillis, would be disastrous for the people of the state. And if you believe the Tillis ads, keeping Hagan in the Senate would be equally horrible. Each candidate assumes that persuading the voter that the other is a terrible choice should translate into a vote for him or her. That is largely how our electoral system works – voters are mainly dragooned into casting their ballots for the lesser of two...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: We've got Democrats apparently running away from Dingy Harry. We've got the War on Women not working in Colorado in the Cory Gardner race and this Udall character. The theory behind the War on Women not working, and there's a reason why it isn't, and it's because of something that Gardner's done. But the media is saying that the reason that the War on Women campaign theme, the Democrats have had success with it, the reason it's not working is because single women, who are the targets of the War on Women, don't turn out in midterm...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: If there was a word, if there was a word that I would attach to the news today, it would be "clarity." Some things are starting to come into focus. Well, to people like you and me they have been in focus for a long time, but that focus and that clarity is starting to be reflected in the Drive-Bys as they continue to spin for what they now obviously believe is gonna be a pretty big Republican win one week from today. I know some of you might think, "Hey, Rush, don't be fooled. They're sandbagging."...

President’s postelection agenda is both secret and obviousBefore Americans vote next week they deserve to know what President Obama has in store for them. The administration’s near-term plans on health care, the environment, immigration, nominees for high office and other issues are shrouded in mystery. It doesn’t take much of a crystal ball to guess what lies just ahead, but the people should hear it from the source. Mr. Obama isn’t talking. He says his policies are on the ballot, and he knows that the less the voters know, the better for Democratic candidates. The White House wants no repeat...

Not content with the total bias and domination of the news networks, CNN, and the nation's leading newspapers, the Democrats on the Federal Election Commission have moved to assert federal control over Internet political speech. Claiming the authority to regulate political postings and blogs as independent campaign expenditures, they want to apply federal campaign finance laws to online voices. According to the Washington Examiner, the three Democrats on the FEC moved at the Oct. 24 meeting to impose "burdensome new rules on Internet-based campaigning." The three Republican members on the commission beat back the measure, warning the proposal would regulate...

Democrats want everyone to vote: old, young, white, black, Hispanic, Asian, citizen, non-citizen. Wait, what was that last one again? We'll get to that. Voter ID laws, passed by 30 states so far, are efforts by legislatures to ensure the integrity of votes. Being asked to show a photo ID can diminish several kinds of fraud, including impersonation, duplicate registrations in different jurisdictions and voting by ineligible people including felons and non-citizens. The Democrats have made a number of arguments against voter ID laws. They argue a) that the problem of voter impersonation or in-person voter fraud is nonexistent, b)...

Welcome to the infectious disease known as government. And after a six-year incubation period, the voters are getting feverish. According to the latest from CNN, voters are, uh, duh... angry. “Nearly 7 in 10 Americans are angry at the direction the country is headed,” writes CNN, “and 53% of Americans disapprove of President Barack Obama's job performance, two troubling signs for Democrats one week before the midterm elections, a new CNN/ORC International Poll shows.” How about that? If only 53 percent of people disapprove of Obama’s performance I suspect that the poll sample taken was largely made of U.S. Senators....

UNCW has long been committed to a philosophy of multiculturalism, which suggests that all truth is relative. (But who knows if that's really true!). It is the kind of worldview that allows us to turn a blind eye to evil simply by denying that evil exists. It also allows us to maximize sexual liberty by renouncing all forms of moral judgment. Unfortunately, two of UNCW’s feminist administrators have veered off the script and become moral crusaders in the name of "reproductive justice" - much to the embarrassment of the hire administration (author's note: that last ms-spelling was intentional as was...

On Oct. 27, 1964, 50 years ago Monday, a movie actor and television host delivered a 30-minute speech on primetime national television in support of the presidential candidacy of Barry Goldwater. There were no visual diversions, and the production values by today's standards were primitive. Few if any viewers realized it, but they were watching a future president of the United States. But perhaps Ronald Reagan, the man on screen, had an inkling. Higher-ups in the Goldwater campaign didn't want him on the air, for fear he would distract attention from the current candidate. But Reagan, using the negotiating skills...

The Democratic Party is systematically destroying America and other than Barack Obama, no one deserves more blame for it than Harry Reid. He may be an excellent politician who runs circles around Mitch McConnell the way Bugs Bunny baffles Elmer Fudd, but he's also a habitually dishonest, mean-spirited sociopath who cares absolutely nothing about the good of the country. The Democrat senators who put Reid into power and went along with Obama deserve to be punished for what they’ve done. Certainly, that doesn't mean the Republicans are wonderful. Just the fact that they allow themselves to be led by a...

First, the mayor of Houston flagrantly violated clergy's First Amendment rights, when she subpoenaed sermons, and she still refuses to rescind her mandate. And now California government officials are forcing churches and other faith-based organizations to fund abortions. What's next? Thanks to the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), the California Department of Managed Health Care has required that all insurance plans in the Golden State cover abortions immediately. The kicker is that California churches are no longer exempt from providing such coverage for their employees -- despite the fact that earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare...

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. It would be interesting to know which Arab leaders are telling US Secretary of State John Kerry that the absence of peace between Israel and the Palestinians is “a cause of recruitment” to Islamic State. Is that something he is hearing from Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani? The Qatari leader, whose kingdom has been cited by the US Treasury Department as a major funder of Islamic State (IS), is certainly one of Kerry’s favorite regional leaders. If Thani did blame Israel for the rise of IS, then his statement would constitute yet...

Some Democrats and their advocates in the press believe Obamacare, a year into implementation, is no longer much of a factor in the midterm elections. But no one has told Republican candidates, who are still pounding away at the Affordable Care Act on the stump. And no one has told voters, especially those in states with closely contested Senate races, who regularly place it among the top issues of the campaign. In Arkansas, Republican challenger Tom Cotton is pulling ahead of incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor partly on the strength of a relentless focus on Obamacare. Cotton's newest ad attacks...

Subtitle: Progressives and the Justice Department are doing all they can to stop improvements in election integrity. In the past few months, a former police chief in Pennsylvania pleaded guilty to voter fraud in a town-council election. That fraud had flipped the outcome of a primary election. Former Connecticut legislator Christina Ayala has been indicted on 19 charges of voter fraud, including voting in districts where she didn’t reside. (She hasn’t entered a plea.) A Mississippi grand jury indicted seven individuals for voter fraud in the 2013 Hattiesburg mayoral contest, which featured voting by ineligible felons and impersonation fraud. A...

... Much can go wrong for Ukraine in the next decade, but not enough to transform the country into a victory for Putin. This time last year Putin controlled the whole of Ukraine through Yanukovych. Today he controls Crimea and three conflict-wracked provinces dependent upon Russian military support. His Eurasian Economic Union is faltering, and without Ukraine it is no match for other economic blocs. He has given a modest boost to NATO and now has its troops on Russia’s Baltic borders. Sanctions on Russia are weakening its economy and the interests of his kleptocratic supporters at a time when...