Free Republic

A spanking new national survey of registered voters out on Thursday shows embattled Joe Biden trailing each of the top three Republican presidential candidates, which is significant. Even more significant, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley bested Biden by the largest margin of the three.While there's quite a bit to unpack in the Marquette Law School national survey, there are also fundamental election factors at play that tend to hold in all elections. We'll hit those factors along the way.Of consequence, the survey found Haley leading Biden, 55 percent to 45 percent, with former President Donald Trump topping the inept...

The Florida Governor previously lumped the Senator in with the GOP's 'culture of losing.' Florida’s Governor is striking a charitable tone on social media after U.S. Sen. Tim Scott ended his run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Ron DeSantis bid the “strong conservative” from South Carolina farewell in the wake of his snap decision to exit the race. “Tim Scott is a STRONG conservative with BOLD ideas about how to get our country back on track. I respect his courage to run this campaign and thank him for his service to America and the U.S. Senate. I look forward...

If former president Donald Trump’s case ever makes it to court, federal prosecutors will use his own words against him — spoken on national TV to Fox News host Bret Baier on Monday. I’m not a lawyer. I don’t even play one on internet video. So when it comes to stories like this one, there are a few people I turn to for sharp analysis and good advice. On the surface at least, what Trump said could cause him trouble in court. When Baier asked, “Why not just hand [the documents] over then?” Trump replied, “Because I had boxes —...

Rush Limbaugh's death two years ago this week left a void in conservative media that younger, more versatile contenders are still trying to fill. Why it matters: Today, no one radio host commands the same level of power and influence that Limbaugh did, but a number of new voices are emerging — blending the reach of traditional and digital platforms — and collectively proving to be more powerful in shaping conservative opinion for younger audiences. "The world is changing and there are questions as to how Limbaugh, had he lived and remained healthy — based upon his mindset and his...

Happy Recession Day, everybody! Over the past several days, we’ve watched with great interest to see just how the media would find a way to downplay our ongoing economic downturn under President Joe Biden. We’ve seen plenty of hackery already, but we new that the real spectacle wouldn’t get underway until the numbers officially came out. Well, the numbers officially came out, and the GDP shrank by 0.9% in the second quarter. That’s a recession, folks. Earlier this week, Erick Erickson made an observation about the media’s treatment of the Biden administration’s shameless attempts to redefine “recession”: We're about to...

Call Russian President Vladimir Putin a dictator. Call him an autocrat. Call him a totalitarian. Call him whatever you want, but make sure you understand he is serious. He also knows the West is not. He has brought war to the West's doorstep. On Dec. 5, 1989, Putin was running a KGB office for the Soviet Union in Dresden, Germany. The Berlin Wall had fallen, and East German mobs were ransacking Stasi headquarters. They came for the KGB in Dresden. Putin called out to the approaching mob that he and his men would open fire. The mob held off. Putin...

@EWErickson David Perdue was unable to beat a spectacularly unaccomplished Jon Ossoff. Why does he think he can beat Stacey Abrams? Clip...

If you are a longtime reader, you will know my wife has lung cancer. It is not from smoking or radon or any environmental cause. When we first got married, due to my wife's family history of breast cancer, she had a prophylactic mastectomy. Sixteen years later, having thought we dodged a bullet, doctors diagnosed her with a genetic form of lung cancer. In fact, the day the Mayo Clinic called my wife, at roughly the same time, doctors were wheeling me into a cardiac ICU unit not expecting me to live. If I ever hear "the next 24 hours"...

Tucker Carlson has an audience of around 3 million viewers, which is more than any other news program and most other programs generally. It is still only 3 million people out of a nation of 330 million people. In the grand scheme of things, Tucker Carlson is influential in the way many others are -- he has a core fan base that listens to him, generally trusts him, talks to other people and posts on the internet. Nielsen ratings showed Rush Limbaugh had tens of millions of listeners, but the TV networks rarely focused on him. They focused on Carlson...

H.R. 1, the For the People Act, was a messaging piece of legislation that was never meant to be passed. But Democrats are increasingly held hostage by the wing of the party that believes Twitter is real life. Now, the same forces seem intent on dismantling the Biden Administration. First, the Twitter activists of the left bought into the For the People Act rhetoric. The progressive base fully believes the GOP is dismantling democracy. News anchors roared that the GOP couldn't even debate saving democracy or protecting the right to vote. Most Americans do not care. They support needing a...

Republican Rep. Liz Cheney is out as Republican conference chair in the House of Representatives. The story has dominated American news outlets over the past week. Most Americans are probably hard-pressed to care about the story, but to the political press in the United States, the story has mattered deeply. This past Tuesday night, as rockets rained down on Tel Aviv from Gaza, the press was focused on Cheney's pending ouster, which happened Wednesday morning. On Wednesday afternoon, while President Joe Biden was holding a press conference about the Colonial Pipeline shutdown, MSNBC was holding a panel discussion about Cheney...

It would be far better to go back to party bosses picking their nominees than scrapping partisan primaries in favor of something that alienates the party base from their nominees as this proposes. https://t.co/4GFcCH28Fb— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) May 12, 2021

Remember Never Trump? For four years, an influential clique of think tankers, Republican operatives and talking heads claimed that any conservative who supported ­Donald Trump was complicit with a uniquely malevolent presidency. But if Trumpian conservatives are ­responsible for everything the 45th president was faulted for, then Never Trump should likewise own the evils of the new Biden administration. Never Trumpers spoke of the Trump GOP almost as if it were Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party, a dictator’s discredited political organ, badly in need of a purge. “President Donald Trump leaves office with a crimson-stained legacy,” thundered Peter Wehner, vice president...

Vice President Kamala Harris had another call with a foreign leader Tuesday, independent of President Biden. Harris spoke with the prime minister of Norway, Erna Solberg, where Harris "affirmed her commitment to deepening the strong alliance between Norway and the United States." " The Vice President thanked the Prime Minister for Norway’s close security partnership with the United States and generous contributions to development and health security efforts around the world," according to a readout of the call. Harris previously took calls alone with French President Emanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as well as Israeli Prime Minister...

I have noted before that I grew up in Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates. From 1980-1990, my family lived in an ungated community in the middle of the city down the street from the Iranian Hospital with the Jumeirah American School just one long block up the road. We walked to school every day. The school changed its name to the American School of Dubai the year after I graduated. It moved locations. The current school at the old location is the Jumeirah Baccalaureate School. My old house is all that remains of my neighborhood. The whole place...

The Israel-United Arab Emirates news is actually much bigger than the American press is reporting. President Donald Trump actually does deserve a great deal of credit, and if the deal were reported accurately, he would get that credit. But the issue is larger than even that, and the American media has totally missed the bigger story. First, to review, the United Arab Emirates and Israel have decided to publicly have diplomatic relations in something they are calling the Abraham Accords. This is groundbreaking in and of itself. Though the countries have privately been collaborating for some time, they will make...

There is no police power in the federal Constitution. The police power is left to the states. To the extent the President can send federal officers into Portland, Oregon, and other cities, it should be to protect federal property. The President cannot save Portland from itself, and he should not. He cannot save the other cities either. I want a mask mandate, but there is no federal police power for the President to impose it. It must come from governors, who have more expansive police powers than your average libertarian-leaning person would have you believe. The President does not have...

Dr. Fauci was in the stands with just his best friend and his wife and he pulled his mask down to drink water when the picture was taken. A conservative movement playing gotcha over a photo like that is a conservative movement that needs a controlled burn to blaze through it.— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) July 24, 2020

NRSC Chairman John Cornyn said today that Florida’s GOP Senate primary has been “a learning experience” for him. If we’ll remember back to last year, Cornyn’s NRSC recruited (then Republican) Governor Charlie Crist to challenge the already announced conservative darling Marco Rubio for the open Senate seat left by the departure of Mel Martinez. Of course Rubio didn’t need a challenger, and should have been allowed to run uninterrupted from Washington. Cornyn sees that wisdom now. “In this political environment it’s not necessarily helpful for candidates running in the states to have the national party chairman” endorse them. No joke....

I’d never thought that some liberals would actually take a stand and call out their colleagues for being totally unspooled for caving to the progressive mob. For some, the liberal agenda they grew up with is now considered right-wing in some circles. Why? Well, it doesn’t go far enough. It has to be far left and quasi-Marxist. The woke clowns we used to mock on The College Fix and Campus Reform have graduated. And now, their toxic agenda is spreading like a brush fire. No dissent is permitted. Just one slip-up or differing opinion from that of the far-left mob...