Free Republic

Denver Last January, a "confidential" memo from a Democratic political consultant outlined an ambitious scheme for spending $11.7 million in Colorado this year to crush Republicans. The money would come from rich liberal donors in the state and would be spent primarily on defeating Senate candidate Bob Schaffer ($5.1 million) and Representative Marilyn Musgrave ($2.6 million), who are loathed by liberals for sponsoring a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. The overarching aim: Lock in Democratic control of Colorado for years to come. Leaked memos have a way of revealing who's on top and who's not in politics and...

For years now, John McCain has warned of the peril to America in sending $400 billion a year to foreign countries in return for oil. He's been loud and relentless on the subject--and wise. "It's a national security issue," he declared last week at a town hall meeting in New York City. Much of the money goes to countries that "do not like us very much," he noted. That was McCain's understated way of saying the beneficiaries include Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia, countries in which anti-American forces find aid and comfort. So you'd think McCain would favor an unbridled...

Republicans finally have a winning argument on a big issue, and they'd better make the most of it. It starts with high gasoline prices--the single most infuriating issue to voters these days--but doesn't end there. Democrats are not being blamed for causing the price of gasoline to reach $4 a gallon, at least by the public and at least for now. Where Democrats have stumbled embarrassingly is in their campaign to persuade the public that the American oil industry is the chief culprit. A Gallup national poll in May found only 20 percent blame the oil companies for gouging, down...

Out of over 20 debates that Barack Obama has heretofore participated in, he has yet to come away with a decisive victory. John McCain, aiming to capitalize on his political foes weakness, recently challenged Obama to participate in 10 town halls this summer. Fred Barnes argues on The Weekly Standard’s The Blog that Obama’s political cowardice prevents him from accepting McCain’s proposal town hall proposal. Barnes has a point: McCain’s best when he’s spontaneous, while Obama has struggled in such situations...

The story of the Democratic Congress is this: So much to do, so little done. Issues of importance are crying out for attention. The alarms are largely ignored. The list of big issues is long and includes immigration, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, health care and health insurance in general, and energy. It might make sense for Republicans to demand these issues be brought up this year, as President Truman did in 1948 to embarrass the "do nothing 80th Congress." But political stunts seldom work the second time. Besides, these are especially complex issues. There's an alternative, however, that might galvanize...

First, the good news. Conservatives won a sweeping victory in an enormously important election the week before last. Unfortunately, it happened in England, where Boris Johnson won the race for mayor of London and Conservatives trounced Labour all across the country. Now, the bad news. Prospects for Republicans in the 2008 election here at home look grim. The political environment isn't as bad as it was in 2006 when Republicans lost both houses of Congress and a lot more. But it's close. The empirical evidence is well known. More than 80 percent of Americans believe the nation is heading in...

The NOTION THAT BARACK Obama should pick Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential running mate is crazy. She passes the first test of a veep selection: she's a plausible president. But she fails the second. She doesn't qualify as a partner on the Democratic ticket (and possibly in the White House) that Obama would be comfortable with--far from it. But there is someone who does meet these two requirements, plus a third one and maybe a fourth. That person is Democratic Governor Edward Rendell of Pennsylvania. Yes, Rendell was the leading supporter of Clinton when she trounced Obama in the...

E.J. Dionne's column in the Washington Post asked this question about Barack Obama: "Is he Adlai Stevenson or John F. Kennedy?" In the New Republic online, John Judis wondered if Obama might be "the next" George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee who lost in a landslide. Both are interesting questions. But there's a more relevant and important one: Is Obama who he says he is? This matters because Americans choose an individual, not a party, to fill the presidency. If voters elected the next president by party preference, the White House successor to George W. Bush would almost certainly...

During an appearance in Philadelphia last month, Hillary Clinton introduced a controversial couple as part of her presidential campaign. She defended them as victims of smear attacks. "Valerie and Joe have had their patriotism questioned," she insisted. "They have been maligned as un-American because they believed that President Bush was waging a preemptive war that was not in America's interests and now because we believe our troops should not police Iraq's civil war." Of course this wasn't true. Both Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson were accused of being untruthful (and shameless self-promoters), not unpatriotic. Plame was a CIA official who...

Warning Signs Frank Luntz says Republicans could be in danger in 2006. by Fred Barnes 10/26/2005 12:00:00 AM IF YOU'RE A REPUBLICAN and already worried about your party's prospects in 2006, pollster Frank Luntz, a Republican himself, has a message for you: It's worse than you think. Luntz, who worked with Republicans in 1994 to draft the Contract With America and win a realigning election, said political conditions are as bad or worse now--only this time for Republicans, not Democrats. Republicans won 52 House seats in 1994 and have held the House since then. In 2006, he said, Republican control...

When John McCain begins his search for a vice presidential running mate, he'll quickly come upon a sad fact. He wants a candidate who will be seen as a plausible president. That's criterion number one. He also wants someone who won't subtract from his campaign in any serious way. That's criterion number two. The unfortunate truth is that few Republicans meet these simple criteria. McCain doesn't have much of a pool to choose from. But his selection matters enormously, all the more because of his age. McCain will turn 72 on the eve of the Republican convention this summer. Choosing...

The Veepstakes [Fred Barnes] There's an obvious winner. by Fred Barnes 03/17/2008, Volume 013, Issue 26 When John McCain begins his search for a vice presidential running mate, he'll quickly come upon a sad fact. He wants a candidate who will be seen as a plausible president. That's criterion number one. He also wants someone who won't subtract from his campaign in any serious way. That's criterion number two. The unfortunate truth is that few Republicans meet these simple criteria. McCain doesn't have much of a pool to choose from. But his selection matters enormously, all the more because of...

When John McCain begins his search for a vice presidential running mate, he'll quickly come upon a sad fact. He wants a candidate who will be seen as a plausible president. That's criterion number one. He also wants someone who won't subtract from his campaign in any serious way. That's criterion number two. The unfortunate truth is that few Republicans meet these simple criteria. McCain doesn't have much of a pool to choose from. But his selection matters enormously, all the more because of his age. McCain will turn 72 on the eve of the Republican convention this summer. Choosing...

A year ago, when neither the war nor political reconciliation was going well, the Bush administration reluctantly agreed to 18 benchmarks for judging progress in Iraq. And the Democratic Congress eagerly wrote the benchmarks into law, also requiring the administration to report back in July and September on whether the benchmarks were being met.

The stakes--keeping Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama out of the White House--are too high to be prideful. McCain, probably alone among Republicans, can win this fall, but not without the full-blown support of conservatives. If he continues to reach out to them while running as a conservative, they need to heed Barry Goldwater's advice in 1960. "Let's grow up, conservatives," he said. "If we want to take this party back, and I think we can, let's get to work."

MITT ROMNEY HAD A light home field advantage in the Michigan primary since he grew up in Detroit and his dad was a three-term governor. But that's not why he won. Romney defeated John McCain because the economy is emerging as the overriding issue in the 2008 presidential race, and Romney's message on the subject is stronger than McCain's. And Romney is far more comfortable and persuasive in talking about the economy. So McCain needs to make an adjustment in his campaign. His strength is still national security and the idea that he could step in as "commander in chief...

THERE'S A TRUTH THE Democratic presidential candidates can't handle: the success of the "surge" in Iraq. The addition of American troops and the adoption of a new strategy of protecting the civilian population has now dramatically reduced the level of violence in Baghdad and pacified other parts of Iraq as well. But the Democratic candidates insist on pretending otherwise. It isn't clear whether they were uninformed, out of touch, mistaken, politically fearful, or knowingly dishonest when they were asked to comment on the surge during an ABC television debate Saturday night in New Hampshire. In any case, their refusal to...

Can anybody explain Fred Barnes animus towards Fred Thompson. Paraphrasing Barnes - the problem with Fred Thompson's 3rd place finish in Iowa is that he has to continue in this campaign. Later his said Thompson just needs to go home What's up with that? It was so uncalled for that Bill Kristol had to get on Barnes about it. Is Barnes a shill for somebody else and see's Fred pulling support away from his guy? Or is Barnes solely interested in picking a guy he thinks can win – conservative principles be damned? Thompson is one of the most solid...

PRESIDENT BUSH SAYS the presidency is still "a joyous experience" for him. "People ask if I would do it again. I would." And one reason for his upbeat mood in talking to a dozen journalists Wednesday is progress in Iraq, including revenue sharing by the central government with the provinces. Another is the beginning of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, though Bush cautioned that the creation of a Palestinian state won't come any time soon. Reconciliation between Shia and Sunni is occurring in Iraq, Bush said, but it's "bottom up reconciliation," not top down from the central government of Nouri a-Maliki. However, the...

Republicans lost the governorship of Kentucky and the state senate in Virginia last week. But the elections were not as bad as they looked for Republicans. Knocked down and trampled on by Democrats in 2006, Republicans are at least back on their feet in 2007. The Democratic trend in Virginia, especially in the suburbs of Washington and urban centers of Hampton Roads, was the most discouraging aspect for Republicans. It reinforced the likelihood that former Democratic governor Mark Warner will win the seat of retiring Republican senator John Warner next year and suggested the long Democratic drought at the presidential...

Republicans are so intent on pushing scandal-plagued members of Congress out of office and far from the media spotlight that the entire party--from the White House to congressional leaders to the Republican National Committee to various campaign committees--was instantly united last week in the effort to force Senator Larry Craig of Idaho to resign. At another time, Republicans might have cut Craig some slack, allowing him to finish his term and not seek reelection. But after suffering crushing losses in last year's midterm election--spurred in part by highly publicized GOP corruption in Congress--Republicans are not in a mood to tolerate...

The recipe for Republicans is to stop acting like, well, Republicans--that is, Republicans of recent vintage. It's not particularly visible at the moment, but there is a road to political recovery for Republicans. Chances are they won't get far enough down it to recapture the House or Senate or even hold the White House in 2008. But they might. Three things have to happen for Republicans to recover--in effect, a political hat trick. Events must work in their favor, notably in Iraq. Democrats must screw up badly. And Republicans must change their ways, in a compelling fashion. This last requirement...

The what-ifs in the sudden death of immigration reform are intriguing. What if Senate majority leader Harry Reid hadn't pulled the immigration bill from the floor when it was close to passage in early June? What if Republican senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jon Kyl of Arizona had come up earlier with their enforcement-toughening amendment that would have prompted, for the first time, a sweeping crackdown on those 3 to 4 million foreigners who have overstayed their visas? What if Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky had twisted arms to get more Republican votes for the bill?...

Conservatives are sometimes blind to what's in their own best interest. This is especially true on immigration, all the more so on the narrower matter of the bipartisan immigration reform bill now before the Senate. The bill gives conservatives a large chunk of what they've wanted for years, plus some things they don't want. The balance is heavily in their favor, though, and they're crazy to oppose this once-in-a-lifetime chance to stop illegal immigration and enact sensible policies for legal immigration. At the top of the list of what conservatives can get is significantly beefed-up security along America's southern border....

Don't listen to Teddy Kennedy. If you belong to the small band of conservative brothers inclined to support immigration reform, the Massachusetts senator is on your side. But what he says is likely to make you anxious, vexed, or even crazed. At times, Kennedy makes the compromise immigration bill sound like the latest loopy liberal legislation to provide welfare to the world.It's not. Indeed, much of the organized left opposes it. The AFL-CIO is especially upset about the provision to bring foreign workers here temporarily. But when you hear Kennedy on the subject, you have to wonder what they're so...

Senator John McCain's speech last week on winning in Iraq earned high marks, at least from conservatives. One result was an immediate fourfold increase in McCain's online fundraising, though he'd made no special appeal. Another was that his once close ties to the mainstream media continued to fray, which may improve his standing among conservatives. And at the same time his chief opponents for the Republican presidential nomination hit bumps in the road: Rudy Giuliani over his support for taxpayer-funded abortions, Mitt Romney because of his seemingly innocent but exaggerated claim to have been a lifelong hunter.Even taken together, these...

FNC's 'Beltway Boys' Call GOP Anti-Illegal Immigration Stand 'Dumbest Move' of 2006 Posted by Tim Graham on January 3, 2007 - 14:59. Just to prove that Fox News Channel doesn't live up to the liberal stereotype of Music to Conservative Ears, angry E-mailers are demanding someone denounce Fred Barnes and Morton Kondracke for slamming conservatives who staunchly oppose illegal immigration. In their year-end Beltway Boys "awards show" this weekend, there was this clip of agreement: Kondracke: "Our 'Dumbest Move' award of the year is Republicans trashing immigrants. And this - this has disastrous consequences for the, in the election. The Hispanic...

IN DEALING WITH the new Democratic Congress, President Bush is said to have a big choice to make. To get anything done, he either has to compromise with Democrats or ally himself with an as-yet-unformed majority coalition of Republicans and moderate-to-conservative Democrats. But there's a third option: take bold moves on his own, based on his presidential powers.The president, stung by the defeat of Republicans in the midterm election, may be reluctant to step out on his own. The safer tack would be to negotiate with Congress to pass legislation in hopes of enhancing the legacy of his presidency. That's...

Congratulations to The Weak-ly Standard. The "conservative" magazine did a wonderful job promoting Democrat senatorial candidates Jim Webb, Harold Ford Jr., and Jon Tester in it's last two issues immediately preceding Tuesday's election. The Standard wrote a long tribute to Webb, calling him a "blood and soil conservative". Despite Harold Ford Jr.'s very low ACU lifetime congressional voting record of 19, the Standard tried to portray him as being similar to his conservative opponent Bob Corker on the issues. Apparently, the magazine was enamored of the notion of having little Harold in the U.S. Senate. But, most outrageously, the last...

Was just watching BB, and they were saying that the general impression that the Internet is awash in :Liberal websites and posters, but in fact, while ther may be more Dim/Lib websites..the statististics show that the top 5 Repub/consevative websites/blogs, get more than twice as many "hits" as the top 5 Dim/Liberal sites...whod'a thunk??? Yes, FR was one of them! :-) Sorry no link availiable..i checked BBs page, but nothing.

CAN PRESIDENT BUSH help Republicans retain control of Congress? He thinks so. And so do more Republican candidates than you might guess, given Bush's improved but still relatively low popularity. In fact, he'll appear in many states not ordinarily viewed as Bush country: Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, California, Ohio, just to name five. "I think I can help," Bush said at an Oval Office session last week with seven journalists. "And if I can't, Laura can." First Lady Laura Bush, who years ago told Bush she'd marry him so long as she'd never have to give a speech, has become a...

CIA agent's naming led to giant hoax by Bush foes Fred Barnes September 15, 2006 THE rogues' gallery of those who acted badly in the CIA "leak" case turns out to be different from what the media led us to expect. Note that we put the word "leak" in quotation marks, because it's clear now that there was no leak at all, just idle talk, and certainly there was no smear campaign against former US ambassador Joseph Wilson for criticising President George W.Bush's Iraq policy. It's as if a giant hoax were perpetrated on the country - by the media,...

The rogues' gallery of those who acted badly in the CIA "leak" case turns out to be different from what the media led us to expect. Note that we put the word "leak" in quotation marks, because it's clear now there was no leak at all, just idle talk, and certainly no smear campaign against Joseph Wilson for criticizing President Bush's Iraq policy. It's as if a giant hoax were perpetrated on the country--by the media, by partisan opponents of the Bush administration, even by several Bush subordinates who betrayed the president and their White House colleagues. The hoax lingered...

HOW DO PEOPLE BECOME PRO-LIFERS? What turns people into passionate foes of abortion and related issues like euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research? I'm not referring to those who supported the pro-life position because of their family upbringing or religious faith or because of a political requirement as, say, a Republican candidate in a red state. I'm talking about people who, as adults or mature teenagers, were either pro-abortion or basically indifferent to the issue. Then something changed their mind, prompting them to take up the anti-abortion cause. Perhaps they began defending the pro-life position without realizing they'd flipped. In...

You could almost hear cheers of joy coming from the White House. President Bush, it seems, is back, no longer hopelessly unpopular and embattled. You could see a renewed vigor in Bush's bracing defense last week of his Iraq policy and his warning of the geopolitical disaster that would follow a pullout (or "redeployment" as Democrats call it). And you could even see it in polls. In a polling slump since Hurricane Katrina struck a year ago, Bush's job approval was back in the 40s again--42 percent in the Gallup, Hotline, Rasmussen, and CNN surveys--and rising.That wasn't all. The closely...

Let me begin by defining three terms that are thrown around in debates about the media today. The first is objectivity, which means reporting the news with none of your own political views or instincts slanting the story one way or another. Perfect objectivity is pretty hard for anyone to attain, but it can be approximated. Then there's fairness. Fairness concedes that there may be some slant in a news story, but requires that a reporter will be honest and not misleading with regard to those with whom he disagrees. And finally there's balance, which means that both sides on...

DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE. In the early 1970s, they rejected their hawkish tradition on national security with the nomination of George McGovern for president. The resulting weakness on national security issues has haunted them ever since. Democrats didn't recover until the 1990s when the Cold War was over and national security was no longer the paramount national issue. Now, after 9/11 and with Islamic jihadists still threatening America, Democrats are purging the hawkish remnants in their party. That's the meaning of the primary defeat in Connecticut yesterday of Senator Joe Lieberman to Ned Lamont, an antiwar Democrat. Lamont is...

DURING A GET-TO-KNOW-YOU meeting with the new Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, last week, a veteran Washington journalist asked about possible bipartisan talks to deal with the growing cost of entitlements. "Would revenues be on the table?" he inquired. Paulson looked puzzled. Another journalist explained that the question was about tax increases. Would they be considered?The questioner had used a word--"revenues"--drawn from the growing lexicon of liberalism. It is a language quite common now in Washington and in liberal political circles, and it's designed to substitute softer or neutral words for harsher ones with political implications. It is a language of...

Going on Offense for Missile Defense Defending ourselves has never made more sense. by Fred Barnes 08/07/2006, Volume 011, Issue 44 SENATOR CARL LEVIN of Michigan had a grim and unhappy look on his face. For years, he had led Democrats in an effort to slash funding for missile defense. He had planned to seek a cut of $68 million. But with North Korea poised to launch missiles and Iran's relentless drive to go nuclear, the situation had changed. So much so that Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama proposed to boost spending on the missile defense program, now more than...

The Bush Bounce He's only part way back. by Fred Barnes 07/17/2006, Volume 011, Issue 41 THERE'S JOY at the White House again and less anxiety among Republicans in Congress. The excesses of the press and Supreme Court are bringing Bush and rebellious conservatives closer together. Iraq is better off. The American economy is humming. The White House has made no harmful missteps. And the president's job approval rating is rising. Yet the Bush recovery is not complete. "We're in a better place than we were two or three months ago," says Republican national chairman Ken Mehlman. "But [the midterm...

THE MEDIA COVERAGE of the killing of 24 Iraqis at Haditha has given rich new definition to the phrase "rush to judgment." The coverage, plus the reaction of antiwar politicians like Democratic representative John Murtha, amounts to a public verdict of guilty, rendered against a handful of Marines, before an investigation of the bloody incident is completed or a trial (if there is one) held. An egregious example was MSNBC host Chris Matthews's interview with Murtha on May 17. Asked to "draw us a picture of what happened in Haditha," the congressman said he'd tell "exactly" what occurred. "One Marine...

Republicans are staring political disaster in the face on immigration. PRESIDENT BUSH AND REPUBLICANS are staring political disaster in the face on immigration. The problem isn't that they might enact a bill allowing illegal immigrants living in America to earn their way to citizenship, inviting foreign workers to come here, and beefing up security on the 2,000-mile border with Mexico. No, it would be a disaster for Republicans if they didn't pass such a bill.Rarely has the American public been so involved in a national issue as they are today in immigration reform. Everybody has an opinion. Everybody agrees there's...

When Will Republicans Wake Up? May 17, 2006 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I want to start by going back to yesterday's program, about 24 hours ago, and I want to review what I said leading into a discussion of President Bush's speech RUSH ARCHIVE: Let's get to the president's speech on immigration last night. What you saw, what you heard, I think, is a sincere leader trying to lead the nation. Then we got the third rail of third rails here, illegal immigration, and the horses are out of the barn on this. You can lock the door to the barn...

Jefferson City, Missouri THERE'S A SUREFIRE WAY for a Republican governor to lose favor with the public, the press, and Democrats: wipe out a state's budget deficit without raising taxes. This inevitably involves trimming spending on Medicaid, the out-of-control health care program for the poor that's become the largest expenditure in virtually every state's budget. Faced with a $1.1 billion deficit last year, Missouri governor Matt Blunt chose to restrain spending--especially Medicaid spending--and not to increase taxes. For months, he was pilloried in the Missouri media for cutting off Medicaid recipients. And his approval rating dropped in one poll to...

PRESIDENT BUSH IS A CONSERVATIVE politician, not a conservative ideologue. This explains why Bush sometimes does things that aren't conservative. He does so to survive and, if all goes well, to prosper politically. Or he does so because he actually favors some nonconservative policy or position. Conservative politicians are never ideologically pure. "The president works at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, not 214 Massachusetts Avenue N.E.," a Bush administration official says. The Massachusetts Avenue location is the site of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank.President Reagan, like Bush, was a politician first and an ideologue second. When Social Security was on...

Baton Rouge LOUISIANA GOVERNOR KATHLEEN BLANCO rented a fleet of buses a few weeks ago to take state legislators on a tour of New Orleans neighborhoods ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans is only an hour's drive away, but fewer than half of the 143 legislators showed up for the trip. Maybe the legislators were indifferent. But the snub was also an unmistakable sign of the loss of political dominance in Louisiana by New Orleans, one of the most overwhelmingly Democratic cities in the nation. At least it once was a powerful Democratic stronghold, the arbiter of Louisiana elections. But...

TONY SNOW, the former Fox News anchor and talk radio host, has taken one of the toughest jobs in America. As White House press secretary for President Bush, he'll have deal with a press corps that is both out of control and smug in its negative opinion of the both the president and his administration.What should Snow do? First, recognize the position he's put himself in: It's dire. The press is bent on trashing Bush. And while Snow is a delightful and upbeat person, his charm will get neither him nor Bush anywhere with the media. And second, he's fighting...

NOW THAT HE'S BACK IN the elections business, Karl Rove has a huge task on his hands: assuring strong Republican voter turnout. At the moment, Republicans are in a funk. And their dejected mood may presage a low turnout in the midterm election on November 7. Should a large number of Republican voters sit this one out, Republicans could lose control of one or both houses of Congress. It's when Republicans are either inspired or angry that they show up in large numbers and win elections. So Rove, along with Republican national chairman Ken Mehlman, has the job of shaping...

On immigration, Mr. Allen, whose mother emigrated from France, is clear. His take is more like that of a House Republican than a senator. "I don't want to argue anybody's particular bill," he says. "First thing we need to do, and should have done, is [secure] our borders. We needed fences, whether virtual or physical, unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned ground sensors, detention centers. . . . If that's all that can be done, do that now. Don't allow a lack of a consensus [on guest workers or other immigration issues] to prevent what needs to be done." Mr. Allen is...

In every administration, there is always one journalist that the White House trusts above the others to represent its point of view. In this administration, it is Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard magazine. Whenever you read one of Mr. Barnes' columns, you know that you are getting an inside perspective. You are, in effect, reading what the White House itself is thinking on any given day on any given subject. This is an arrangement that suits everyone. Mr. Barnes is regularly able to scoop other reporters viewed as hostile to this administration, while the administration has a conduit through...