Free Republic

The Only Thing We Have to Fear . . . is Obama. by Fred Barnes 01/26/2009, Volume 014, Issue 18 Barack Obama is the apostle of hope. But he also arouses the flipside of hope--fear. And while the fear he stirs may turn out to be unfounded, it's not irrational. People don't know who Obama really is or where his ideological center of gravity rests, to the extent it rests anywhere. He was a liberal in the Senate and the campaign, a centrist in the transition, and who knows what he'll be as president. He's elusive. I count four separate...

Barack Obama is the apostle of hope. But he also arouses the flipside of hope--fear. And while the fear he stirs may turn out to be unfounded, it's not irrational. People don't know who Obama really is or where his ideological center of gravity rests, to the extent it rests anywhere. He was a liberal in the Senate and the campaign, a centrist in the transition, and who knows what he'll be as president. He's elusive. I count four separate fears. Whether he's a crypto-Marxist is not one of them. Neither is the absurd fear that he's secretly a Muslim,...

The postmortems on the presidency of George W. Bush are all wrong. The liberal line is that Bush dangerously weakened America's position in the world and rushed to the aid of the rich and powerful as income inequality worsened. That is twaddle. Conservatives--okay, not all of them--have only been a little bit kinder. They give Bush credit for the surge that saved Iraq, but not for much else. He deserves better. His presidency was far more successful than not. And there's an aspect of his decision-making that merits special recognition: his courage. Time and time again, Bush did what other...

Uncorrected transcript provided by Morningside Partners. C-SPAN uses its best efforts to provide accurate transcripts of its programs, but it can not be held liable for mistakes such as omitted words, punctuation, spelling, mistakes that change meaning, etc. ### C-SPAN/Q&A Host: Brian Lamb Guest: Brit Hume July 9, 2008 . . BRIAN LAMB, HOST: Brit Hume, if you had to go in front of a journalism class and define the term ”journalism” today, what would you say? BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: That’s a big subject today. But I think journalism is in new forms, pretty much what it’s always...

Barack Obama is an awfully good politician but not much of an economist. His model for lifting America out of its economic slump is President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. The trouble with FDR's policy, however, is that it didn't come close to reviving the economy and restoring it to pre-Depression vigor. But FDR did use the New Deal quite successfully in another regard: to build a coalition that kept Democrats in the majority for a half century. The difference between Reagan's and Obama's policies is striking. Reagan stressed private investment. With Obama, as with FDR, it's public investment. Reagan cut...

The Other American Auto Industry Plenty of car makers make a go of it in this country--they're just non-union and not headquartered in Detroit. West Point, Georgia Drew Ferguson IV is a 42-year-old dentist whose family has lived in this town, population 3,300, "since God put us here." To be precise, the family arrived eight generations ago. Ferguson went off to the University of Georgia, then on to dental school, after which he came back to West Point. He and his wife, whom he met in college, have four kids. A year ago, Ferguson was elected mayor. "There's a reason...

I'm so sick of this guy. He needs to get out of Washington and see what ILLLEGAL, not legal, immigrations is doing to our country. I wish Fox would get rid of this jerk who's spent all most his whole life in DC. Every week he's complaining about the "anti-immigrant" faction of the Republican party. Hey Fred, live in CA for a while, visit the schools, visit the emergency rooms, and don't go to a posh rich area, go to a middle class area, and you'll see why we're all so mad.

Barack Obama wants to give the economy a jolt. So far, though, the biggest jolt we've seen is the one the economy has given to Obama. That jolt, in the form of a plummeting stock market, upset Obama's desire for a leisurely transition. It made him virtually America's acting president. Obama is fond of saying-he said it again last week-that the country has only one president at a time, and until January 20 it's George W. Bush. True enough, but financial markets don't look at Washington that way. They focus on the future, and that means Obama. Financial markets demanded...

Fred prediction is McCain.

They just said it is a foregone conclusion that Obama's win ( my paraphrase). Good lord. Thanks guys. They say it would take a 3000 point rise in the stock market to save McCain now. The dems special interest agenda caused this debacle and the GOP takes the fall. Is there no justice? But WHY never any mention of the stinkin' muck and company Obama keeps?

Palin Comes Out Swinging And keeps hope alive for McCain. by Fred Barnes 10/13/2008, Volume 014, Issue 05 Sarah Palin's scintillating success in last week's vice presidential debate with Joe Biden has made her an enormous asset (again) to John McCain's bid for the presidency. Now McCain must decide how to maximize her role in the campaign. Anything short of bringing her front and center makes no sense. McCain was thrilled by her debate performance. "The kind of excitement that she ignites, frankly, I have not seen before in American politics," he told talk radio host Mike Gallagher. Having gambled...

The Thursday, October 2, 2008 "Special Report With Brit Hume" on Fox News discussed the ramifications of not passing the Rescue Bill. Fred Barnes, Executive Editor, the Weekly Standard gave the following stupid response to a question on the House Republican’s resistance to this bailout/pork bill from Host Brit Hume; Brit Hume: “Let me ask you this question, Fred (Barnes). You're none unsympathetic to the conservatives in the House of Representatives, and the noisiest opposition to this measure has come from conservatives in the House. Give me your thoughts on the quality of their arguments.” Fred Barnes: “I think their...

Comeback Sarah Palin changed her image overnight. by Fred Barnes The moment when Sarah Palin knew she was winning last night's debate with her vice presidential opponent Joe Biden came after the subject had turned to nuclear weapons. Palin had talked about nukes as a deterrent and said it was important to keep them out of the hands of dictators who are enemies of America. Then she turned to moderator Gwen Ifill and asked, "Can we talk about Afghanistan real quick?" Afghanistan? The impression Palin had left in television interviews with ABC's Charles Gibson and CBS's Katie Couric was that...

St. Paul - That was easy. Sarah Palin delivered what may have been the most important speech ever by a vice presidential candidate and made it look like she'd been performing on the national political stage for years. And she made John McCain look good for having picked her as his running mate. Yet, as governor of Alaska, Palin had never addressed as large a crowd as she did last night at the Republican convention. She'd never before given a nationally televised speech in prime time. And she'd never had to deal with a situation filled with such political peril...

It seems Barack Obama had a "senior moment" on Wednesday during his trip to Israel regarding which Senate committees he is a member of. On the same day's Special Report with Brit Hume, during the "Fox All Stars" segment, the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes called out Obama for his claim, which the Illinois Senator made while trying to impress Israeli reporters, that he is a member of the Senate Banking Committee, and he took credit for the passage of legislation regarding Iran. Barnes: "[Obama] was trying to brag about how tough he was on the Iranians, and he said his...

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...