Free Republic

Many Republicans are giddy over a Gallup poll released this week that found a 14-percentage point shift in the nation from majority Democratic support to majority Republican support during the past year. Understandably so; this marks the largest Republican advantage in over 25 years. The last time Republican support was this high was in 1995, after the Republicans, led by my father, Newt Gingrich, won the House of Representatives for the first time since 1952. But Gallup's findings don't mean that Republicans hold all the cards. The reality is that independents will have a massive impact on the elections' outcomes...

A new Gallup poll shines a spotlight on the deep political divide in America and surely points to what the upcoming presidential election will be about. Gallup asked, "How proud are you to be an American?" Seventy-six percent of Republicans said "extremely proud" compared with 22 percent of Democrats. Broken down by age, 63% of those over 65 said "extremely proud," and only 24% of those 18 to 29. This tells us something about Nike's recent move to pull its Betsy Ross flag sneakers from the marketplace, having taken guidance from its ex-football star anti-hero, now-Nike corporate spokesman, Colin Kaepernick....

With no charges being filed against the Cleveland officers involved in the shooting death of Tamir Rice, you can be assured that the Black Lives Matter movement will continue their activism into the 2016 season. This incident, the police-involved shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the controversial arrest and death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, took a toll on law enforcement. In June, a Gallup poll showed that confidence in police had reached a 22-year low. Now, the polling company is saying that there has been a “tenuous” recovery: After dipping to 48% in 2014 amid a national...

Washington Post political reporter Chris Cillizza is one of those self-impressed Watergate babies who thinks everything the media report brings great value to society. His latest article was titled "Trust in the media is at an all-time low. That's a terrible thing for all of us." It is? Automobile manufacturers can claim we need a car to get anywhere. The farmers and food companies will impress on the world its need to eat. But for the news media -- especially this news media -- to suggest civilization as we know it will cease to exist without their profound wisdom and...

WASHINGTON - Why is it that many of the Republican presidential contenders are dodging issues the voters say are among their highest concerns? Go to the Gallup Poll's website that lists the issues that trouble Americans most and you'll find the economy and jobs are far and away the "most important problems" they face, according to the pollster's recent surveys. I know why the nightly news shows don't deal with this, because for a very long time now they've been trying to convince us that the Obama economy is doing fine and people are doing better. It isn't and they...

Recently, after the New York Times published a racially insensitive article about film and television producer Shonda Rhimes, the paper became the object of weeks of scorn and derision that prompted a public debate over racial diversity in the newsroom. It may be true that the Times should diversify its staff on racial grounds. But there is another area in which the Times is sorely in need of diversification: its coverage of religious and social conservatives. The Times has always had a liberal bias. But these days its goal seems to be to drive social conservatives from the public square entirely....

According to a Gallup poll released today, Republican support for the Supreme Court has increased 21 percentage points since September of last year. Partisan views have flipped since the beginning of the High Court’s term last October. GOP approval has increased from a mere 30 percent to a majority of 51 percent. On the other hand, Democrats approval is down 14 points, falling from 58 percent to 44 percent. This is notable considering the majority of Democrats have viewed the Supreme Court favorably since 2012’s ruling on the individual mandate portion of the Affordable Care Act. During this time,...

WASHINGTON - America remains adrift under Barack Obama's presidency, without any sustained or effective focus on the sea of troubles that afflict our nation. Obama goes through the ceremonial motions of being president, while ignoring the consequences or making excuses about the most serious, long term challenges we face here at home. Instead, he is devoting more and more of his time delivering political speeches attacking his adversaries and raising money for besieged Democrats who face severe election losses in the fall. Meantime, the U.S. economy all but stopped growing in the first three months of this year; the nation's...

Gallup’s latest economic findings are seemingly straight out of the dystopian novel “The Hunger Games.” That is to say, every state in the nation boasted a negative economic index score; only the District of Columbia -- the capital city -- is seemingly prospering. Surprise: The pollsters posit some interesting takeaways for us to consider: (1) the disparity between the most economically confident state (Massachusetts) and the least economically confident state (West Virginia) is 43 percentage points. (This excludes the District of Columbia, of course, which is not a state).That’s an enormous gap, and one that doesn’t appear to be shrinking,...

With the shorthand "OMG" (oh, my God) becoming a huge cliche, it might be worth taking a look at how Americans are seeing the Almighty these days -- that is if they are looking at all. A recent Gallup poll indicates that just 31 percent of Americans worship publicly on a weekly basis, while 43 percent rarely go to a church, synagogue or mosque. Growing up under the heavy hand of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, it was drummed into me that attending weekly Mass was not an option. It was a must to avoid eternal damnation, which...