Free Republic

Early in Ronald Reagan's second term, Bill Rusher, the publisher of National Review, was interviewing the president in the Oval Office for a documentary on the conservative movement. Rusher asked how he would describe Barry Goldwater's role. Reagan thought a moment and replied: I guess you would have to call him the John the Baptist of our movement. I resisted the impulse to lean in and ask, "Sir, if Barry Goldwater was John the Baptist, who would that make you?" The death of George McGovern brought back thoughts of these two men who suffered two of the greatest defeats in...

When liberals fail, they fail spectacularly as (we are very likely about to see on November 6). George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign is a great example of this.What I suspect most people (myself included) didn't know is he sort of saw the light on big government regulation 20 years after his failed run (see the full article here). While he lamented that future generations of Democrats could take note of his folly and learn from it, we've seen nothing of the sort...

The late George McGovern is best known for his disastrous 1972 campaign for the presidency which was built around his opposition to American intervention in Vietnam. Less well known was his proposal for a military intervention just six years later.

The family of ex-U.S. Sen. George McGovern says the 90-year-old is "no longer responsive" in hospice care. McGovern's family issued a statement Wednesday afternoon through Avera McKennan Hospital. His daughter, Ann McGovern, earlier told The Associated Press that her father is "nearing the end" and appears restful and peaceful. She says it's a blessing that she and other family members are able to be with him.

“Fidel Castro could have been Cuba’s Elvis!” (Dan Rather.) “Fidel Castro is one hell of a guy! “You people would like him!” (Ted Turner to a capacity crowd at Harvard Law School during a speech in 1997.) “Fidel Castro is old-fashioned, courtly—even paternal, a thoroughly fascinating figure!” (Andrea Mitchell.) “Castro has brought very high literacy and great health-care to his country. His personal magnetism is powerful, his presence is commanding.” (Barbara Walters.) “Viva Fidel! Viva Che!” (Jesse Jackson while arm in arm with Fidel Castro himself in 1984.) "Fidel Castro is very shy and sensitive, I frankly like him and...

Former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern has been hospitalized for fatigue in South Dakota, a hospital spokeswoman said Tuesday. Jullie Ward, a spokeswoman for Avera McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls, said the 89-year-old former senator from South Dakota was admitted to the Sioux Falls hospital for fatigue after completing a lecture tour. McGovern, a South Dakota congressman from 1957 to 1961 and U.S. senator from 1963 to 1981, ran for president against incumbent Richard Nixon in 1972 and lost in a historic landslide. He ran for president three times, making a try for the nomination in 1968 and 1984 in...

For many years, a handful of American political leaders -- including the late senator Ted Kennedy and now President Obama -- have been trying to gain passage of comprehensive health care for all Americans. As far back as President Harry S. Truman, they have urged Congress to act on this national need. In a presentation before a joint session of Congress last week, Obama offered his view of the best way forward. But what seems missing in the current battle is a single proposal that everyone can understand and that does not lend itself to demagoguery. If we want comprehensive...

Do you remember the 1972 Democratic Convention? This was the convention which put abortion on the party's platform. I watched this on tv. I also remember a Democrat Convention which could have been 1972 or maybe 1976, this time they put gay rights on the party platform. I wish someone in the Republican Party could find these archives and show the whole country how the Democratic Party accepted these extreme views and officially put it on their party platform. It appears that there are too many naive Democratic voters who have never heard of this and are under the illusion...

We keep saying this — and no one seems to listen — but over the course of this campaign, we’ve met about 50 people who worked on McGovern-72, and every one of them said to us, without quivocation, that the main reason McGovern lost to Nixon was McGOVERN’S SUPPORTERS. The way McGovern’s “youth army” behaved, and the terrible things they did in McGovern’s name, worked against their candidate and every day drove more people who would have never voted Republican over to Nixon. [more (but not much) at source URL

On August 8, George McGovern had an editorial published by the Wall Street Journal that astounds for the fact that it runs counter to union aims. In it, McGovern warns the unions against their woefully misnamed "Employee Free Choice Act," the legislation that has as one of its main goals the elimination of democratic styled, secret balloting for union elections. Unions actually wish to eliminate the union member's ability to keep his vote private. This act will serve to put pressure on union voters to conform to the union's party line because, after all, every vote they make as individuals...

He was a fighter pilot in World War II, bombing targets in Europe to stop Hitler. But former Senator and 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern says that didn't qualify him to run the country--and the same goes for GOP presumptive nominee John McCain. ``I don't have any regrets about that,'' the antiwar Democratic stalwart said in a brief interview yesterday on Capitol Hill. ``While bombing is a terrible thing, we smashed Hitler's oil refineries all over Europe.'' ``But I don't recall ever saying that experience as a bomber pilot equipped me to be very strong on how to run...

When you're a Clintonite, you're a Clintonite all the way. From your first Monicagate defense, To Hil's last primary day.—with apologies to Leonard Bernstein Look next to the definition of "Clinton loyalist" in the dictionary, and you're likely to find a photo of Lanny Davis. The man who would have put Baghdad Bob to shame for his unflinching flackery during Bill's Monica mess is back on the beat for Hillary. Yesterday, Davis wrote a HuffPo column purporting to set forth 10 Undisputed Facts showing Obama's weakness as a general election candidate against John Mccain. As Jake Tapper has observed, some...

Winners work and save and plan – and somehow manage to overcome the vagaries and pitfalls of life; losers do not. Through bad luck or a lack of discipline, losers fall through the cracks. Throughout the ages there have always been winners and losers, and there have always been hugely more losers than winners. Dictators have used this to focus the hatred of the losers on scapegoats to gain and keep power – Hitler and the Jews; Mugabe and the white farmers; Stalin and the bourgeois farmers, for example. In democracies, political opportunists scapegoat the winners to gain power –...

People worldwide -- and indeed, most Americans -- are under the impression that whichever party candidate has the most delegates at the end of the primary elections is assured the party nomination for president. And who can blame them? In a typical year, one candidate will emerge from the primary campaign with a majority of the delegates, and he will have the nomination secured. But this year's race is unprecedented; a woman and black man, running neck to neck against each other to try and reach the magic number of 2025 delegates to lock the nomination. There are 4,049 total...

As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president. After the 1972 presidential election, I stood clear of calls to impeach President Richard M. Nixon for his misconduct during the campaign. I thought that my joining the impeachment effort would be seen as an expression of personal vengeance toward the president who had defeated me. Today I have made a different choice. Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment. The...

As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president. After the 1972 presidential election, I stood clear of calls to impeach President Richard M. Nixon for his misconduct during the campaign. I thought that my joining the impeachment effort would be seen as an expression of personal vengeance toward the president who had defeated me. Today I have made a different choice. Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment. The...

In spite of what the polls supposedly tell us, I strongly suspect that the Democrats may already have blown the 2008 election. Unlike the late Senator Aiken of Vermont, who proposed that we declare victory and get out of Vietnam, the Democrats want us to declare defeat and get out of Iraq. This, they imagine, is what the American people were demanding in the congressional election of 2006. But it seems far more likely that the message of that election was not "Get out," but rather "Win, or get out." In any case, the position the Democrats are now taking...

George McGovern, the former senator and Democratic presidential candidate, said Thursday that he will meet with more than 60 members of Congress next week to recommend a strategy to remove U.S. troops from Iraq by June. If Democrats don't take steps to end the war in Iraq soon, they won't be in power very long, McGovern told reporters before a speech at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "I think the Democratic leadership is wise enough to know that if they're going to follow the message that election sent, they're going to have to take steps to bring the war to a...

Former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate, George McGovern, says he has encouraged Tom Daschle to run for president in 2008. McGovern lost to Republican Richard Nixon in the 1972 election. Eight years later he lost his bid for re-election to the Senate. McGovern expects up to a dozen people to run for the Democratic nomination for president, and he says Daschle has as good a chance as anyone. Daschle expects to make a decision by year's end on whether he'll run.

A Democratic stalwart warns that labor's old strategy can't win against a new competitive reality. Many of my friends will consider this view heretical. But it is based on stark reality... It can be galling to hear companies argue that they have to cut wages and benefits for hourly workers — even as they reward top executives with millions of dollars in stock options. The chief executive of Wal-Mart earns $27 million a year, while the company's average worker takes home only about $10 an hour. But let's assume that the chief executive got 27 cents instead of $27 million,...