Free Republic

... The so-called purity test is a 10-point checklist -- a suicide pact, really -- of alleged Republican positions... James Bopp Jr., chief sponsor of the resolution and a committee member from Indiana, has said that "the problem is that many conservatives have lost trust in the conservative credentials of the Republican Party." Actually, no, the problem is that many conservatives have lost faith in the ability of Republican leaders to think. The resolutions aren't so much statements of principle as dogmatic responses to complex issues that may, occasionally, require more than a Sharpie check in a little square. It's...

In town to give a talk on civility, I was surrounded by women who wondered what I thought of Sarah Palin's Newsweek cover. "Why aren't women coming to her defense?" they asked. "Why are the media being so rough on Sarah?" Having been enjoying a self-imposed moratorium on all things Palin, declining numerous interviews to discuss her latest self-promotional tour, I was surprised by the questions. My thoughts lately have drifted toward the sense that, though Palin is very much a celebrity, she's no longer running for public office, at least officially. Ergo, radar gets a rest. As for her...

WASHINGTON — As the Republican Party continues its pilgrimage through the desert, its leaders may be missing the oasis for the vale of tears. The answer to the party's woes isn't a revamped Web site (GOP.com) offering — wowser! — really cool social networking platforms. The answer won't be found in the sudden realization that 83 percent of young people 18 to 24 have an online profile — or other late-breaking revelations that merely reinforce the perception of the GOP as woefully behind the curve. The answer is … drum roll, please … women. If the GOP is really serious...

While everyone in Washington is suddenly pretending they’ve hardly ever heard of ACORN, they might want to pretend they’ve never heard of the SEIU, one of the nation’s largest unions. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and the Service Employees International Union are tight as Heidi Klum and a new pair of jeans. You also don’t talk about either organization without mention of Wade Rathke, co-founder of ACORN and founder of SEIU Local 100 in New Orleans. Rathke, who resigned from ACORN last year as “chief organizer” after it became known that his brother embezzled almost $1 million...

Just as the left pioneered "AstroTurf" protesters -- homeless people lured to demonstrations with the offer of a free T-shirt and a box lunch -- liberals have also specialized in producing fake "insiders" denouncing their alleged group.

Kathleen Parker has an interesting little shtick. Few noticed her when she was writing from a conservative point of view...until she started attacking conservatives about a year ago. Then she went whole hog and has made a lucrative new career of attacking conservatives...while still going through the motions of pretending to be conservative. Parker's latest column on the topic of townhall protests is but the latest in her role of pretend conservative. Here is how "conservative" Parker refers to those protesters: Generally considered a fringe group, the demonstrators have been described derisively by Democratic leaders. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed...

WASHINGTON -- Southern writer Walker Percy liked to poke fun at Ohioans in his novels, just to even things out a bit. "Usually Mississippians and Georgians are getting it from everybody, and Alabamians," he once explained to an interviewer. "So, what's wrong with making smart-aleck remarks about Ohio? Nobody puts Ohio down. Why shouldn't I put Ohio down?" Percy, the genial genius, laughed at his own remark. Now, apparently, it's the Buckeye State's turn to poke back. In a fusillade of pique, Ohio Sen. George Voinovich charged that Southerners are what's wrong with the Republican Party. "We got too many...

...In a fusillade of pique, Ohio Sen. George Voinovich charged that Southerners are what's wrong with the Republican Party... Alas, Voinovich was not entirely wrong...

According to her, the problem with the Republican party is that it has too many conservatives. Well, that’s not new, we knew she felt that way since she labored to diminish Sarah Palin in every column since her nomination (including her most recent column, dated Aug 5 2009). Not satisfied with attacking a single conservative person, she deftly uses a comment by Ohio Sen. George Voinovich to launch her attack on the entire southern Republican establishment. She paraphrases Voinovich’s comment to better fit her argument as, “Those ignorant, right-wing, Bible-thumping rednecks are ruining the party.” Then she proceeds to agree...

Followers of Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court confirmation hearings were witness to a now-familiar phenomenon. The first Latina to rise to the highest bench with a record of accomplishment few can match isn't the best person for target practice when Hispanic voters are the golden means to a political future. Senators also hammered Sotomayor about her ethnic identification and whether she could rule fairly without undue influence from her gender or political preferences. Wait, let me guess, you're white guys! Are we to infer that men of European descent are never unduly influenced by their own ethnicity, gender or political preferences?...

When you're up to your waders in barracuda, blame the media. And quit your job. And say you did it for the people. And hire an agent. And try to keep a straight face. On your way to the bank. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, H.L. Mencken once said. Terribly elitist fellow, that Mencken. If only he were alive to witness the phenomenon of Sarah Palin, whose biography validates every cynical thought that ever found expression in his prolific prose..... Meanwhile, getting real, can we stop pretending that Palin is interested in anything other...

WASHINGTON -- When you're up to your waders in barracuda, blame the media. And quit your job. And say you did it for the people. And hire an agent. And try to keep a straight face. On your way to the bank. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, H.L. Mencken once said. Terribly elitist fellow, that Mencken. If only he were alive to witness the phenomenon of Sarah Palin, whose biography validates every cynical thought that ever found expression in his prolific prose. Let's just say, Palin is in no danger of going broke. From...

Kathleen Parker, an obscure Washington Post syndicated columnist who made herself famous by attacking Republican Vice Presidential nominee Alaska Governor Sarah Palin last fall, said that Palin 'invited' vicious sex jokes made this week by CBS Television Late Night host David Letterman. Parker also made degrading, sexist comments of her own about Palin.Parker made the comment in an online chat this afternoon at WashingtonPost.com:Re: Letterman: Listen, Letterman is a comedian. Comedians that don't go over the line are not funny. If you said she looks slutty, that's over the line. If I say it, it's over the line. Why wouldn't...

Listening to President Obama and former Vice President Cheney give their respective national security speeches Thursday put me in mind of John Gray, author of "Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus." Different men, different planets. Or are they?

Racial and ethnic diversity is the key to happiness, success in the global marketplace and, not least, an interesting life. So we are told in a batch of new "fair housing" radio ads that are the sort of treacly propaganda that cause sober drivers to run off the road. Presented as a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, the ads were produced by the National Fair Housing Alliance, a private, nonprofit group whose stated purpose is to make sure the act is properly implemented. The act bans housing discrimination and imposes stiff penalties for those who...

The GOP's identity crisis just got more interesting with the recent media splash of Meghan McCain, eldest daughter of the senator who did not become president. Young McCain, who began blogging during her father's presidential campaign, recently made waves at The Daily Beast when she picked a fight with conservative media mavens Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. This is enough sport to make the little dog laugh, to say nothing of the dish and the spoon. McCain, just 24, is one smart cookie. In a matter of weeks, she has created a brand, presenting herself as a fresh face of...

Kathleen Parker, a "conservative" columnist who has discovered that slamming real conservatives was an easy way to lift herself from her earlier state of relative anonymity, has now turned herself into an inadvertent comedienne. I mean, how can you beat this comedy line on the title of her latest column appearing in the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel: "Is Meghan McCain the GOP's answer to Rush Limbaugh?" Yes, Parker is seriously proposing that "Valley Girl McCain" can save the Republicans from that "nasty" Rush Limbaugh: The GOP's identity crisis just got more interesting with the recent media splash of Meghan McCain, eldest...

The GOP's identity crisis just got more interesting with the recent media splash of Meghan McCain. Young McCain, who began blogging during her father's presidential campaign, recently made waves at The Daily Beast when she picked a fight with conservative media mavens Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. McCain, just 24, is one smart cookie. In a matter of weeks, she has created a brand, presenting herself as a fresh face of her daddy's party and a voice for young conservatives. Strategically speaking, what better way to launch herself than to challenge the reigning diva herself, Miz Coulter? McCain jammed traffic...

The GOP's identity crisis just got more interesting with the media splash of Meghan McCain, daughter of the senator who did not become president. Young McCain, who began blogging during her father's presidential campaign, recently made waves at the Daily Beast when she picked a fight with conservative media mavens Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. This is enough sport to make the little dog laugh, to say nothing of the dish and the spoon. McCain, just 24, is one smart cookie. In a matter of weeks, she has created a brand, presenting herself as a fresh face of her daddy's...

Pseudo-conservative Kathleen Parker’s ongoing method of getting her columns published in the Washington Post – bashing conservatives – took another sleazy turn on Sunday, with Parker asserting in the Post that conservatives who accuse the media of a liberal bias are "non-journalists" who stoking "ignorance," like Rush Limbaugh (not to mention groups like the Media Research Center.) The biggest challenge facing America's struggling newspaper industry may not be the high cost of newsprint or lost ad revenue, but ignorance stoked by drive-by punditry. Yes, Dittoheads, you heard it right. Drive-by pundits, to spin off of Rush Limbaugh's "drive-by media," are...

As he lifted the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research Monday, President Obama proclaimed that scientific decisions now will be made "on facts, not ideology." This sounds good, but what if there were other non-ideological facts that Obama seems to be ignoring? One fact is that since Obama began running for president, researchers have made some rather amazing strides in alternative stem cell research. Science and ethics finally fell in love, in other words, and Obama seems to have fallen asleep during the kiss. Either that, or he decided that keeping an old political promise was more...

Geez, with this kind of fawning, Michelle O better watch her back: Eh? The president was asking us how we wanted to proceed. For the record, this is very un-Bush. At several meetings with the former president, including a one-on-one interview aboard Air Force One, there was never any question about how we would proceed. Bush ran all shows. Either Obama hasn’t figured out yet that he’s the boss or, quite possibly, he doesn’t care. As a veteran White House correspondent suggested to me later, “Maybe he knows he can handle whatever we toss his way.” I’ve written about the...

The only thing scarier than the Christian Right are pundits who believe that they cost the GOP the election. Without anything constructive to do, Republicans have apparently decided that being destructive might not be the wisest course of action but is a far sight better than sitting around and twiddling their thumbs. And that brings us to Kathleen Parker, conservative columnist with the Washington Post Writer’s Group and, lately, the bane of the GOP base. Parker, who became the model for thousands of conservative voodoo dolls when she wrote a few weeks ago that Sarah Palin should resign from the...

It may be time to take a closer look at karmic justice — that mysterious quid pro quo by which good and bad acts are rewarded in kind. One needn't believe in past lives and reincarnation to note that there's a whole lotta shakin' goin' on. Put another way: What goes around comes around. The most obvious manifestation is the 44th president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama. I mention his middle name only because Chief Justice John Roberts did during the swearing-in ceremony, a proper time for proper names. It was wholly karmic that those who have been...

NEW YORK -- At Sarabeth's restaurant on Central Park South, two young old friends are catching up and comparing notes over breakfast. Anyone seated nearby quickly learns the story. They met in graduate school; both hold MBAs. Both recently have joined the swelling ranks of America's unemployed. Their shared tales, if once unthinkable, are becoming increasingly familiar. First, blue-collar jobs disappeared. Now white collars are fading. The young and briefly affluent, accustomed to earning more than $75,000, suddenly have time on their hands, the latest victims of the current economic crunch. Now what? The young woman has some consulting work...

Okay, maybe — maybe — someone could have given Kathleen Parker the benefit of the doubt as a voice of “loyal opposition” when she recommended that Sarah Palin drop out of the race after her interview with Katie Couric. That is a big maybe. The maybe comes from the fact that Couric — no intellectual giant herself, given that she offered no comment on Joe Biden’s claim that “when the stock market crashed Franklin Roosevelt got on television” — did make Palin look awkward with “gotcha” questions probably scripted for her and that she would never have asked any Democrat....

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Nationally syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker made herself the scourge of the pro-life community when she blamed emphasis of pro-life issues for allowing Barack Obama to win the presidential election. In a new article, Parker is backing down slightly from those arguments, but still bungles the facts. Parker drew guffaws originally for blaming the presidential election loss on "oogedy-boogedy" pro-life advocates. In her new column she urges the evangelical and conservative Catholic pro-life advocates to give up their religious-based pro-life arguments and tells them to "take a cue from Nat Hentoff, a self-described Jewish atheist, who has...

December 05, 2008, 1:40 p.m. Enough with the Oogedy-BoogedyReligion, politics, and us. By Shannen W. Coffin Kathleen Parker’s war on religion in the Re-public-an square entered a new phase today. In her syndicated column, she nobly attempted to explain her use of the term “oogedy-boogedy� to describe religious conservatives. It’s not that she is “anti-God.� It’s just that God really shouldn’t be mentioned in polite company. Religion can inform our values (gee, thanks). But reason, not religion, should inform our public debates. I hadn’t realized religion and reason were mutually exclusive. It seems Pope Benedict hasn’t gotten the memo,...

Washington Post columnist says the Republican Party must ditch God in order to survive. So, Kathleen Parker has determined that getting rid of social conservatives and shelving the values they fight for is the solution to what ails the Republican Party (“Giving Up on God,” Nov. 19). Isn’t that a little like Benedict Arnold handing George Washington a battle plan to win the Revolution? Whatever she once was, Ms. Parker is certainly not a conservative anymore, having apparently realized it’s a lot easier to be popular among your journalistic peers when your keyboard tilts to the left. She writes that...

In this, the interregnum between the end of one administration and the beginning of another, there’s not much for Republicans to do except look for ways to entertain themselves while Democrats are occupied with the serious business of creating a government. The problem — and the GOP is just waking up to this — is that there is absolutely nothing for them to do but wait. No one cares what they think of President-elect Obama’s choice for attorney general or any other cabinet post. The Clinton drama has always been a Democratic farce and only involved the Republicans as onlookers,...

Every time the GOP takes a beating at the ballot box there are calls to get rid of those doggone social conservatives -- or as Kathleen Parker refers to them, the "oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP." This is a fascinating argument -- well, fascinating if you like watching people who don't even realize that they're doing little more than projecting their own personal biases onto the Republican Party and calling it political strategy. Atheists, agnostics, Elvis worshippers, Jedis, Satanists -- it doesn't matter; they're all welcome in the Republican Party (Ok, not the Satanists so much. They're creepy losers). However,...

As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit. Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D. I'm bathing in holy water as I type. To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh.

As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit. Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D. I'm bathing in holy water as I type. To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh. Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth -- as long as we're setting ourselves free -- is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among...

Before a few weeks ago, I don't recall seeing Kathleen Parker on TV. But tuning into Andrea Mitchell's MSNBC show this afternoon, there she was. And when I got back from the gym and fired up my DVR of David Gregory's "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?" Yup, Parker redux. Let's see. What might possibly explain Kathleen Parker's sudden popularity on MSNBC? You don't suppose it could conceivably have anything to do with her September column calling on Sarah Palin to step down from the GOP ticket, do you? For the record, I found Parker, in her appearances today, well-spoken, thoughtful and appealing....

Before a few weeks ago, I don't recall seeing Kathleen Parker on TV. But tuning into Andrea Mitchell's MSNBC show this afternoon, there she was. And when I got back from the gym and fired up my DVR of David Gregory's "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?" Yup, Parker redux. Now, let's see. What might explain Kathleen Parker's sudden popularity on MSNBC? You don't suppose it could possibly have anything to do with her September column calling on Sarah Palin to step down from the GOP ticket, do you?

George F. Will, Ken Adelman, Frank Fukuyama, David Brooks -- these are just a few names on the list of eminent experts who have declared that Sarah Palin is what's wrong with the Republican Party. Even if we were to add all their prestigious names to the list, however, it wouldn't be nearly as long as the line of people who stood in the cold wind of Pennsylvania to see Palin this week. The line outside the Heiges Field House at Shippensburg University was already growing long by noon, more than two hours before the doors opened for a Tuesday...

My husband called it first. Then, a brilliant, 75-year-old scholar confessed to me over wine: “I’m sexually attracted to her. I don’t care that she knows nothing.” There can be no denying that McCain’s selection of her over others far more qualified —— suggests other factors at work. His judgment may have been clouded by ... what? Science provides clues. A study in Canada, published in New Scientist in 2003, found that pretty women foil men’s ability to assess the future. “Discounting the future,” as the condition is called, means preferring immediate, lesser rewards to greater rewards in the future....

As if the mainstream media's dumpster-diving campaign against Palin isn't galling enough, the conservative elite's casually dismissive attitude toward the brightest GOP star from Alaska may be even worse. Washington insiders' common mantra is "readiness." Colin Powell dismissed Palin as not "ready to be president." Kenneth Adelman, forgetting the governor is already above his pay grade, patronizingly declared her "not close to being acceptable in high office." Their disdain is rivaled by some East Coast conservative pundits. New York Times columnist David Brooks declared Palin "a cancer," and Washington Post writer Kathleen Parker called her "clearly out of her league."...

Financial Times reporter Edward Luce has found another sign of trouble for the McCain campaign: he's turning up the noses of the "cocktail party circuit" inside Washington, D.C., which is "swelling with disaffected Republicans." I kid you not. From Luce's page 4 October 24 article, "McCain's troubles highlight party rift": The more trouble John McCain's campaign encounters, the more it highlights the cultural divide between the "real America" the Republican candidate says he represents and the Washington "cocktail party circuit" that largely disdains it. That circuit is swelling with disaffected Republicans. Some complain about Mr McCain's selection of Sarah Palin,...

At this juncture, I wouldn't want to bet even a subprime mortgage on this presidential election. As perhaps never before, multiple hidden factors could alter the outcome. Judging by polls, it would seem that Barack Obama will be our next president. Monday's Washington Post-ABC tracking poll, for example, showed Obama even winning 22 percent of conservatives and getting 12 percent support among Republicans. But polls only reflect what people say they think, not what they really think. Which is to say, we have both an election and a shadow election in progress. The latter, in which unconscious motivations come into...

The truth few wish to utter is that the GOP has abandoned many conservatives, who mostly nurse their angst in private. Those chickens we keep hearing about have indeed come home to roost. Years of pandering to the extreme wing — the “kooks” the senior Buckley tried to separate from the right — have created a party no longer attentive to its principles. Instead, as Christopher Buckley pointed out in a blog post on thedailybeast.com explaining his departure from National Review, eight years of “conservatism” have brought us “a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere,...

Before we get started: Does anyone know whether Joe the Plumber is kin to Six-Pack Joe? This was by far the most interesting debate to date, perhaps because we are -- at last -- down to the wire. Just as people often reveal their truer natures in times of crisis or under extreme pressure, McCain and Obama tonight seemed reduced to their essential selves. Cool Obama was quintessentially cool. Tense McCain was INTENSE. Both men smiled a lot, but both seemed less good-natured than like well-mannered pit bulls (without the lipstick), snarling behind teeth bared in imitations of mirth. At...

Here she is, the ‘Cuda’s bete noire, kinda sorta hinting near the end that she’s prepared to pull the lever for The One this November.

Let me be the latest conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama bandwagon. It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance. Or would they? But let’s get that part out of the way. The only reason my vote would be of any interest to anyone is that my last name happens to be Buckley—a name I inherited. So in the event anyone notices or cares, the headline will be: “William F. Buckley’s Son Says He Is Pro-Obama.” I know, I know: It lacks the throw-weight of “Ron Reagan Jr....

WASHINGTON -- If you're a Democrat who needs help getting the votes of rural white folks, the go-to guy is David "Mudcat" Saunders, a central-casting political consultant recently made famous by a parade of magazine writers led by The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash. But sometimes you can learn more about a people and their place through literature than by hiring consultants. So I called Ron Rash, poet, author and purebred Appalachian whose newest novel, "Serena," should be at the top of Barack Obama's reading list. Sarah Palin might enjoy it as well. Described by one blurber as "an Appalachian retelling...

When Sarah Palin said she was taking off the gloves, she wasn't just whistling "Onward, Christian Soldiers." Or was she? In the wake of the vice presidential debate, Palin has trained her moose-hunting sights on bigger trophies -- Barack Obama and the media. In Colorado a few days ago, she told fans that Obama pals around with terrorists. Later in Clearwater, Fla., resplendent in white against a backdrop of red, white and blue, she said, "This is not a man who sees America the way that you and I see America, as the greatest source for good in this world....

The McCain campaign knows that Obama isn't a Muslim or a terrorist, but they're willing to help a certain kind of voter think he is. Just the way certain South Carolinians in 2000 were allowed to think that McCain's adopted daughter from Bangladesh was his illegitimate black child. But words can have more serious consequences than lost votes and we've already had a glimpse of the Palin effect. Dana Milbank of The Washington Post reported that media representatives in Clearwater were greeted with taunts, thunder sticks and profanity. One Palin supporter shouted an epithet at an African-American soundman and said,...

LEWIS CENTER -- Rudy Giuliani blasted prominent conservative columnists who have criticized Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin as being unqualified and even worthy of being removed from the GOP ticket. The former New York City mayor spoke at a press conference at the Ohio Victory campaign’s grassroots leadership conference Saturday. Giuliani was asked what he would say to columnists who’ve criticized John McCain’s selection of Palin, such as Kathleen Parker, George Will and David Frum. “I think they look like a bunch of jerks after the debate the other night,” Giuliani said. “I think they should all say they...

Last week, Kathleen Parker became, overnight, liberals' favorite non-liberal pundit for her column calling on Sarah Palin to step down from the GOP ticket. Parker described Palin's interview performances as painful cringe-inducing, and filled with "BS," and concluded that Palin "clearly out of her league." Parker is back with her post-debate column in today's Washington Post. And if that isn't quite egg we spot on her face, perhaps it's the product seen at the right. The very headline, "Sarah Palin's Bridge to Somewhere", is a tacit admission that Palin has a political future. "What did they do with the other...

<p>WASHINGTON -- What did they do with the other Sarah Palin?</p> <p>I mean the one who bases foreign policy experience on the proximity of Russia to Alaska and who speaks cutely about Vladimir Putin poking his little head into American airspace. Where did they put her?</p>