Free Republic

As soon as Republican Rep. Michael N. Castle announced last week that he was running for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s open Senate seat, election analysts rated the contest a tossup favoring the Republican Party. Mr. Biden's seat had been rated safely Democratic by all the forecasters. However, the nine-term congressman and former two-term Delaware governor, who has never lost an election (winning vote totals in the 60 percent to 70 percent range) changed all that with his entry into the race. The Democrats were in danger of losing yet another Senate seat in 2010...

As it turned out, FreedomWorks, the Washington-based conservative advocacy group that was the chief organizer of the rally's arrangements, corrected an earlier estimate of 1 million to 1.5 million that it attributed to ABC News and put the figure between 600,000 and 700,000. ABC News denied it had reported a crowd that large and said its reports put the size of the demonstration in the "tens of thousands" range.

Protest set on Democratic health care plan The armies of "tea party" conservatives who packed town-hall meetings last month to oppose President Obama's $1 trillion government health care plan bring their protest movement to the Capitol on Saturday to urge its defeat. Those who thought the hundreds of April 15 tax-day rallies across the country were a flash-in-the-pan phenomenon had better think again. This is a grass-roots movement that has been gathering strength ever since, fueled anew by pending bills in Congress to enact a historic expansion of the government's power over the nation's private health care system. The tea...

When the "tea party" movement kicked off in April to protest record federal spending bills, trillion-dollar deficits and higher tax burdens, its members were fiercely independent and opposed any suggestion that they bond with a larger umbrella group, preferring to work within their local communities. But that go-it-alone approach is changing as a result of the war over health care, and the Tea Party Express tour is leading the way. The Tea Party Express - a caravan of buses, speakers and entertainers who have been holding protest rallies in cities and towns across the country - is heading to Washington,...

When the "tea party" movement kicked off in April to protest record federal spending bills, trillion-dollar deficits and higher tax burdens, its members were fiercely independent and opposed any suggestion that they bond with a larger umbrella group, preferring to work within their local communities. But that go-it-alone approach is changing as a result of the war over health care, and the Tea Party Express tour is leading the way. The Tea Party Express - a caravan of buses, speakers and entertainers who have been holding protest rallies in cities and towns across the country - is heading to Washington,...

Republican candidates are showing new political strength in some states this year, but none seems more improbable than conservative Republican Christopher J. Christie's big lead over embattled Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine's bid for a second term in deep-blue New Jersey.

Republican candidates are showing new political strength in some states this year, but none seems more improbable than conservative Republican Christopher J. Christie's big lead over embattled Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine's bid for a second term in deep-blue New Jersey. The bearish 46-year-old Mr. Christie, whose only elective office was a brief stint as a county commissioner, achieved statewide recognition as a corruption-fighting U.S. attorney for the district of New Jersey who sent scores of corrupt politicians — of both parties — to prison during a seven-year tenure. He then set his political sights on the governorship in December, brandishing...

WASHINGTON -- The gutsy admonition that "failure is not an option" has turned into the "failed public option" in President Obama's trouble-plagued, government-run health care plan. The idea of the federal government operating another health-insurance business to compete with Blue Cross/Blue Shield and hundreds of other private plans has crashed and burned -- the victim of a massive grassroots protest movement and deepening fears and divisions among Democratic lawmakers. The White House gave Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius the go-ahead Sunday to suggest that the administration was not necessarily wedded to a government health-insurance plan for millions of...

The people showing up at town hall meetings to voice their strong disapproval of President Obama's health care plan have been called thugs, extremists, mobs, terrorists and, this week, "un-American." Ever since Democrats headed home for the one-month August recess to hear what constituents are saying about their pending health care reform bills, White House and Democratic Party officials have been attempting to demonize opponents who are packing congressional town hall meetings to freely express their opinions. According to reports from around the country, most opponents are civil and respectful, but in some cases many are also angry; voices are...

WASHINGTON -- The escalating war to block Barack Obama's hostile takeover of our healthcare system has moved to a wider battlefield of TV ads, Internet videos and town-hall meetings where his opponents may have the advantage. With Congress on vacation through Labor Day, the grassroots ad wars of August against Obama's government-run medical-care scheme is being fought out on a more level playing field where Republicans have shown they're better at this kind of combat than their Democratic rivals. Think Hillarycare, for example, an incomprehensible, Rube Goldberg budget buster that Democrats never brought up for a vote in the House...

Two guys in a newsroom discussing Governor Palin:Click on image.Don Lambro speaks to Ralph Z. Hallow about his exclusive interview with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Republican Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska announced Friday that she will resign her office July 26, fueling speculation that she intends to spend the next four years pursuing her party's presidential nomination in 2012. Mrs. Palin made her stunning announcement at her Wasilla home with Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who will be sworn into office at the end of the month, she said. She did not take questions from reporters and only cryptically referred to her future plans. In her announcement, she said it "hurts to make this choice," but compared herself to a point guard in basketball. "A good...

President Obama's original plan to pay for his health care reforms was to limit charitable contributions and mortgage interest payments that people can deduct from their taxable income. But both proposals were nonstarters from the moment they reached Capitol Hill. They would raise taxes on the two sectors that we need to be encouraging, not stifling. The former would reduce charitable giving. The latter would hurt the beleaguered housing industry at time when it needs all the incentives it can get. So now Democratic leaders are considering yet another sacrosanct tax-free benefit they can tap into: employer/employee health insurance premiums....

WASHINGTON -- Five months into his presidency, the biggest items on Barack Obama's agenda are in deep trouble, and support for his handling the economy and a ballooning budget deficit is plummeting. The national news media was still trying to deal with the administration's agenda as gently as possible, as if everything was on a steady course. But his top proposals are dangerously off course and headed for defeat. Healthcare reform is mired in Democratic dissension, especially on the sky-high taxes needed to pay for it. His revenue-raising, inflationary, climate-change "cap and trade" energy bill is all but dead. His...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama, known for his soaring oratory, has been having a hard time finding the right words to respond to the Iranians' struggle for political change and freedom in a repressive society. The reason: He has so much invested in his let-us-sit-down-and-settle-our-differences diplomatic approach to Iran that it has all but turned into a "see no evil, hear no evil" policy toward that nation. Continues... Surprise, surprise! A systemically corrupt party mafia, using a network of thugs to carry out the theft of an election through criminal shenanigans, human rights violations, cash payoffs, fake votes, stuffing of ballot...

No one envies Sen. John Cornyn's job as chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee in a daunting election cycle when the party likely will lose more Senate seats in 2010. Soon after the two-term Texas senator took over the No. 4 Republican leadership post, five Republican-held Senate seats became open contests as a result of four retirements in New Hampshire, Missouri, Ohio and Florida and a devastating party switch in Pennsylvania - states that are trending Democratic and where his party's prospects of holding them look bleak. "History has dealt Cornyn a bad hand," veteran elections forecaster Stuart Rothenberg...

Nearly four weeks after President Obama met with health-industry officials touting a "watershed" cost-cutting agreement, the goal of slowing the sharp rise in medical-care spending is elusive as ever. Appearing with executives of six industry groups on May 11, Obama announced what he called a "historic" and "unprecedented commitment" by the medical-care industry to "cut the rate of growth of national healthcare spending by 1.5 percentage points each year" that would yield $2 trillion in savings over 10 years. The story got front-page play and nightly news coverage across the country. However, after American Hospital Association president Richard Umbdenstock returned...

WASHINGTON -- After all is said and done in Judge Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation proceedings, the fact of the matter is that she will not change the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court. The appeals-court jurist will replace retiring Justice David Souter, one of the high court's four reliably liberal members. Many, if not most, of the cases heard by the conservative-leaning body are decided by 5-4 votes, and that ratio will remain unchanged. For that, conservatives have President George W. Bush to thank. He is responsible for choosing Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito Jr., who shifted the...

Former Vice President Dick Cheney's sweeping indictment of administration policy changes on the handling of terrorism-suspect detainees has thrown President Obama on the defensive and scored points for the vice president and his party, according to pollsters and political analysts. While Mr. Cheney has come under increasing fire from Democrats for charging that Mr. Obama's policies have made the country more vulnerable to future terrorist attacks, polls show a majority of Americans side with him on using aggressive interrogation methods on high value al Qaeda prisoners and are against moving them from the detention facility at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo...

Not long after President Obama was sworn into office, he faced a monstrous $1.8 trillion budget deficit that analysts said would force him to sharply curtail his big-spending agenda. But Obama saw the economic recession he inherited as another Great Depression (which it's not) that demands the enactment of a lengthy list of new social programs, whose costs will drive total federal spending to more than $3.7 trillion in 2010 and add more than $9 trillion to the government's total debts over the coming decade. Deficits or no deficits, debts or no debts, Obama sees no reason to cut back...

Last month's nationwide "tea party" demonstrations to protest massive government spending increases and rising taxes received relatively little coverage from the national news media. Liberal big-government groups dismissed them as the work of right-wing advocacy organizations in Washington, and the events were so dispersed - most of them in small cities and towns - that no one could be sure how many actually had turned out to attend them. In fact, the events were organized locally by nonactivists who had never done anything like this before. More than 600,000 people in nearly 600 localities - from Bakersfield, Calif., to Atlanta...

The grass-roots "tea party" movement that swept across the country April 15 to protest federal tax and spending hikes will hold demonstrations in Washington and elsewhere this summer and fall when Congress will be battling over President Obama's biggest budget proposals. Leaders of the Tax Day rallies that drew an estimated 600,000 people in nearly 600 cities and towns say the seemingly spontaneous local protests have grown into a more muscular movement concerned that the escalating growth and cost of government threatens to undermine economic freedom. Organizers say rallies are planned here and around the nation on the Fourth of...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama set great expectations for himself on his first European diplomatic trip to test his new get-along-by-going-along foreign policy. And it was a complete success, according to the gushing reports from the news media. Not everyone agreed with that assessment. Obama certainly proved "that he can work smoothly and productively with a wide range of foreign leaders -- provided that he allows them to set the agenda," remarked the Washington Post's foreign-policy analyst Jackson Diehl. Obama went to Europe to persuade the major European powers and other countries who make up the world's richest G-20 to pump...

WASHINGTON -- Most media polls are showing President Obama's job approval in the 59 percent to mid-60 percent range, but not pollster John Zogby, who says Obama's rating has dipped below 50 percent. Contrary to many of the other major presidential surveys such as the venerable Gallup Poll, which puts Obama's number at around 60 percent or higher, Zogby's poll (mid-March) showed that Obama's job performance fell. His findings are significant for a number of definitional reasons and are worth a closer look. In his most recent survey, the pollster said that "49 percent rate his job performance as excellent...

GOP gleeful at prospects for 2010Donald Lambro Tuesday, March 31, 2009 Republican strategists eager to rebuild the party and regain voter confidence see the comeback road running over a number of unpopular Democratic governorships on a playing field that favors making statehouse gains in traditionally Republican red states. Boosting the Republicans' potential political appeal in the current two-year election cycle is the Democrats' tendency to propose higher taxes as the solution to their state budget deficits that has sent gubernatorial polls into a steep nose dive in these tight economic times — giving the Republican Party a potent issue in...

The Republican brand is badly damaged and won't be in the majority anytime soon. But independent campaign analysts say the GOP will likely make gubernatorial and House gains anyway in the 2009-10 election cycle. The reasons have more to do with political geography and math than with any forecasts about what the economic climate will look like this year and next when the off-year and midterm elections will be influenced by the by whether the nation's economy responds to President Obama's stimulus programs. Republicans will just have more opportunities than the Democrats next time around in the congressional and gubernatorial...

President Obama told executives of big business last week that he believed in free-market economics, capitalist risk-taking, wealth creation and possibly lower corporate taxes - terms he rarely, if ever, uttered in his stump speeches for the presidency. In an address Thursday before the Business Roundtable, a powerful lobbying organization made up of America's richest blue-chip corporations, Mr. Obama sounded at times like a cross between Ronald Reagan and free-market crusader Jack Kemp as he sought to win over titans of industry, many of whom are skeptical about his economic policies. In the course of his fence-mending speech and...

President Obama and his White House staff are making mistakes that continue to worsen an already deflating U.S. economy. As the stock market plunged below the Dow's 7,000 mark -- a loss of 1,500 points since his inauguration -- Obama casually dismissed the sharp drop in equity values, comparing it to the ups and downs of a poll. The stock market "is sort of like a tracking poll in politics," he told news reporters. "You know, it bobs up and down day to day. And if you spend all your time worrying about that, then you're probably going to get...

Some Wall Street economists think President Obama could have voiced some sympathy about the plight of frightened shareholders when he compared the stock market's plunge to an election tracking poll that "bobs up and down, day to day." They worry that the president is underestimating the important role the stock market plays in the economy's performance, and that the markets' precipitous slide is actually a vote of no confidence in the administration's handling of the economy. There's also a suspicion that Mr. Obama and his advisers think only wealthy people own stocks. "There is some of that feeling that rich...

WASHINGTON -- The House's Blue Dog Democrats like to pretend they are the deficit tigers of Congress, determined to stop runaway spending and stamp out waste, fraud and abuse. But when push came to shove, as it did in the pork-crammed $800 billion economic-stimulus bill, most of these tigers mewed like pussycats, voting in lock step with Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank for a bill they had not read. One by one, they inserted their voting cards into the slot in front of their seats and charged the stimulus money to the taxpayers. The first payment will be due April...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama seems unwilling to acknowledge that reasonable and principled people oppose his stimulus bill because they believe another approach will yield significantly better results. Throughout his Monday-night news conference, the first of his presidency, he falsely characterized the plan's Republican opponents as people who preferred to "do nothing versus do something." Now there may be a few GOP members of Congress who fit that description, though they are a tiny number, but anyone following the very loud and heated debate in Congress knows that the loyal opposition has a full-blown plan of its own, heavily weighted...

STANFORD, Calif. -- Barack Obama will likely be forced to scale back his spending plans and perhaps slow his middle-class tax cuts next year because of massive deficits from the recession and the economic bailout. That is the prediction from top economists and budget analysts here at the Hoover Institution who have been tracking the worsening recession. Their forecast: sharply higher government deficits from plunging revenues that will severely constrain the incoming president's ambitious agenda. Obama's problem: He has exaggerated the revenue his tax increases would bring in and underestimated what his healthcare and other social-welfare programs would cost. "It's...

Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz says President-elect Barack Obama should practice President Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive defense against terrorism that has kept the country safe since the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Shultz credited Mr. Bush with pushing "a controversial but important idea" he said has made the U.S. a harder target when other nations were being hit by terrorists. "That is, that in this age where there are people who want to do damage to us through terrorist tactics, you want to be aggressive in trying to find out what might happen before it happens, and then stop...

Ronald Reagan's legacy is being kept very much alive here at a time when Republicans have lost their way and are looking for a new voice to lead them out of the political wilderness. The richly detailed testament Reagan left behind in his archives and writings, much of it still unknown to the public at large, is being uncovered, re-examined, recorded, studied and preserved at the Hoover Institution, the venerable think tank where many Reaganites of that age continue to work, breathing new life into his legacy for future generations. Much of that work is being done in the lofty...

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. economy is shrinking, unemployment is at its highest level since 1994, manufacturing is at its lowest point in 26 years -- and Barack Obama is pushing a stimulus bill to rebuild bridges and roads. Whatever the long-term infrastructure needs of the nation may be, we are not going to pull this economy out of its hole with a bunch of government public-works projects. The question is, did Obama's economic advisers tell him that? If they did, that wasn't what he told the American people last Saturday after meeting with his 20-member advisory team. Instead, he went...

A fast-growing anti-Republican wave threatens to significantly shrink the party's ranks in Congress, as Democratic challengers make headway against once safe incumbents including the Senate's minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Nearly a dozen Senate Republicans - many considered safe for re-election just weeks ago - are now in locked in tight races with Democrats. Analysts and operatives agree that such a change could put Democrats within reach of a filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority. Democrats also are poised to make significant gains in the House, where they now have a 36-seat majority in the 435-member chamber. Analysts are predicting that Republicans...

Gun control has suddenly emerged as the toxic issue of the 2008 presidential campaign, endangering Barack Obama's appeal among Democratic blue-collar and labor union households. The freshman Illinois senator has a long record of favoring gun bans in Chicago and Washington, D.C., and a raft of other gun control bills that are anathema to gun owners, hunters and sportsmen alike. He insists now he supports Second Amendment gun rights to keep and bear arms that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld when it struck down the D.C. gun ban in June. But he refused to join 77 of his colleagues who...

Despite the talk about a changing electoral map and new strategies, Barack Obama is pulling back from his 50-state plan as John McCain has solidified Republican support, turning November's presidential election into a contest for the same handful of states that have swung the last two contests. The first round of post-convention polling shows Mr. McCain, in picking Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, has enthused Republicans. Meanwhile Mr. Obama, the Democrats' nominee, is pulling back resources from Georgia, a state he once boasted he would flip Democratic; is stepping up efforts to hold Democrats in Pennsylvania and...

...In a briefing for reporters Monday, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said they expected to hold all of the states won by Mr. Kerry in 2004, which gave him 251 electoral votes out of the 270 needed to win. Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has pulled back from Georgia, stepped up his campaign in Pennsylvania and Michigan, and poured attention on Ohio. The campaign hopes to take Iowa and New Mexico out of the Republican Party's column, which would push its total to 264 - putting it within six electoral votes that the campaign expects to find in at least...

COMMENTARY: There's a big difference between listening to one of Barack Obama's speeches, as inspiring as they may sound, and carefully reading them and weighing each passage. There is less there than meets the ear. Maybe it sounds good to the unquestioning mind, but much of his thinking doesn't hold up to even the most cursory scrutiny. Many of his suggestions are disturbing because they would move the country in old directions that have never worked in the past. He gave a speech about the economy the other day in Titusville, Fla., that contained many of the thoughts he has...

WASHINGTON -- There's a big difference between listening to one of Barack Obama's speeches, as inspiring as they may sound, and carefully reading them and weighing each passage. There is less there than meets the ear. Maybe it sounds good to the unquestioning mind, but much of his thinking doesn't hold up to even the most cursory scrutiny. Many of his suggestions are disturbing because they would move the country in old directions that have never worked in the past. He gave a speech about the economy the other day in Titusville, Fla., that contained many of the thoughts he...

Barack Obama got more than he bargained for from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki before he had barely begun his military crash course in the Middle East's war zones. The freshman senator, making only his second trip to Iraq in two years, after a quick tutorial visit to Afghanistan (his first), got a well-timed campaign gift from Mr. al-Maliki, who embraced his plan to withdraw U.S. combat troops 16 months after taking office. In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Mr. al-Maliki refused to take sides in the race, but when asked about Mr. Obama's pullout timeline, he...

Barack Obama is only a candidate, but don't tell that to the Germans, some of whom have leapfrogged that whole election thing and already are calling him "President Obama" in advance of his visit. For that matter, his own campaign could use a reminder. For the second time in as many days, reporters traveling with Mr. Obama on his overseas trip corrected campaign staffers for saying White House practices also govern his campaign in dealing with the press, or in delivering speeches. Even the King of Jordan gave the senator from Illinois special treatment - personally driving the presumed Democratic...

WASHINGTON -- Gasoline prices are flattening consumer wallets and hobbling our economy, while the Democrats sit back and play politics with the issue. Voter surveys show that the economy and gas prices top the list of the most critical issues facing our country. A Washington Post/ABC News poll reported last week that 85 percent of voters polled said gas prices will be either extremely or very important to their vote in this year's elections. And with good reason: Americans are getting walloped with huge gas bills, while utilities, buckling under ever-higher energy prices, are raising electricity rates to historic levels....

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama is coming under increasingly heavy fire from his left flank for abandoning long-held liberal positions in an abrupt swing toward the center that threatens his candidacy. After racing away from hardcore positions on trade protectionism, gun control, government wiretapping, the death penalty and even his vaunted troop-pullout plans for Iraq, his once-diehard supporters on the left are attacking his character and honesty and threatening to withhold campaign contributions or, worse, shift their allegiance to Ralph Nader. "We've been hearing more from voters who are disconcerted about Obama's move to the right. We're hearing from antiwar folks,...

WASHINGTON -- If the presidential election hinged on who could best protect us from terrorism, veteran Sen. John McCain would probably defeat freshman Sen. Barack Obama. The Arizona Republican beats the Illinois Democrat by 19 points (52 percent to 33 percent) when voters are asked who would do a better job on that issue, according to the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll. The inadvisability of answering loaded hypothetical questions aside, no wonder Charlie Black, McCain's top strategist, told Fortune magazine that the senator's stock would rise if there was a terrorist attack between now and Election Day. On the bedrock issue...

Sen. Barack Obama is close to clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, but he faces trouble on several fronts in the general election with blue-collar workers and other parts of the electorate who question his lack of experience, foreign-policy judgment and social liberalism. Fewer than a few dozen delegate votes away from making history as the first black to win the nomination of a major party, the freshman senator is also showing signs of weakness among white voters in Midwestern and Southern battleground states, including Ohio and Florida, which Democrats must carry if they are to win the White House. A...

WASHINGTON -- Have you noticed that ever since the Democrats took control of Congress, oil and gas prices have been going through the roof? The Dems won control of the House and Senate last year in part on the notion that sinking billions of taxpayer dollars into corn-based ethanol would combat global warming; itself a dubious superstition that some scientists say is part of the Earth's natural environmental changes over many eons. Among the predictable results: increased gas prices because of higher refinery costs to blend ethanol into petroleum-based fuel, and higher grain and food prices because the government-induced demand...

WASHINGTON -- John McCain has been relentlessly pounding Barack Obama on his weakest ground: experience, fighting the war on terrorism and his judgment in world affairs. And with good reason: Recent voter surveys show Obama's polls on these critical presidential-leadership qualities are in the basement and that Americans trust McCain far more on all three issues than the youthful and inexperienced freshman senator from Illinois. His scores aren't just so-so mediocre -- they are failing grades that pose disturbing questions about the Democratic presidential front-runner's tissue-paper-thin qualifications to be commander in chief and the leader of the free world. Consider...

Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean has a plan that will produce a nominee before his party's convention in August, avoiding what he fears could be a "really ugly and nasty" fiasco. Democratic leaders have begun complaining he has bungled the party's nominating process and alienated voters because of his failure to engineer a political compromise in the DNC's ill-advised decision to strip Florida and Michigan of all its delegates. But Mr. Dean, whose polls show the party's internecine warfare is hurting its chances in November, has been talking to party bigwigs about a deal and now says the delegations will...