Free Republic

All self-respecting Ricochet readers will want to go read this amazing story published in the Los Angeles Times Magazine (!) about how President Ronald Reagan came to understand the threat of Communism in Hollywood and develop effective strategies for fighting it. After cultivating a relationship with former movie-industry union chief Roy Brewer, reporter John Meroney obtained access to his voluminous archives filled with private correspondence, speeches, congressional documents, Communist Party newspapers, transcripts of testimony from executive sessions and minutes from closed union meetings. Meroney discovers Reagan's "Rosebud," as he puts it, since the information explains so much about why President...

Yet despite all this, the gist of Nocera’s column is not to chastise the president for making a bad decision, he, instead, blames our “poisoned politics.” In fact, he explains away the president’s decision: "I realize that President Obama rejected Keystone because, politically, he had no choice. My guess is that, in his centrist heart of hearts, the president wanted to approve it. But to give the go-ahead before the election was to risk losing the support of the environmentalists who make up an important part of his base…" Of course, to say that President Obama “had no choice” is...

I thought Newt just gave a masterful speech, touching on the need to look south and reach out to Central and South America and improve relations and commerce with them, support and encourage democracy and free enterprise. He also highlighted his economic plan and how he wants to encourage entrepreneurship in all communities, including Hispanics. He came out strong in support of using all forms of non military measures to support the rise of freedom in Cuba. He received frequent applause throughout.

To conservatives, she’s public enemy number 2. Only President Obama himself elicits more anger and outrage from those on the right. While she’s constantly decried as a monstrous villain, she’s been unfortunately effective for the left, particularly in ramming the unpopular Obamacare through Congress. Republicans have been woefully ineffective at minimizing her power and even though she’s no longer the speaker of the House, she’s remained the most visible Democrat other than the commander in chief. So, when Nancy Pelosi claims to “know something” about Newt Gingrich, it’s easy for nervous Republicans to joke that they’re surprised to learn she...

After November’s elections, Senator John McCain, former Congressman Dick Armey and others called for a return to the principles and policies of Ronald Reagan. At the time these policies were first advanced, many observers believed they constituted a revolution. But how did Reagan himself come to these views and where did he learn to translate them from one man’s vision into governmental policies and acts? In my book, The Education of Ronald Reagan: The General Electric Years and the Untold Story of his Conversion to Conservatism, I trace Reagan’s evolution from liberal to conservative, from actor to politician. The changes...

In the other election of 2012, the one more imminent, there are only two words worth remembering. The first is leadership. The second is change. The rest, as the French say, is du blah-blah. If the French decide leadership is more important in a time of crisis they will grit their teeth and re-elect Nicolas Sarkozy. If they want change from a president never close to their hearts, they will — as Samuel Johnson said of second marriages — embrace hope over experience and elect the Socialist candidate, François Hollande. On the face of it, Hollande, slimmed-down and cultivated in...

Remember Ronald Reagan the Great Communicator. In my opinion, he was a great leader, because he was a great communicator. I the GOP primaries, Newt Gingrich is by far the best speaker, orator, and communicator. Since he espouses the conservative values, methods and action plans that we mostly agree with and since he does give the best, most interesting and easy to listen to speeches, he has the potential to be the best candidate against Obama and to be the best president to help we Americans to clean up the mess made by the Obama administration. Also, Gingrich is not-only...

How Jesse Helms Made the Reagan Revolution Possible Helms was key to securing Reagan victory in N.C. primary 35 years ago By John Dodd Mar. 22nd, 2011 WINGATE -- Thirty-five years ago, on March 23, 1976, voters in North Carolina helped shape the course of history. Their decision to support the presidential hopes of former California Gov. Ronald Reagan in the Republican presidential primary kept Reagan in the race for the 1976 GOP nomination and opened the way for his 1980 election as the 40th president of the United States. Why did North Carolina voters choose Reagan instead of his...

Well I tell ya Greta, give me the opportunity to be in leadership in Washington DC and I think you’d see something different. Because coming out of the military, we didn’t go home until the mission was complete. So maybe that’s what the American people need to understand. It’s about time we take a chance with some of the young leaders that we have sent to Washington DC and move away from this establishment rhetoric and this game that they play in Washington DC.

Candidate has already proved his high office credentials as House speaker Almost all political commentators agree on one thing: The Republican presidential campaign is unlike any we have experienced. It is not a campaign of steady trends and continuities, but rather of emotional reversals and discontinuities. Perhaps this is so because the past three or four years have been a shocking time of discontinuities and reversals for America. Really, America has been bewildered, shocked and disoriented since Sept. 11, 2001. The economic collapse and the unprecedentedly statist policies of the past three years have just compounded the anxiety. The rise...

The GOP primary voters reflect this helter-skelter search for leadership. And I predict that when the general electorate is engaged in the general election campaign next year, the independents and some Democrats will reflect the same desperate confusion and search for the right kind of leadership for these treacherous times. But what kind of candidate is most likely to make sense of the terrible events and forces that weigh down our country; be capable of vividly describing our plight and what needs to be done; and convince the public that he or she has the intelligence, courage, experience and sheer...

Gov. Rick Perry's entire statement about the "loss" of our drone [1:20] Bonus: Perry: Washington DC is the problem [1:16]

Perry Slams Obama Over Downed Drone: "This President Is The Problem" December 10th, 2011 "The idea this president now, with Iran getting one of our predator drones in their possession, and he had opportunities -- he had two choices. Actually, he had three. He chose the worse. And those two opportunities he had was to either retrieve that drone or to destroy it. And he did the worst of the three. And he did absolutely nothing. And the Russians and the Chinese will have our highly technical equipment now. This president is the problem, not something Newt Gingrich said." VIDEO...

RUSH: We're starting in Johnstown, Colorado. This is David, and thank you for waiting, sir. I appreciate it. CALLER: Thank you, Rush. It's an honor and a privilege to be on your program. RUSH: Thank you very much, sir. CALLER: I am responsible for three factories in China and have been for the last year and a half and so I've spent about two-thirds of my time in China, and what you see in China is a veneer of prosperity over really a mountain of poverty. RUSH: Prosperity over a mountain of poverty. CALLER: Because once you get outside of...

...[Perry] vowed to "uproot the three branches of government and overhaul government. "They each have contributed to the demise of America," Perry said. Perry has scheduled an Iowa speech on Tuesday where he plans to lay out details of his overhaul. But he told the activists it will be sweeping and form the basis of the case he will make to activists who will show up for Jan. 3 precinct caucuses. "The question for Iowans in 50 days is not whether to embrace change, but for Iowans to decide who is the most credible messenger for that change," said Perry....

Taking a page from Ronald Reagan, Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Saturday sought to use humor to rebound from his much-noted debate flub earlier in the week. That flub, a 53-second brain freeze that was replayed endlessly on news shows, had him forgetting the name of the Department of Energy, the third federal agency he pledges to eliminate. So Perry was quick to cut off CBS’ Scott Pelley, one of the debate moderators in South Carolina, when he began a question, saying, “Governor Perry, you advocate the elimination of the Department of Energy. If you eliminate the Department of Energy...”...

Gov. Rick Perry stated at the outset of his presidential campaign that he is running for president based on his principles and leadership accomplishments, not his oratorical skills. Media focus on his debate missteps deliberately ignores Perry's record and charisma. America's third president - Thomas Jefferson - was a lousy public speaker. He was literally a genius, and his singular eloquence as a writer is seen in his prose in the Declaration of Independence and other writings. But Jefferson was no speaker, so much so that he only gave a couple speeches in his entire two-term presidency. He was so...

Democrats had ruled the state Agriculture Department for a hundred years. Perry immediately ejected Hightower loyalists and Democratic operatives from the agency. He pledged to cut the department’s staff by 20 percent and scale down the number of regional offices around the state. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Rick Perry talked with a friendin September 1991 while visiting a ranch outside Austin. After Rick Perry switched from Democrat to Republican in 1989, he set out to become, in the words of his mentor Phil Gramm, more Catholic than the pope. During the next 22 years, as he rose to the top of...

La Marque, TX – On Tuesday, October 25, 2011 – Republican Presidential Front-runner Herman Cain delivered a powerful speech thirty-two minute speech to the Clear Lake Tea Party. His broad speech covered a variety of topics ranging from the economy to leadership and everything in between. This is the opening three minutes of that speech:

Exceptional Leadership By Ari Bussel How does one measure leadership? I will let the reader ponder this question, as I point out a true leader is one who wields his will onto others rather than the one who submits to populace wishes. Leaders are often judged in retrospect, in much better light than when they were contemporaries. Such, for example, are Ronald Reagan, Menachem Begin, the Shah of Iran, Lech Walesa, Pope John Paul II and others. To this short list, I would add President Mubarak of Egypt, who in 2011 stood up to the American President, and despite the...

Winning in politics isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. But how important a factor electability should be in a voter’s calculation remains very much in the eye of the beholder, leading to an active debate within the parties about who has the best chance to win next November — and how much it should matter. That fight is played out every four years as the two parties pick their presidential nominees. The party establishment — and many members of the media — tend to focus heavily on electability while the party’s activist base prizes ideological alignment. “Electability usually doesn’t matter...

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain slammed Occupy Wall Street protesters camped out in New York City’s Zuccotti Park Friday as hypocrites who would “rather have a handout than work.” “Visiting New York this week, I found the organized street protests against Wall Street were the talk of the town. But I’m sorry — they lost me at hello,” writes Cain in a New York Post op-ed. Cain argues that capitalism is the main driver of job creation in the United States, and criticizes protesters for the hypocrisy of attacking corporations that supply them with the technologies they themselves use. “It’s...

...LYNN SHERR: Do you feel as if the other candidates have been ganging up on in the debates? RICK PERRY:“When you come into the fray and you’re leading in the polls, you’re going to get attacked by everyone. I get it. I’m a big boy, and I know how to play that game. “ Your critics say you’re not electable... “Well, I disregard that. Americans are looking for somebody to stand up and tell them the truth, and I have a record to back it up. Ultimately, if I can explain my heart, my jobs record, and my philosophy to...

“Hold on a second!” I interrupted. “Are you saying that to become a Christian somebody might have to give up everything he has?” “Well, what do you think the text means?” Gunner replied. . . . “After I had this encounter with the Lord about the Pearl and realized I didn’t care much about what God wanted from me, sure enough over the next few weeks God bgan to help me liquidate my assets. I prayed, “Okay, Lord, you can have my career,” and it was as though two giant hands came out of heaven and opened my fingers,...

...is a total vacuum of leadership.

ATLANTA -- Police in Atlanta are hunting several suspects who posed as FBI agents Saturday to rob and shoot a man, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The unidentified victim was leaving his Atlanta apartment with a woman at around 10:30am local time when he was approached by several men in the building's parking lot, police said.

The global crisis and a perceived lack of leadership in the West seem to be creating nostalgia for two previous leaders who radically reformed their countries, albeit with plenty of controversy. But what's even more striking about this sense of déjà vu, is that the names of American President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher - two leaders, who fought for freedom and rallied the West against Communist rule - were being invoked by a senior Chinese policymaker at the summer Davos in Dalian, China. “The U.S. economy needs fundamental reforms, bigger reforms, bigger policy changes than President...

Drudge linked to an article about Rick Perry’s faith in this morning’s Washington Post: “Perry casts himself as spiritual, forsaking talk of jobs for a day” But before I talk about the article and the role of faith in today’s politics, I want to point out that both the web title and URL of the article are very different from its published title: “Perry casts himself as anti-intellectual, says life shaped by faith“. Something tells me that the WaPo editors intervened before the article went to press, but weren’t able to change the working title of the piece that was...

(CNN) -- There is a lot of buzz about CNN's new poll that shows Rick Perry seemingly solidifying his lead among Republican in the primary contest. Forty-two percent of Republicans think Rick Perry has the best shot at beating Barack Obama. Forty-five percent of seniors support Perry compared to 21% for Mitt Romney. There is one question that is not getting as much attention, though in my mind it explains every other question. CNN asked, "Which Republican candidate is most likely to fight for their beliefs?" The winner? Rick Perry with 29%, followed by Sarah Palin at 23%. Mitt Romney?...

Eyewitness to History: Recalling BushÂ’s Leadership on 9/11 A first-person account of President Bush's response in the first moments of the attack. September 11, 2011 - 12:00 am - by Stephanie Maier In 2001, I was a regional director for the Republican Party of Florida, responsible for grassroots activities in ten key Republican counties from Manatee down to Collier. A regular part of my job included attending presidential visits to my region and providing staff support by doing whatever was needed, from site prep to corralling guests, media, and bystanders into some kind of organized chaos.Presidential visits were always exciting,...

Rick Perry entered the Republican presidential race like a jackrabbit bounding out of the West Texas prairie. He quickly hopped past longtime leader Mitt Romney, who was deliberately, step by step, inching his way toward the nomination he felt was his to win. Now, Romney's strategists are hoping that the former Massachusetts governor plays the tortoise to Rick Perry's hare, slowly and steadily working to win the long race, and that Perry fades in the stretch. But presidential contests are not fables, and it'll take a lot more than hope to make Romney finish first.... [snip] Some of the contrasts...

A speech to a joint session of Congress is one of the prized "leadership moments" that only the president is afforded in American politics. And on Thursday, it's one Barack Obama is availing himself of at a critical juncture -- and with good reason, a new poll finds. Resurgent Republic, a conservative non-profit group, released results of national survey that found six-in-10 Americans believe Obama to be a weaker president than they expected him to be, while fewer than a third say he's been stronger than expected. "It's not just the bad economy that is weighing on the president's numbers....

[excerpt of ONE analysis in the article that includes an "executive imager," and "sociology and urban research" professors who pick over Gov. Rick Perry and rural people] [snip] ...Perry is a “no” man, says James Hoggard, an author and English professor at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls. “He fits into what Stuart Chase, a political economist, called ‘no’ men and ‘yes’ men. ‘No’ men tend to be associated with a rural or an agrarian society, which means they’re farmers and they’re going to be working by themselves as opposed to in groups, the way people in towns work. ‘Yes’...

FORT WORTH, Texas — Between events in Fort Worth and Dallas Tuesday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry called in to conservative pundit Sean Hannity’s radio show, and the host brought up a controversial story published by the online publication Politico this week with the headline "Is Rick Perry Dumb?" "What’s dumb is to oversee an economy that has lost that many millions of jobs ... to downgrade the credit of this country ... to put fiscal policies in place that were a disaster back in the ’30s and try them again in 2000s," Perry said. Hannity quickly warned that the thought...

All joking aside about "if Obama has lost [fill in the blank], he has lost America", there was a stunning display today of a formerly ardent supporter condemning in the most fundamental terms President Obama's failure of leadership. On Morning Joe, leftist Columbia Prof. Jeffrey Sachs scalded the president. Declared Sachs: the stimulus failed. Three years in, Obama has no plan, and is providing "no leadership." Ouch. View video here.

Leading by Example Leadership is one thing about which I can speak with some authority, though I've neither headed vast corporations, nor large governmental bodies. I served in the Army, and I was a leader. My duties demanded it of me before it was my official mandate, and like millions of other before me, and since, I faced the challenges to carry out my missions as best I could under difficult conditions. The United States military has spent many billions of dollars in the effort to build and nurture leaders. Some people are born with it, some have it...

Flying under the radar. Maintaining plausible deniability. Leading from behind. Voting present. All these phrases have come to symbolize President Barack Obama's political career and now his presidency. He lectures others on how to live, work and vote but takes no real action himself that might be used against him in future campaigns. While many on the ideological right have called him out on this strategy for years, it is only recently that voices from the left have joined the chorus demanding actual leadership from this president.

As a former senator who served under four different presidents, Alan Simpson (R., Wyo.) is perplexed at the way the current one has “led” since taking office in 2009. “One thing that’s puzzled me from the beginning of this administration is that, on every major piece of legislation, he’s said, ‘Let Congress decide,’” Simpson tells National Review Online. “With every other administration in the past, whether it was Carter, Reagan, Bush, or Clinton, whenever they wanted to do something big, those of us in Congress would always say, ‘Okay, where’s the White House bill?’ They always had a plan to...

Rick Perry was a lousy student. So says the Huffington Post and has posted Perry's Texas A&M transcript to back their claim. Imagine the gleeful chortling among their liberal readership as they envision this revelation to be a fearful blow to Perry's impending candidacy. It can't be easy to be a Democrat watching your Great Hope sinking in the quicksand with no idea of where to find a rope while the opposition has a Hollywood-handsome hero standing out there on solid Texas economic soil with a record that shows he just may know how to drain that swamp. I wonder...

No matter what happens with the eventual debt ceiling deal, one thing is certain: the political ground has now shifted under President Obama’s feet, and he and his strategists have yet to realize how seismic the shift has been...

Contentions - Obama the Ineffectual!!! It just wasn't a bad speech. It was a glaringly ineffectual speech!!!

....What if Perry were an atheist who called for a day of secular discussion of solutions to the many challenges we face as a nation, and as a sidelight pushed the notion that the faithful should not play a role in the discussion? The Constitution's establishment clause was designed to protect freedom of religion by protecting us from one religion, authorized by the state. But the noxious nature of the governor's proposal does not merely hinge on the question of its constitutionality. ....Perry's proclamation, and the Response website, seek cover with a timeline of historical calls for national prayer, quoting...

<p>In an unusual display of emotion, President Obama angrily responded to House Speaker John A. Boehner's abrupt withdrawal from talks on a debt ceiling increase, and summoned congressional leaders to the White House on Saturday for emergency talks to plot a new course before the Aug. 2 deadline.</p>

David Brooks over at the New York Times thinks Obama's presidential style has made him a great Senate majority leader. Which is a great compliment, for a crossing guard. That's not a criticism because a crossing guards are leaders too. Calm down libs, its not like I said he was a patriot! The public follows crossing guards out into oncoming traffic solely on the sense of hope they provide that it's safe to cross. So they never make that call unless its safe for them to cross too. The stop signs they carry contain a message they intend for...

In the days of the judges of Israel, Israel had turned their backs repeatedly on the Law of Moses and the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses (Deut. 31:29, Judges 2:6-11). When they followed these absolutes of time and ETERNITY (which was almost NEVER) they were blessed and prospered by the hand of the Lord (Judges 4-5). "The consequences of this lawless departure led to the break down of society and to the chastening hand of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses" During one particular time when Ehud - a godly man, deliverer and judge of the...

Over the past few weeks, Republican candidates offering themselves as warriors in the crusade against Obama have sprung up as wildflowers in the field: each colorful, each beautiful in its own way. But these are not happy warriors. Each seems to send a sad message. It is the now-familiar tale of woe: our once-great republic reduced to a poverty-ridden husk of its former self, led to destruction by the Obama Administration. I suppose this recitation of the unworthiness of Obama is supposed to affirm a candidate’s “conservative” bona fides. IMHO, it is just a blinding glimpse of the obvious and...

The media is in a frenzy and elite pundits are all atwitter. Why? Because Sarah Palin refuses to let them define her. As Palin puts it, "I don't owe the media anything." The political and media elites on both left and right are rising up in anger at former Governor Sarah Palin. Stories abound, all negative, about this American citizen whose message resonates with ordinary citizens yet doesn't conform to the current political and media template. By all rights, Palin should be kowtowing to the media. Doesn't she know that? Instead, this upstart dares to ignore the unwritten rules governing...

Transcript of Interview With Ichiro Ozawa By YUKA HAYASHI And TOKO SEKIGUCHI /snip Q: If you had been in charge, would you have disclosed all the information about the meltdown in the initial stage? A: Yes. I would have. There is no use in holding back information. We have to decide what to do, based on the premise of the information we have. This problem may be contained in Fukushima for now, but the contamination may spread outside of Fukushima. Anxiety and frustration are growing. People cannot live in the contaminated areas. These areas are becoming uninhabitable. Japan has lost...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was hoping to avoid his clash with US President Barack Obama this week in Washington. Four days before his showdown at the White House with the American leader, Netanyahu addressed the Knesset. His speech was the most dovish he had ever given. In it, he set out the parameters of the land concessions he is willing to make to the Palestinians, in the event they ever decide that they are interested in negotiating a final peace... So, just as he was about to board his plane, Netanyahu realized that his mission in the US capital had...