Free Republic

It seems the most enduring divide in American politics isn't between left and right, conservative and liberal, or Republican and Democrat, but voters who want real change and politicians who refuse to give it to them. Mark Sanford is not that politician. As a South Carolina congressman and now governor, Sanford has had one primary guiding principle his entire political career — limited government. Not just limited government rhetoric, the sort of lip service paid by milquetoast Republicans to pacify their right-leaning base, but genuine, strict, fiscal conservatism. More importantly, Sanford has the guts to back it up. If you...

There isn't much point in my expending a lot of time this morning chastising Senate and Assembly Democrats for their plans, this morning, to try to stick Californians with billions of dollars in new taxes, using some scheme where they brazenly attempt to navigate around the State Constitution's requirement for a 2/3 vote to raise taxes. Through sleight of hand and bizarre terminology, Democrats are planning to hike the state's income, gas, and car taxes (and that's not all) -- and do it with a majority vote (Republican legislators have appropriately and boldly said NO to any tax increases to...

(CNN) -- The questions now being asked are: Where to go from here and who's to blame for the downfall of the Republican Party? Too bad the concern for the future of the Republican Party had not been seriously addressed in the year 2000 when the Republicans gained control of the House, Senate, and the Presidency. Now, in light of the election, many are asking: What is the future of the Republican Party? But that is the wrong question. The proper question should be: Where is our country heading? There's no doubt that a large majority of Americans believe we're...

In an op-ed in the Washington Post on Friday, U.S. House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, wrote that Republicans need to "rebuild our party by fighting for the principles of freedom, opportunity, security and individual liberty." You think? Boehner wrote that during an Obama presidency, Republicans will "stand firmly against policies that violate our principles." If only more Republicans had stood firm when their own leadership pushed policies that violated their principles, the party might be enjoying its eighth consecutive electoral victory instead of its second consecutive shellacking. Also on Friday, Boehner's predecessor, former Majority Leader Dick Armey, wrote in...

A Contract to Limit Government 1 - Limit Members of Congress to Social Security and Medicare for their retirement benefits 2 - Limit Members of Congress to Medicare for health care benefits while serving 3 - Limit Members of Congress to three terms in each House, cumulative 4 - Limit total Federal taxes per individual to no more than 15% of gross income 5 - Limit Federal rules on education to funding only. 6 - Make the Federal education funding portable at the choice of the parent/guardian. 7 - Limit access to our border to legal immigrants and citizens only....

1. Keep spending within constitutional limits. The Tenth Amendment restricts the size of government, and that should always bear out in the federal budget and spending. That means understanding income and export taxes were unconstitutional to our founders, which if applied today would be two of the greatest economic stimulus packages. 2. Return to a pay-as-you-go government. If we don't have the money, we don't spend it. Period. No more debt. No more bailouts. No more spending. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote to Fulwar Skipwith in 1787, "[T]he maxim of buying nothing but what we had money in our pockets...

Bill Clinton Says ‘Extreme Philosophy’ of GOP Dates to Reagan Presidency Thursday, August 28, 2008 By Staff (CNSNews.com) - In his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last night, former President Bill Clinton said that the Republican Party has been defined by an “extreme philosophy” for more than 25 years. The remark appeared aimed at the foreign and economic policies of President Ronald Reagan, who was sworn into office in 1981 and was in his third year of governing 25 years ago.

There's a passage from a 2005 essay by Umberto Eco that I've frequently quoted, as it neatly defines several elements of the mindset of our age in just a few carefully thought out sentences: G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a [skeptical] age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity. Indeed. While it's a cliche that ours is a cynical era, it really is just...

War on Terror Complex by: Amanda Busse, January 09, 2008 The War on Terror is yet another example of the state using a national emergency to promote its own growth, according to Robert Higgs, a Senior Fellow in Political Economy for the Independent Institute. “The so-called war on terror has given rise to a huge industry that has emerged almost from scratch during the past few years,” Higgs writes in The Free Market, a newsletter published by the Ludwig Von Mises Institute. The title of the article, “The Siren Song of the State,” refers to Margaret Atwood’s poem Siren Song....

As soon as former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson announced that he was mulling over a run for the presidency, pundits and voters alike began to announce comparisons between Thompson and Ronald Reagan. Now that Thompson is in the race with both feet, it is worthwhile to examine more carefully ways in which he is or is not somehow parallel to Reagan. It is important to note at the outset that Republicans have to come to grips with the facts that there was only one Reagan and that he was not perfect (though he was very, very good). Constant seeking after...

First, the Founding Fathers wrote a Constitution that strictly limited the role of the federal government in the lives of Americans. The idea that Washington had some role in education, redistribution of wealth, setting minimum wage requirements, nationalizing millions of acres of land, taxing income and subsidizing government-approved artists would have been anathema to the men who fought so valiantly for freedom against an overreaching foreign tyranny – if they could have even imagined such abuses. Secondly, the Framers of that Constitution spoke eloquently about the fact that only a moral people – a nation of Godly people with common...

Last week Fred Thompson was speaking to a crowd of close to three hundred people at the Music Man Square in Mason City, Iowa, explaining how he accidentally fell into a movie career. In the early 1980s Hollywood producers came to Tennessee to make a film about a famous case Thompson had handled as a young lawyer. "They asked me to play myself," Thompson told the audience in his folksy, Southern drawl, "and I said, well, they can't tell me I'm doing it wrong - although they still did from time to time." The line always gets a big laugh,...

I interviewed Michael Moore recently for an upcoming "20/20" special on health care. It's refreshing to interview a leftist who proudly admits he's a leftist. He told me that government should provide "food care" as well as health care and that big government would work if only the right people were in charge. Moore added, "I watch your show and I know where you are coming from. ... " He knows I defend limited government, so he tried to explain why I was wrong. He began in a revealing way: "I gotta believe that, even though I know you're very...

"Why? Because we'll need more government and more spending to address the many and diverse problems that fragmented or absent-father families disproportionately create."

We published an analysis on “Dollar Myths” in which we criticized spending habits in Washington: "Interestingly, nobody seemed to focus on the fact that there is an unconventional solution to foreigners holding too much of our debt: live within your means and do not issue debt. Such an old fashioned concept would indeed strengthen the dollar. Unfortunately, none of the presidential candidates at either side of the aisle seem to have heard of this notion." We missed that there is indeed a presidential candidate who believes in the old fashioned view to “live within your means.” Our apologies go to...

The Tower Institute is pleased to provide this research and analysis for the benefit of public policy leaders and decision makers. The purpose of the Tower Poll is not to recommend a specific course of action in public policy, but rather to provide a guidepost so decision makers can balance the goals of public policy initiatives with the public’s perceptions and expectations. Several questions were determined in collaboration with Americans for Prosperity – Texas.

As we settle into the nighttime of despair, fret not, for the Sun will rise again!!Good Morning! Please join us in discussing the day's events, large and small...

Rep. Ron Paul, the iconoclastic, nine-term lawmaker from southeast Texas, took the first step Thursday toward a second, quixotic presidential bid _ this time as a Republican. Paul filed papers in Texas to create a presidential exploratory committee that will allow him to raise money. In 1988, Paul was the Libertarian nominee for president and received more than 400,000 votes. Read the full article at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/11/AR2007011101424.html

http://conservativepresident2008.blogspot.com/2006/12/constitution-party-to-select-candidate.html The Constitution Party, a conservative third party founded in 1992 to serve as a possible ticket for Pat Buchanan to run on, plans to have nominated its candidate for President by July 2007, World Net Daily reports. The party held a national committee meeting last weekend where Howard Phillips, who is the party's founder and three time Presidential candidate (1992, 1996 and 2000), told World Net Daily "The time has never been better for a third party dark horse candidate to grab the White House." Phillips said that the party will nominate candidate next year and among the possibilities...

Nov. 17, 2006 | "Lord, enlighten thou our enemies," prayed 19th century British economist and moral philosopher John Stuart Mill in his "Essay on Coleridge." "Sharpen their wits, give acuteness to their perceptions, and consecutiveness and clearness to their reasoning powers. We are in danger from their folly, not from their wisdom: their weakness is what fills us with apprehension, not their strength."For every left-of-center American economist in the second half of the 20th century, Milton Friedman (1912-2006), Nobel Prize winner, founder of the conservative "Chicago School" of economics and advisor to Republicans from Goldwater to Reagan, was the incarnate...