Free Republic

For the first time in national history, a Rhode Island native son is running for President: Lincoln Chafee. “Stumbling” is more accurate, since shortly after declaring an exploratory committee, he fumbled into making himself a full-fledged candidate, and all the campaign finance hoopla which accompanies it. A one-term Republican US Senator, then one-term Independent Governor, Chafee entered the 2016 Presidential Election as a Democrat. Confused? Cable news program Common Sense openly derided his ambitions: “Are you kidding me?” MSNBC took his campaign seriously enough, asked him serious questions, and Chafee already looked like a deer in headlights. Joining the repeal...

Happy International Workers Day, the perfect occasion to write about Bernie Sanders, an actual Socialist running for President. The jokes fairly assemble themselves, mostly along the lines of: Sanders is far from the first Socialist presidential candidate, he’s just the first to admit it. You may assemble your own snarky rejoinders as the cranky 73-year-old gears up a challenge to Ms. Inevitability, Hillary Clinton. But once the chuckles fade, it is worth noting that Sanders brings some wild cards to the table. None of them suggest strongly that he will be the nominee, but they do suggest that he could...

It becomes clearer and clearer every day that the Republican Party is locked in an internal conflict whose resolution, if that can ever really happen, will determine, not only the future success of the party, but also its impact on safeguarding what is left of the principles on which we have been governed and the rules of decency affecting how we relate to each other as Americans. Our democracy is a republic, with checks and balances and constitutional limits on federal intrusion into our lives. Our forefathers were well aware that democracy begins to fail when the foxes gain entry...

Two days after losing a bid for a second term, Sen. Lincoln Chafee said he was unsure whether he would remain a Republican. Chafee lost to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in a race seen as a referendum on President Bush and the GOP. On Thursday, he was asked whether he would stick with the Republican Party or become an independent or Democrat.

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I want to talk to you for just a second about Republican Senate candidate Thomas Kean, Jr. in New Jersey. This is a brave man. This is a man who deserves your attention and your support. This is a man who in the midst of the war on terror and the war in Iraq, has demanded the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. That's so courageous! I was so moved when I heard this demand from this Republican. It's not many Republicans that have this kind of courage and have these guts -- and he wasn't through there!...

Friday, June 3, 2005 A true Republican litmus testPosted: June 3, 20051:00 a.m. Eastern By Kevin McCullough © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com As someone who has been registered as a Republican for the last several election cycles I sometimes weary of the wing of the party that seems to have forgotten what it is to be one. It seems like in recent years I have been forced to hear how "all enlightened" John McCain, Arlen Specter, Lincoln Chaffee and others are – who stand on the advantage of being part of the majority won by grassroots conservatives. My appearance on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal"...

The filibuster isn't a noble institution, it's a tactic - and one with a checkered past, at that. Liberals decried it in the 1960s when segregationist Southern Democrats used it to thwart the will of the majority to block civil rights legislation. But at least that tawdry application of the filibuster was consistent with its purpose in the United States Senate as a procedure to force legislative compromise.

Conditions were perfect for a showdown in the Senate over the judicial appointment process. Democrats had managed to convince half the population that the filibuster is some sort of constitutional right endowed by our Creator, and that Bill Frist and those evil Republicans were fixin’ to “nuke” the constitution by ending the misuse of the filibuster, used here only to block the confirmation of qualified nominees on the sole basis of the DNC litmus test. Too bad this half of the population has never read the constitution. A shame they don’t know that their litmus test is a litmus test....

Democrats desperate to prevent tough-talking pro-U.S. John Bolton from going to the U.N. are going all-out to convince Republican senators from supporting his nomination. Senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer, for example, are using their political action committees (PACs) to put pressure on Republican Senators to vote against their President's nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Kerry is even using his PAC funds to run ads in Rhode Island to convince GOP Senator Lincoln Chaffee to turn his back on President Bush and vote against his nominee's senate conformation. On his PAC website Kerry writes, "In addition...

Last week, three US Senators, Florida's Bill Nelson, Connecticut's Thomas Dodd, and Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee visited with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez in Caracas, to try to assess the deteriorating state of US-Venezuelan relations. The three Senators left their meeting, reciting the need for improved relations, and describing how central was Venezuela's role in supplying oil to America. The identical statements could have been uttered had the three Senators visited the sheikhs and princes in Saudi Arabia, of course. However, other than the many paid shills for Saudi Arabia in the think tanks and Middle East studies institutes in this...

Yesterday, it was reported that Rhode Island RINO Sen. Lincoln Chaffee had announced he might not vote for Pres Bush. Unsurprisingly, there he was as Judy Woodruff's guest on Inside Politics this afternoon. He spoke of his disagreements with W over "the environment, Iraq, and women's reproductive freedoms." Just as an aside, don't you just love the preciousness of his use of the plural form, "freedoms"? As to Iraq, he said "we want to make decisions on good, honest information. Where are we in Iraq?" Even Judy was surprised. "Aren't you able to determine the status, frankly, by reading the...