Free Republic

A sitting President of the United States is "organizing a political organization loyal to him, bound by a pledge, outside the government and existing party apparatus. The historical precedents are ominous." What is so ominous about an organization? Americans, Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed, "constantly form associations.... If it is proposed to inculcate some truth or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society."   Certainly, thousands of organizations seek to influence the political debate. There's Newt Gingrich's American Solutions or the left-wing People for the American Way, for instance. Political parties are another...

Critics of the Bush Administration are divided between those who tend to view Republicans as part of an ultra-secret, ultra-capable military-industrial cabal who control the world and everything in it, and those who view the President as a moron and his advisers as ideologues who are leading us over a cliff. While I don’t presume to know for a fact which school of thought is correct, they can’t both be right. The Republicans-as-evil-geniuses point of view is exemplified by the “No Blood for Oil” argument. The Republicans-as-fools point of view is exemplified by the “quagmire” or “No End in Sight”...