Free Republic

The search for moderates in Iran to justify the nuclear deal with Tehran would benefit from looking at the moderate Iranian opposition that rejects both clerical rule of Iran as well as acquiring nuclear weapons in word and deed. It is the main adversary of the Islamic Republic from within. Iran’s parliamentary elections took place on February 26. They prompted two narratives of the outcome. As headlined in The New York Times of Feb. 29, “Iranian President and Moderates Make Strong Gains in Elections.” But as noted in The Weekly Standard Magazine of Mar.14, Iran’s moderates only “Make-Believe” ones. The...

Everyone loves to deal with moderates, especially when they represent a rare shift toward moderation for a rogue state. The trouble is that the concept of a moderate is relative. In dealing with the former Soviet Union we heard the term "Politburo moderates" over and over. Reaching out to this fabricated species was an excuse for being nice to despicable governments. In the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran, reaching out to "moderates" among the ayatollahs' inner circles has been a constant dream of American officials for the past 30 years. These moderates are supposed to be the...

5 minute discourse regarding "moderate muslims" and words we can use as WE formulate our thoughts and language for the present and coming dangera reminder

President Obama now says he never believed in the $500-million program to train and equip the moderate Syrian opposition. The administration last week halted the failed program, which ended up “training” fewer than 100 Syrians, all but four or five of whom deserted or died after the Americans tried to turn them into anti-ISIS fighters. “Steve, this is why I’ve been skeptical from the get-go about the notion that we were going to effectively create this proxy army inside Syria,” Obama told CBS’ Steve Kroft during an interview for “60 Minutes.” …

He called out to me as I walked by the pool. “Hey, what’s going on? Do you want a beer?” I politely declined, telling him that I did not drink. “Really? I’ve never met an American who didn’t drink. I have a soda. Do you want a soda?” It was late, and I have never been a very social person, but with my wife and children in South America waiting on my wife’s green card, I had been spending my evenings alone. So I sat down and talked to him. We will call him Ali. He told me he was...

The media have developed a predictable and equally annoying habit every presidential election cycle. We hear the Republicans are going to be crushed by pandering too much to conservatives. The Democrats are firmly moderate and need a push from the left so they don't forget their "compassion." So it was with Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter 35 years ago. So will it be in 2016, no matter who is nominated. Republican primary voters have nominated moderates in every election cycle since Reagan '88, but not because they are moderates. Instead, the moderates survive the usual conservative circular firing squad exercise;...

The "Third Way" ideology is much more than just 'another way' of doing things. Rather, it is the specific ideology of the political elite and their multinational industrial paymasters. And, if you study this ideology closely, you may soon learn the real reason behind all those very oppressive laws, rules and regulations coming out of Washington these past few years. Simply put, the intent of the "Third Way" ideologues is to design a classed society -- made up of us worker serfs and our elite controllers. To do that, it is necessary that the elite have general control over money,...

How is it possible that a president can win re-election by a relatively comfortable margin while receiving fewer raw votes than his first election? Enter Mitt Romney. A simple data comparison is very telling. That comparison is the Romney raw vote vs. all votes for congressional Republicans in a given state. Crunching the numbers, Romney significantly underperformed the Republican congressional vote totals in multiple states. In North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin -- all presidential swing states -- Mitt Romney underperformed the total raw votes cast for all Republican congressional candidates by an average of 3 percent. That means that...

From 1910 to 1943, it was fairly common for some members of the Republican Party to vote for somebody for Speaker of the House other than the choice of the conference. Progressive Republicans initially joined with Democrats in rebellion against the autocratic Joe Cannon, and the habit stuck. And in every Speaker’s election during that time, up to 11 members would cast their votes for a person other than the two candidates put forward by the two major parties. ADVERTISEMENT That habit died in 1945, and from the close of World War II to the close of the Cold War,...

The Johnson County moderate, a fixture of Kansas politics for decades, is an increasingly endangered species. Republicans and analysts on both sides of the moderate-conservative divide say the Nov. 4 election results confirm that conclusion. The centrist bankers, lawyers and businessmen who once defined the county’s politics are giving way to younger, more socially oriented conservatives who now play the major role in determining the county’s approach to government. “The old guard just doesn’t have the weight they used to have,” said Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Republican just elected to a second term. “The fact that the elites...

While Sen. Ted Cruz may be a star among tea party faithful and other more socially conservative Republicans, he has been less active on the midterm campaign trail as some candidates fear he could polarize voters, The Hill reports. More welcomed in states with tight midterms contests have been Cruz's conservative brothers in the Senate, Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky, who have been counted on to support election bids across the country, the Hill noted. “It’s almost exactly a year ago to the day when [Cruz] led to the government shutdown," Republican strategist Rich Galen told...

As President Obama laid out his “strategy” last night for dealing with ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and as bipartisan leadership in Congress push to approve as much as $4 billion to arm the Syrian “rebels,” it should be noted that the keystone to his anti-Assad policy — the “vetted moderate” Free Syrian Army (FSA) — is now admitting that they, too, are working with the Islamic State.This confirms our reporting about the FSA’s alliances with Syrian terrorist groups here at PJ Media last week.On Monday, the Daily Star in Lebanon quoted a FSA brigade commander saying that his...

Link only: http://www.ohio.com/news/latourette-says-gop-at-crossroads-must-shift-from-right-to-have-shot-at-white-house-senate-1.482707

SPECIAL REPORT CLARK CLIFFORD REPUBLICANS The GOP Establishment shell game: when winning is losing. By Jeffrey Lord – 10.18.11 (reprint) "Clark is a wonderful fellow. In a day when many are seeking a reward for what they contributed to the return of the Democrats to the White House, you don't hear Clark clamoring. All he asked in return was that we advertise his law firm on the backs of one-dollar bills." -- John F. Kennedy on Washington lobbyist and ex-Truman aide Clark Clifford What can one say? Is there any wonder Tea Party supporters think they are always in danger...

While off-year elections suffer from a surfeit of interpretation, it’s hard not to see the victories of Christie and McAuliffe as sending a similar message: Republicans must be moderate to win. Mr. McAuliffe was a cipher of a candidate who was saved in the end by Mr. Cuccinelli’s reactionary social views. And Mr. Christie’s victory simply confirmed what we have known about Republicans in New Jersey since Clifford Case: Republicans must be moderates to win statewide. (See another governor named Christie Todd Whitman.) But while the lessons of the 2013 gubernatorial elections may seem obvious to many, Republican zealots are...

I just don't understand it. Everywhere we turn, we conservatives are told we need to moderate, be less extreme, be more bipartisan. The public just wants us all to get along and solve our major problems together. Democratic politicians and the liberal media harp on the alleged extremism of mainstream conservatism, the tea party, Sen. Ted Cruz, conservative talk radio and anyone else who dares to call out President Obama and his Democratic congressional cohorts in plain language for what they're doing to the country. Nonsense. No one with a modicum of political power is more extreme than Obama's Democrats...

Republican Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick had been expected to face a tough re-election fight. Then he sided with GOP leadership and a tea party insisting that a federal spending plan to keep the government open must delay or defund President Barack Obama’s health care law. Now, with the partial government shutdown stretching into its second week, Fitzpatrick’s bid for a second term may be growing even more challenging. Voters in his suburban Philadelphia district talk of a widening sense of disappointment with their two-term congressman, while Democrats across Pennsylvania and other states claim new momentum in their quest to take back...

Amidst reports of chemical weapons and atrocities committed by the warring factions, one Sierra Leonean, Sheikh Mohammed Canah Bah (photo) [at URL] has been captured and tortured to death by the Free Syrian Army... Even though no reason has been proffered by the rebel faction for the capture and execution of the Sierra Leonean, reports generally indicate that such dispositions have been usually manifested against foreigners in the country, a situation akin to what happened to blacks in Libya during the rebellion against Muhamar Al Gaddafi. A representative of the Sierra Leone Students Union in Syria, now residing in the...

President Obama waived a provision of federal law designed to prevent the supply of arms to terrorist groups to clear the way for the U.S. to provide military assistance to "vetted" opposition groups fighting Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. Some elements of the Syrian opposition are associated with radical Islamic terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, which was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pa., in 2001. Assad's regime is backed by Iran and Hezbollah. The president, citing his authority under the Arms Export Control Act, announced today that he would "waive the prohibitions in...

Bahrain security forces routinely detain children without cause and subject them to ill-treatment that may rise to the level of torture, Human Rights Watch said today, based on reports from victims, family members, and legal rights activists. On September 12, 2013, the European Parliament issued a further resolution on the deteriorating rights situation in Bahrain, urging it among other things "to respect the rights of juveniles, to refrain from detaining them in adult facilities and to treat juveniles in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of a Child, to which Bahrain is a party." ... Information recently obtained from...