Free Republic

There are few things the liberal media like more than a Republican renegade. David Stockman has made a career out of strutting his independence from the GOP. So little surprise that he was an honored guest on this morning's Up With Chris Hayes on MSNBC. That Stockman repaid his hosts by attacking Republicans was utterly predictable. Even so, the absurdity of Stockman's particular assertion was breathtaking. The former Reagan budget director actually claimed that the notion of American exceptionalism, a focus of Newt Gingrich's campaign, is nothing less than . . . "neo-con code" for an aggressive foreign policy. View...

This is a story I couldn’t resist writing. Ron Paul supporters are spraying vinegar at the sky to “kill” clouds. They’re standing in their backyards, on their porches, and in front of their windows, angrily aiming spray bottles filled with vinegar into the air.How could I not write about this? If I live to be one-hundred years old, will I ever again get the chance to write about something so incredibly insane?I have several friends who support Ron Paul. The aim of this piece is not to malign or belittle all Paul supporters – just the ones who adhere to...

The Syrian regime, which has endured nine months of civil unrest spurred by the Arab Spring as it swept across the Middle East, has armed its medium-range missile arsenal with chemical warheads. According to a report published by the Sabah daily Sunday, Damascus armed 600 one-ton chemical warheads to use in the event of a foreign military intervention. Furthermore, President Bashar al-Assad ordered the deployment of 21 missile launchers along its border with Turkey. Syria’s medium-range missiles that can be equipped with chemical warheads have a range of up to 1,300 kilometers and would include the southern and central provinces...

On Fox News Sunday today, Bill Kristol threw cold water on Herman Cain‘s presidential candidacy, arguing that regardless of his popularity among conservative voters and whether or not his sexual harassment scandal will end up helping or hurting him, there was very little chance in the first place he was ever going to be the Republican nominee. Chris Wallace brought up Cain’s contentious exchange with a reporter last night over the allegations over his sexual harassment controversy, and asked the panel if there was a connection between what Cain is currently going through and what Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas...

Listen to what Michele Bachmann has to say at the 1:08:50 mark of this video. She honestly appears to believe we could direct the secretary of the treasury to pay off all "pay off all debts of the United States, all interest, all obligations" now. (Note: I inserted the exact language and employed the italics because I noted that in the comments section various Bachmannites were claiming she called for paying off only the interest. If you can't understand plain English, this is not the blog for you.)  She then goes on to say she would balance the budget.  Huh?...

My father suggested to me recently that it might be helpful to better explain what the term “neoconservative” means. “A lot of people don’t know,” he said. As usual, Dad was right. Though decades old, the mainstream use of the word neoconservative is relatively new. I mentally filed away my father’s suggestion agreeing that a layman’s explanation of “neoconservative” might be helpful when the time was right. The time is right—as the American intervention in Libya has drawn a clearer line between neoconservatives and conventional Republicans than any event in recent memory. The “neocons” believe American greatness is measured by...

Authors from several publications– the Atlantic, Commentary and the Washington Post have finally caught up on the political history of the past 5+ years–Governor Palin had an excellent record during her tenure. For some reason, the Atlantic writer, Joshua Green, finally realized in May of 2011 what Governor Palin accomplished as an oil and gas commissioner in 2003-2004 and as Governor 2006-2009. She took on the corruption in her own party in both roles. She revamped the oil taxation plan in Alaska by cleaning up the corruption of her predecessor and helping leave Alaska with what is currently a $12...

Sarah Palin has parted ways with the neoconservative foreign policy advisers who had been writing speeches and advising her on policy since she joined the McCain campaign. An aide to Palin, Tim Crawford, confirmed that Orion Strategies' Randy Scheunemann and Michael Goldfarb are no longer working for her PAC. They parted, both sides said on good terms. "Randy flat out said, 'We can't give you the time,'" Crawford said. (snip) Crawford said they've been replaced by Peter Schweizer, a writer and fellow at the Hoover Institution who blogs regularly at Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace. The personnel shift carries an ideological...

Andrew Sullivan takes exception to my observations that we are on a fool’s errand in Libya and a dangerous one. The other day I took issue with neo-conservatives who had learned nothing from failed attempts to create Western-style democracies in Muslim cultures. I had pointed to recent experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza (let alone Turkey) and warned that our military invasion of Libya could lead to the creation of an al-Qaeda aligned totalitarian state. Here is how the Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan characterized these thoughts: “It looks as if David Horowitz has left the neocons and become an anti-Islam...

Ominous Signals on Libya: A Response to Andrew Sullivan Posted By David Horowitz On March 26, 2011 @ 12:04 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage Andrew Sullivan takes exception to my observations that we are on a fool’s errand in Libya and a dangerous one. The other day I took issue with neo-conservatives who had learned nothing from failed attempts to create Western-style democracies in Muslim cultures. I had pointed to recent experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza (let alone Turkey) and warned that our military invasion of Libya could lead to the creation of an al-Qaeda aligned totalitarian state. Here...

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin came out strongly in favor of continued U.S. foreign aid to Israel in a Sunday interview with Judge Jeanine Pirro on Foxnews. "You know I'm sure that there's some waste and fraud in our foreign aid we need to find efficiencies and not give to any regime that would seek to harm Americans in any sense of the word 'harm,'" Palin said, "I don't support that kind of foreign aid at all. but when it comes to Israel - NO... I stand strong with Israel and unapologetically I say that America should keep this strong...

Two American airmen were shot dead and another left fighting for his life today after a Kosovo Albanian gunman stormed their bus before opening fire at Germany’s busiest airport where he allegedly worked. Officials said the gunman, identified as Arid Uka, 21, shouted out 'Islamic slogans' before opening fire. He gunned down his first victim as the soldier stood in front of the vehicle at Terminal 2 before turning his weapon on the driver as he sat behind the wheel. A fourth man was lightly injured and both he and the gravely wounded man are now being treated at the...

Leadership: For years, Barack Obama called Iraq "a dumb war." But considering how that conflict undeniably scared Libya's Moammar Gadhafi into ending his WMD program, the 2003 invasion has never looked smarter. 'I don't oppose all wars," future President Barack Obama told Chicagoans Against War in Iraq during a 2002 rally. "What I am opposed to is a dumb war ... a rash war ... the cynical attempt by ... armchair, weekend warriors in this (Bush) administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne." Obama called the...

Some activists want wealthy Jane Harman to pay for special election voteBy Sean J. Miller - 02/21/11 06:08 PM ET A grass-roots movement fueled by anger over the cost of a special election for Rep. Jane Harman’s (D-Calif.) seat has sprung up in the coastal towns surrounding Los Angeles. Harman announced Feb. 7 that she was stepping down as the representative for California’s 36th district to become head of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, a Washington-based research institution. She’s set to remain in the House until Feb. 28, according to her office. Her departure only two months into...

Let’s Blame Israel by Ari Bussel I am reminded that many thought (and some still do) that the United States went to war in Iraq on Israel’s request and for her sole benefit. President Bush, close with the Saudis, apparently cared so much more about Israel that, notwithstanding any threat to his friends the Saudis, he mobilized the entire US military to protect and defend Israel against an enemy she knew well how to handle. We can use as an example Israel’s 1981 bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor. For the past two weeks, our series “Postcards from America –...

Glenn Beck's epic takedown of George Soros left out something interesting. One of Sarah Palin's top aids, Randy Scheunemann, has been on Soros' payroll for years. From Salon: Given Soros' alleged role plotting to destroy the United States, Beck and his Fox viewership might be surprised to learn that one of Sarah Palin's top aides, [Scheunemann], has been on Soros' payroll for years.

Last Friday the WikiLeaks organization again published previously classified Defense Department documents. From their reporting, and from my own scant review of just a few of the documents, they appear to illustrate the inherent -- and forseeeable -- problems with the nation-building strategy we pursued in Iraq and are still pursuing in Afghanistan. The Post goes along with the WikiLeaks claim that the new documents show "…that U.S. soldiers killed at least 700 Iraqi civilians in situations where troops felt threatened." That claim may well be true. But how else can troops act -- in accordance with the rules of...

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Israeli Sephardic leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in his weekly Saturday night sermon said that non-Jews exist to serve Jews. “Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel,” he said during a public discussion of what kind of work non-Jews are allowed to perform on Shabbat. "Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat," he said to some laughter. Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas Party and the former...

The Great Recession has done wonders for the Republican Party. Two years after being tossed out of power at every level, it's about to waltz right back in, kicking aside the corpses of Democrats foolish enough to go along with the designs of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. This is good news for most conservatives. It's slightly worse news for a smaller group of conservatives—namely, the ones who spent the end of the '00s explaining why a Republican comeback like this was not really possible. Take, for example, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, whose 2005 Weekly Standard cover story, "The...

WASHINGTON - Sarah Palin, seen as a possible Republican presidential candidate, has paid tens of thousands of dollars for foreign policy advice to a U.S. firm that represents three overseas governments, campaign finance documents show. While legal, the adviser’s work as an agent for other countries raises questions about whether Palin is receiving impartial information about foreign relations and could be become a subject of debate if she runs for president or another elected office. Financial reports filed by the former Alaska governor’s fundraising committee known as SarahPAC, show that between December 2009 and the end of May 2010, it...

[Ed. note: In what easily ranks as the high point in my blogging career, and the low point of the entire neoconservative movement, I was somehow invited to attend the 80th Birthday Roast of Norman Podhoretz at the Park Plaza in New York last night where I got to rub elbows with, among others, Charles Krauthammer, William Bennett, Lucianne Goldberg, Paul Gigot, Mark Steyn, Henry Kissinger and the whole Podhoretz family. What follows is my small contribution to the roast, an edited version of which was wonderfully performed in character by the great Orson Bean. Many thanks to Commentary editor John Podhoretz for including me in...

For a glimpse of how venomous and debased the discourse about Islam has become, consider a blog post in The New Republic this month. Written by Martin Peretz, the magazine’s editor in chief, it asserted: “Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims.” Mr. Peretz added: “I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.” Thus a prominent American commentator, in a magazine long associated with tolerance, ponders whether Muslims should be afforded constitutional freedoms....

Last September, the don of neconservatism was put to rest. Irving Kristol's funeral represented, to some, the end of not only the man but also his ideas. The obituary for neoconservatism proved premature, however. A younger generation of neocons, and aligned hawks, wrote President Obama that same month. "We congratulate you on the [wartime] leadership" the letter read. They urged the president to ignore antiwar pressure. It was the most public statement of support–albeit qualified–for what was now Obama's war.

Over the past decade, “neocon” has become an all-purpose term of abuse among critics of the right. Yet few of these critics appear to realize that from the beginning there have been two very different branches of neoconservative thinking. The first aimed to bring sober, dispassionate analysis and a skeptical temper to questions of domestic policy; the second specialized in devising cogent, often highly polemical arguments in favor of a militarily aggressive foreign policy. The first exercised its greatest political influence during the 1990s with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s crime-fighting policies and the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. The second peaked...

Jews. Everywhere, there are Jews. They have penetrated the highest ranks of government, control vast swaths of the economy, and bend nations to their demonic will. But not to worry: Chris Matthews is on the case. The host of "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on radical-left MSNBC has become a modern-day Paul Revere. But instead of the British, he gallops each weekday into a few (very few, with first-quarter ratings down 46% compared to last year) homes and warns the nation of the threat of this international circumcision cult that wants to serve up a heaping helping of world domination along...

"…The more terrifying the occasion for defense, the closer will become the organization and the more coercive the influence upon each member of the herd. War sends the current of purpose and activity flowing down to the lowest level of the herd, and to its most remote branches. All the activities of society are linked together as fast as possible to this central purpose of making a military offensive or a military defense, and the State becomes what in peacetimes it has vainly struggled to become—the inexorable arbiter and determinant of men’s business and attitudes and opinions…" -Randolph Bourne Dear...

Last December, when President Obama launched his second escalation of the Afghan war, he did so with the unflinching support of the Republicans, the right, and neoconservativies. But a small group of conservatives, libertarians and assorted contrarians on the right has opposed the war, and yesterday I journeyed to the Cato Institute to find out whether that nucleus of anti-war opposition is significant or not. The answer: maybe, but probably not. The Cato conference was entitled "Escalate or Withdraw? Conservatives and the War in Afghanistan," and it brought together several ultra conservative members of Congress: Tom McClintock (R-CA); Dana Rohrabacher...

Picking Apart Washington’s Scumby Paul Gottfried on January 12, 2010 As everyone and his cousin know, the neocons are my least favorite “Washington insiders” and they divide generally into two categories, the ill-mannered, touchy Jews and their groveling or adulatory Christian assistants. David Frum, the Kagan boys, Norman and John Podhoretz, and Michael Ledeen are the house-owners; while Bill Bennett, Fred Barnes, Michael Novak, Cal Thomas, Linda Chavez, and Rich Lowry all live in the servants’ quarters. Although I’ve suffered more at the hands of the Podhoretz-types than from the machinations of their servants, I’ve always felt a grudging admiration...

Justin Raimondo detects yet another death of neoconservatism and yet another resurgence of non-interventionism on the right. As usual, he takes isolated examples, misinterprets them and then grossly exaggerates their importance. It is great news that many Tea Party protesters support something like a non-interventionist foreign policy. As many of them were originally Ron Paul supporters, just as I was, it makes sense that quite a few of them do support this. It would be even better news if there were any reason to believe that most of the Republican Party and conservative movement shared their foreign policy views. The...

For eight long years under George W. Bush, conservatives endorsed a don’t ask, don’t tell foreign policy–they did not really ask why their country was at war and Republican leaders did not tell, or bother, Americans with any of the gory details. Missions were accomplished, we fought them over there so we didn’t have to fight them here and troops were supported by simply supporting the wars they fought, with little to no dissent. But why were we fighting? What was “victory?” How many had to die? What was the cost? Conservatives did not ask-Republican politicians did not tell. But...

Obama Pleases the NeoconsFirst Published 2009-12-04 Because of the Iraq calamity, other elements of the neocon vision of remaking the Middle East were put on hold. But the neocons haven’t yet given up on the idea of a military strike against Iran. The neocon detachment from reality continues to pervade their wishful thinking. The reality of the disappearing US industrial base and America’s decaying infrastructure do not fit into the soaring rhetoric about US global power, says Robert Parry. President Barack Obama’s escalation of the Afghan War has upset many rank-and-file Democrats who had hoped for a more peaceful strategy,...

... "Irving Kristol was an intellectual giant who played a major role in developing the anti-communist arguments that led to the defeat of the Soviet Union," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told The Washington Times. ... ... Known as the godfather of neoconservatism, Mr. Kristol was a youthful radical who went from embracing communism in his 20s to attacking it publicly in his 30s. In subsequent years, he became an equally forceful advocate of free-market economics, including the supply-side tax cuts enacted during the Reagan administration and dismantling much of the so-called welfare state. Neoconservatism was a label originally bestowed...

Irving Kristol, 89, a forceful essayist, editor and university professor who became the leading architect of neoconservatism, which he called a political and intellectual movement for disaffected ex-liberals like himself who had been "mugged by reality," died Friday at the Capital Hospice in Arlington. He spent much of his career in New York but had for the last two decades lived at the Watergate apartments in the District. He died of complications from lung cancer, said his son, William Kristol, the founder and editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has planned a flurry of appearances in the Washington area this weekend, an indicator of the kind of hectic schedule he's been keeping as he looks ahead to a possible presidential bid in 2012. His D.C. itinerary will be dominated by fundraisers, but Romney has planned a pair of high-profile speeches to conservative groups that are sure to draw attention: On Saturday he is slated to address the Values Voters Summit, and on Monday he'll deliver remarks to a luncheon at the Foreign Policy Initiative, a neoconservative think tank founded by William...

"We're All Realists Now." No. Pragmatists maybe, but not "realists." Barack Obama's election as U.S. president delighted many people, especially the self-described foreign-policy "realists" who accused his predecessor, George W. Bush, of denying reality in favor of dangerous idealism. Obama has praised the realpolitik of Bush's father, George H.W. Bush. And a White House official recently told the Wall Street Journal, "[Obama] has really kind of clicked with that old-school, end-of-the-Cold-War wise-men generation." The elder Bush's national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, called Obama's election a rejection of the younger Bush "in favor of realism." Of course foreign policy should be...

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The sale of The Weekly Standard should put paid to any lingering illusion that the neoconservative empire was anything but a Potemkin Village. Whatever happens from this point on, the news of Rupert Murdoch’s repudiation of his ugliest stepchild is as refreshing a pick-me-up as the morning’s second Bloody Mary I am enjoying, anchored off Spetzai on the Bushido with Chronicles’ incomparably hospitable columnist, Taki. The only thing needed to make my happiness complete would be for the boys of National Review to take the hint and sell out for oh, maybe $2 million. Allegedly, Murdoch sold the magazine for...

FBI agents visited the offices of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine yesterday after a shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum and told employees they'd found the magazine's address A senior Standard staffer confirmed the visit but declined to discuss it in detail. An FBI spokeswoman, Katherine Schweit , also declined to comment on the investigation. Two other sources said two FBI agents arrived shortly after 5:00 p.m. Thursday at the 17th Street offices of the magazine. They told staffers that they had found the address of the magazine on a piece of paper associated with the shooter, James von Brunn,...

Retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski in once again on the air after a year's absence----and has restarted her Internet radio program "American Forum." Kwiatkowski is a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties in the Pentagon and the National Security Agency. Lt Col Kwiatkowski's " American Forum" radio program includes discussions about libertarianism and the state of the economy. Lt Col Kwiatkowski's PhD in World Politics was taken at Catholic University of America. Her doctoral thesis centered on overt and covert war in Angola. She has also published two books about US policy towards...

We knew it on Friday, when Bill Kristol praised President Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, but the degree to which neoconservatives are happy with the plan is striking. “He’s definitely saying no to pulling back,” said Fred Kagan, at the neoconservative Foreign Policy Initiative conference today in Washington. “It was a gutsy and correct decision.” Kagan worried/predicted that Obama’s base would bristle at the plan, so “he will be counting on some significant amount of support from his political opponents.”

I asked the boss for a reaction to the Afghan speech. He said he would have framed a few things differently, but his basic response was: "All hail Obama!"

EXCERPT Though neocons formed a kind of Praetorian Guard around John McCain during his campaign, their truculent approach to foreign affairs sabotaged rather than strengthened McCain’s appeal. The best that Sarah Palin, a foreign-policy neocon on training wheels, could do was to offer platitudes about standing by Israel. It seems safe to say, then, that the neocon credo is ready to be put out to pasture. Or is it? One problem with this line of argument is that it’s been heard before—sometimes from the neoconservatives themselves. In 1988, after George H.W. Bush replaced Ronald Reagan, neocon lioness Midge Decter fretted,...

Listening to neocon mastermind Richard Perle, there's a sense of falling down the rabbit hole. Perle was the ideological architect of the Iraq war and of the Bush doctrine of preemptive attack. But at a forum of foreign policy intellectuals, hosted by National Interest magazine, he created a fantastic world in which: 1. Perle is not a neoconservative. 2. Neoconservatives do not exist. 3. Even if neoconservatives did exist, they certainly couldn't be blamed for the disasters of the past eight years. "There is no such thing as a neoconservative foreign policy," Perle informed the gathering. So what about the...

A Bad Year for the Neocons Who is more Catholic than the Pope? Brian Mershon REMNANT COLUMNIST, North Carolina By all accounts, 2009 has been a challenging year for Neocon Catholics. Lamenting the spread of the Traditional Latin Mass to their own diocesan parishes since the Pope issued Summorum Pontificum July 7, 2007, the recent revelations concerning the founder of the Legion of Christ, Father Marcial Maciel, the death of Father Richard John Neuhaus, and now the dissolving of the excommunications of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), the Neocon Catholic worldview is clearly being undermined George Weigel’s recent...

Rudy Giuliani analyzes the reason the Republican party is losing in recent years and what it can do to enlarge it's base. Stressing the importance of big tent politics and under-emphasizing social issues. In any case, the economy is the main reason McCain lost, but other social issues have also created a bad stereotype of Republicans in general.

CLICK TO ENLARGEAny man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains." Winston Churchill Since Obama left the Rev. Wright and his cultic influence, I believe he has had several "come to Jesus meetings," as well as a couple of come to Bush meetings. According to Wikpedia:"Neoconservatism is a political philosophy that emerged in the United States. Its key distinction is in international affairs, where it espouses an interventionist approach that seeks to defend what neo-conservatives deem as national interests. In...

Neoconservatives are elated with Obama's appointments, recognizing that the new guard is very much like the old.  Some traditional conservatives were hoping that with Bush leaving office and Obama coming in, the neocons would be put out of power, but sadly, they're not going away that easily. Contrary to the public's perception of President-elect Obama as the peace candidate, he has been extremely hawkish in his appointments. The selection of Joe Biden as a running mate was a sign that the globalist and hawkish wing of the Democratic Party (where the neocons originally hailed from) was going to be strongly...

Jonathan Clarke, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs looks back at the rise and fall of the neocons, who encouraged George Bush to invade Iraq.With the Bush Administration about to recede into history, a widely asked question is whether the neoconservative philosophy that underpinned its major foreign policy decisions will likewise vanish from the scene. The answer seems likely to be Yes. But the epitaph of neoconservatism has been written before - prematurely, as it turned out, in the 1980s. Having been apparently headed for extinction at the end of the Reagan Administration a...

President Bush will leave office with an approval rating of under 30 percent, and the Republican Party is not faring much better. In the past two elections, it has shed more than 50 House seats and more than a dozen Senate seats. The conservative label, though, does not appear to have taken much of a beating. On Election Day 2008, exit polls showed that more voters still identify themselves as conservatives than as liberals. Conservatives can thus spare themselves the kind of re-branding liberals felt compelled to attempt earlier in the decade when they dubbed themselves “progressives.” Precisely what is...

The rise of the neoconservatives within the GOP has not only discredited the Grand Old Party but tarnished the image of conservatism. The Republican party suffered an overwhelming electoral defeat this past November. The establishment media were all too quick to proclaim that conservatism is dead and we're now at the dawn of a liberal age. Peter Beinart, Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), wrote in Time magazine that we are facing the dawn of a "new liberal order." In making this proclamation, Beinart overlooks the fact that the public was not voting...