Free Republic

In the wake of ISIS’s beheading of Americans, acts which the White House rightly said it considered terrorist attacks upon the nation, it could be considered crass to discuss the domestic political implications associated with the threat the Islamic State poses and the president’s planned response to that threat. It is, however, an election year, and there are political connotations associated with Barack Obama’s breakfast cereal, let alone an issue nine in 10 Americans are nervous about. It is just remarkable uniformity of opinion which is beginning to fray and will present a challenge to America’s elected leaders. The Islamic...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney -- a longtime journalist before he joined the Obama administration in its infancy -- is back in the media game as a political analyst for CNN. We caught up with Carney on Wednesday, in the hours before President Obama addresses the nation to outline his plan for dismantling ISIS, the brutal terrorist group that's roiling Iraq and Syria. A former White House insider, Carney had insight into how the President and his team are preparing for such a major address. But he also riffed on the state of the news media, the "not...

Michigan's primary elections were last month and for a young progressive who loves all things political, it was Christmas in August for me. As a member of LaunchProgress PAC's Candidate Advisory Board, I was excited to support our Michigan candidates Jon Hoadley, Stephanie Chang, and Kristy Pagan who won big on August 5, and Rebecca Thompson, a strong LaunchProgress candidate who was just 500 votes shy of winning her election. But still, I'm haunted by the text message I received the afternoon of the primary, "Today are elections? Wasn't Obama just re-elected?" Sadly this is the reality our country lives...

For several years Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky and the son of presidential candidate Ron Paul, has been one of the most interesting politicians in his party and in congress as a whole. At a time when new ideas have become increasingly scarce, and the policy bandwidth increasingly narrow in Washington, Mr. Paul, whether speaking about US intervention and foreign policy or more recently about militarization and the police, has been one of the few politicians with views outside of his party’s mainstream. With the 2016 presidential election approaching, this has made Mr. Paul one of the most...

A fresh round of clues arrived this week from two Republican lawmakers who are regularly asked about their desire to pursue their party's nomination in 2016. While each cited different reasons, both Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas say they're now more interested in running. Rubio says the current Senate gridlock is limiting his ability to advocate for the kind of policies he sees as critical for moving America forward and that the White House might be a better place for that. "I'll have to make a decision in 2016 either way, because I'm up...

Mark Udall says he's "troubled" by Obama's quickness to act on IS (!!!?!!!?!!), and that the two journalists beheaded by IS terrorists would have wanted a "cautious" approach."I can tell you," Udall said, "Steve Sotloff and James Foley would tell us, don't be impulsive. Horrible and barbarous as those executions were, don't be impulsive, come up with a plan to knock ISIL back." Allah makes a point that didn't occur to me: Given that we know that Obama delayed the rescue mission that would have saved both Sotloff and Foley, until they were no longer present at the target site,...

As the 2016 White House race begins to form, more than a few dark horse GOP candidates could end up breaking away from the pack. With the Republican presidential field wide open, the campaign could be a repeat 2012, when even candidates thought to be longshots briefly stole the spotlight and spiked in the polls. “We don't even have anywhere near a front-runner and it doesn't look like one is going to break free,” said GOP strategist Ford O’Connell. “There's a potential opening for a lot of these wild-card candidates.” Republican National Committee rules have changed since then, shrinking the...

Months ago, the isolationism of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was so extreme that I said he might as well be President Bashar Assad's man in Washington, referring to the Syrian dictator and murderer at a time when Rand Paul was following the policy of Ron Paul of extreme non-intervention. Times have changed, or shall I say Rand Paul's calculations have changed, so his positions have changed. Now Sen. Paul mocks President Obama over the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and vows to be a super-hawk going after ISIS. I guess when it's time to raise campaign money for...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Pat Buchanan predicted Mitt Romney will run for president on this weekend's broadcast of The McLaughlin Group. "There is no doubt Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Mitt Romney are in the establishment category or bracket that are headed for the finals," Buchanan said. "I think Mitt would come out first but I really don't see Bush as really having the drive or inner drive. And I think, then you get Mitt Romney against someone like a Cruz, or someone like that, and I think that would be the finals. And I think that Mitt has got it in his heart...

The smart take on social media last night was that Romney’s new op-ed on national defense is a signal that he’s quietly thinking of running too. So maybe we’ll finally get that Mitt versus Jeb match-up that conservatives have been dreaming about lo these many years. In fact, I tend to think the only rational explanation for the Jeb buzz is that it’s some sort of sly “Romney 2016″ psy op. There’s just no way, no way, that the Republican Party’s going to take another bite at the Bush apple. The donor class may despise the base and would doubtless...

Democrats are going to fight to keep their former Kansas senate candidate, Chad Taylor, off the ballot (an odd turn of events to put it mildly). This comes after Kris Kobach, Secretary of State, announced that Taylor must stay on ballot. Kobach is intensely political and is likely the most successful and outspoken voter suppression advocate in the country today. Rick Hasen says the law is not dispositive. But life's hard. Kobach's the Secretary State. He gets to make the decision, or at least he gets the first pass at it. A Court will likely have the final say over...

Heading into the GOP primary for U.S. Congress, New Hampshire state representative Marilinda Garcia has been racking up endorsements by influential Republicans and conservatives. But the most significant, and symbolic, show of support will be on display on Sunday, when U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, will be in New Hampshire to stomp for her. The primary, to be held on Tuesday, will determine who runs against the Democratic incumbent, U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster, in November. “I’m proud to support Marilinda Garcia,” Cruz said in a statement that was released by Garcia’s campaign, “because she is the candidate who will fight...

Jeb Bush, Florida’s former governor, is still deciding whether to jump into the 2016 race. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie continues to endure an investigation into whether his administration abused its power by intentionally creating traffic jams. And Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is struggling to convince conservatives that he is not a foreign policy isolationist while Islamic terrorists run rampant through Iraq and Syria and execute Americans journalists. A dozen or more prominent Republicans have been testing the national political waters for more than a year trying to decide whether to make a bid for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination....

As of now, a handful of Democrats have flirted with (or outright embraced) mounting a challenge to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ahead of her expected second run at the White House. Those candidates have, however, largely been relative unknowns or too exotic to be considered a genuine threat to her inevitability. Self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is seriously contemplating a 2016 bid, but few believe that he can mount a legitimate challenge to Clinton. Former Democratic Virginia Sen. Jim Webb is also contemplating a run at the White House, but he retired from the Senate after only...

The 1968 race riots helped to recast the politics of the country. But what happened in Ferguson was not a partisan issue, and it won't be fixed by helping Democrats keep control of the Senate. In the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, race riots convulsed the country. Chicago, Washington D.C., Baltimore, and Louisville endured the worst of it. Almost 50 years hence, you can still see where the damage was done. Louisville’s West Side, which was an integrated community, is now monochromatic. Some parts of Chicago’s West Side, where the rioting was the worst,...

<p>Now that Labor Day has passed, the 2014 campaign season is officially underway. By any measure, the Republicans seem to have the advantage and are poised to take control of the Senate in the midterm elections. The Democrats are struggling on just about every front. They do not have a credible economic agenda, and under President Obama, our country’s foreign policy has gone from bewildering to frightening.</p>

Definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. — Albert Einstein Unbelievably, the drumbeat has begun for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to run for president a third time. The man who lost twice for president is now being encouraged by many party leaders to give it another try. Congressman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, recently told MSNBC, “I think he’s proven right on a lot of stuff. I happen to be in the camp that thinks he’s actually going to run, and I think he will be the next president of the United States.”...

A perfect storm is brewing in Michigan that may propel a Republican into the U.S. Senate seat Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), a Democrat, has held since 1979. Terri Lynn Land, Michigan’s ex-Secretary of State and a Republican National Committeewoman, is running her U.S. Senate campaign on an aggressive conservative populist message that seems more fit for red state Republicans than a Republican running in a bluish-purple state like Michigan. A national mood against President Barack Obama is hurting Democrats, especially those who don’t have the luxury of incumbency like Land’s opponent Rep. Gary Peters (D-MI). Package all that together with...

President Barack Obama’s impotent approach to the international crises proliferating around the globe has resulted in a bipartisan barrage of criticisms directed at him and his administration, and it’s all getting to be just too much to handle for Obama’s remaining supporters. The latest to offend the sensibilities of those for whom the Islamic State is a threat only to our ability to craft convincing moral equivalencies for their abhorrent acts is New Jersey governor and 2016 Republican presidential hopeful Chris Christie. According to a report from New York Times journalist and Christie tracker Michael Barbaro, the governor had the...

ANDERSON, S.C. - Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., "the son of Ronald Reagan when it comes to national security" Monday night at a barbecue gathering of nearly 1,000 conservatives in the upstate. South Carolina's senior senator also dubbed Rubio "a rising young star" in the GOP "who you will see a lot," a nod to his colleague's White House aspirations in 2016. The high praise comes from one of the Senate's biggest foreign policy hawks at a time when the country is confronting how to deal with the unraveling violence and chaos in Iraq being caused...