Free Republic

THERE IS A LEFT-WING conspiracy at loose in the world, dedicated to undoing conservative governance, only the people who see it aren't sure what it is. John McCain is in it, of course, in fact he is the cause of it, as making him president is the ultimate goal. He is blamed for running, (and perhaps, for breathing), but beyond him the face of the threat is less clear. In fact, the faces are those of other conservative stalwarts, who were their heroes and brethren until--until, say, just after the Florida primary, when McCain emerged as a serious threat. These...

Late last week, as New Orleans was sliding into savage conditions, some talking heads were glowing with pleasure at the idea of a moral meltdown of such immense proportions that it would not only bury George Bush in its rubble, but erode forever the country's self confidence. Or, as Robert Scheer would happily write, "Instead of the much-celebrated American can-do machine that promises to bring freedom and prosperity to less fortunate people abroad, we have seen a callous official incompetence that puts even Third World rulers to shame."Not quite. The reason New Orleans slid so quickly from civilization into Third...

THERE THEY GO AGAIN, our friends the Democrats, eager to use the social issues as low roads to power, isolating the right as religious fanatics, outside of the mainstream of American life. "We're going to use Terri Schiavo," vowed Howard Dean at a breakfast in Hollywood, pledging to exploit the right-to-die case in Florida in the 2006 elections, the 2008 elections, and perhaps to the end of the century. And there goes the press again, eager to help them, as so many times in the past. The media analysis of the Schiavo case followed a tried and true pattern: The...

The Democrats who used to produce things -- cars, steel, and foodstuffs -- are being replaced by those who produce fads and fashion, things people enjoy but don't need. Societies need teachers, soldiers, engineers, and mechanics; they need people who drill for oil and fix cars; people who understand war and politics. No one needs sitcoms, movie reviews, handbag designers, gossip columnists, or professors of gender construction, but this superfluous cadre is becoming the core of the party of Truman and Roosevelt, an alliance of the superficial and trivial, along with the hopelessly poor. Call it the FDR coalition, minus...

Glossy magazines were guilty pleasures--before they discovered George W. BushON MARCH 6, THE Drudge Report noted the fact that newsstand sales for the magazine Vanity Fair had plummeted by 22.5 percent during the last half of 2004, attributed by the editor to three successive covers that showed pictures of . . . men. What Drudge did not cite is the parallel fact that this slide tracks exactly with the mutation of the magazine from a great escape read of the guilty-pleasure variety, the place to go for fatuous film stars, Princess Diana, and society murders, into a Bush-bashing rag of...

The Democrats' worst week and a half since Black Tuesday (November 2, 2004, when the U.S. election returns came in) began on January 18, when Barbara Boxer took on Condi Rice in the Senate, and ended on Black Sunday (January 30, 2005, when Iraq held its first free election). In one comparatively short window of time, the Democrats managed to exhibit all of the class, grace, wisdom, presence, good sense, and strategic and tactical brilliance that had allowed them to move from absolute parity after the 2000 election to the loss of the House, Senate, and White House in the...

The 9/11-related attacks on Bush began long before his campaign ads. LOOKING BACK, there is nothing surprising about the carefully plotted spasms of outrage at the reference, in a Bush campaign ad, to the terrorist attacks of September 11 through the fleeting shot of a flag-covered stretcher, and the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center in downtown New York. This has been done, done before, and done for all the same reasons: Democrats have been steadily working to take September 11, its cause, effect, and aftermath, off the table of election-year politics since . . . oh, possibly ....

The Washington Post stands up for the First Lady when a new biography gets her wrong. ONE OF THE TOUGHER DAYS in the life of a book section editor must come when he or she receives a review of a book by one of the paper's own writers that the reviewer finds not up to par. Thus, it was especially brave of the Washington Post last Sunday to run a review of "The Perfect Wife," a book about Laura Bush by Post Style writer Ann Gerhart, that gives the book and its author its due. Judith Warner, author of a...

Are we about to replay the Reagan-Mondale election? CLOSE YOUR EYES on some days, and you can almost believe it: You're back somewhere in the mid-1980s, 1984 to be precise. At least from the Democrats' side of the aisle. There it all is: The Republican president denounced as a dunce and a dangerous cowboy; the left on a tear against corporations and tax cuts; and the vast, murky war against a dangerous enemy, which Republicans think of as a crusade against evil and Democrats think is a sham. Magically, the three intervening elections--1992, 1996, and 2000--appear to have vanished, as...

GOVERNOR ARNOLD is bad news for the Democrats. Republicans now hold the statehouses in the four largest states. But the really bad news is that the Democrats running for the honor of contesting George W. Bush in the 2004 showdown are being picked by a primary audience that is so out of sync with the national mainstream that the two of them barely converge. Think of the California recall as a trial run for the national election: Track the primary themes as they played out in the recall, and the picture you see is a field in denial, a party...

Say Uncle, Walter By Noemie Emery The Wall Street Journal | April 24, 2003 SOME TIME in the morning of April 9, 2003, as the statue of Saddam Hussein was being hauled down in Baghdad, another statue--of Walter Cronkite, famed CBS newsman--hacked at with hammers by various bloggers, also came crashing down. Cronkite, once called "the most trusted man in America," was believed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to have turned the American public against the Vietnam War. This time, Cronkite had done his best to turn the American public against the war in Iraq, but no one paid any...