Free Republic

The Trouble With Romney I read the New York Post this morning and, reluctantly, the weekly Peggy Noonan column. Noonan is a centrist RINO who thinks she represents mainstream American conservative thinking because she wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan over thirty years ago. You can read her article titled “Obama Can Lose” here: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obama_can_lose_XyLH4VsgHAHvWQlmzrdGRJ?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME The traitorous Noonan—who supported, shrilled and voted for Obama in 2008—writes that even if the economy turns around, inflation calms and mid east unrest subsides, Obama will lose in 2012. According this shrill, the only way Obama will win is if the GOP fails to “nominate,...

The State of the Union Address is usually among the most important and least memorable of presidential speeches. The speech itself, in an august setting, is an opportunity for a president to break through in a new way. TV and radio carry it live, and it's hard for the average citizen to avoid seeing at least a piece of it. It's a real chance for a White House to tell the American people "This is where we stand, this is why we are here, this is what we believe in." But most State of the Unions don't measure up. They...

Peggy Noonan's weekend column, Americans Vote for Maturity, is generally supportive of the Tea Parties, but she can't resist joining the chorus of ruling class Republicans grousing about "unqualified" candidates. She concludes: Americans don't want, as their representatives, people who seem empty or crazy. They'll vote no on that. It's not just the message, it's the messenger. Without specifics, this is a fair enough point.  But who decides that a candidate is "empty or crazy"?  Do we take the word of the mainstream media and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee that Rand Paul, Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell are...

All presidents take vacations, and all are criticized for it. It's never the right place, the right time. Ronald Reagan went to the ranch, George W. Bush to Crawford, both got knocked. Bill Clinton even poll-tested a vacation site and still was criticized. But Martha's Vineyard—elite, upscale—can't have done President Obama any good, especially following the first lady's foray in Spain. The general feeling this week was summed up by David Letterman: "He'll have plenty of time for vacations when his one term is up. Plenty of time."

And out-of-touch leaders don't see the need to cool things off. It is, obviously, self-referential to quote yourself, but I do it to make a point. I wrote the following on New Year's day, 1994. America 16 years ago was a relatively content nation, though full of political sparks: 10 months later the Republicans would take the House for the first time in 40 years. But beneath all the action was, I thought, a coming unease. Something inside was telling us we were living through "not the placid dawn of a peaceful age but the illusory calm before stern storms."

In our earlier thread on Chris Matthews, one commenter asked why we consider the MS-NBC host a barometer of conservative opinion, considering Matthews’ deeply liberal worldview. It matters because the disillusion of people like Matthews, who sold their audiences on the near-perfection of Barack Obama, are instructive moments to see just how far Obama has fallen in public reputation. After all, conservatives didn’t fawn over a man who had no executive experience and spent most of his legislative career voting “present” rather than showing any leadership.Well, most conservatives didn’t, anyway. At least one who succumbed to Obama’s glamour wonders what...

This week, two points in an emerging pointillist picture of a White House leaking support—not the support of voters, though polls there show steady decline, but in two core constituencies, Washington's Democratic-journalistic establishment, and what might still be called the foreign-policy establishment. From journalist Elizabeth Drew, a veteran and often sympathetic chronicler of Democratic figures, a fiery denunciation of—and warning for—the White House. In a piece in Politico on the firing of White House counsel Greg Craig, Ms. Drew reports that while the president was in Asia last week, "a critical mass of influential people who once held big hopes...