Free Republic

Editor's note: A version of this column appeared originally on THE DAILY BEAST. Optimistic Republicans like to view the upcoming presidential race as an echo of the epic battle of 1980 (when a triumphant Ronald Reagan thrashed the hapless Jimmy Carter). But they may more accurately anticipate unfolding events by recalling the fateful campaign of 1968 (when the Democratic Party collapsed into warring factions and the nation elected Richard Nixon, despite his manifold flaws as a candidate). The ’68 model also offers a potential solution to one of the many mysteries swirling around the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations: placing the...

We've gone from "hope and change" to hoping blaming Bush will work. As Joe Scarborough said: at least Mika Brzezinski's honest about it. Asked whether she believed that President Obama's attempt to continue to blame George W. Bush for the country's economic woes will work as a campaign strategy, a seemingly dispirited Mika Brzezinski replied: "well, I'm hopin'". Scarborough burst into laughter. The Morning Joe panel was responding to a clip of President Obama from yesterday in which he analogized Republicans to people who had ordered an expensive restaurant meal, left just as Obama was sitting down to dinner, and...

We begin tonight with what has become by any measure a pretty massive protest movement. While it goes by the official name ‘Occupy Wall Street,’ it has spread steadily and far beyond Wall Street, and it could well turn out to be the protest of this current era. ---Brian Williams on Oct. 5, 2011 gushing with extreme hype over OWS. Despite all the friendly hype given to the Occupy Wall Street protests by much of the mainstream media, OWS is now in its death throes according to this Reuters report by Chris Francescani. He also notes that as OWS is...

The House Democrats pushing for a steep hike in the minimum wage could face an unlikely foe: their own leadership. Behind Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (Ill.), almost two dozen liberal Democrats endorsed legislation this week to raise the federal minimum wage immediately from $7.25 to $10 per hour, the first such increase in three years. The lawmakers think they’ve found a winning issue in an election cycle that’s featured the rise of the Occupy movement, criticism of Mitt Romney’s path to wealth and a class-centered fight over the Bush-era tax rates. But no Democratic leaders have endorsed the measure, and...

The myth persists that the left—while it might often be naive and unrealistic—still has its heart in the right place. Those who want to redistribute income are the gallant Robin Hoods of contemporary life. "Occupiers" and socialists clearly have real concern for the downtrodden and poor. Those who demand social justice are more sincere, more compassionate, more spiritual, and surely more Christian than the rest of us. Fairness and decency are the heart of the left; materialism and selfishness the hallmarks of the bourgeoisie, Wall Street, the tea party crowd, and, well, ordinary Americans in general. So we are told....

An Upstate man is in custody, accused by the FBI and local law enforcement as being part of a “domestic terrorist group” that broke into and took over a foreclosed home, according to a release by the Pickens County Sheriff’s Office. The home is listed as being valued at $2,599,000. A realtor checking on the home found a notice, apparently posted by the extremists, saying that they were taking possession of the home. The Sheriff's Office release said, “On April 24, a deputy responded to a report of a burglary at 112 White Violet Way in Sunset. A lock on...

“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” —Winston Churchill Art is powerful. Through art nations have been swayed toward greatness … and toward Obama. Via the arts souls have been lifted and wars have been waged. There’s no mistaking the mighty leverage art wields on people and lands. For instance, on a personal level, my buddy Hambone Tweedle lives in a house that his wife has decorated with Hello Kitty swag, ubiquitous doilies and posters of fat baby angels who look like they’re stoned out of their gourd on Robitussin. His flat looks like Jan Crouch, Ross Matthews and...

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley signed a quarter-billion dollars’ worth of tax increases into law on Tuesday. The move is meant to keep the state’s ever-expanding budget on a path toward growth. “Growth” is the last thing the private-sector economy is going to see in the Free State. According to the latest Labor Department figures, Maryland lost 6,000 jobs in April, the largest such drop in the nation. Unless the General Assembly and the governor begin to rethink their free-spending ways, Maryland soon will be in the fiscal hole like California and Greece. Like a good Democrat, Mr. O'Malley has taken...

A search of the email cache that BigGovernment released last week reveals that the #Occupy movement is largely driven by socialists and anarchists who realize they need to conceal their actual message and goals in order to appeal to the political mainstream. The goal of #Occupy is to build large enough numbers where a ‘mob mentality’ takes over so they achieve their real aim of overthrow, as evidenced by a statement from one of the #Occupy movement’s earliest and strongest advocates: …when the numbers are big enough, they will feel their oats, get impatient, and start demanding more than you...

With just under two weeks to go until Wisconsin's election to recall GOP Gov. Scott Walker, the Democratic Governors Association is spending an extra $1 million in support of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who is challenging the incumbent. The money will go to Greater Wisconsin, a liberal group, to keep running ads in the state as part of a get-out-the-vote operation. In total, the DGA has spent $3 million on the recall effort, which is more than it invested in the 2006 and 2010 election cycles in the Badger State. Barrett lost to Walker by just under six percentage points...

It’s amazing what a few competitive polls can do to concentrate the mind. Democrats had taken comfort for months in the Republican Party’s seeming inability to get behind Mitt Romney, Obama’s healthy lead in the polls, and equally healthy job growth. And for a few, fleeting, moments, Democrats thought the election might just be easy. But Republican division appears to have been merely an artifact of primary politics, and Mitt Romney has proved a consistent, if unglamorous campaigner… “There was this sense maybe a month or two ago that Obama was really riding high — that he had gotten his...

Though the Obama campaign has repeatedly attacked Mitt Romney for his career at Bain Capital, President Obama still accepted $7,500 in campaign contributions from three Bain executives. His campaign press secretary, Ben LaBolt told The Politicker the president has no intention of giving the money back. “No one aside from Mitt Romney is running for President highlighting their tenure as a corporate buyout specialist as one of job creation, when in fact, his goal was profit maximization,” said Mr. LaBolt. ”The President has support from business leaders across industries who have seen him pull the economy back from the brink...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - At a fundraiser for his re-election campaign in Denver tonight, President Obama set out to upend conventional Republican wisdom that his administration has been defined by excessive government spending. "I'm running to pay down our debt in a way that's balanced and responsible. After inheriting a $1 trillion deficit, I signed $2 trillion of spending cuts into law," he told a crowd of donors at the Hyatt Regency. "My opponent won't admit it, but it's starting to appear in places, like real liberal outlets, like the Wall Street Journal: Since I've been president, federal spending has...

As an added bonus he also sympathizes with Occupy Wall Street.Via MEMRI: The Prophet Muhammad told us that Islam would spread. He told us about the Islamic conquest of Constantinople — Turkey of today — and indeed, it was conquered. He also told us about the conquest of Rome, which is Italy. People find this strange. “How can we conquer Italy?” they say. “We are too weak.” You should consider the number of Muslims in that great Christian center — another person converts to Islam every day. Check on the Internet how many people want to convert to Islam in...

For the last couple of months, many of the pointy-headed talking heads who inhabit The Fox Neocon Channel (FNC), PMSNBC, and the Communist Newspeak Network (CNN) have been babbling about the in-fighting on the Right. Many have wondered if the GOP Establishment's Golden Boy Mitt Romney has been damaged by the lukewarm rececption of him by the GOP's Conservative base. (As of this writing, it is unknown if the Bellvue staff has allowed Tokyo Rove to have shoe laces yet.) Night after night, we've had nothing but on air hand-wringing from the likes of Ann Coulter and the rest of...

Each held Saturday on $1.5 million bondTwo Broward County men were among three arrested this week in a nighttime police raid after they planned to attack four police stations, President Barack Obama's campaign headquarters and Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s house, according to court documents. The men arrested Wednesday in an apartment building in the Bridgeport neighborhood. They're accused of trying to make Molotov cocktails ahead of the two-day summit that starts Sunday. They were each held Saturday on $1.5 million bond. Brian Church, 20, of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.; Brent Vincent Betterly, 24, of Oakland Park, Fla. and Jared Chase, 24, of...

A standoff between UC Berkeley and Occupy activists who planted renegade crops on university land is headed from the farm to the courts. The University of California Board of Regents filed a lawsuit Wednesday against 14 protesters, claiming they and others conspired to cut through chains that secured gates and trespass onto the Gill Tract, a patch of land along bustling San Pablo Avenue in Albany. The activists, who call themselves Occupy the Farm, moved onto the tract April 22. They are pressuring the university to preserve part of the tract, which has been the subject of development debates for...

A standoff between protesters and the University of California at Berkeley over a 10-acre plot of university-owned agricultural land in Albany continued into its 17th day today. Anya Kamanskaya, of the group Occupy The Farm, said the ball is in the university's court after protesters issued a response late Monday to the university's proposal to resolve the standoff. UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said the university planned to respond to the protesters' letter later today. Occupy the Farm activists moved onto the site, which is known as the Gill Tract and is located near the corner of Marin and San...

Last week, I wrote a piece suggesting that Mitt Romney's path to the presidency wasn't necessarily narrow. Rather, the breadth of that path will depend on "environmental" factors that could ultimately push him well past the 286 electoral vote ceiling that has seemingly been imposed upon the Republican party since 1992. On the other hand, Ron Brownstein suggests that this ceiling is an outgrowth of demography and changing coalitions, and is largely etched into our electoral map. This has created a “blue wall” consisting of “the 11 states from Maryland to Maine (except New Hampshire); the three West Coast states;...

I just about knew it when I heard a top-of-hour radio report this morning. When the announcer intoned that there was a 3% increase in "home construction" in April, I said to myself: "There's the Associated Press again, up to its old tricks." That was indeed the case. When I went to the related AP reports, I found that they were, like the economic data coming out during the Obama administration, much worse than expected. In this morning's coverage of the still bottom-feeding situation in new home construction, the AP's Christopher Rugaber indeed wrote that a 3% seasonally adjusted April...