Free Republic

Why are women’s rights stalling even as other societal advances are made? The answer is a disaster for the right. Progressives often comfort themselves that while they’re losing a lot of economic battles, at least they’re winning the so-called culture wars. New York’s Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a staunch proponent of both gay marriage and tax cuts for the wealthy, symbolizes that political paradox for the left. But lately it’s impossible not to notice that even our culture war victories are uneven. They mostly involve gay rights, particularly marriage equality, and rarely women’s rights. In the same few years that...

A week after defeating Chris McDaniel, the Republican campaign opened a line to reporters. Then all hell broke loose.The Senate race in Mississippi is so strange that they can’t even get through a conference call without weirdness breaking out. After winning last week’s Republican runoff, the campaign of six-term incumbent Senator Thad Cochran held a conference call for national media on Wednesday to respond to allegations from defeated Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel that the election was somehow stolen. The call lasted about ten minutes before descending into absolute anarchy after a pro-McDaniel blogger obtained the dial-in information and posted...

A conference call held by Sen. Thad Cochran’s campaign quickly devolved into chaos and ended Wednesday after one of the participants repeatedly asked racially charged questions. The call was held to address a lawsuit challenging the runoff results for the Republican nomination. Cochran defeated his primary challenger, state Sen. Chris McDaniel, by 6,700 votes last week, but McDaniel has refused to concede and his supporters allege Cochran won with the help of illegal votes. The call was held for the national media who could not be at a news conference in Jackson. But 5 minutes after it started, there were...

Democrats have an enthusiasm problem, and they know it. A June poll from the Democratic firm Democracy Corps revealed that, among those voters who make up the Obama coalition — young people, Latinos, African-Americans, and single women – only 68 percent describe themselves as “likely” to vote in 2014. 85 percent of other voters who are expected to favor Republican candidates say they are “likely” to cast a ballot in November. The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake observed that this is not the only troubling sign for Democrats ahead of the midterms. “An April AP-GfK poll showed, among those who are...

A look at the frontrunners currently making waves.Mitt Romney hasn’t disappeared from the political scene the way many people thought he would after coming up on the losing end in the 2012 presidential race. But that doesn’t mean he’s running for president — or even thinking about running for president — in 2016. Talk of a possible third presidential bid for Romney has surfaced of late, with poll numbers showing that he is well regarded by Republican voters and a growing sense within the GOP smart set that no candidate has really emerged from the pack as yet. Romney has,...

It’s clear the left will say anything to make people believe that the Tea Party is racist, no matter how ludicrous. Tonight on Hardball, Charlie Rangel claimed that the Dixiecrats who opposed the Civil Right’s Act are in fact today’s Tea Party, arguing that it’s hard to distinguish between the two. In fact, he goes on to say that the Dixiecrats that were from the South are the ‘grandparents’ of the Tea Party. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) HOST: Congressman, I will start with you. …The Civil Rights Act that passed in 1964 wouldn’t pass in 2014. Do you agree with that? RANGEL: First...

As Charlie Crist has pretty much established his persona as a incompetent Democrat,along with becoming another laughing stock for Floridians,Debbie Wasserman being at the top of the list,so what happens when Floridians say "Sorry Charlie" come November? Is he off to 2016? God Help Us Please!Charlie Crist,and easy contender for a nightmare Democrat Ticket!.Hard to say what would be the worst Democratic ticket for 2016,but Charlie Crist will easily make the list of possibilities along with Howard Dean,Bernie Sanders and John Kerry.

We don’t know who the GOP candidate will be, but we know what he needs to be. This week, Gallup found Americans are losing faith in their government: “Americans’ confidence in all three branches of the U.S. government has fallen, reaching record lows for the Supreme Court (30 percent) and Congress (7 percent), and a six-year low for the presidency (29 percent).” Gallup also finds Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with their freedom to choose what they can do with their lives: Gallup also finds Americans increasingly believe corruption is widespread throughout the government. Note that this question does not specify...

Thanks to AG Conservative for that headline. First “don’t ask, don’t tell,” then DOMA, now RFRA: Precisely how many statutes signed by Bill Clinton are the Clintons currently horrified by? It’ll be fun during President Hillary’s administration to try to identify the various laws that Senator Chelsea will be forced to repudiate circa 2036. Part of the reason I was so adamant about including women and girls in our foreign policy, not as a luxury but as a central issue is because they’re often the canaries in the mine,” Clinton said. “You watch women and girls being deprived of their...

“There’s something strange about a Republican primary that’s decided by liberal Democrats.” – State Sen. Chris McDaniel. There was something strange about that primary election between six-term incumbent Republican Senator Thad Cochran and state Senator Chris McDaniel, period! From reports of a McDaniel supporter sneaking into the bedroom and taking a photo of Mrs. Cochran at the nursing home where she resides to the discovery of more McDaniel supporters locked inside a courthouse where ballots had been counted on primary election night, to some folks actually believing a Democrat (former Rep. Travis Childers) could win the Senate seat this Fall,...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)The GOPe has never stooped lower. Not only have they denied that any fraud has taken place (Reince Priebus has kept so silent you can hear a pin drop). Not only did Cochran’s camp lie to black voters about McDaniel taking away their food stamps and make racist allegations about him that scared them. Not only did the camp STIFF the pastor of money they had agreed on and then DENY he did all the work requested in the first place, they are NOW going after investigative journalist Charles Johnson of http://gotnews.com/. Johnson was ready for it. He had let...

An audio interview has surfaced in which the interviewee claims that he was to be paid by the Cochran camp to grease voters in the Mississippi GOP Senate runoff election. The audio interview, which coincides with a separate audio recording and batch of evidence produced by the newly launched GotNews.com, a project by Charles C. Johnson, alleges that the Cochran campaign conspired with a Mississippi Reverend to buy the votes of African American voters, who happen to be democrats. Before I get into the weeds of what is in the audio interview and transcript, which are both below, let me...

Hillary Clinton applauded efforts in a Republican Senate runoff election in Mississippi to reach out to voters outside its usual voting bloc. Clinton said Monday the contest between incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran and tea party-backed challenger Chris McDaniel "was of historical importance because the Republican Party of Mississippi expanded its base." Forced into a runoff election after a GOP primary was too close to call, Cochran's campaign utilized anti-McDaniel sentiment in a traditionally Democratic voting group to sway the tight contest in his favor. Clinton, a likely 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, suggested politicians from all ideological backgrounds could learn from...

Do you know why everyone loves the holidays? It’s because we all have that one wacky uncle that does enough stupid stuff during each family get together to give the rest of us funny inside jokes that last all year. If you don’t know who that is in your family, it’s probably you. In the GOP, it is the tea party. This fringe group has always clung to the edges of the Grand Old Party. Thanks to Barack Obama — ostensibly because of his policies and not his pigmentation — the group was able to cohere into a politically relevant...

Last Tuesday’s GOP primary runoff in Mississippi is turning out to be the most revealing incident in the protracted fight between the conservative grassroots and the GOP establishment. The GOP party leadership has been exposed for their true motives in front of all the party faithful. Over the past few years, we have been told by some of the inside-the-beltway “conservatives” that the GOP schism is overblown, that it is merely a disagreement over strategy. We have also been told that the grassroots have been too purist in their expectations of how Republicans can govern when they only control the...

Hillary Clinton on Monday condemned the Supreme Court decision that found some family-owned corporations cannot be forced to pay for the birth control coverage of their employees, required by the healthcare law. "I think that there should be a real outcry against the decision," Clinton said at the Aspen Ideas Festival. "And there will be many more now — look, many more companies will claim religious beliefs and some will be sincere but others maybe not. And we are going to see this one insurable service cut out for many, many women." The 5-4 ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby,...

Update: 2:34 p.m. EST: Texas Sen. Wendy Davis, the Democratic nominee for governor in 2014, issued a statement condemning the court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby case. “Today’s disappointing decision to restrict access to birth control puts employers between women and their doctors. We need to trust women to make their own health care decisions — not corporations, the Supreme Court, or Greg Abbott,” she said. Abbott, the attorney general and her opponent in this fall election, issued a statement praising the ruling, which is below. Update 1:09 p.m. EST: Former U.S. Solicitor General Kenneth Starr, the current president of...

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz is taking heat for his anti-gay views and vocal opposition to marriage equality by none other than a fellow Republican figure. Prominent Republican lawyer, Ted Olson, who is a strong supporter of LGBT rights, thought Cruz's comments on marriage equality were "very, very sad." Cruz had a lot to say to the crowds at the Texas GOP convention about the "threat" that is gay marriage. His speech appeared on an article of The New Yorker (emphasis mine): "Marriage is under assault," Ted Cruz said to the crowd. "It is under assault in a way that is...

Christopher Hitchens got a chance to analyze the Tea Party in 2011, the same year cancer took his life. In a Vanity Fair article titled "Tea'd Off," the great polemicist explains that populist movements like the Tea Party are a reaction to social and political change. Hitchens writes that before the Revolutionary War costumes, America had seen a somewhat similar phenomenon with the John Birch Society: The John Birch Society possessed such a mainstream message--the existence of a Communist world system with tentacles in the United States--that it had a potent influence over whole sections of the Republican Party. It...

It’s not too uncommon for Republican leaders from the House and Senate to occasionally meet, trade notes, and work out bicameral strategies, but as a rule, rank-and-file members tend to stick with colleagues from the same chamber. When they have ideas or grand plans, GOP lawmakers usually turn to their chamber’s leadership or committee chairs. Which is why it’s odd to see House Republicans huddle so frequently with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Last September, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) presented a plan to avoid a government shutdown. Cruz met directly with House Republicans, urged them to ignore their own leader’s...