Free Republic

Friday evening’s Donald Trump rally in Chicago was broken up by a foul-mouthed mob that infiltrated the hall and forced the cancellation of the event to prevent violence and bloodshed. Brownshirt tactics worked. The mob, triumphant, rejoiced. And the reaction of Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and John Kasich? All three Republican rivals blamed – Donald Trump. With his “dangerous style of leadership,” Trump stokes this anger, mewed Rubio, “This is what happens when a leading presidential candidate goes around feeding into a narrative of bitterness and anger and frustration.” Rubio implies that if Trump doesn’t tone down his remarks to...

Over the long weekend before the Mississippi and Michigan primaries, the sky above Sea Island was black with corporate jets. Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Napster’s Sean Parker, Tesla Motors’ Elon Musk, and other members of the super-rich were jetting in to the exclusive Georgia resort, ostensibly to participate in the annual World Forum of the American Enterprise Institute. Among the advertised topics of discussion: “Millennials: How Much Do They Matter and What Do They Want?”That was the cover story. As revealed by the Huffington Post, Sea Island last weekend was host to a secret conclave...

Not in memory has the leadership of a party been so out of touch. The Republican rank and file are in revolt, not only against the failures of their fathers but the policies of their present rulers. Fully 116 members of the GOP’s national security community, many of them veterans of Bush administrations, have signed an open letter threatening that, if Trump is nominated, they will all desert, and some will defect – to Hillary Clinton! In every primary upcoming, Trump is under a ceaseless barrage of attack ads on radio, TV, cable and social media, paid for by super...

Pat Buchanan: Regardless of nominee, Donald Trump surge marks 'death rattle' of establishment ... We hear wails that the nomination of Trump would mean the end of the conservative movement. But how so? If Trump won and conducted a conservative government, it would validate the movement. If Trump won and turned left, it would inspire an insurgency like Ronald Reagan’s in 1976, when the Ford-Rockefeller-Kissinger administration moved too far toward detente. If Trump ran and lost, the conservative movement would have President Clinton to unite and rally the troops against. One recalls Barry Goldwater’s historic wipeout in 1964. But, in...

Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan ripped the Republican Party establishment on Saturday, saying that its backing of Marco Rubio over front-runner Donald Trump represented "a point of desperation and total panic." "I'm sure it's delighted with Marco Rubio savaging Donald Trump," Buchanan, who ran for the White House three times, told Uma Pemmaraju on Fox News. "But really, Rubio, in the numbers he's gotten, suggest this: He's failed Middle America. "Middle America has asked for 25 years — get control of the borders, stop these trade deals shipping jobs overseas, no more of these wars where Americans come back in body...

On a special post-GOP debate edition of Hardball Thursday night Chris Matthews turned up the spin to brush the dirt off of Donald Trump. “I thought the funniest line tonight was when Rubio was doing his upper cuts … He said “you hired illegal immigrants,” people without documentation and trump says “you've never hired anybody.”” (SNIP) “I'm sorry that still is Trump's trump card and it is, that he's built and these other guys are junior debaters who have just come in the Senate. They've done nothing in their lives except learn how to debate on television basically.” Matthews jabbed....

The turnout at Trump rallies has been unlike anything seen in presidential primaries; and what's more, the GOP voter turnout in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada set new records for the party. Yet voter turnout for the Clinton-Sanders race has fallen, in every contest, below what it was in the Clinton-Obama race in 2008. ... This is the year of the outsider, and Hillary is the prom queen of Goldman Sachs. She represents continuity. Trump represents change. ... America is crossing into a new era. Trump seems to have caught the wave, while Clinton seems to belong to...

As the returns came in from South Carolina Saturday night, showing Donald Trump winning a decisive victory, a note of nervous desperation crept into the commentary. Political analysts pointed out repeatedly that if all of the votes for Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Jeb Bush and Ben Carson were added up, they far exceeded the Trump vote. Why this sudden interest in arithmetic? If the field can be winnowed, we were told, if Carson and Kasich can be persuaded to follow Bush and get out, if Cruz can be sidelined, if we can get a one-on-one Rubio-Trump race, Trump...

Republican hawks are aflutter today over China's installation of anti-aircraft missiles on Woody Island in the South China Sea. But do these Republicans, good free-traders all, realize their own indispensable role in converting an indigent China into the mighty and menacing power that seeks to push us out of Asia? Last year, China ran up the largest trade surplus in history, at our expense, $365 billion. We exported $116 billion in goods to China. China exported $482 billion worth of goods to us. Using Census Bureau statistics, Terry Jeffrey of CNSNEWS.com documents how Beijing has, over decades, looted and carted...

Republican hawks are aflutter today over China's installation of anti-aircraft missiles on Woody Island in the South China Sea. But do these Republicans, good free-traders all, realize their own indispensable role in converting an indigent China into the mighty and menacing power that seeks to push us out of Asia? Last year, China ran up the largest trade surplus in history, at our expense, $365 billion. We exported $116 billion in goods to China. China exported $482 billion worth of goods to us. Using Census Bureau statistics, Terry Jeffrey of CNSNEWS.com documents how Beijing has, over decades, looted and carted...

In an exclusive statement to Breitbart News, Pat Buchanan declared that Trump's rise represents a rejection of 25 years of Bush Republicanism - an ideology which Buchanan says has destroyed America's once-great manufacturing core, flooded the country with low-skilled workers, and drained the treasury with ill-advised foreign adventures in the Middle East. "In the GOP nomination race, the chickens of a quarter century of Bush Republicanism have come home to roost," Buchanan told Breitbart. "Trump's triumphs to date are due to his recognition of, and identification with, the Middle American revolt against Bush family ideology and policy, and what it...

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders stalked the snows of New Hampshire as the Abominable Snowmen, wreaking havoc on a craven establishment. The political earthquake that rumbled the Granite State left the ruling elites of both parties buried in the rubble. It's an appropriate time to reread the speech Pat Buchanan gave in 1999 when he left his lifelong home in the Republican Party to seek the Reform Party nomination for president. It is prophetic. His speech, titled "The New Patriotism," predicted the mood today. "Our vaunted two-party system is a snare and a delusion, a fraud upon the nation. Our...

If you believed America's longest war, in Afghanistan, was coming to an end, be advised: It is not. Departing U.S. commander Gen. John Campbell says there will need to be U.S. boots on the ground "for years to come." Making good on President Obama's commitment to remove all U.S. forces by next January, said Campbell, "would put the whole mission at risk." "Afghanistan has not achieved an enduring level of security and stability that justifies a reduction of our support. ... 2016 could be no better and possibly worse than 2015." Translation: A U.S. withdrawal would risk a Taliban takeover...

Donald Trump's performance in this year's Iowa caucuses was identical to Pat Buchanan's in 1996: second place, enjoying the support of approximately one in four Republican caucus-goers. Trump's campaign, like Buchanan's, is powered by the resentment and anxiety of the white working class. Trump is this year's celebrity mascot for the Buchanan boys. The Buchanan boys are economically and socially frustrated white men who wish to be economically supported by the federal government without enduring the stigma of welfare dependency. So they construct for themselves a story in which they have been victimized by elites and a political system based...

Whoever wins the nominations, the most successful campaigns of 2016 provide us with a clear picture of where the center of gravity is today in both parties and, hence, where America is going. Bernie Sanders, with his mammoth crowds and mass support among the young, represents, as did George McGovern in 1972, despite his defeat, the future of the Democratic Party. That Hillary Clinton has been tacking left tells you Sanders is winning the argument. Should she avoid indictment in the email scandal, and win the nomination and the election, Clinton would be a placeholder president. Yet, should Sanders win...

The conservative movement is starting to look a lot like Syria. Baited, taunted, mocked by Fox News, Donald Trump told Roger Ailes what he could do with his Iowa debate, and marched off to host a Thursday night rally for veterans at the same time in Des Moines. Message: I speak for the silent majority, Roger, not you, not Megyn Kelly, not Fox News. Diss me, and I will do fine without Fox. And so the civil-sectarian war on the right widens and deepens.

At the end of Obama's second term, it is estimated the national debt will be 20 trillion dollars. Most of this money has gone to frivolous spending by the Federal government, as well as been stolen by various government officials, using the excuse that astronomical sums of money are missing. In the computer age, it would be impossible to lose a trillion dollars, unless it was purposely lost to cover the theft of it. In looking at the numbers, we find that most of the 20 trillion debt is accountable in lost funds. Since 9-11, the US has spent 6...

Conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan delivered a one-two punch Friday against the National Review, which has used its latest issue to launch a full-scale effort to take out GOP front-runner Donald Trump. The magazine includes essays from conservative writers who argue that Trump would be a disastrous nominee for president and that he lacks authenticity as a true conservative. Appearing on "The Laura Ingraham Show" on Friday, Schlafly swatted away those complaints. "National Review is not the authentic conservative," said Schlafly, founder of the Eagle Forum. "You know (magazine founder) Bill Buckley was for giving...

Thursday, January 21, 2016 Trolling is the New Politics Posted by Daniel Greenfield Your classic troll was an amoral sociopath or played one on the internet. His only cause was his own amusement. He advocated horrible and contradictory causes because it amused him to infuriate people. If he could get an entire group howling for his blood, he won. If an outraged media reported on his antics, he was a prince among trolls. Chaos and absurdity were his only agendas. But eventually the trolls who did it for the "Lulz" gave way to the "Moralfags" sincere trolls who were sincerely...

Imagine giving this advice to a Republican presidential candidate: What if you stopped calling yourself a conservative and instead just promised to make America great again? What if you dropped all this leftover 19th-century piety about the free market and promised to fight the elites who were selling out American jobs? What if you just stopped talking about reforming Medicare and Social Security and instead said that the elites were failing to deliver better health care at a reasonable price? What if, instead of vainly talking about restoring the place of religion in society — something that appeals only to...