Free Republic

History is not standing still. It did not stop with the Clinton era, which is now finally over. At least history did not stop for America. America is moving along and at a rapid pace. For the Clintonistas and their millennial acolytes, however, I guess America did stop. In fact, it froze, locked into an eternal 1968, forever reliving all the demonstrations, the sit-ins and the sobbing, heaving hubbub of yesteryear. Yet America goes on riding the currents of history, and those currents are moving rapidly. As for the Clintons themselves, they have been stopped dead in their tracks. There...

A week-long trip through these Midwest battleground states talking with ordinary people convinced us the polls aren't telling the full story. There’s something afoot in Michigan and Wisconsin. If you believe the polls, former Vice President Joe Biden is set to win both these states in November—battlegrounds President Donald Trump narrowly carried in 2016, and can ill afford to lose this time around.Some pollsters say Biden is ahead by as much as 17 points in Wisconsin and a dozen points in Michigan, suggesting the Democrats have rebuilt their so-called “blue wall” in the industrial Midwest. If that’s true, the president’s...

Trump cared about what matters to the old Reagan Democrats. Reagan won them for the same reason Trump did, and the GOP could have turned the rust belt red long ago had they been less interested in internationalism and oil profits “As a dog returns to his vomit, so fools repeat their folly”—Proverbs 26:11 Ever quick to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the GOP has not even waited for the weekend to begin systematically dismantling the stunning victory their party achieved despite their best efforts. Trump has barely had time to shower and shave before his party began...

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, lives along so many fault lines of American politics that he is especially sensitive to Trump tremors, which he fears could become an earthquake by November. “I’m concerned,” he said. “Beating Donald Trump won’t be as easy as it might look.” Casey is a pro-life, pro-gun Roman Catholic in a state that Democratic consultant James Carville once described as “Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in between.” He is also an old-school Democrat and a new-school one: He's pro-union and wary of global trade; he defends Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare and same-sex...

Former Democratic presidential candidate Jim Webb won’t be voting for Hillary Clinton, but he hasn’t ruled out casting his ballot for Donald Trump. Webb, who briefly flirted with an independent bid before deciding against it, said on Friday morning that the Democratic frontrunner wasn't inspirational. "I would not vote for Hillary Clinton,” Webb said on MSBNC's "Morning Joe." When asked if he'd vote for Trump, Webb said he wasn't closed to the idea. “I'm not sure yet. I don't know who I'm going to vote for,” he said.

Why doesn't the establishment get behind Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) to stop Donald Trump? I've been asking this question for months. As I wrote back in December: The establishment can't stand Cruz because they believe he unfairly rips establishment Republicans for insufficient ideological purity. They think Cruz doesn't understand the necessary deals that must be cut in politics in order to "get things done"-they think he's more interested in posturing than in achieving practical policies to help Americans. They will have to put such concerns aside if they want to defeat Trump. It's clearer now than it was then that...

So if Donald Trump proved the political universe wrong and won the Republican presidential nomination, he would be creamed by Hillary Clinton, correct? A new survey of likely voters might at least raise momentary dyspepsia for Democrats since it suggests why it wouldn't be a cakewalk. The survey by Washington-based Mercury Analytics is a combination online questionnaire and "dial-test" of Trump's first big campaign ad among 916 self-proclaimed "likely voters" (this video shows the ad and the dial test results). It took place primarily Wednesday and Thursday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent. Nearly...

At an event in Norwood in August, real estate mogul and 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump embraced Maureen Maloney, the mother of Matthew Denise of Milford. In August 2011, Denise was killed on his motorcycle when he was hit and dragged by a pickup truck driven by a drunken man, here in the country illegally. Denise was dragged a quarter mile, authorities said. His death became a lightning rod on the subject of undocumented immigrants. “Will you close the borders?” an emotional Maloney asked Trump at the event via an arranged meeting. Trump replied, “We’ll get them closed, believe...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is in Raleigh this weekend organizing his campaign in the state, sees some parallels between the crowded GOP presidential primary and the NCAA basketball tournament. With the GOP primary becoming increasingly crowded, Cruz said it is useful to break down the field into brackets. Candidates must win their brackets in order to advance. “I think of the Republican primary very much like an NCAA tournament bracket,” Cruz said in an interview at the Raleigh Convention Center on Friday. The typical Republican primary, Cruz said, is composed of 35 percent of self-identified moderates, 15 percent libertarians,...

When Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas declared his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election last Monday, he became the first to do so officially. Here is a look at what he will need to do if he hopes to win. The coalition To win the Republican nomination, Cruz will have to bring together the party’s anti-establishment wing, which is made of separate but overlapping voter blocs, including Christian conservatives, libertarians and Tea Party voters angry with the leadership of both parties. His ultimate goal is to get into a one-on-one campaign against whoever emerges as the favorite of establishment Republicans....

"..................What discourages Democrats is that men’s attitudes shaped over generations — through debates over civil rights, anti-Communism, Vietnam, feminism, gun control and dislocations from lost manufacturing jobs and stagnant wages in a global economy — are not easily altered. “Democrats are for a bunch of freeloaders in this world as far as I’m concerned,” said Gari Day, 63, an Avis bus driver from suburban Detroit. “Republicans make you work for your money, and try to let you keep it.” Michael Bunce, 48, buying parts at a Lowe’s in Southfield, Mich., first ascribed his Republican bias to fiscal matters, but quickly...

Has anyone seen any signs that people in blue states may be turning away from the big government ideology that has controlled these states for so many decades? Any discussions with relatives, neighbors or friends who are Democrats?

In a typical Friday afternoon “news dump,” the Treasury Department announced it could not grant unions’ request for another special Obamacare break. This time, unions had lobbied the Administration to let union-run, multi-employer plans receive taxpayer-funded insurance subsidies on the new exchanges. These subsidies would be in addition to the tax break that multi-employer plans, like health plans offered by all employers, already receive. Union leaders wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in July asking for the Obamacare “fix,” stating that their progressive “vision has come back to haunt us”:

On Nov. 3, 1969, Richard Nixon, his presidency about to be broken by massive antiwar demonstrations, called on “the great silent majority” to stand by him for peace with honor in Vietnam. They did. Within days Nixon’s approval surged to 68 percent. The ferocious Republican partisan of the 1950s had won over millions of Democrats. Why? Because sons and brothers of those Democrats were doing much of the fighting in Vietnam. If Nixon was standing by them, they would stand by him. In 1972 Nixon would win 49 states. Ronald Reagan, backed by his “Reagan Democrats,” would win 44- and...

On Nov. 3, 1969, Richard Nixon, his presidency about to be broken by massive antiwar demonstrations, called on "the great silent majority" to stand by him for peace with honor in Vietnam. They did. Within days Nixon's approval surged to 68 percent. The ferocious Republican partisan of the 1950s had won over millions of Democrats. Why? Because sons and brothers of those Democrats were doing much of the fighting in Vietnam. If Nixon was standing by them, they would stand by him. In 1972 Nixon would win 49 states. Ronald Reagan, backed by his "Reagan Democrats," would win 44- and...

As Byron York has written, Mitt Romney would have lost the election even if he had won 70% of the Hispanic vote. And as Breitbart News thoroughly documented, Romney would have won the election had 389,821 more working class voters in four states turned out to vote. Palin urged Americans to read the Breitbart News article that detailed how the Senate's amnesty bill betrayed working class Americans of all ethnicities. By noting that the immigration bill devastates working class Americans regardless of race, Palin is emphasizing that the best way for Republicans to win over minorities and expand the party's tent is...

For over seventy years, white blue-collar Catholics who have lived and worked in America’s once great industrial states were the voting bloc that provided the margins of victory for Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and the two Bushes. The 2012 election results, however, indicate these Catholics no longer have that kind of clout at the ballot box.Why? First of all, they are an aging group whose numbers are declining every year. About 650 Catholic World War II and Korean War veterans die every day. That translates into 950,000 in the last four years. Add spouses and the number...

Liberal pundits are already fanning out in force to attack and discredit Paul Ryan. Michael Tomasky, who recently wrote a Newsweek cover story calling Mitt Romney a “wimp,” has now decided that Romney’s bold move is “a terrible choice” because Ryan has proven himself to be an extremist on budget issues. No doubt there are many Democrats rubbing their hands in glee in contemplation of reviving some version of the ad that featured an actor playing Paul Ryan pushing a grandmother in a wheelchair off a cliff. But the smarter ones are worried. First, if Ryan is an extremist and...

Scott Walker beat the spread. Sometime politics is like betting on football. It's not just about whether your team wins. It's about whether you beat the spread. The rough calculation going into Tuesday's recall election in Wisconsin was that if Governor Scott Walker won by less than five percentage points, the race would not have any clear national-level implications, but if he won by five points or more, it would. The final result, 53.2% to 46.3%, is a margin of 6.9 percentage points. He beat the spread... --snip-- But we are finally reaching the Thatcher Line: the point at which...

DETROIT, Feb. 28 (UPI) -- Mitt Romney was a double winner Tuesday, capturing the Michigan and Arizona Republican presidential primaries, results showed. The Detroit Free Press declared Romney the victor over his GOP rivals in Michigan. With about 74 percent of the precincts counted, Romney had 317,258 votes (41 percent) to Rick Santorum's 286,530 (37 percent), results posted by the Free Press showed. Ron Paul was third with 88,521 votes (12 percent) and Newt Gingrich followed with 50,726 votes (7 percent). Another 2 percent voted "uncommitted" and a handful of votes went to several other Republicans who are no longer...