Free Republic

think I know how a Christian convert feels in Saudi Arabia. When I worked for the House Republican leadership during the 2000 presidential primary, I voted for John McCain. I was then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s spokesman at the time, and while he had his issues with McCain’s chief rival, George W. Bush, it was clear that Bush was his choice. Bush also had the backing of the rest of the House Republican leadership. On the day of the 2000 New Hampshire primary, we had a leadership meeting in the speaker’s office. Rumors were rife that Bush was getting his derrière...

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger created shock and awe in the Republican Party when he warned years ago that the GOP was in danger of "dying at the box office" by failing to make the sale to a wide swath of voters. And with the presidential election looming, the Republican governor of the nation's most populous state - a decidedly blue state - has now found a chorus of agreement. The Republican "brand" - thanks to an unpopular president, a war, gas prices, foreclosures and deficit - has become such damaged goods that GOP Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia groused last...

In the wake of the state Supreme Court's recent legalization of gay marriage, the Republican governor said Tuesday in San Francisco he wants gay couples to flock to California for wedded bliss. "You know, I'm wishing everyone good luck with their marriages and I hope that California's economy is booming because everyone is going to come here and get married," said Schwarzenegger, prompting laughs and applause. The governor appeared at an Environmental Defense Fund event ... The governor reiterated that he opposes an initiative backed by conservatives to ban gay marriage in the state constitution.

Oh, dear Lord. The hapless Republican establishment has gone and made a public embarrassment of itself again. Can your hearts take much more of this? Mine can’t: Hoping to get things moving in a positive direction, House Republicans will on Wednesday begin rolling out their own policy agenda, trying to showcase their differences with Democrats on issues such as health care, the economy, energy and national security. In a memo to be sent to Republican members today, the leadership hints at a new slogan building on the change message that has already been shown to have political resonance with a...

A former House GOP leader is calling this year's political atmosphere "the worst since Watergate and is far more toxic than the fall of 2006," citing "deep seeded (sic) antipathy toward the president." Rep. Tom Davis wrote a 20-page treatise (see earlier note) assessing the state of the Republican Party as we head into the summer and presented it to House GOP rank and file this morning. Davis, who is retiring, is rumored to be interested in finishing his term as the head of the GOP House campaign arm.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sensing trouble in the fall, the House GOP leadership on Wednesday addressed recent losses in special Congressional elections by unleashing a new agenda aimed at changing that party's image. House Republican leaders pushed the retooled message, which they call "Change You Deserve." They rolled out the first version Wednesday, which focuses on working mothers and military families. "This agenda is a reflection of House Republicans' commitment to providing American families with the change they deserve: common-sense solutions to the challenges they face in their daily lives," according to the agenda provided to CNN. "Today's families face challenges...

The Republicans in Congress continue to baffle me. They are spending all of their time trying to use the marketing tool of “re-branding” the party, while at the same time they refuse to vote against terrible public policy. The most recent example is the disastrous farm bill that the Senate passed overwhelmingly. The House has already passed the bill, and although President Bush will veto it, Congress will likely override the veto. As long as the Republicans in Congress pay lip service to conservatism while voting like liberals, they deserve to lose in November. Those leading the Republicans down the...

In a delicious piece of irony, many dispirited Republicans, devastated by Tuesday’s special election loss in Mississippi, now believe their savior to be John McCain — a not-so-constant conservative many of them also have long intensely disliked. The logic: McCain, the vaunted maverick, can move the party away from President Bush and reinvent a Republican brand that, at the moment, is in tatters. “The public is prepared to believe that McCain is a different kind of Republican,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Donatelli, McCain’s point man at the committee. “This is not some political idea that was cooked up.”...

John McCain is America's favorite kind of candidate. With his record of extraordinary patriotism and his distinctive Senate tenure, McCain is a nominee whom voters from both parties — and independents, too — could easily support. But he has been dealt a terrible hand: a tanking economy, an unpopular war, a Republican incumbent whose approval ratings are at their all-time low and a gloomy national mood, with 82 percent of Americans saying in a Washington Post-ABC News poll last week that the country is on the wrong track. Political scientists add all that up and predict that the Democrats are...

[ Ray Haynes is a Republican from California. He served in the California Legislature from 1992-2006 as a Senator and Assemblyman. ] Now that I am in the private sector, I have learned an important lesson. Last month, I was in Costa Rica on behalf of a company that I have been doing some work for. We found that one of our distributors had been taking our product and diluting it. It still worked, just not as well, and our customers were blaming us. To protect the brand, and the quality of our product, we got rid of the distributor....

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger created shock and awe in the Republican Party when he warned years ago that the GOP was in danger of "dying at the box office" by failing to make the sale to a wide swath of voters. And with the presidential election looming, the Republican governor of the nation's most populous state - a decidedly blue state - has now found a chorus of agreement. The Republican "brand" - thanks to an unpopular president, a war, gas prices, foreclosures and deficit - has become such damaged goods that GOP Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia groused last...

I agree with our esteemed Governor and many other critics both right and left that the GOP is a rudderless disaster and out of touch with the general voting public (especially in CA), or at least incapable of expressing themselves in a way that is both heard and understood by the great unwashed masses. But while he gives a lot of examples of where we are "wrong", he has no examples whatsoever of where we are right. No examples whatsoever of how we can successfully distinguish ourselves from the Dems and become a winning party...

WASHINGTON — Senator John Kerry tried reintroducing himself last week with a new speech against the Iraq war, but he promptly ran into an old problem. To Democrats, it was a fresh, tough speech that put him in good position to challenge President Bush in this week's debate. To Republicans, it was a familiar opportunity. They gleefully labeled it Mr. Kerry's ninth different position on Iraq and put up a commercial showing him windsurfing to the strains of the "Blue Danube" waltz while a narrator dismissed his Iraq policies as going "whichever way the wind blows." By sticking to their...