Free Republic

There’s a chance that what ails the GOP is terminal, but to give ourselves a chance at recovery, we’ve got to move—physically. The Republican Party is sick, so sick it can’t breathe, and its lack of oxygen has given it severe muscle fatigue. There’s a chance that what ails the GOP is terminal, but to give ourselves a chance at recovery, we’ve got to move—physically.The party’s national committees, think-tank brains, campaign strategists, and government functionaries all live in the fever swamps of Washington that firmly anchor the snotty southern end of the Acela Corridor. The GOP’s elected and unelected leaders...

Discussions of the current political situation and comparisons between the 2008 election and earlier contests frequently overlook a crucial fact. As a result of changes in American society, today's electorate is very different from the electorate of twenty, thirty, or forty years ago. Three long-term trends have been especially significant in this regard: increasing racial diversity, declining rates of marriage, and changes in religious beliefs. As a result of these trends, today's voters are less likely to be white, less likely to be married, and less likely to consider themselves Christians than voters of just a few decades ago. The...

Watching a steady stream of Democrats like Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, and Chuck Schumer each take their turn delightedly pummeling President Bush over the war in Iraq today, I couldn’t help but think of fellow conservatives who are starting to give aid and comfort to these Democrat Party loyal oppositionists. According to Byron York of the National Review, the Republican Party base has simply decided to throw Mr. Bush under the wheels of the bus. Since so many of us disagree with him on things like illegal immigration and Scooter Libby, York opines that a whole bunch of Republican loyalists...

Warning Signs Frank Luntz says Republicans could be in danger in 2006. by Fred Barnes 10/26/2005 12:00:00 AM IF YOU'RE A REPUBLICAN and already worried about your party's prospects in 2006, pollster Frank Luntz, a Republican himself, has a message for you: It's worse than you think. Luntz, who worked with Republicans in 1994 to draft the Contract With America and win a realigning election, said political conditions are as bad or worse now--only this time for Republicans, not Democrats. Republicans won 52 House seats in 1994 and have held the House since then. In 2006, he said, Republican control...

A prominent Democratic Party pollster Thursday said the reason members of his party have lost major elections in recent years is because they have not "run with conviction." Stanley Greenberg, who currently heads his own research firm, previously conducted polling and offered advice to then-President Bill Clinton, then-Vice President Al Gore, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and South African President Nelson Mandela. Greenberg conceded that the biggest current weakness among Democratic candidates is that they "do not know what they stand for, they don't know their policy direction, they don't know their underlying values, they don't know who they fight...