Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Democrats and the media have used the term so much that it's almost an article of faith. But the so-called "Republican attack machine" waiting with piles of unregulated cash to chew up Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is anything but. Obama cited the threat of unregulated attack groups — called "527s" because they're authorized to raise unlimited cash under that section of the Internal Revenue Service code — to justify dropping his pledge to take public financing — along with its spending limits — for the general election campaign. Yet there's no 2008 equivalent to the 2004 Swift...

John McCain has cursed and bullied fellow Senate Republicans on a host of issues over the years. Yet McCain's colleagues are setting aside any hard feelings to embrace his White House bid -- for their own good. In doing so, many are also distancing themselves from Republican President George W. Bush, widely derided for the unpopular Iraq war, ailing economy and soaring gas prices. "We are going from rallying around one of the most disliked guys in the world, to a guy who is very well liked in America, but not so popular in the Senate," a Senate Republican leadership...

In a further sign that Republican hopes are fading badly, the head of the Senate GOP's campaign committee has set a new goal for the party this Fall: Not to lose too many Senate seats. NRSC chair John Ensign has moved the goal posts, according to the Savannah Morning News, saying that the GOP will have succeeded if they don't lose more than eight seats. Ensign pointed out that if the Dems win nine seats they'll get to the filibuster-proof magic number of 60 -- at which point, Ensign warned, "they will be able to do pretty much whatever they...

The people who created this country built a moral structure around money. The Puritan legacy inhibited luxury and self-indulgence. Benjamin Franklin spread a practical gospel that emphasized hard work, temperance and frugality. Millions of parents, preachers, newspaper editors and teachers expounded the message. The result was quite remarkable. The United States has been an affluent nation since its founding. But the country was, by and large, not corrupted by wealth. For centuries, it remained industrious, ambitious and frugal. Over the past 30 years, much of that has been shredded. The social norms and institutions that encouraged frugality and spending what...

For four months John McCain had a clear field while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were at each other's throats. Given the opportunity, the Arizona Senator failed to define the debate in favorable terms, spending much of the valuable primary months defending himself on charges that his campaign staff was top heavy with lobbyists. Conversely, McCain has so far eluded the anti-Republican tidal wave that threatens to sweep away the party's candidates at every level, from county councils to the U.S. Senate. Amid the early wreckage -- GOP partisan identification in the tank, three defeats in rock-solid GOP House districts,...

Why the Conservative Crisis? To me, Conservatism is mostly the child of Wisdom and Common Sense. But what do we do when common sense is no longer common and wisdom is no longer held in esteem? That is the current state of Conservatism in America. Slandered and slapped, belittled and maligned. Many conservative Americans are shifting nervously in their seats, unsure of what they were once sure of. The power of a constant drone of the media, academia, and even popular culture can make even the most headstrong believers hesitate. When the perception is built that almost nobody believes as...

As congressional Republicans contemplate the prospect of an electoral disaster this November, much is being written about the supposed soul-searching in the Republican Party. A more accurate description of our state is paralysis and denial. Many Republicans are waiting for a consultant or party elder to come down from the mountain and, in Moses-like fashion, deliver an agenda and talking points on stone tablets. But the burning bush, so to speak, is delivering a blindingly simple message: Behave like Republicans. Unfortunately, too many in our party are not yet ready to return to the path of limited government. Instead, we...

I've never been a fan of John McCain. Not only is he not a conservative, he may have done more damage to the conservative movement than any other Republican over the last few years. Look back at the Gang-of-14, global warming, McCain-Feingold, coddling terrorists at Gitmo, illegal immigration -- on and on and on, and you'll remember John McCain working feverishly with liberals to defeat conservatives. For that reason, John McCain was not someone I backed for the Presidency. My order of preference for President was Duncan Hunter (whom I consulted for), Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and then,...

Wednesday, May 14, 2008 "You're Going to Lose If You Keep This Up"   [Kathryn Jean Lopez] As Sean Hannity issued the above warning to congressional Republicans today on his show, the House — including enough Republicans (100) to amass a veto-proof majority — passed the pork-laden farm bill. We editorialized on the bill: The program is nothing more than a massive income transfer from American taxpayers to a small handful of very large producers who grow just a few crops; the program can’t be serving the purposes its defenders claim it does — ensuring a stable food supply and...

. . . Democrats will control Congress. If they also control the White House, we will have a series of legislative packages that will make the Great Society look like a libertarian government. . . . The country is in trouble. We have forgotten our founding principles, and we move inexorably toward a European style socialist state, with the only winners being an enormous bureaucracy. This will accelerate the economic decline. The argument is to give the Democrats their head, and pick up the pieces after the inevitable crash. I think that overlooks the resilience of tax and tax, spend...

Soul searching Republicans are turning to an unlikely savior, one-time party heretic and now presumptive White House nominee John McCain, as they try to stave off an electoral disaster. Stung by the Democratic seizure of three staunch conservative seats in Congress, Republican lawmakers fear a shellacking in November's general election, after losing control of both chambers of Congress in 2006. The rise of McCain as their champion is not without irony, since the 71-year-old Arizona senator has quarreled with his own party for years on issues as diverse as immigration, campaign finance reform and global warming. But it is precisely...

All Republican leaders must resign Written by Viguerie on Wed May 14 11:48:26 -0400 2008 Republican leaders in the White House, the Congress, and the Republican National Committee and its affiliates, along with most Republican leaders at the state level, have failed – or outright betrayed – the conservative voters who put them in their positions.The result is that the party’s “brand” has become a negative, to an extent greater than in the Watergate era, perhaps worse than in the days of Herbert Hoover. The number of new Republican voters is flat while Democratic voter registration is skyrocketing.Contributions to GOP...

Special election races for Congress have arguable value as bellwethers for upcoming general elections. Mostly these races get decided on local issues rather than national themes, as in Louisiana, where the Republicans ran a lousy candidate, considered the only person who could have lost the seat. They do demonstrate the strength of national party efforts, though, and when one party loses three special elections in districts previously thought safe, that sends a message — and rightly has Republicans worried about their chances in November: A Democrat won the race for a GOP-held congressional seat in northern Mississippi yesterday, leaving the...

RUSH: I've been waiting for this, and I am prepared for this. I just got an e-mail, not a subscriber. This is in the general e-mail account at ElRushbo@eibnet.com. It's from a woman called Sandy Bose. I guess that's how you pronounce it. BREAK TRANSCRIPT "Dear Rush: Since Operation Chaos, the GOP has lost three congressional seats. I'm a conservative. I have nothing. I have no candidate for president. I have no national party unit, and no Rush, who is consumed with Operation Chaos. Enough is enough. Sandy Bose." I've been waiting for this. I've been waiting for somebody to...

In a major blow to national Republicans, a Mississippi congressional seat that once voted for President Bush by a twenty-five point margin elected a Democrat on Tuesday. Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers beat out Republican candidate Greg Davis, the mayor of Southaven, by a 54%-46% margin, a spread that several Republican strategists on Capitol Hill characterized as a startling wake-up call for a party in dire straits. Voters cast ballots for the fourth time in three months for the seat, vacated when Republican Roger Wicker was appointed to fill the remainder of Senator Trent Lott's term. After winning the...

Lot's of very glum faces among House GOP members this morning as they emerged from their weekly closed-door session. The political situation is not good, and they aren't even trying to deny it. Rep. Tom Davis stomped on the concrete floor of the Capitol basement when asked by reporters about Republican fortunes at the moment. "This is the floor," he said, by way of explanation. "We're below the floor." Inside the meeting, Davis had just presented his colleagues with what he said was a 20-page memo outlining his prescription for a way out of this mess. He did not offer...

It goes without saying that the GOP is taking a dreadful thrashing right now. Conservatives are unmotivated, Democrats are obliterating Republicans in the fundraising arena, and the GOP's poll numbers have dropped off a cliff. George Bush, the face of the Republican Party, has an approval rating of 30% and according to Rasmussen Reports, one of the best polling agencies in the business, 41.4% of Americans consider themselves to be Democrats while only 31.4% say they are Republicans. Worse yet, voters trust the Democrats more than Republicans on the economy, government ethics, the war in Iraq, health care, Social Security,...

McCain has recently been making efforts to reach out to all sorts of people not traditionally associated with the GOP. He appeared on the View, the Daily Show, before black civil rights activists in Alabama, etc. When is he going to make a serious effort to reach out to conservatives? How about promising to appoint strict constructionist judges? How about re-assurances on gun ownership rights? What about reducing the out-of-control spending of this administation? Does he take conservative support for granted? Does he even want them? Maybe he sees that Obama and his kooky spiritual advisor have totally freaked most...

While Democrats duel, the unofficial Republican nominee considers a vice president. John McCain should start by asking what he needs. The admiral’s son fits two legs of his own party’s three-legged stool: foreign policy (zinging terrorism) and economic (scoring spending). Alas, he is out to sea with social and cultural conservatives, the one group without which national Republicans once routinely lost, and will surely lose again. According to a new Pew Research Forum poll, 44 percent of the electorate terms itself “born-again.” Politically, these Christian, mostly Protestant, evangelicals are the Republican Party’s largest block: 35 percent of George W. Bush’s...