Free Republic

JERUSALEM –Is President Obama attempting to unseat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and replace him with a leftist leader who largely toes the line set by the president for the Middle East?There are indications the so-called social protests rocking Israel were engineered for that very purpose. According to an investigative report in Israel's Maariv's newspaper, the country's protests were engineered by a group of media strategists directed by prominent Democratic strategist Stanley Greenberg, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, John Kerry and others.Greenberg reportedly is working with Israeli strategists who were behind left-wing leader Ehud Barak's successful race for prime...

FULL TITLE: Dem Strategist: ‘I Cannot Imagine the Horror That Could’ve Occurred’ if Churchgoers Were Armed During Charleston Massacre Longtime Democratic strategist Bob Shrum said on MSNBC Friday that he “cannot imagine the horror that could’ve unfolded” if churchgoers were armed during the recent massacre in Charleston, South Carolina. ((snip)) “I cannot imagine the horror that could’ve occurred if people were sitting around with concealed weapons, this thing started and you had a full-scale gunfight,” Shrum said Friday. “You might not even have three survivors.”

Mitt made multiple mistakes that will lead to his defeat on Tuesday. Some of them date all the way back to 2008.The campaign has come down to a race between Mitt’s media and Mitt’s mistakes—and the mistakes are winning. We have now crossed the billion dollar mark in ad purchases. In Ohio alone, the two sides, Super PACs and all, are spending $30 million in the closing week—and in the battleground states overall, Romney forces are outspending Obama by $30 million. But the contest is not as unbalanced as the numbers. The Obama money goes further because more of the...

Concerning Obama’s Hampton University speech, just one observation. I don’t care so much about the down-home accent and style. Lots of people slip into different skins, for different purposes. It isn’t necessarily hypocritical or wrong. (That said, I’m not eager to hear Hillary Clinton’s “black voice” again. Will we be treated to it when she runs in 2016?)What is damnable about Obama’s Hampton speech is this: It perpetrates a racial lie. It furthers racial grievance and alienation. It hardens division in our society. It increases bitterness and mistrust.The charge that President Bush and Republicans generally were indifferent to black...

The employers of an American man killed while working in Yemen said in a statement Monday that he “highly respected” Islam, after a group tied to al-Qaida claimed it had executed him because of his “Christian proselytizing.” Joel Shrum, a teacher at the International Training Development Center, was shot dead Sunday in the city of Taiz where he worked. A group linked to al-Qaida, Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law), claimed responsibility. "This operation comes as a response to the campaign of Christian proselytizing that the West has launched against Muslims," an unidentified person said in a text message to...

Friendship has its claims; so does fairness. And in the wake of the bankruptcy of brokerage firm MF Global, the media's portrayal of Jon Corzine, MF's ex-CEO and a former Democratic senator and governor in New Jersey, strikes me as profoundly unfair — and not just because he's a friend.

Be kind to Bob Shrum. Perhaps the 68-year old is suffering from the not-so-early-onset of some dread memory-loss syndrome. How else to explain his suggestion on Al Sharpton's MSNBC show this evening that the National Restaurant Association's settlement for a relatively modest sum, in today's litigious world, proves that Herman Cain must have done something wrong? Does the failed presidential campaign consultant's support of Bill Clinton, despite his much larger, $850,000 settlement with Paula Jones while "adamantly denying" her claims, fire any synapses in Shrum's cerebrum? View the video here.

Bob Shrum, known for his incredible ability to fail even across the Atlantic Ocean and his propensity for writing concession speeches, is again the Great Prognosticator. Here's his latest divorced from reality column at TheWeek.com: Democrats will hold the House and SenateObviously, Shrum's been abusing his medical marijuana prescription a little more than usual. I'll give him credit that he starts the piece out with this: Maybe I’m wrong. After being an adviser for eight failed campaigns (McGovern to Kerry), he uses the word "maybe"? In fact, maybe I’m really, really wrong, which is the reaction I hear when I...

The GOP must decide whether to follow the Tea Party over a cliff. Dems must decide whether to distance themselves from Obama. And the president must prove once again that he can tip events in his favor. Republicans, Democrats, and the White House have all reached separate decision points for 2010—and possibly for 2012, as well. Republicans had assumed they were harnessing the energy of the Tea Party movement. Instead, with the ABC/Washington Post poll now registering majority disapproval of the Tea Party, Republicans find themselves in an accelerating march of folly. As a result, they have diminished their moment...

The Republicans were appalled, outraged, aghast—and running out of means to describe their horror, indignation, and righteous anger. It seems the president, after a year of trying to induce the Party of No to say “yes” to something, finally called for an up or down vote on health care. Majority rule in a democracy—oh the shame of it! Although, come to think of it, the 2000 election showed the GOP is only too happy to dispose of the concept when politically convenient. The Republican opposition to reconciliation—passing the health bill without facing a filibuster—is transparently cynical for a party that...

Sarah Palin sets the tone for a narrow, spiteful corner of American politics. That corner was occupied by the Tea Party convention last week in Nashville, where Palin served up a strong, carefully-brewed, neo-con-written speech featuring a blend of slurs steeped in personal animus toward Barack Obama. There were lies of a general nature, including the palm-reading Palin’s suggestion that the President is so out of his depth, so stupid—at least that’s what the cheering crowd heard—that he can’t function without a teleprompter. And the contradictory, but equally bogus, claim that Obama is a feeble egghead -- appealing to an...

The left wing “news” network that couldn’t bother itself to cover the Christmas Day jihadi attack on America, interrupted its time honored weekend prison documentary marathon to cover Sarah Palin’s speech at the National Tea Party convention in Nashville. So compelling is Palin that MSNBC staffers braved a colossal global warming storm to get to the studio to carry her speech and provide MSNBC’s emblematic hallucinatory commentary. Forced to make do with whatever dregs could be hauled in from the blizzard, the Palin denigration was chaperoned by someone named Ed Schultz. First to offer his freakish assessment was perennial failure...

Whenever you hear a party say our candidates will do fine because midterm elections are just a series of local contests, you know there’s trouble. And we’ve been hearing that from too many Democrats. All politics now is national. The Republican strategy for 2010 has been both conscious and clear for months. The GOP wants Obama to fail and the economy to fail. At every turn they are determined to obstruct. This reached the point a week ago where seven Republicans in the Senate, including John McCain, voted against a bill they had cosponsored -- simply because Obama had endorsed...

Here is video of Democratic strategist Bob Shrum praising Obama's "achievements." (Video)Shrum said that "we're going to look back on this year as the historic first year of a Presidency that changes the direction of the country" and said the passing of the "economic stimulus package" and "health care bill" will be "historic change" and is an "amazing set of achievements." Shrum said that Obama has "restored America's respect in the world."

Later this fall, President Obama will sign into law a landmark health-reform bill. Then the hard part begins. Barack Obama was advised early in his presidency to focus on just one thing at a time and postpone health care for another year. The advice was pressed on him not just from outside observers but from trusted aides inside the White House. He rejected it—and for that reason, among others, the health reform that's been delayed for a century, and which he will sign into law this fall, will carry his indelible stamp. Afterward, though, there will be no period of...

Yet another liberal whiner has taken time out from his busy schedule destroying the Constitution and wrecking America to condescend about the recent tea party protests. This time it's Democratic strategist Robert Shrum who for reasons only he knows, finds it necessary to beat up the Americans who protested President Obama's massive expansion of federal spending. Shrum, of course, is the cursed adviser who has helped Democrats lose the White House eight times, including John Kerry's run in 2004. Conservatives are the real kooks Shrum argues in The Week, echoing the theme of the dubious DHS report last week that...

Having rendered themselves irrelevant on every major issue, Republicans consoled themselves last week with a delusional round robin. First, the Drudge Report, linking to a Pew Poll, featured a headline denying what most of us observe in the real world: “President Polarize: Poll Shows Historic Divide…Partisan Gap in Obama Job Approval Widest in Modern Era.” Perhaps demonstrating that Drudge, not Limbaugh, is the maestro of the GOP chorus, the point was quickly picked up by Karl Rove on the house network, Fox News. Then the Washington Post’s Michael Gerson, one of the few Bush aides to emerge from that administration...

Having rendered themselves irrelevant on every major issue, Republicans consoled themselves last week with a delusional round robin. First, the Drudge Report, linking to a Pew Poll, featured a headline denying what most of us observe in the real world: “President Polarize: Poll Shows Historic Divide…Partisan Gap in Obama Job Approval Widest in Modern Era.” Perhaps demonstrating that Drudge, not Limbaugh, is the maestro of the GOP chorus, the point was quickly picked up by Karl Rove on the house network, Fox News. Then the Washington Post’s Michael Gerson, one of the few Bush aides to emerge from that administration...

Don’t go wobbly, Dems Two weeks to go—time enough for one last case of Democratic wobbles and one last resort fueled by Republican desperation. Democrats, scarred by the stolen election of 2000 and the near miss of 2004, privately worry, wring their hands and, traveling cyberspace’s vast expanse, trip over a discouraging word, poll, or prediction. Generally, they needn’t look farther than the Drudge Report, which shamelessly selects information—and disinformation—in order to stereotype Barack Obama and denigrate his prospects. With genuine anguish, one Democrat said to me Sunday, “Did you see Drudge has Obama only 2.7 percent ahead?” It wasn’t...

News & Opinion Monday, September 8, 2008 ROBERT SHRUM: The Republicans’ Lipstick Populism It was appropriate that the Republicans convened in the city named for Saint Paul. For on the road to the convention, John McCain had a conversion experience worthy of the saint, transforming his lobbyist-run, insider campaign into a full-throated appeal to cultural populism. The combination of purple anti-Washington rhetoric and blue-collar melodrama will henceforth be known as “Palinesque.” The question now is whether this hit show has enough gas to run until November. -snip- Will Americans take seriously a pledge to stand for “the people, not the...