Free Republic

Sen. John McCain cannot win in November without the Catholic vote, which is around 25 percent of the electorate. How is he going to get it? The worst thing he could assume is that it is going to fall into his lap because Catholics will have nowhere else to go. Some people with nowhere to go simply stay home. Or they may go elsewhere, as it appears they have already been doing. The Wall Street Journal reports that in "a recent survey of 19 states that have held presidential primaries this year, 63% of Catholics identified themselves as Democrats." That's...

"After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in coming days," writes The New York Times. If true, it marks either the beginning of the end of the Giuliani campaign -- or the beginning of the end of the Party of Ronald Reagan. For Reagan's party was a pro-life party. Life defined the man. Life defined the movement he led. It was Reagan who insisted that his speechwriters include mention of the life issue in every State of...

The liberal media are having a field day trying to portray the Republican Party and conservatives in disarray. The crescendo has reached a new peak this week with Time magazine's cover picture of Ronald Reagan with a tear on his cheek. But Time's story, "How the Right Went Wrong," is a superficial and simpleminded caricature of what is going on with Republicans. First of all, as anyone with a passing awareness of political history knows, Reagan himself had anything but a cakewalk in reaching the leadership of the party and the presidency. His landslide victory in 1984 was the culmination...

Time magazine has chosen a weeping (and Photoshopped) Ronald Reagan for its first redesigned cover in 15 years. The theme: "How the Right Went Wrong." This is not the first time Time has run an altered photo of Reagan on its cover. The August 16, 1993 issue featured Reagan turned upside down, and the blaring headline: "Overturning the Reagan Era." The implicit message in the wake of the 1992 defeat and the passage of the Clinton tax increase: the Age of Reagan was over. Higher marginal tax rates and HillaryCare were here to stay. The American people had something else...

A central factor in how Ronald Reagan won the Cold War, and did so with greater support along the way than the current president, was his ability to find means to undermine the enemy without losing thousands of American lives. An intriguing example, one that has eluded history, is the Farewell Dossier. This top-secret effort was part of the devastating strategy of economic warfare pursued by Reagan and a handful of intimate advisers—a strategy so sensitive that those involved publicly denied that a campaign was underway. A central architect of that effort, National Security Adviser Bill Clark, was confronted on...

A Zogby International survey reveals many Americans long for leadership qualities similar to the kind shown by former U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Survey respondents were offered thumbnail descriptions of the presidential qualities, including the names of five of the greatest American presidents: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan. Respondents nationwide said Reagan’s qualities are most sought after, with FDR a very close second, according to Zogby. Twenty–eight percent said they would prefer someone like Reagan, who displayed "far-sighted vision” and who "persevered despite harsh criticism from enemies and was...

PRIME Minister John Howard has named Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II as the "three towering figures" of the late 20th century. He said their moral clarity "punctured the nonsense" of left-wing apologists for communist dictatorships. In a blistering attack on the left's role in global history, to mark the 50th anniversary of the conservative journal Quadrant, the Prime Minister last night lauded those who resisted the "stultifying orthodoxies and dangerous utopias" of Western intelligentsia. And he linked the great historical battle of ideas between communism and capitalist democracies to the modern-day struggle with Islamist terrorism, arguing...

For Péter Zwack, the prominent Hungarian businessman and descendant of a famous liquor-producer family, there is no doubt that Ronald Reagan and his foreign policy changed his whole life. “If Reagan had not been in the White House, the Iron Curtain would never have fallen—and I never would have come back to Hungary and never would have served as the first ambassador of the democratic Hungary to Washington,” said Zwack, 79, during the September 22 unveiling ceremony of Ronald Reagan's bust in Budapest City Park. Zwack's family fled to America in 1948 after the Communist Party came to power in...

Ronald Reagan's vision that the United States would one day need a missile defense system was again validated last week when North Korea assembled and fueled a missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to American cities. On March 23, 1983, President Reagan announced from the Oval Office, "I've reached a decision which offers a new hope for our children in the 21st century." He explained his vision -- and his defense budget's inclusion -- of the genesis of this nation's missile defense effort. Liberals, and most of the media, derided the president's project as "Star Wars." Reagan's visionary effort,...

(AP) SIMI VALLEY, Calif. Two years after Ronald Reagan's death, former first lady Nancy Reagan visited the hilltop gravesite of the nation's 40th president and gently tapped his tombstone. Mrs. Reagan and daughter Patti Davis made a private, five-minute visit to the gravesite Monday at the Reagan Presidential Library. Mrs. Reagan placed a bouquet of white roses at the granite memorial, paused and then gently placed her hand on the headstone. "It was a poignant moment. You could feel the loss and feel the love," said library Director Duke Blackwood, who escorted the former first lady. Library visitors were kept...

Americans believe George W. Bush is the worst president since 1945, while Ronald Reagan was the best and Bill Clinton made both lists in a national Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday. Thirty-four percent of those surveyed ranked Bush at the bottom, 17 percent said Richard Nixon was the worst and 16 percent picked Bill Clinton. The poll found 56 percent of Democrats, 35 percent of independent voters and 7 percent of Republicans thought Bush was the worst. "Democrats just plain don't like President Bush," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "His father, the 41st president, was...

“We’re the party that wants to see an America in which people can still get rich.” —Ronald Reagan “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” —Honore de Balzac The two quotes you’ve just read do a great job of representing how most liberals and conservatives view the rich. Conservatives believe that America is a land of opportunity, a place where a person can go from rags to riches if he’s clever and willing to work hard. On the other hand, liberals believe that in and of itself, wealth is evidence of wrongdoing. Either the rich are, “winners of life’s...

“Political leaders here believe that heavy, last-minute campaigning by President Ford has cut substantially into Ronald Reagan’s early lead in Texas, turning tomorrow’s Presidential primary into a cliff hanger that they said was too close to call.” —The New York Times, April 30, 1976 In the annals of Ronald Reagan’s long and sometimes tortuous road to the White House, there were few days quite as memorable as the day (May 1, 1976)—now some 30 years ago—that Reagan unexpectedly swept all 100 delegates in the Texas. Republican presidential primary in his 1976 nomination contest with President Gerald Ford. Against all conventional...

WASHINGTON -- It was 25 years ago today that John Hinckley tried to kill President Reagan. He fired the shots that struck President Ronald Reagan and three others outside a Washington D.C. hotel. The shooting came just 70 days into the Reagan presidency. It nearly killed him and permanently disabled White House Press Secretary James Brady. The shooting was said to be an attempt by Hinckley to impress actress Jodie Foster. At his trial a year later, Hinckley was found innocent by reason of insanity. He is still in a Washington mental hospital, continuing his efforts to be allowed to...

A portrait of former British Prime Minister Lady Margaret Thatcher was unveiled yesterday by former first lady Nancy Reagan at the Reagan Presidential Library. Described by the Ventura Country Star as showing Mrs. Thatcher - the fiercely determined woman the Soviets dubbed "The Iron Lady" - wearing a royal blue suit and seated with her hands folded in her lap. The portrait is the work of artist Richard Stone, the only artist whose royal subjects include Queen Elizabeth II, the Prince of Wales, and Princes William and Harry. Stone said the painting took him 10 months to complete and was...

On the day that longtime White House Chief of Staff Andy Card took a bullet for an incompetent White House operation – more on that in a moment – another former White House staffer has also departed. Lyn Nofziger, longtime aide to Ronald Reagan and a personal friend and adviser of mine, died of bladder cancer Monday at the age of 81. Lyn had been a newspaper reporter when then-candidate Ronald Reagan's kitchen cabinet asked him in the 1966 race for governor to become press secretary to the campaign. From that day forward – with a few temporary postings elsewhere...

In his first debate with Walter Mondale, my dad Ronald Reagan fumbled badly – there was no sign of the Great Communicator during that debate. What there was instead was a Ronald Reagan given bad advice by some of his staff who were afraid of letting the public see the real Ronald Reagan, who they feared might be seen as too conservative. In the second debate all that changed because my dad insisted upon being himself rather than the namby-pamby moderate politician some of his advisers thought he should be. My dad insisted on being Ronald Reagan, not some pale...

He would have turned 95 on Feb. 6 – the most recent former president to die and likely the most popular and inspiring chief executive of the 20th century. Ronald Reagan – known as unflappably pro-defense yet able to forge friendships with his adversaries. Staunchly partisan and loyal to the Republican Party yet deft at crafting compromise with Democratic lawmakers to move his agenda forward. A tax cutter who presided over a significant expansion in revenues to the federal government. Though Reagan's legacy includes accomplishments in all areas of public policy, it is his success in toppling the "Evil Empire"...

During the Reagan campaign of 1980 one felt part of movement or “revolution” that was going to change not only the nation but perhaps the world. Then “Governor” Reagan’s vision was clear and concise and left little room for doubt... America must shrink the size of the federal government, reduce regulations on business, and cut taxes “across the board” for all Americans. In other words, Reagan instinctively knew that -- given the tools -- the American entrepreneur would lead the country back to prosperity and out of double-digit inflation and double-digit interest rates. Reagan also understood that communism’s worldwide influence...

WASHINGTON, July 27 - The early 1980's were a heady time for conservatives in Washington. Ronald Reagan was president, and after years on the outside, some of the strongest voices in the conservative movement - men like Edwin Meese III, James G. Watt, William Bradford Reynolds and Theodore B. Olson - were in high positions in the government and were determined to reverse what they believed to be years of liberal policies in areas like civil rights, environmental protection, criminal law and immigration. John G. Roberts, a young lawyer in the Justice Department in 1981 and 1982 and on the...