Free Republic

Conservatives are, IMHO, soon to be in the decided and percecuted minority. It is accordingly time to utilize methods from the Radical Left playbook "Rules for Radicals" to further our agenda. My suggested targets are: Harry Reid (vulnerable), the owners of Google (soft and naive), and the president of Time Warner (useful). Here are the Rules: RULE 1: "Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have." Power is derived from 2 main sources - money and people. "Have-Nots" must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a...

The day after the election, Slate's political writers tackled the question of why the Democratic Party—which has now lost five of the past seven presidential elections and solidified its minority status in Congress—keeps losing elections. Chris Suellentrop says that John Kerry was too nuanced and technocratic, while George W. Bush offered a vision of expanding freedom around the world. William Saletan argues that Democratic candidates won't win until they again cast their policies the way Bill Clinton did, in terms of values and moral responsibility. Timothy Noah contends that none of the familiar advice to the party—move right, move left,...

I say forget introspection. It's time to be honest about our antagonists. My predecessors in this conversation are thoughtful men, and I honor their ideas, but let's try something else. I grew up in Missouri and most of my family voted for Bush, so I am going to be the one to say it: The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 million have not. (Well, almost 58 million—my relatives are not ignorant,...

The transcripts show that John F. Kerry said the right things to connect with religion-minded voters, with his earnest speeches about God's work on Earth and invocations of faith and Scripture. Yet they landed with a thud on a populace conditioned to view liberal Democrats as faithless intellectuals. No doubt Kerry's stiff New England style didn't help. This is not what religious faith looks like to much of the rest of the country, especially the South. Yet one candidate's stiffness cannot fully explain the "God gap" that drives people of faith, and those more concerned with moral issues than economic...

I have to thank Jimmy Carter for saving my sanity. Granted, his was not a presidency that one looks back to with fondness. Gas lines stretched forever, Iran took our people hostage, and there was disco. But Carter's ex-presidency has been a model of that unofficial institution. He has built homes for the poor, mediated wars, helped feed the hungry in Africa, fought disease in Latin America. In so doing, Carter -- a deacon of Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga. -- has obeyed a directive that Jesus issued to one of his disciples.

Bested by a Republican campaign emphasizing Christian faith, some Democrats are scrambling to shake off their secular image, stepping up efforts to organize the "religious left" and debating changes to how they approach the cultural flashpoints of same-sex marriage and abortion. Some call the election a warning. "You can't have everybody who goes to church vote Republican; you just can't," Al From, founder of the Democratic Leadership Council, said last week at a forum on the election. Religious traditionalists including Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention, and Jim Wallis...

Liberal religious figures, concerned about broad moral issues such as world poverty as well as the perception that ''moral values" helped win the election for President Bush, are stepping up their organizational efforts to support left-leaning candidates and their causes to prepare for the 2006 midterms and the 2008 presidential election.

Democrats, reeling from the Republicans' success at courting churchgoers, are focusing new attention on a religious and political anomaly: Jim Wallis, one of the few prominent left-leaning leaders among evangelical Protestants. At the start of the Congressional session, Senate Democrats invited Mr. Wallis to address their members at a private session to discuss issues. A group of about 15 House Democrats invited him to a breakfast discussion about dispelling their party's secular image. And NBC News has enlisted him to appear as a guest during its inauguration coverage opposite Dr. James C. Dobson, one of the most prominent evangelical conservatives....

The party of abortion has tapped a leader from the religious left to help it get back in the good graces of the red states. Democrats are looking for ways to tap the evangelical vote that went so strongly for Republicans and President Bush in November, so they've enlisted the leader of Sojourners, Jim Wallis, to help improve their party's poor image in the eyes of Christians. Wallis, one of the leaders of the evangelical left, told The New York Times that Democrats have a problem: They are being perceived as secular fundamentalists. Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family...

Like any preacher worth his salt, Jim Wallis, the self-described "progressive evangelical" leader and editor of Sojourners magazine who has lately been discovered by Democrats in Washington desperate to learn the language of "moral values," likes to tell a story to drive a point home. In his new book, "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It" (HarperSanFrancisco), just published this week and currently sitting at #2 on Amazon.com, Wallis recalls speaking to "a group of Boston's best and brightest Left/liberal intelligentsia" gathered in "a large living room" a few blocks off Harvard Square....

… Hillary Clinton, engaged in …God-drenching ...fundraiser organised by the Reverend Eugene Rivers…She lavished praise on faith-based organizations… ...Clinton's speech was part of a growing debate on the left about how to close the God gap. Democrats want to change the focus of religious debate from abortion and gay marriage to, say, war and poverty. ... …Hillary told …pro-choice activists not only that abortion represents “a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women” but also that “religious and moral values” are the primary reason why teenage girls abstain from early sexual activity. …more proof of Mrs Clinton's political maturity...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wants her party to develop a faith agenda for 2006 to try to reconnect with religious-minded American voters. Pelosi has tapped U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., to lead the effort to recapture faith-based voters who, exit polls indicate, constituted a substantial bloc of votes in the 2004 U.S. elections. Clyburn said he would convene a working group to review party policies and ideas and look at new ways to frame those issues in faith-based terms, Roll Call reported Monday. "Our problem is not our programs," Clyburn added. "It's been...

America stands at a religious and a political crossroad. If Barack Obama becomes president, his religiosity will be embraced to some extent by certain members of our society. There will be more unseemly and drastic changes than our country has ever experienced. Obama and others of his ilk will dedicatedly undermine the traditional understanding of God’s Word to change our society as they see fit. The Democrats implemented a strategy to vie for votes using Christian verbiage to draw people to them. However, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfeger spoiled it to a degree with their flamboyance.

Public anxiety over the Iraq war, already reflected in polls and demands from some Democrats to withdraw U.S. troops, is now prompting calls for change from some unlikely quarters: Republican congressional candidates. Across the country, GOP candidates are breaking with the White House over how long troops should remain in Iraq and who should lead the war effort. Even some of President Bush's staunchest allies in solidly Republican states are publicly questioning the administration's war policies, while others are scrambling to find new ways to talk about Iraq in the face of rising voter frustration over management of the war....

By Andrea HopkinsMONROE CITY, Indiana (Reuters) - In a dozen districts across the U.S. heartland, voter unhappiness has imperiled Republicans, setting the stage for what could be the biggest anti-incumbent midterm election since 1994.Pat Wilkerson says U.S. troops and veterans are her first priority, believes family values are important and voted Republican in 2004. But in November she'll switch parties -- though not because Democrats have won her over."When I vote now, it's not who I'm voting for, it's who I'm voting against," said the 59-year-old administrator, adding she is fed up with the war in Iraq and wants troops...

Gregoire ‘Jumps the Shark’ * Now claims she has nothing to do with lawsuit Bellevue, WA – Christine Gregoire had nothing to do with an Attorney General opinion opposing the inclusion of previously rejected ballots into a hand recount. Nor does she have anything to do with a lawsuit filed by the Democratic Party regarding the hand recount in the governor’s race. At least, that’s what Christine Gregoire says. This week Gregoire, who has been Attorney General for 12 years, claimed she had no knowledge of long-standing Attorney General advice that in a manual recount, rejected ballots cannot be introduced...

Okay, below is latest the Rossi campaign press release: Gregoire & the memo: Attorney General claims ignorance Bellevue, WA – Christine Gregoire is trying to shrug off responsibility for a 1996 memo that puts her own Attorney General’s office at odds with her efforts now to change the rules of the recount in the governor’s race. Yesterday, a November 1996 memo from then-Secretary of State Ralph Munro regarding a manual recount in a state legislative race was made public. It included the following statement: “Challenge of Ballots Not Allowed. We are advised by the Attorney General that state law makes...

The leader of the Democratic National Committee announced Monday that he will start an investigation into voting irregularities in Ohio, where lines snaked outside some inner-city polling places on election day and provisional ballots were sometimes in short supply. Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the DNC, said the aim of "this comprehensive study is not to contest the results of the 2004 election, but to help ensure that every eligible vote cast is truly counted." McAuliffe made his announcement on the same day that Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell certified the state's final presidential election results, declaring President Bush...

With support from John Kerry's campaign, two third-party candidates for president officially asked on Tuesday for a recount in Ohio, the state that put President Bush over the top in November. The requests, mailed to all 88 counties, were expected to arrive by Wednesday. Generally, county election boards must agree to a recount, as long as the parties bringing the challenge pay for it. And the Green and Libertarian parties collected enough donations to cover the required $113,600, or $10 per precinct. David Cobb, Green Party presidential candidate, said the election was full of irregularities, including uncounted provisional ballots. "There...

A great wailing and gnashing of teeth was heard from half the country, while jubilant cheers rose from the other half. At least from the 60% of American citizens who actually voted in the Word Series of Politics. Forty percent chose not to take part in choosing the Commander in Chief of the mightiest military force the world has ever known. Not to take part in choosing the Leader of the Free World. Not to take part in choosing the President of the Untied States. Those were the truly undecided ones and no exit poll was done for them. Australia...