Free Republic

House Republicans picked John Boehner Friday to serve as minority leader when Democrats take control of Congress for the first time in 12 years in January. Boehner defeated Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana in a closed-door election among colleagues. The Ohio winner was expected to speak after elections for other leadership positions concluded. Boehner received 168 votes, Pence 27 and Rep. Joe Barton of Texas won 1 vote.

WASHINGTON – Less than a month before the midterm election, the campaign is a picture of uncertainty. Take, for example, Elenore Klepser, a resident of a suburb near Buffalo, N.Y., and a loyal Republican - at least until recently. She has supported Congressman Thomas Reynolds for as long as she can remember. But now, she wonders if Mr. Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, has been part of a coverup in the congressional page scandal. Or take Patty Wetterling, a Democrat and child-safety advocate in Minnesota. She was lagging in her first-time race for a vacant House seat...

DFLer Patty Wetterling leads Republican Michele Bachmann 48 to 40 percent in the hot race for Congress in Minnesota's Sixth Congressional District, according to the latest Star Tribune Minnesota Poll. Independence Party candidate John Binkowski received the support of 4 percent.

Pundits glued to their Potomac seats, applying their usual Beltway explanations for everything that happens in America, would have it that House Speaker Dennis Hastert bollixed up the House page scandal because he is an unredeemed Republican partisan. Or that he doesn't care enough about congressmen hounding boys. Or that his conservatism made him do it.Blind partisanship, moral failings, hypocrisy, gay bashing or any of those other explanations that don't come close to the reality that Hastert was simply doing politics as it is practiced here, in Illinois.Hastert knows no other way, having been bred, born and raised in the...

The only good thing about North Korea's nuclear test--aside from the fact that it may have been a dud--is the fact that it has broken the spell of the past two weeks' 1990s re-enactment.I enjoy a good "Seinfeld" episode as much as the next guy, but in hindsight, the famous "show about nothing"--"Seinfeld" always obsessed over the minutiae of life--was a benign symptom of the more ominous underlying affliction of its era: the refusal to face up to the big issues of world events and to take the difficult and unpopular actions necessary to head off looming threats. The Clinton...

Hi, Here's a letter-to-the-editor I wrote that was printed today in the San Jose Mercury News. It gives part of the other side of the Mark Foley. If you live outside the SF Bay Area, please feel free to make the letter your own...and send it in to a newspaper. THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS WE CAN DO DURING THE NEXT 28 DAYS ARE: 1) Get our message out; 2) Help conservative Republicans financially; 3) Go vote. All the best. Dear Editor: The nation's liberals would do well to re-evaluate their suggestion that the Democrats would show more integrity in dealing...

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.), who was considered a safe bet for re-election just a few weeks ago, was trailing his Democratic challenger in the first public polls released since the scandal surrounding former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) broke out. In a related development, the Republican write-in candidate in the race to replace indicted former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) has halted plans to campaign with Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Reynolds, who said he brought concerns over Foley’s relationship with young pages to Hastert — and whose chief of staff resigned Wednesday over the Foley scandal — was...