Free Republic

Democratic senators in swing states have a tough choice ahead of them on Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s Supreme Court pick. Their base may not forgive them for voting “yes,” but there may not be enough of that base to offset the backlash from voting “no.” My advice is the same I gave to Assembly members when I was speaker and a vote like this came up: Go with whatever will get you re-elected. No one vote — not even for a Supreme Court justice — is worth costing your party a Senate seat for six years. Especially when the...

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News on Tuesday that Democratic hopefuls for 2020 feel the need to be "the most insane person" when commenting on President Donald Trump's federal court nominations. "It seems to be that if you are running for president on the Democratic side in 2020 or thinking about it, you have to prove you are the most insane person when it comes to Trump nominees," Graham said in the interview with Fox host Martha MacCallum. The senator added that "President Trump could nominate George Washington and they would all be up in arms." Graham was referring...

Sen. John McCain praised the Department of Justice's announcement of the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers for interfering in the 2016 presidential election, adding President Donald Trump shouldn't meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin unless he holds him accountable. "President Trump must be willing to confront Putin from a position of strength and demonstrate that there will be a serious price to pay for his ongoing aggression towards the United States and democracies around the world," the Arizona senator said in a statement Friday. "If President Trump is not prepared to hold Putin accountable, the summit in Helsinki should...

He admitted it must seem far-fetched. In fact, John Phillips kiddingly said he may need to “blow into a breathalyzer, take a drug test and get psychologically evaluated.” But the CNN commentator attempted to make a serious argument that “radical congresswoman” Maxine Waters could be the Democratic nominee for president in 2020, in an opinion piece published Wednesday in the Orange County Register and L.A. Daily News....

President Donald Trump, more than any modern president, freely expresses his racist views — whether it is calling Mexican immigrants rapists, asserting that immigrants “infest” America, saying neo-Nazis include some “very fine people,” preferring Norwegian immigrants to those from “sh--hole” countries or associating immigrants with crime in public and in private. (In May, The Post reported on an episode in April 2017: “Trump reminded them the crowds loved his rhetoric on immigrants along the campaign trail. Acting as if he were at a rally, he recited a few made-up Hispanic names and described potential crimes they could have committed, such...

When it comes to supporting families, paid parental leave is a solution to a number of problems. Studies show that paid leave can reduce infant mortality, increase breastfeeding rates, can improve maternal mental health and strengthen the connection between fathers and babies. There are a ton of benefits to parental leave, ones that American families should be seeing, but aren't. While some employers have been modernizing parental leave policies, federal policy lags behind. The last major policy change came in 1993, when the Family and Medical Leave Act passed with bipartisan support, guarantees more than half of American workers 12...

Democratic pollster Carly Cooperman on Wednesday pointed to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential bid to argue that opposing President Trump alone is not enough to win an election. "With Hillary Clinton, we saw that just being against Trump isn't enough," Cooperman, who is a partner at Schoen Consulting, told Hill.TV's Joe Concha on "What America's Thinking." “There is so much anger and passion in the Democratic Party right now to come out against Trump, but I do not think that will be enough," she continued. “The Democrats need more than just that, and they need to have ideas that they're articulating...

The summer of 2018 is witnessing the eurosocialist Democrats’ coming of age, reminiscent of Hermie’s experience in “The Summer of ‘42,” where the late-adolescent teenager falls for a young war bride. The summer ends, of course, and Hermie moves on. And that’s how the Democrats and left will roll as well. The recent election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described Democratic socialist, to Congress prompted the DNC chairman to proclaim that socialism is “the future of our party.” The pretense is off: the Democrats’ love affair with socialism is consummated. As the Democrats and other eurosocialists grew to attain this new...

American politics is a wonder for the world to behold. Our free speech traditions produce all kinds of interesting folderol, over the top in its theatrics and yet usually deeply meaningful to those participating in it. It was on display Monday, in front of the United States Supreme Court building, appearing seemingly by magic moments after President Donald Trump announced he’d chosen D.C. Appellate Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace retiring Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy. The right was there. And the left, each itching to get their point across. They had signs, including some urging opposition to nominees not picked, pre-printed...

For many on the American Jewish left, President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court is the last straw. Like his "zero tolerance” immigration policy, the prospect of ensuring a solidly conservative majority on the high court is viewed with horror by many who see this as the beginning of the end of liberal democracy. Indeed, Trump’s presidency is so abhorrent to those who deplore his policies that they have ceased to view politics as something on which decent people can agree to disagree. That’s the only explanation for why even normally sensible people like...

Critics of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, connected Kavanaugh’s selection to the ongoing Russia investigation, citing an article Kavanaugh wrote that claimed presidents should not be tied up in lawsuits and probes and warning that the commander in chief might be looking for a way to protect himself in a legal challenge. In a 2009 Minnesota Law Review article, Kavanaugh claimed that presidents should not be caught up in “time-consuming and distracting” lawsuits and investigations. He argued that they “would ill serve the public interest, especially in times of financial or national security crisis.” “In choosing Brett...

Donald Trump called out more than a dozen people including various politicians and media personalities who said he would never become president in a tweet on Sunday evening. The 'Twitterer-in-Chief' posted a two-and-a-half-minute video compilation featuring clips of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Stephen Colbert and even the Simpsons saying that he didn't have a chance in the election. The second half of the profanity-laden video shows various media outlets announcing the states that had gone red on election night, counting up the number of electoral college votes for Trump as menacing music plays in the background....

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton underperformed relative to Barack Obama in 2012 among most demographic groups, according to new research published in the Journal of Political Marketing. “People have long been interested in how different demographic groups vote in elections. The role of demographics in 2016 received a lot of attention from the campaigns, media outlets, etc,” said study author Aaron C. Weinschenk of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. “In part, I think the fascination stemmed from the fact that the electorate in 2016 was the most diverse U.S. electorate in history and many people thought this would be...

The 2016 presidential election cycle went on for a notoriously long time, and two years later, its details are still being analyzed by academics and citizenry, alike. One New York Post columnist, however, believes there is reason to believe that the 2020 election might be so similar to 2016 that it could feature the exact same candidates, all over again. This weekend, writer Michael Goodwin argued that he believed there is a chance Hillary Clinton will run for president again in 2020, pointing to what he describes as urgent and frequent emails sent by Clinton-associated organizations. In his column, which...

Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, said he is concerned about what Trump might promise Russian President Vladimir Putin when the two meet this month. "It does concern me," the Arizona senator told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" Sunday. "I'm glad that the President is talking to Vladimir Putin. I'm glad that he's talking to North Korea as well. But I am concerned, and I know there is concern across Europe, about what might be promised." The two leaders are due to meet on July 16 in Finland, and CNN previously reported...

An irate man threatened to kill a campaign volunteer — and Donald Trump supporters — at a Long Island Congressman’s campaign headquarters on Long Island Friday, police said. Martin Astrof, 75, charged at Donato Panico at Rep. Lee Zeldin’s Nesconset campaign office around 11:15 a.m., harassed him and verbally attacked Zeldin and Trump fans, Suffolk County cops said. When the agitated Astrof drove off, he almost hit Panico, police said. He was arrested outside his home several blocks away a short time later. Astrof was charged with making a terroristic threat and reckless endangerment, authorities said, and is expected to...

President Donald Trump escalated a familiar attack on Sen. Elizabeth Warren Thursday night, mocking the Massachusetts Democrat and leading potential 2020 rival for her claim of Native American heritage. He revived his nickname for her — "the fake Pocahontas" — and told the crowd at his Montana campaign rally that should the two find themselves on a debate stage, he would challenge her to submit to genetic testing to prove that she has Native American ancestors. "I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you're...

On June 25, Axios’s Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei took readers inside Donald Trump’s “winning, cynical plan.” They argued that “the more President Trump does, says and tweets outrageous things, the more his critics go bananas and the better he does in the polls.” The evidence for this was that Trump had hit 45 percent in Gallup’s presidential approval tracker — a personal high for him, though he’s since slipped back to 42 percent. More impressively, Trump’s approval among Republicans is hovering around 90 percent, and special counsel Robert Mueller’s disapproval among Republicans was up to 53 percent. “It’s arguably...

One will match volunteers with the right campaign and the other will focus on organizing organizers The Democratic National Committee announced two new initiatives to hire and train organizers for the 2018 midterm elections. The first initiative, called the DNC Talent Bank, will allow anyone interested in working on a campaign to submit their resume and fill out a questionnaire to be matched with an appropriate campaign. “We would be working with state parties where capacity is needed,” a DNC aide said. But while the aide said there would be people hired to specific campaigns in certain states, “we want...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) slammed President Trump over his comments about Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) during a rally on Thursday night. Trump at the campaign-style rally in Montana called Waters a “low-IQ individual,” a claim that he has repeated many times. He speculated her IQ is “somewhere in the mid-60s.” The average IQ is 85-114, and a mid-60s IQ indicates mental challenges....