Free Republic

As chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) had one job: win the Senate majority. Not only did he fail, but he did so in spectacular fashion — through calamitous mismanagement of the NRSC that left Republican candidates under fire without air cover in the final critical months of the midterm elections. Now Scott is trying to deflect blame for the GOP’s disastrous showing. So, it’s worth reviewing the record of his catastrophic tenure at the helm of the GOP’s Senate campaign arm. According to the New York Times, by July of this year, Scott’s NRSC...

Stacey Abrams is running a less-than-subtle campaign to be Joe Biden’s vice-presidential running mate. Republicans should hope she succeeds. If selected, she would displace Sarah Palin as the least-qualified person ever to serve on a major-party ticket. Biden should understand this, because he saw firsthand how much damage Palin’s selection did to then-Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the Republican presidential nominee in 2008. Preelection polls showed that 6 out of 10 Americans said Palin was not qualified for the job, and a Stanford University study found that she cost McCain more than 2 million votes.

PRESIDENT TRUMP'S detractors are trying to play down the significance of the U.S.-Mexico immigration deal, saying it is largely comprised of actions that Mexico had already agreed to many months ago. Nice try. If Mexico had truly agreed to implement many of these measures in December, then why had they not been implemented six months later? As even Mexican officials acknowledge, it was Trump's threat of tariffs that forced Mexico's hand. In announcing the deal, a relieved Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said the "most important thing is that they didn't apply tariffs and we didn't experience an economic slowdown."...

Remember how much of the mainstream media was pooh-poohing Mexico's agreement to reinforce its southern border due to President Donald Trump's threatened tariffs? An example was last Sunday when White House NBC correspondent Mike Viqueira discounted the agreement by claiming that nothing much was really achieved: “But a look at the details reveals that the agreement is an expansion of deals already made with Mexico and critics are calling it little more than a fig leaf.” Well, less than a week later, in Thursday's Washington Post comes a report by Kevin Sieff that completely contradicts the widely held assertion in the MSM...

longest government shutdown in history over nothing. Democrats have agreed to fund $1.375 billion for 55 miles of physical barrier along the border, which is only a little different than what Trump would have gotten under a continuing resolution that funded the government at current levels — and far less than the $5.7 billion Trump demanded to build 230 miles of barriers that experts and the Department of Homeland Security said they need to secure the border. But Trump can still get the rest of the money — without a government shutdown or declaring a national emergency... To win, Trump...

In his second year in office, the list of extraordinary things President Trump has done, for good and ill, continued to grow. Today, I offer my annual list of the 10 best things Trump has done in office. (In my next column, I will give you my list of the 10 worst.) 10. He has secured the release of 19 people, including 16 Americans, from foreign captivity. When Pastor Andrew Brunson was freed by Turkey, he became the 19th captive released thanks to Trump. Others include: four held by North Korea; an aid worker and her husband held by Egypt;...

Democrats routinely express outrage over claims of collusion with a foreign power to undermine our democracy. So where is the outrage over revelations that former secretary of state John Kerry held not one but two secret meetings with Iran’s foreign minister to strategize over how to undermine President Trump’s plans to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal? An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed the meetings after the Boston Globe broke the news, declaring , “We don’t see the U.S. just as Mr. Trump; the United States is not just the current ruling administration.” Think about what this means. Iran is...