Free Republic

Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson – President George W. Bush’s top speechwriter from 2001 to 2006 – was hired by the Post in 2007 because he would be “a different kind of conservative” and "an independent voice." Translation: he would slash other people on the right as dishonest, dishonorable, unpatriotic people. He has not attacked talk-show hosts on MSNBC or other leftists this way. In his Friday column, Gerson whacked Ron Paul, Rush Limbaugh, and Mark Levin with these harsh attacks. Mark Levin offered NewsBusters his reaction. Gerson began: A number of libertarians and conservative populists have found data collection...

...First, and most important, is focusing on the economic concerns of working-and middle-class Americans, many of whom now regard the Republican Party as beholden to “millionaires and billionaires” and as wholly out of touch with ordinary Americans. This is a durable impression—witness Bill Clinton’s effective deployment of it more than 20 years ago and its continued resonance during the 2012 campaign when Team Obama portrayed Mitt Romney as a plutocrat who delighted in shutting down factories and moving jobs overseas. Sure enough, in November exit polls, 81 percent of voters said that Barack Obama “cared for people like me”; a...

Former President George W. Bush’s aide Michael Gerson posted a distressingly ignorant column on 12/13/11 which attacked both former speaker and Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, and my colleague Andrew C. McCarthy, for their sober, if frank conceptions of the Sharia. The counterfactual basis for Mr. Gerson’s diatribe is his own thoroughly deficient understanding of Islam’s religio-political code for personal, societal, and Muslim state behavior. He glibly—and wrongly—imputes unique Western notions of individual rights, equality before the law, or even rational legal procedures of evidence to the Sharia’s so-called “set of transcendent principles of justice.” Gerson condemns Gingrich’s apt summary...

Gerson, in his column starts out by telling us that our often conservative criticism of the "democratic transformation" that is occurring in the Mideast is, indeed, unfounded. He further notes that we are rather arrogantly, a word that I have interpreted from Gerson's ill-stimulating ginger tense, concluding that Democratic success is not possible in a society lacking a Democratic culture. Interesting conclusion, yet not exactly accurate at all. To wit, these events, Sir, are not a simple exercise in Democracy breaking out, there will always be far more to this sort of conflagration than the happenstance of every searingly irritated...

When I was a Senate staffer more than a decade ago, Republicans hit on a tactic to advance school choice. They kept narrowing the eligibility standard to cover poorer and poorer families with children in only the most spectacularly failing schools, daring Democrats to vote against the most sympathetic possible group of students. I remember one liberal senator saying in exasperation, "Someday, you are going to make this impossible to oppose." . . .

WASHINGTON -- Christopher Hitchens -- bald from cancer treatments, speaking between doctor's appointments -- has a special disdain for deathbed religious conversions. Appearing before a group of journalists organized by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public life, he criticized the pressures put on Tom Paine to embrace Christianity and the malicious rumors of faith that followed Charles Darwin's demise. "I've already thought about this a great deal, thanks all the same," he explained. The idea "that you may be terrified" is no reason to "abandon the principles of a lifetime." At this event -- a joint appearance with his...

Former top Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson is a Washington Post columnist, and there is never a better time for right-leaning columnists to lean left than in the last weeks of an election season. (See George Will trashing Sen. George Allen in the last weeks of 2006.) His rant also may have granted Gerson a seat on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday. Gerson not only denounced Christine O'Donnell as a wacky candidate like Alan Keyes, he denounced "the childish political thought of the Tea Party." He insisted conservatives were like Bolsheviks. Bloggers like Michelle Malkin and talk show hosts like...

With his recent criticisms of Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell on Fox News, Karl Rove kicked up a controversy. His critique of O'Donnell was granular and well-informed. Having worked with Karl for a number of years, I know that he is nothing if not detail-oriented. Rove has taken O'Donnell to task for her checkered financial past, her history of litigiousness and paranoia,...

In the Long Run, the GOP Must Be Inclusive. BY MICHAEL GERSON Mel Martinez's recent resignation from the U.S. Senate was for personal and family reasons. But the departure of the Republican Party's most visible Hispanic leader crackles with political symbolism. Martinez does not consider himself disillusioned, but he is "frustrated." "There are lots of Hispanics to the right of you and me on immigration," he told me, "but they think, 'Republicans just don't like us.' " Martinez makes clear that a number of his Senate colleagues were "conservative, but not inflammatory." Other elected Republicans, however, made "pretty divisive use...

It is now clear why Barack Obama has refused John McCain's offer of joint town hall appearances during the fall campaign. McCain is obviously better at them. Pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency -- two hours on Saturday night evenly divided between the relaxed, tieless candidates -- was expected to be a sideshow. McCain and Obama would make their specialized appeals to evangelicals as if they were an interest group such as organized labor or the National Rifle Association... What took place instead under Warren's precise and revealing questioning was the most important event so far of...

Warning: The following contains extreme vulgarity by a candidate for the U.S. Senate. In the razor-close and nationally important Senate race in Minnesota, Republican incumbent Norm Coleman is presented with a unique political problem. Should he raise in his ads the issue of comedian Al Franken's offensive vulgarity? Or would this risk a backlash against Coleman for coarsening the public conversation? Remember that when Ken Starr detailed Bill Clinton's most repulsive antics -- stained dresses and such -- it was Starr who was accused of sexual obsessiveness. Franken's defenders explain that his edginess is the result of being a "satirist"...

A former senior aide to President Bush today hailed Barack Obama is an “extraordinary political talent” who would make a tougher opponent for John McCain than Hillary Clinton. In a remarkably frank interview with Daniel Finkelstein, Comment Editor of The Times, Michael Gerson said Obama's ascent to the White House would be “one of the great culminating moments in American history”. The former chief speechwriter to President Bush insisted that, despite the recent controversies dogging Mr Obama, the Illinois senator nevertheless remained the greatest threat to the Republican Party. Describing himself as “very impressed” with the Democratic frontrunner, Mr Gerson...

THE first Mormon to run for president was the first Mormon. Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, formally announced his candidacy on Jan. 19, 1844, urging his supporters to tell the people we have had Whig and Democrats presidents long enough. We want a president of the United States. Smiths campaign lasted about five months before it — along with his life — was ended by a violent mob in Carthage, Ill. Mitt Romneys campaign has been better received. He possesses a winning public personality, enough personal wealth to ensure he will be...

To observe the sentimental fantasy and ruthless political calculation that fuels the Bush administration's immigration plans, one need only turn to Michael Gerson’s most recent Washington Post column. Former Bush speechwriter Gerson was a powerful voice in the White House, especially on the matter of injecting faith into policymaking; his May 25 column provides a window into how the administration deals with facts. Gerson accuses opponents of the Senate’s recent amnesty proposal of a nativist fear of illegal immigrants. Such a fear, he argues, will hurt the Republican party’s electoral chances and miss an opportunity to make the country even...

Michael Gerson helped create “compassionate” conservatism. Now he’s attacking the small-government ideal—and inadvertently highlighting America’s need to learn from Europe. In what may be the most aggressive attack on small-government conservatism in years, highly influential former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson writes: “What does antigovernment conservatism offer to inner-city neighborhoods where violence is common and families are rare? Nothing. What achievement would it contribute to racial healing and the unity of our country? No achievement at all. Anti-government conservatism turns out to be a strange kind of idealism—an idealism that strangles mercy.” Gerson’s arguments, though flawed to the core, present a...

... This reaction previews a broader, high-stakes Republican debate as we head toward the 2008 election. One Republican Party—the Republican Party of movement conservatives on Capitol Hill and in the think-tank world—will argue that the "big government Republicanism" of the Bush era has been a reason for recent defeats. Like all fundamentalists, the antigovernment conservatives preach that greater influence requires a return to purity—the purity of Reaganism. But the golden age of austerity under Reagan is a myth. ... As antigovernment conservatives seek to purify the Republican Party, it is reasonable to ask if the purest among them are conservatives...

The President of the United States calls him "The Scribe." Michael Gerson is stepping down as the Director of Speechwriting for President George W. Bush. The 1982 graduate of Creve Couer's Westminster Academy crafted some of the most important words of his time in the days after September 11. According to MSNBC, Gerson will shift more into policy, and will likely be replaced as top speechwriter by William McGurn, an editorial page writer for the Wall Street Journal.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One of President George W. Bush's top policy advisers and former chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, is stepping down to pursue other opportunities, a White House spokesman said on Wednesday. Gerson was Bush's chief speechwriter during the president's first term and was promoted to policy and strategic adviser in 2005. He had been crafting major speeches for Bush since joining the former Texas governor's presidential campaign in 1999. Gerson, listed as one of the 25 most influential Evangelical Christians in America by Time magazine last year, is credited with helping Bush give voice to his "compassionate conservative" philosophy,...

Michael J. Gerson, one of President Bush's most trusted advisers and author of nearly all of his most famous public words during the past seven years, plans to step down in the next couple weeks in a decision that colleagues believe will leave a huge hole in the White House at a critical period. Gerson said in an interview that he has been talking with Bush for many months about leaving for writing and other opportunities but waited until the White House political situation had stabilized somewhat. "It seemed like a good time," he said. "Things are back on track...

McGurn replaced Mike Gerson, who is taking on other duties in the West Wing. Gerson, who was often seen scribbling at a coffee shop near the White House, filled speeches by the famously plainspoken Bush with soaring rhetoric tinged with religious overtones. Gerson finally persuaded McGurn, a longtime Wall Street Journal columnist and chief editorial writer, to take his place. He admired McGurn's ability to turn an elegant phrase when advocating conservative social politics and complex economic issues, the latter especially timely as Bush promotes his plan to introduce private retirement accounts as part of Social Security. ``I was taught...