Free Republic

I will summarize the following article from the anti-Trump National Review, titled "A Second Trump Administration Would Be Bonkers":Republicans shouldn’t vote for Trump again because Democrats will act more violently than they did after Trump won the first time. Here it is:If Donald Trump’s Truth Social post about his impending arrest made it feel like our politics was about to reach another level of insanity, just wait.The impending Alvin Bragg prosecution offers a taste of what our national politics will be like post–November 2024 if Donald Trump wins the presidency again.The Left freaked out in 2017, and that was before...

I know, I know; National Review is still the outfit that published the infamous “Against Trump” issue as a last ditch effort to foil the successful 2016 candidacy that led to four years of peace, prosperity, low inflation, and disproportionate gains for the lower end of the income scale under President Trump. But still, it comes as a bit of a shock that the publication I must credit for opening my eyes to the virtues of conservativism seems to be throwing in with Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and the rest of the J6 kangaroo court crowd that censored...

We are only 20 months away from the next Presidential election, and at this stage, the Republican party should be starting to whittle down its field of contenders. Yet here we are with most of the people expected to run still sitting it out, silent. It’s true that Nikki Haley has started her campaign, as have a few outriders like Vivek Ramaswamy, to whom I wish much luck. But the serving or former officials who should have started their campaigns by now are still sitting it out. Leaving the ground open for Trump to do stunts like his Ohio trip...

Marjorie Taylor Greene says the country needs a national divorce. “We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government,” she tweeted. “Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”Generally speaking, I’m sympathetic to the idea that the political left is congenitally unable to accept a truly diverse nation. Virtually every legislative policy proposal from modern Democrats — and every policy issued by edict — strengthens federal power and economic control over states. Modern Democrats...

On the menu today: I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it appears someone is attacking the electrical power grid of the Seattle area, which comes after a series of similar incidents elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest as well as in Florida. And the FBI never caught the guy who attacked the electrical grid down in North Carolina earlier this month. Shooting up a power substation is apparently the latest fad. Electric BoogalooPicture it: It’s Christmas, you’re about to prepare a big meal for the whole family, and the power...

Once again, Donald Trump has proposed dismantling the United States Constitution. “Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?” Trump asked on TruthSocial Saturday. “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” The answer to Trump’s question is “neither.” The response to his declaration is, “No, it does not.” The conclusion one must draw is that the 45th president of the United States has lost whatever was left of his...

The Crusades were not brutal wars of colonial oppression or zealous attempts to spread Christianity by the sword. The First Crusade was called in 1095 by Pope Urban II in response to desperate appeals from the Christians of the Middle East, who had lately been conquered and continued to be persecuted by the Turks. And these were only the latest in more than four centuries of attacks on Christian peoples by Muslim powers. At some point Christianity as a faith and as a culture had to defend itself or else be subsumed by Islam. The work of the Crusader, who...

To paraphrase Voltaire after he attended an orgy, once was an experiment, twice would be perverse.A bruised Donald Trump announced a new presidential bid on Tuesday night, an invitation to double down on the outrages and failures of the last several years that Republicans should reject without hesitation or doubt.To his credit, Trump killed off the Clinton dynasty in 2016, nominated and got confirmed three constitutionalist justices, reformed taxes, pushed deregulation, got control of the border, significantly degraded ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and cinched normalization deals between Israel and the Gulf states, among other things. These are achievements that...

Florida governor Ron DeSantis led former president Donald Trump by eleven points in a new poll of likely Republican primary voters by the Republican Party of Texas. The survey, conducted by CWS Research on November 12 and 13 among likely GOP voters statewide, asked respondents, “If the upcoming 2024 Republican Primary for president were held today, and the candidates were Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley and Mike Pence, for whom would you vote?” Forty-three percent of respondents said they would support DeSantis, while Trump followed in second with 32 percent of the vote. Thirteen percent...

Election defeats naturally create circular firing squads, but the last few days have seen a more directed effort to put Minority Leader Mitch McConnell against a wall and shoot him at dawn. The MAGA forces in the party, eager to deflect blame from Donald Trump for the failure to take the Senate, are pointing fingers at McConnell. Trump himself wrote on his Truth Social network, “It’s Mitch McConnell’s fault.” Meanwhile, there is agitation in the caucus to delay this week’s scheduled leadership vote in the hopes that some viable alternative to McConnell will emerge. There are legitimate criticisms of McConnell,...

In attempting to describe Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over the last four years, the press has reached for a whole host of inapt comparisons: He’s Donald Trump! He’s Scott Walker! He’s Satan! But none of these seem right. Instead — and hear me out! — he may well be Bill Clinton. No, not morally. Despite Donald Trump’s grotesque insinuation that there is something “unflattering” about DeSantis that only he knows about, there’s no indication that Florida’s governor is anything other than an upstanding husband and father.

Former president Donald Trump boasted on Saturday that he’s polling way above “Ron DeSanctimonious” for the GOP 2024 presidential nomination, in an early taste of the rivalry that’s widely expected to develop after next week’s midterms. Trump at 71, Ron DeSanctimonious at 10 percent, Mike Pence at 7 percent . . . Oh, Mike’s doing better than I thought,” Trump told a crowd of supporters at a rally in Latrobe, Pa., for Republican Senate and gubernatorial candidates Dr. Mehmet Oz and Doug Mastriano. The fact that Trump assigned the governor of Florida a derogatory nickname is a telltale sign that...

It’s with regret and some trepidation that I take issue on a legal matter with someone whom I like and respect as much as I do Andy McCarthy, the prominent legal affairs commentator and contributor to many publications, websites, and television programs. But like many other intelligent and otherwise convivial people I know, he’s unfortunately incapable of speaking or writing rationally about Donald Trump. McCarthy has a particularly baneful influence on the discussion of Trump-related issues because he naturally brings to it the gravitas of his legal expertise and apparently authoritative articulation. But this is the same McCarthy who wrote...

The California legislature just passed S.B. 107, a dangerous bill that undermines the fundamental right of every parent in every state to direct the upbringing of their children. It allows California courts to strip custody from parents — even parents who don’t live in California — who have legitimate concerns about a young child undergoing irreversible medical procedures to appear as a different gender. California wants to become a “sanctuary state” to which minor children from around the country can flee (or even be taken by someone else) to obtain on-demand puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgeries to remove healthy...

The left-wing PolitiFact hacks worked overtime to gaslight Americans on the deleterious effects of President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness scam. PolitiFact took a swipe at multiple criticisms of Biden’s irresponsible student debt policy on Aug. 26. The “fact-check” required three authors and came after Biden announced a legally dubious plan to cancel $10,000 in student loan debt for anyone making less than $125k (or $250k for couples filing jointly). In one portion of the 921-word article, PolitiFact targeted National Review for daring to share an estimate by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF) that found that the average cost...

Former president Trump is likely to be charged with obstruction of justice and causing false statements to be made to investigators. [cut] Trump apologists would surely counter that a not-so-average person named Hillary Clinton was not indicted for recklessly mishandling classified information, actually destroying thousands of government records, and making misleading statements (such as the laughable claim that she did not understand classified markings) in her FBI interview. Of course, the Biden Justice Department would not be very sympathetic to that analogy, and Trump would not exactly be arguing from a position of strength if his best defense were that...

Perhaps Republicans Could Learn Something HereI despise the term RINO — Republican in Name Only. It splits the Republican Party year after year, and its persistence hands the Democrats power in Congress they would not otherwise be able to earn. I never hear the term DINO — Democrat in Name Only — because the Democrats are too smart for that. Within the Democratic Party are avowed socialists (Bernie Sanders) together with senators and representatives who represent Montana, Arizona, and other generally red states — states that have long traditions of independence and free-market values. In other words, the Democratic Party...

There’s simply no market for this among Republicans. On top of it, Cheney’s alienation from her party is likely to build on itself. Already, she has said that she’d “find it very difficult” to support Ron DeSantis, the leading Republican alternative to Trump. In so doing, she is identifying herself with a fraction of a fraction of the party that is so small it is all but nonexistent. If she ran in a primary, she’d be firmly in the Larry Hogan lane, which might constitute about 5 percent of the Republican electorate total. It’s quite possible that those voters are...

Crime has surged in Denver, despite the city council increasing the budget to a record high of $265 million in 2022. The last weekend in July was a violent one in and around Denver, Colo. Early Saturday, a 31-year-old man was shot and killed in Northglenn, a northern suburb of the city, the first of at least six area shootings that sent at least four others to the hospital that weekend. Around 3 p.m., a man was stabbed to death on Denver’s north side. ... The weekend concluded with the late-Sunday killing of Kevin Piaskowski, who was driving home from...

The court-authorized search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is another unmistakable signal that the Justice Department is trying to build a criminal case against him arising out of the Capitol riot. Ostensibly, the search relates to a long simmering dispute between the former president and the government over Trump’s potentially illegal retention and mishandling of classified information. But don’t be deceived. National Archives officials alerted the Justice Department months ago regarding missing records and possible classified information violations. That owes to the chaotic atmosphere in which the Trump family decamped to Florida from the White House following the...