Free Republic

As Republicans rubbed their eyes on the morning of November 9, it became painfully clear that the much-predicted red wave had turned out to be a mirage. A slew of unremarkable Republican candidates lost their bids to unseat Democratic congressmen, and prominent “MAGA-style” Trump-backed candidates lost as well. Both groups within the GOP blamed the other, with MAGA Republicans saying that the establishment GOP was milquetoast, and mainstream Republicans criticizing the crass populism of many Trump candidates. In spite of rampant inflation and general economic anxiety, Republicans only nar­rowly reclaimed the House of Representatives and failed to take the U.S....

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to form a coalition government before the scheduled midnight deadline. After a series of deadlocked elections, Netanyahu, a five-term incumbent, was given a mandate on April 6 by President Reuven Rivlin to try to piece together a coalition of smaller parties to comprise a ruling majority. The deadline of midnight on Wednesday came and passed without Netanyahu cobbling one together, leaving the prime minister's political future unclear. Rivlin said Beit HaNassi, or the "President's House," will "contact the parties in the Knesset regarding the process of forming a government" Wednesday morning. Benny Gantz,...

The New Right and Zehut parties have reached an agreement on basic principles for a joint run in this September’s election to the 22nd Knesset. According to a report by Yediot Ahronot Monday, former Likud MK and Zehut chairman Moshe Feiglin and ex-Education Minister and New Right chief Naftali Bennett have laid the foundations for a united ticket, reaching an understanding on key issues. The two reportedly carried out extensive negotiations over the past month, including a number of face-to-face meetings between the two leaders, along with talks between other senior Zehut and New Right party officials. One remaining point...

Former Education Minister Naftali Bennett announced on Sunday evening that he will run in the elections for the 22nd Knesset as part of his New Right party. Bennett formed the New Right party prior to the previous elections in April together with former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. In his first statement following his dismissal from the government, Bennett said: "Earlier today, the prime minister informed me that he was dismissing me as Minister of Education of the state of Israel. For the first time, I can dedicate the beginning of the coming school year on September 1 to only my...

Jon and Stephen welcome back Michael Malice, author of The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics. Michael also wrote 2014’s Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il, and is the subject of Harvey Pekar’s graphic novel Ego & Hubris. He currently hosts both “Night Shade” at Compound Media and “YOUR WELCOME” at the GaS Digital Network. The Conservatarians also discuss Naomi Wolf’s interview faceplant and the media panic over a slowed-down video of Nancy Pelosi...

A review of Michael Malice's new book, The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics.

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked published a farewell post on Tuesday following the official announcement of the results of the Knesset elections, which revealed that the New Right party had failed to clear the electoral threshold. "Dear friends, supporters and activists, thank you. You are amazing, true idealists, that every party would be happy to have," Shaked wrote. "The fighting spirit of the hundreds of volunteers who came from all over the country excited me and encouraged me in these difficult times. Some of the findings have been corrected by the Elections Committee, where ballot boxes have been found, and suspicions...

The New Right party of Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked will conduct a partial vote recount following last Tuesday’s election, after receiving approval from the Central Elections Committee Sunday evening. Judge Hanan Melcer, the chairman of the Central Elections Committee, green lighted a request by the New Right to conduct a recount of votes in 300 ballot boxes which were used for special votes – the double-enveloped ballots cast by Israeli citizens unable to vote at the ballot nearest to their home. These voters include voters who were hospitalized during the election, soldiers stationed at bases...

The New Right party said on Thursday night, "The results that were published are not final, and we continue to fight. We expect the media to show some more seriousness in its reports.” "Over the course of the day, a war room was established at party headquarters that gathered about 1,000 failures and flaws in the voting process. At the beginning of the week we will receive the protocols and our hundreds of volunteers will compare them to the computerized results.” "We will also address all the extreme irregularities discovered in the counting of the double envelopes. We will accept...

The Likud is projected to gain one mandate over the initial post-election vote count, pushing it from 35 to 36 seats, after the counting of special ballots was completed Thursday, Israeli media outlets reported Thursday afternoon. Special ballots, which make up some five percent of the nearly 4.3 million votes cast in Tuesday’s election, include the votes of Israeli soldiers stationed at bases across the country, prisoners in jails and detention facilities, voters in Israeli hospitals, and members of the Foreign Ministry overseas service. The preliminary results of the full county of all ballots cast in the election show the...

A discrepancy of slightly more than 60,000 votes between the summaries of the valid votes of all parties in the elections and the number appearing on the committee's website may decide the fate of the New Right Party. According to data appearing on the Election Committee's website from early morning, the New Right Party received 3.26 percent of the vote, while the electoral threshold stands at 3.25 percent of the vote, meaning that it exceeded the threshold. However, an examination of total valid votes granted to all parties running in the Knesset elections shows the number at 4,291,707, while the...

The new Blue and White alliance of Benny Gantz’s Israel Resilience party and Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid faction would become the largest party in the Knesset if new elections were held today, a new poll shows – but the right-wing – religious bloc would retain a narrow majority. According to the poll, conducted by Maagar Mohot and published by i24NEWS and Israel Hayom Sunday evening, if new elections were held today, the Blue and White party of Gantz and Lapid would win 36 mandates. The Likud, by contrast, would gain a single mandate over its 2015 performance, winning a total...

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is a huge part of the Millennial psyche. But while that extends to everything that goes down on social media, this generation doesn’t seem to be worried about missing out on retirement funds. Millennials—or Generation Y—are today’s late teens and twenty-somethings born in the 80s and 90s, and they number some 80 million people in the United States. And because FOMO is the Millennial common denominator, the financial detours are numerous. Thanks to the meteoric rise of social media advertising, Millennials have endless options for spending money, and they account for an estimated $1.3 trillion...

Howard ("Howie") Phillips was unique. The year was 1987 and the Reagan administration had announced the INF Treaty to limit short-range nukes. Many conservatives were opposed. I elected to host a press conference to make that point publicly. The night before, we met privately. As ringleader, I issued a directive: No attacks on Ronald Reagan. Our beef was with the treaty, not with the Gipper. My co-conspirators agreed unanimously. But while we were meeting President Reagan was sitting down for an interview with Tom Brokaw and said about conservative opposition, "Some conservatives just believe in the inevitability of nuclear war."...

Last night, MSNBC aired a Chris Matthews special, labeled a documentary, called The Rise of the New Right. I decided to take a quick break from my radical right wing extremist acts like bitterly clinging to my guns and my Bible, whilst fiendishly drawing devil horns on Obama photos, to watch it. I know. Apparently, I’m a glutton for punishment. However, while absolutely infuriating, it was simultaneously hilarious and almost took my mind off the distressing shortage of windmills in this country. Almost immediately, two things became rather apparent. Firstly, MSNBC’s NewSpeak definition of “documentary” is evidently “blatant fallacies and...

Summary: The evidence of the past two decades is unimpeachable: the political right in America no longer stands for individual rights, limited government and capitalism. [www.CapMag.com] The evidence of the past two decades is unimpeachable: the political right in America no longer stands for individual rights, limited government and capitalism. The “rightists” now advocate expanding the welfare state, increasing government intrusion into our intimate private affairs, and sacrificing American lives to foreign paupers. They call it “advancing the cause of freedom.” This is not what the right once stood for. Fifty years ago one could recognize serious problems in their...

August 24, 2002 When Did It Happen? A remarkable transformation has occurred in American thought. It's one of those transformations that's imperceptible while it's happening, but seems breathtaking when looked upon in retrospect. I believe historians will almost certainly remark upon the 1990s as the linchpin decade that marked a radical shift in the American mindset. Consider a 1950 book called Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society, by Lionel Trilling. In it, Trilling wrote: In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain...