Free Republic

The primary season begins, and thoughtful watchers of the passing scene are reminded yet again of one thing that has stuck in our craw for over 50 years now: Why do outsiders get to choose a party’s nominee for the general election? I know, this has gone without saying for so long that it may seem like a foreign concept, but it is worth reconsidering – because it wasn’t always like this. For almost the first two centuries of our Republic, there were two kinds of candidates in any election: independent candidates and those selected by a political party. You...

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) - This may not be an election year, but some voters are switching political parties. In Arizona, Republicans have the largest number of registered voters, but more voters are switching or registering as Independents. Politics in Arizona is a constant national focus with the state Senate election audit, politicians making headlines and President Joe Biden winning the traditionally red state in 2020. New poll shows election audit unpopular with Arizona voters Examining voter registration from the Secretary of State's Office shows some interesting trends. In the years between the 2016 and 2020 general elections, Democrats saw the...

We FReepers complain about the Uniparty. Do other democracies have a uniparty or in the UK, e.g., do the the Tories and Labourites manage to avoid overlapping ideologies?ff

Republicans are the racist and sexist party, right? They keep women down and want take us back to the Jim Crow era, don’t they? While these are commonly held beliefs by our nation’s professors, political pundits, journalists, celebrities, and essentially all liberals and many independents, if you take a look at the history of our two major parties you’ll quickly realize that the war on women is being waged by Democrats and the party that defended slavery and keeps blacks enslaved today is, yep, you guessed it, the Democrats. Full disclosure here. I don’t think Republicans are saints or even...

In 1857, the Supreme Court, with 7 of the 9 Justices being Democrat, decided that Dred Scott was not a citizen, but property. Chief Justice Roger Taney, appointed by Democrat President Andrew Jackson, referenced in his decision that slaves were "so far inferior...that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for their own benefit." After the Civil War, Republicans pushed through the 13TH AMENDMENT, adopted December 6, 1865, officially abolishing slavery in America. Once Southern Democrats were forced to free their slaves, they attempted to effectively re-enslave them by passing Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws which...

Donald Trump won more votes in the Iowa caucuses than any Republican candidate in history. Impressive, except Ted Cruz set the new all-time record. And Marco Rubio exceeded all expectations by taking 23 percent. Cruz won tea party types, evangelicals and the hard right. Trump won the populists and nationalists who want the borders secure, no amnesty and no more trade deals that enable rival powers like China to disembowel American industries. And Rubio? He is what columnist Mark Shields called Jimmy Carter, 35 years ago, “the remainderman of national politics. He gets what’s left over after his opponents have...

Americans with no religious affiliation have supplanted Catholics as the largest such group in the Democratic Party, according to a new Pew Research study set to be released on Tuesday. “Nones,” as the religiously unaffiliated are called, make up 28% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults, Pew’s Religious Landscape Survey found, compared with 19% in 2007, the last time it studied the issue. Christians overall still make up a majority of the Democratic Party, 63%. Catholics comprised 21% of the party as of 2014, down from 24% in 2007, the Pew study concluded. Evangelicals remain by far the largest single religious...

I am no longer a Republican. John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and their Democrat-lite, RINO Republican establishment have seen to that. They have betrayed their own constituents. They have actively turned against the American people – the very voters who granted them power to do good. Even before the gavel has sounded on the Republican-led 114th Congress, these treacherous cowards shamelessly, eagerly, it seems, squandered perhaps the one opportunity they had to stop, in his tracks, America's first cultural Marxist, anti-American, palpably evil president. If ever there were, there can no longer be any doubt. Barack Obama is bent on turning...

Based on the other weird cartoons (the Noam Chomsky one in particular), the artist appears to be a lib, but this is pretty darn funny.

Do your politics line up with your drink of choice? To answer this question we looked to GFK MRI survey data to profile over 50 major brands of wine and spirits according to voter registration and turnout history. The findings are summarized in the following bubble chart “Politics of Wine & Liquor Brands.” The chart shows that Democratic drinkers are more likely to sip clear liquors like Absolut while Republicans prefers darker drinks like Jim Beam. And, perhaps not surprisingly, people who take shots of Jagermeister or Don Julio are much less likely to vote.

"There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution." -John Adams

As I've mentioned before, getting involved in a political party is one of the best ways to have an impact on the things you care about. And for conservatives, that means getting involved in the GOP.However, many people don't get involved simply because they don't know much about it, and a lack of information intimidates people. So, for those who have never been involved, here's a rundown on pretty much all you need to know and where to begin. Structure of Political Parties Political parties are structured in the form of a pyramid, with national elected leaders at the top...

It is time for a new conservative party. I am tired of the Republican Party because it represents keeping the status quo in D.C. The truth is the D.C. establishment consists of both republicans and democrats whose goal is to keep our money flowing into D.C. thereby making everyone beholden to the federal government. These politicians walk away mufti-millionaires with lifetime benefits at our expense while their constituents have less and less of their hard-earned money. Every few years we talk about winning the next election and then taking back the government; however, that never happens because our so-called representatives...

U.S. assistance to Egypt is helping political parties of all ideologies prepare for the upcoming elections -- even Islamic parties that may have anti-Western agendas. "We don't do party support. What we do is party training.... And we do it to whoever comes," William Taylor, the State Department's director of its new office for Middle East Transitions, said in a briefing with reporters today. "Sometimes, Islamist parties show up, sometimes they don't. But it has been provided on a nonpartisan basis, not to individual parties." The programs, contracted through the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and the International...

[snip] Democrat champions in the punditocracy confidently predict that the future of the world’s oldest political party is bright. But in fact, the coalition that is the modern Democratic Party is doomed. Every pillar upholding its heavy roof is crumbling. The Democratic and Republican parties are structurally different. The Democrats are a coalition, forged in the New Deal, of diverse interests that do not get along well. Imagine the deer-hunting union member sitting down with the vegetarian college professor and the lesbian lawyer and you will begin to see the trouble party leaders have holding the horde together. So far,...

There is a quote out there that sometimes get[s] attributed to [former] Republican Senate Leader Everitt Dirksen and sometimes not. The quote is that there [are] two parties in Washington - the stupid party and the evil party. Every once in a while the stupid party and the evil party get together and do something that is both stupid and evil. In Washington, that is called bipartisanship. Our United States Senate, led by Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, are on the verge of leading the Congress into doing something both stupid and...

Everyone in Egypt agrees on this much: The "transition" has already started. But they don't agree on what "transition" means -- or on whether it will be dictated by the "street" or choreographed by a nervous regime. Yesterday, new Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that transition talks had begun between the governing National Democratic Party and "the opposition." He also described the protesters' demands as legitimate and promised "much reform" and a referendum. The subtext: Suleiman is now in charge, and President Hosni Mubarak should be allowed to fade away "with dignity." Yet those who seek regime change won't be...

Do you like to look at Pre-Season College football polls? For some it's fun is it not to go over who is considered the favorite to win it all? But alas these polls ultimately has no true bearing on who is going to win the championship, the games have to be played out and not just on paper.....the same can be said about Media-inspired Presidential candidates polling data, even if it's accurate. In the history of modern politics, polling done on candidates on either political party, years or even weeks before the Primary season has no bearing on what we...

Just when you thought Congress couldn't reach a new low, it did. Only a third of US voters think their Congress members have earned the right to get sent back next year -- a record-low number, a poll released yesterday shows. Thirty-four percent of voters queried think members of the House and the Senate ought to be re-elected -- while an astonishing 63 percent were in favor of throwing the bums out, the new CNN poll showed. That's the worst performance for Congress in the history of the network's polling -- the latest red flag for the floundering Democratic leadership...

Perhaps Conservatives and Republicans should start jamming the C-Span Democrat phone lines just like the Democrats do. This morning was a prime example when the discussion was regarding Obama's appearance before the Republicans yesterday. The C-Span host let obvious Democrats ramble on about the greatness of Obama when he had already announced they called in on the Republican line. They let one Republican through - the very last caller. They definitely got an email from me. They need a new call screener, and they definitely need hosts that will not allow speakers to continue talking when they are obviously calling...