Free Republic

If you don’t understand the stakes, and how fraught the situation is — that the ruling class seeks total power, is closing in on it, and will stop at nothing to achieve it — you are unfit to lead. The defining political question of our time is this: “Do you know what time it is?”The line, popularized by the Claremont Institute’s David Reaboi, succinctly captures the most essential of points: If you don’t understand the stakes, and how fraught the situation is — that the ruling class seeks total power, is closing in on it, and will stop at nothing...

Even before the spanking Democrats across the country received Tuesday night, I was struck by polls earlier in the week showing that resident Joe Biden (and, by extension, the Democratic Party) was hemorrhaging support, even among those who voted for him in 2020. Now that voters have spoken in deep blue states such as New York, New Jersey and Minnesota, and "purple" states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, there are plenty of takeaways for Republicans looking for victory in 2022, 2024 and thereafter. No. 1: First and foremost, no, it is not about "distancing yourself from Trump." Donald Trump...

For sure, Democrats rejoiced as they watched Republicans painfully twist in the wind at the beginning of LGBTQ Pride Month, trying to figure out how to position their party on this issue. Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel got flak from the right and from the left, as she essentially waved a white flag, declaring Republican Party neutrality on a key issue of our cultural conflicts. "We will continue to grow our big tent by supporting measures that promote fairness and balance protections for LGBTQ Americans and those with deeply held religious beliefs," she tweeted. But McDaniel's invitation to relegate...

President Trump blasted RINO loser Paul Ryan in a statement on Friday. Former Speaker of the House and failed Vice Presidential candidate, Paul Ryan, slammed President Trump in a speech about the future of the Republican party. “If the conservative cause depends on the populist appeal of one personality, or on second-rate imitations, then we’re not going anywhere. Voters looking for Republican leaders want to see independence and mettle,” Paul Ryan said at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California on Friday. “They will not be impressed by the sight of yes-men and flatterers flocking to Mar-a-Lago,” he added taking...

To this day, if you want to bring chills to the spines of conservative Republicans, just mention the name David Souter. Souter was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush because he was mild-mannered and thought to be able to avoid the bruising confirmation fight that snared Robert Bork. “He seemed to have felt a commitment to his conservative philosophy for about six months, and then just fell off a cliff into the dark side of liberalism,” said John Sununu, a fellow New Hampshire native and former governor and senator from the Granite State, who...

The brute fact is that the GOP today—unlike its original incarnation—has no rootedness in any specific moral conception of political life. It is an unmoored, mercenary instrument for hire. By Tal Bachman May 14, 2021 Once upon a time, the Republican Party didn’t suck. Actually, there were lots of times it didn’t suck. It didn’t suck when, at its founding in the late 1850s, it declared slavery an inhumane, barbaric practice, and eventually ended it. It didn’t suck when it ended repressive and predatory Mormon polygamy a few decades later. It didn’t suck when it declared late 19th-century corporate monopolies...

Good riddance to Liz Cheney – Yo Lizzy, don’t go away mad, just go away rejected and humiliated back to the smoldering ruins of your failed dynasty. Her ejection is the minimum act of political hygiene necessary to demonstrate to the base that the Republican Party is no longer the cruise ship fleet of the past. I’d ship off Adam Kinzinger too, but his new pals the Democrats will take care of that simpering suck-up soon enough when they gerrymander his Illinois district into oblivion in 2022. It seems ridiculous to have to say it, but you cannot have a...

Protecting people from murder, assault, battery, and mutilation by criminals and predators is the first and most basic government function. A state that cannot do this has no moral legitimacy to do anything else.To explain his veto of a bill that would have protected children from transgender genital mutilation, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson claimed it would be “a vast government overreach.”Using language similar to North Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s in vetoing a bill to protect girls’ sports from unfair and irrational transgender male competition, Hutchinson further claimed:I don’t shy away from the battle when it is necessary and defensible. But...

Everyone knows why Democrats don’t want voters to show ID. It has nothing to do with racism, and everyone knows it. So why are we playing this stupid game?In March, Georgia Republicans amended their state’s election laws in a weak attempt to assuage voters disgusted with their enabling of the 2020 election circus. To punish their political opponents for requiring voter ID and creating an election season of a month long or more Democrats called up their character assassination squads.Democrats have been throwing every bit of pressure they can at Georgia elected officials to get their way without winning power...

They are Democrat propagandists and should be treated as such.The great comedian Chris Farley had a recurring “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which he nervously and incompetently interviewed celebrities. “Remember when you were with the Beatles? … That was awesome!” he “asked” Paul McCartney in 1993, after fidgeting for a suitably awkward amount of time. “Yeah … it was,” replied McCartney, who played it straight.That happened for real last Thursday, but without any self-awareness or comedy, when the entire White House Press Corps either effusively praised or more-than-gently handled President Joe Biden for the duration of his first press conference....

The announcement that Donald Trump will establish his own platform in social media has rocked the political world. A mass exodus from Twitter and Facebook to a new Trump platform could weaken those liberal monopolies, and some in Big Tech are hastily considering whether to invite him back.Meanwhile, Trump’s statements continue to dominate the news more than Biden’s comments do. Almost daily Trump uses his near-perfect track record of successful endorsements to back a new challenger to an incumbent in the 2022 elections.On Monday Trump endorsed the primary challenge by Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) to the turncoat Georgia Secretary of...

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” the Republican Party is a “cult of death.” Discussing Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) lifting the COVID-19 mask mandate, anchor Nicolle Wallace said, “It sounds like it isn’t going to work on the science side. There’s a lot of skepticism in Texas that it’s not going to work on the economic side as well. Why is he doing it?”

It's still a Trump party, but it's more than that.In February 2017, I attended my first Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Donald Trump was fresh off a stunning victory in the 2016 presidential election and it was very easy to tell he had all the energy, vim, and support of the attendees. What was less certain at the time was how Trump would govern and whether his control of the Republican Party would be a longstanding feature, or just some weird detour. This weekend I attended CPAC again. This time, it was held outside of the Washington DC region for...

Former President Donald Trump is expected to shoot down the idea of launching his own party to rival the GOP — and will “walk right up to the line” of announcing a 2024 run, without actually doing so. According to a Suffolk Poll published last week, 46 percent of Republican voters would support a new party formed by Trump, while 27 percent remain undecided. Only 27 percent said that they would stick with the GOP over Trump. However, an early excerpt from the CPAC speech obtained by Fox News says that he will not be starting a new party.

Source: Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead"I don't know if he'll run in 2024 or not. But if he does, I'm pretty sure he will win the nomination." So says Mitt Romney, the sole Republican senator to have voted twice to convict President Donald J. Trump of impeachable acts. But is it possible Trump could win the nomination in 2024? What does history teach us about Republican presidents who, after losing the White House, come back to win it again? Well, to be frank, there is no such history. Consider. Four Republican presidents in the 20th century were defeated...

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) isn’t afraid to make her voice heard. Prior to entering the U.S. Senate, the firebrand lawmaker represented Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District from 2003 to 2019. As a state senator, she bucked the status quo and led the charge against a proposed state income tax. Her latest book, The Mind of a Conservative Woman: Seeking the Best for Family and Country, does an excellent job cataloging her political journey and offers smart tips for advancing conservatism in the public square. I recently spoke to Blackburn—the first woman elected U.S. Senator from the Volunteer State—about the historic number...

This is not going to be a popular opinion, but it is time for Republicans to stop demonizing illegal immigrants and begin recruiting them as voters. resident Joe Biden is determined to give amnesty to the immigrants here illegally now, and whether by executive order (at last count, Biden has signed 55 executive orders, proclamations and memoranda, eight of which loosen immigration restrictions) or because Democrats control the House and Senate, there is every reason to think he will get what he wants. This would not be the first time the government granted amnesty to those who entered the country...

Friday's floor speech was no quick tantrum: It was the last stupid moments of the minority leader's plan to purge the GOP of Donald Trump.Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell “got a load off his chest” with his speech closing out Friday’s second failed impeachment attempt against former President Donald Trump. “Unfortunately,” however, “he [also] put a load on the back of Republicans. That speech you will see in 2022 campaigns.” Who’s responsible for that quote? It might surprise some it wasn’t Donald Trump Jr. or Rep. Matt Gaetz — it was Sen. Lindsey Graham, a moderate, hawkish Republican not up...

WASHINGTON -- "I was allowed to believe things that weren't true," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., told her colleagues Thursday. It was a non-apology for repeating vile disinformation -- which resulted in Democrats stripping her committee assignments. In 2017, Greene wrote that that gun control "could be the very motive of the Las Vegas Massacre" that, ultimately, killed 60. In 2018 she spoke of a "so-called plane that crashed into the Pentagon" on 9/11. Greene denied those assertions, as she argued that those remarks should not be an issue because she made them before she ran for office. Be it...

Liz Cheney's backlash sends a warning signal to GOP senators weighing impeachment, but the issues run far deeper.CHEYENNE, Wyo — Hundreds flocked the Wyoming State Capitol Tuesday, kicking off a campaign to oust Republican Rep. Liz Cheney after the state’s at-large representative joined Democrats in another effort to impeach President Donald Trump. Two weeks ago, Cheney triggered the backlash escalating to a protest in her own state when she declared she would be casting her vote for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s second rushed impeachment featuring an article passed without a single hearing, significant deliberation, or witness. The vote ignited a...