Free Republic

It is reminiscent of the quandary faced by Gen. Maurice Gamelin on the evening of May 15, 1940. Suddenly he realized that German panzer troops had broken through the supposedly impassable Ardennes. French troops to the north were cut off and rendered useless, troops to the south were falling back in disarray on all sides and no reserves were available between the front and Paris. "Yes," he told the prime minister, "it means the destruction of the French Army." Now, analogies between military history and politics are never exact, and no one in American politics remotely resembles the Nazis. But...

It’s Thanksgiving, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to acknowledge some of the things I’m thankful for this year. Problem is, I’m a cynical man. So, I’m truly thankful for some things on this list, but others are there purely for purposes of sarcasm. You decide which is which. First, my friends and family. Blah, blah, blah, love them, blah, blah, blah. They’re “insert your favorite positive adjective here” to me. Without them…I’d probably leave the house less often and spend a lot less time on the phone. I’m kidding, of course, I am thankful for them, but...

For Republicans, winning enough races next year to take control of the Senate and expand their current majority in the House is suddenly oh so easy. Democrats are already underwater because of a flood of clear and compelling evidence that Obamacare is an unmitigated disaster. And there’s no end in sight to the rising tide of bad news, which won’t begin to ebb until painfully close to Election Day 2014. Horrendous as the stories about the damage Obamacare has inflicted upon the individual market have been, certain to be even worse will be news yet-to-come about its damage to both...

Whether we like it or not – and we don’t – there’s a significant chance that Chris Christie will be the 2016 Republican nominee. Perhaps he can use a few helpful hints from the GOP’s Tea Party/Constitutional Conservative/Actual Conservative wing. Let’s start by establishing a baseline: We don’t like you and we don’t trust you. Now, that’s not a deal breaker. You feel the same way about us. There is nothing that says we conservatives can’t grow to like and/or trust you. Maybe we just got off on the wrong foot. So, in that spirit, let’s share our feelings. We...

It is not the libertarians’ fault when a conservative candidate loses. As conservatives, we should avoid blaming others when we don’t succeed. That’s what liberals do. That, plus shred the Constitution and shovel our money to deadbeats. Libertarians are not conservatives, and we don’t have a right to their votes. But sometimes we share the same goals, and some of them are gettable voters for conservative candidates. We just need to understand that there is no one kind of libertarian any more than there is one kind of Republican. In the GOP, you have social conservatives, the moderate/RINO wing, the...

Politics is in the eye of the beholder. Post-mortems now gushing forth about why Ken Cuccinelli, conservative Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, lost to Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a business-as-usual political retread from the Clinton crowd, tell us more about who produces this punditry than what reality actually might be. We’re hearing that the Tea Party killed Cuccinelli (according to the Wall Street Journal editorial page they “stabbed him in the back”) with the government shutdown and that, once again, a socially conservative Republican candidate has shown he can’t win the votes of women. What I see is very...

The presidential election of 2016 will be a defining moment for the nation and for the Republican Party. Not so for the Democratic Party. There’s no controversy among Democrats about what America should be and what their party is about. Big government, welfare state socialism, and secular humanism. The only question about who the Democratic presidential candidate will be is which welfare state socialist, secular humanist they will nominate. The picture for Republicans is more complex and this makes Democrats happy. They see Republican Party intraparty dissension as division and weakness which, in their view, can only help Democrats....

I close my eyes and imagine the coming days. The American public growing skeptical and then outright dismissive of Obamacare. A growing revulsion over the administration's Benghazi deception. A national awakening to the crises we face in spending, especially on entitlements. But then I open my eyes, and I have to look at the real world. Sure, "Saturday Night Live" and late-night comics are poking fun at the disastrous healthcare.gov rollout. But does anyone doubt that these pop-culture jokesters would still vote for Obama by 90 percent margins in the next five elections if they could? Do not fool yourselves....

Some political commentators are dancing on what they believe to be the grave of the Republican Party, claiming that the only way the GOP can have a viable future is for them to behave like Democrats. Last weekend, National Review magazine sponsored a "conservative summit" in Washington. They should have held it elsewhere. Prior to speaking at that event, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal addressed the Republican National Committee's annual winter meeting in Charlotte, N.C., where he proposed a new strategy for Republicans and conservatives that begins, not in Washington, but at the state level. Jindal said the Republican Party...