Free Republic

In a ridiculous discussion that sounded as though it belonged in a forum of a left-wing website, the panel on Sunday’s Meet the Press bemoaned how the country’s attitude towards women cost Hillary Clinton the White House. Moderator Chuck Todd read from the recent NYT column of Nicholas Kristof, who described Clinton’s idea of Trump voters as “I don’t agree with him, I’m not sure I really approve of him, but he looks like somebody who’s been president before.” Paraphrasing Clinton, Todd suggested that “she believed misogyny played a much larger role in this than it’s been analyzed by many...

The best thing that happened to Donald Trump all week is that BuzzFeed published the raw Russia dossier about him. ... By publishing the uncorroborated dossier, BuzzFeed has associated the Russia issue with fantastical rumors and hearsay. ... BuzzFeed’s incredible act of journalistic irresponsibility represented the press leading with its chin. ... Its decision to post the document has to be considered another chapter in the ongoing saga of the media and Democrats losing their collective minds.

The Access Hollywood tape that broke Friday afternoon sent GOP elected officials fleeing from the Republican nominee over the weekend in a truly historic rupture. Trump’s odds of winning the presidency were already long before the airing of the tape. With a swath of the party now in open revolt, they are longer still. We understand the calls for Trump to step aside. Almost any other Republican would have a better chance of defeating Hillary Clinton, a dreary and corrupt statist who is the Walter Mondale or Michael Dukakis of our time, yet is beating her desperately flawed opponent. But...

Among a very long list of harms inflicted upon the United States by Barack Obama and his party, perhaps the worst was Caesarism. Obama relished the worship of millions in 2008. From his star turn at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he was treated not as a political candidate, but as a savior. Progressives fell into a swoon, typified by Newsweek editor Evan Thomas' 2008 comment, "I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above -- above the world; he's sort of God." Now, a similar kind of unreasoning adulation is greeting (improbably enough) Donald Trump. Fred Barnes...

Have Republicans Grown Tired of Supporting the Rule of Law? by MONA CHAREN August 28, 2015 Among a very long list of harms inflicted upon the United States by Barack Obama and his party, perhaps the worst was Caesarism. Obama relished the worship of millions in 2008. From his star turn at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he was treated not as a political candidate but as a savior. Progressives fell into a swoon, typified by Newsweek editor Evan Thomas’s 2008 comment that “I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above — above the world, he’s sort...

Tuesday morning, FBI Director James Comey stepped up to a podium and calmly and methodically demolished every single Hillary Clinton lie, spin, and evasion regarding her misuse of classified information. Months of deception blew up in her face. And then Comey decided to make her president of the United States. Rarely have 30 minutes of television so perfectly encapsulated the decline and fall of the rule of law and the extraordinary privileges enjoyed by America’s liberal elite. After listing abuse after abuse — and detailing lie after lie — Comey declared that “no reasonable prosecutor” would prosecute Hillary for her...

NRO's Andy McCarthy on Rush's show still won't give Trump credit for being able to carry the "The system is rigged" message saying only his supporters agree. Well in that case we have to ask Mister McCarthy is still anti-Trump as we weigh his words. I don't trust anyone from NRO.

...Forget Trump and consider instead Trump’s constituencies. They are weary of being lectured that they deserve presidential rebuke for their supposed Islamophobia because they are angry about the terrorist killings of Americans. The middle classes are exhausted from being sermonized that they do not “pay their fair share,” when their state and federal tax bite is nearly 50 percent — especially when half the population pays no income tax, and massive federal entitlements have done little to address the pathologies of the underclasses. The contractor and the insurance salesman are furious at being scolded that “they didn’t build” their businesses,...

Hillary Clinton may yet win the Democratic nomination -- if she is not indicted. After all, it is hard for a New England spread-the-wealth socialist like rival Bernie Sanders to appeal to working-class southern whites, minorities, or the wealthy Democratic establishment. It is still likely that the Democratic Party will find a way to aid an ailing and scandal-plagued Mrs. Clinton, rather than turn over its future to a 74-year-old scold, who for most of his voting life was not a Democrat and whose redistributionist agendas and Woodstock fables about the 1960s make Obama seem centrist in comparison. All that...

<p>If the ‘high IQs’ of the establishment have let America down, where is a voter to turn?</p> <p>Donald Trump seems to have offended almost every possible identity group. But the New York billionaire still also seems to appeal to the working classes (in part no doubt precisely because he has offended so many special-interest factions; in part because he was seen in the primaries as an outsider using his own money; in part because he seems a crude man of action who dislikes most of those of whom Middle America is tired). At this point, his best hope in November, to the extent such a hope exists, rests on turning 2016 into a referendum on class and a collective national interest that transcends race and gender — and on emphasizing the sad fact that America works now mostly for an elite, best epitomized by Clinton, Inc.</p>

<p>This year was supposed to be Hillary Clinton’s “turn,” after her humiliating loss in 2008 to Barack Obama. She has paid her dues as secretary of state for Obama. And the apparent Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, is written off by most pundits as a buffoon without a chance in the general election. Yet, Clinton’s campaign continues to be dismal, and is getting worse — to the point where the socialist Bernie Sanders polls better against Trump than does Hillary Clinton. How can that be? At least eight reasons come to mind — several of them relating to Clinton’s innate character flaws and past scandals.</p>

Facing a free-wheeling Trump, she is weighted down by tons of baggage. This year was supposed to be Hillary Clinton’s “turn,” after her humiliating loss in 2008 to Barack Obama. She has paid her dues as secretary of state for Obama. And the apparent Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, is written off by most pundits as a buffoon without a chance in the general election. Yet, Clinton’s campaign continues to be dismal, and is getting worse — to the point where the socialist Bernie Sanders polls better against Trump than does Hillary Clinton. How can that be? At least...

<p>White elites are the main reason Donald Trump’s campaign hasn’t sputtered and failed.</p> <p>Why do the angry white poor and working class support the unlikely populist Donald Trump — a spoiled bully who made and lost fortunes in part by gaming the system, who seems to take gratuitous rudeness and cruelty as a birthright, whose lifestyle is symptomatic of American excess, and who for the last half-century has embraced no ideology other than Trump, Inc.?</p>

Trump is crude and politically clueless, but no more so than the Clintons, Sanders — or Obama. Donald J. Trump thus far has not shown that he has the level-headedness to be president. He has no political ideology and could just as well govern to the left of Hillary Clinton as to the right of her. Yet his sloppy way of speaking has earned him equally sloppy, over-the-top analogies — to Mussolini, Hitler, George Wallace, and a host of other populist and racist demagogues. But is he uniquely dangerous, ignorant, or cruel in terms of either distant or recent American...

Especially influential are the revolving-door multimillionaires, especially from big banks and Wall Street — the Tim Geithners, Jack Lews, Hank Paulsons, and Robert Rubins, but also the lesser flunkies of the Freddie/Fannie Clintonite crowd, a Franklin Raines (raking in $90 million) or a Jamie Gorelick ($26 million), all of whom came into the White House and its bureaucracies to get rich, but who always seem shocked when the public does not like their incestuous trails of bailouts, relief plans, favorable regulations, etc. Creepy too are the satellite grifters like “investment banker” Rahm Emanuel — who somehow, between the White House...

Especially influential are the revolving-door multimillionaires, especially from big banks and Wall Street — the Tim Geithners, Jack Lews, Hank Paulsons, and Robert Rubins, but also the lesser flunkies of the Freddie/Fannie Clintonite crowd, a Franklin Raines (raking in $90 million) or a Jamie Gorelick ($26 million), all of whom came into the White House and its bureaucracies to get rich, but who always seem shocked when the public does not like their incestuous trails of bailouts, relief plans, favorable regulations, etc. Creepy too are the satellite grifters like “investment banker” Rahm Emanuel — who somehow, between the White House...

So I just stopped by the Corner blog at National Review Online to see their reaction to Trump's speech today. To my surprise, there wasn't a single post commenting on it. The NR writers spent the day posting about Brexit, and about Rubio's senate run, and about a picture of Trump they don't like. But not a word about Trump's speech. If that isn't proof that Trump hit a home run today, I don't know what is.

Realville, as Rush often says, is where he lives. That’s a place without blinkers or rose-colored glasses. That’s actually where we all live, though some of us prefer to deny it. That is, until reality bites. Then our wishful thinking or willful ignorance dashes upon the hard rock of unforgiving reality. The crackup always smarts. Thus is the case with the 2016 presidential election. There’s Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. In other words, there’s Column A and Column B. That’s the choice. Column C is fairyland. Come November, tens of millions of voters will flock to the polls to choose...

Glenn Beck: Why Do Conservative Pundits Support Trump? Glenn Beck wants to stage a conservative intervention. The former Fox News host and prominent conservative commentator is confounded that so many Republican voters are attracted to Donald Trump. And Beck is particularly bewildered by the conservative pundits who are hooked on the bombastic real estate mogul. "Why are big name 'conservatives' supporting him?" Beck asked wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday. Beck went on to name names, calling out some of Trump's biggest boosters in conservative media: Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage. "I am not talking...

Here is a sentence I never thought I’d type: After days of prayer, reflection, and serious study of the possibilities, I am not going to run as an independent candidate for president of the United States. I gave it serious thought — as a pretty darn obscure lawyer, writer, and veteran — only because we live in historic times. Never before have both parties failed so spectacularly, producing two dishonest, deceitful candidates who should be disqualified from running for town council, much less leader of the free world.