Free Republic

How does the Republican Party establishment choose its presidential candidate?  Typically, constitutionalists accuse their establishment rivals of being moderate, risk-averse, stubborn old fools who lack faith in conservative principles.  This is a soothing interpretation, as it begins from the hypothesis that the contest between conservatives and the GOP elite is a family feud. But there is another hypothesis -- less soothing, but, at least from an outsider's bird's-eye view, more reconcilable with the facts.  This hypothesis is that America has reached a stage of progressive soft despotism in which the only important family feud in national politics is between the fundamentally...

The poll was conducted between March 19 and 23, a week before the White House declared “mission accomplished” on ObamaCare, so maybe it’s simply missing a recent surge in enthusiasm among lefties. The first rule of ACA polling, though, is that the numbers rarely move much no matter what’s going on with the law. They dipped after the Healthcare.gov Chernobyl in October, they bounced back a bit as sign-ups improved, but overall they’ve been steady at around -10 or -12 for years now. Hard to believe that an enrollment milestone will shift that trend markedly and durably, especially with premiums...

VIDEO AT LINKOn Tuesday, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted during a post-speech question-and-answer session at the Marketo Marketing Summit at San Francisco's Moscone Center that she's thinking about running for president in 2016...

A Democratic blitz this week for new orders and laws promising equal pay for women is a key agenda item the party hopes will boost turnout this fall among its most loyal voters. President Barack Obama signed two executive actions, which will bar federal contractors from retaliating against employees for comparing salaries and require contractors to report compensation data to the government by gender and race. A McClatchy analysis in January found that women employees at the White House make 91 cents for every dollar men make. The female share of the federal workforce also has declined under Obama, while...

Libya's General National Congress (GNC) on Sunday (March 30th) agreed to replace the legislative body with a new House of Representatives. As the country prepares for its next try at governance, Magharebia visited Susa to ask activist and former thwar Adel Elhasy about the interplay between politics and security. Unless things change across the board, the former field commander of the Free Libyans Brigade sees a grim future for his country. Adel Elhasy: The security situation is deteriorating - seriously. There are no recognised or active institutions. There is no army, just military units under various military ranks that are...

Jeb Bush's "act of love" comments about immigration over the weekend drew massive headlines with some conservatives criticizing him for his latest apostasy on the issue. But, it's the lead-up to Bush using the phrase "act of love" that's actually the really important part of what he said. Here it is with our bolding added: "There are means by which we can control our border better than we have. And there should be penalties for breaking the law. But the way I look at this -- and I'm going to say this, and it'll be on tape and so be...

Sen. Rand Paul claimed in 2009 that former Vice President Dick Cheney exploited the 9/11 attacks in order to lead the United States into war in Iraq to benefit military contractor Halliburton, where Cheney had been CEO before heading to Washington, a video unveiled by blog Mother Jones' writer David Corn shows. In the video unearthed of a speech given at Western Kentucky University, Paul argues that Cheney opposed the first Bush administration's plans but changed his mind over Halliburton, Corn reports. "He's being interviewed (in 1995), I think, by the American Enterprise Institute, and he says it would be...

Barack Obama’s presidency is failing. Despite what he and his cheerleaders in the press think, he is still losing the argument over ObamaCare. The program has posted a few non-catastrophic enrollment numbers lately, but a lot of the public has already made up their minds. They never liked the program much to begin with, and now that they know what’s in it, they like it even less. The economic recovery, such as it is, continues to be slow, painful, and jobless. The president’s foreign policy is spinning out of control in all directions. So the left is doing what they...

A New Democratic Poll Is Warning Of Midterm Disaster For Democrats

If Sen. Rand Paul has any hope of capturing the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, he'll have to convince the conservative base he can be trusted on foreign policy -- which is exactly why Sen. Ted Cruz is his most dangerous critic.Though they have often been allies on domestic policy, anybody paying close attention knew that there was always a big gulf on foreign policy issues between Cruz, R-Texas, and Paul, R-Ky.Whereas Cruz has a much more traditional Reaganite view of a strong role for America in the world, Paul seeks to advance his father's brand of non-interventionism, which advocates...

Former Sen. Alan Simpson, a Republican, is making the case for a “live and let live” approach to same-sex marriage in a new television ad buy targeting Western states, just as a federal appeals court in Denver prepares to take up the issue later this week. “Whether you’re gay or lesbian or straight, if you love someone and you want to marry them, marry them,” Simpson, of Wyoming, says in the spot. The six-figure buy, sponsored by the pro-gay marriage group Freedom to Marry, is slated to start airing on Tuesday on national cable channels, as well as locally in...

<p>David Corn over at Mother Jones unearths a 2009 video of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), in which Paul suggests that former vice president Dick Cheney wanted to invade Iraq in order to benefit his former employer, Halliburton.</p> <p>In the video, shot at Western Kentucky University, Paul argues that Cheney thought the invasion was a bad idea in the first Bush administration but changed his tune after working for Halliburton.</p>

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) took a shot at Dick Cheney last night, saying the former Vice President wasn't in any position to be criticizing President Obama. "Well, I think he had his eight years and he's caused a lot of trouble for our country and he perpetuated a war in Iraq that was unnecessary and wrong-headed," Paul said of Cheney on CNN's Larry King Live. "So I would say that it would be best he not be so critical right now."

By a quirk of fate, we may be in for some pretty turbulent Senate elections, not only this November but in 2016 and 2018 as well. Majority status could resemble a rubber band as much as anything else. It is entirely plausible that the Senate will tip back into GOP hands in 2014, return to Democrats in 2016, and then flip again to Republicans in 2018. It’s all about how many—and which—seats on each side are up and exposed to losses, not to mention whether it is a presidential or midterm election. Obviously other factors could come into play, chiefly...

<p>The human kindling that makes up the flammable Republican base may soon burst into flames, again. Portions of that excitable cohort are looking — some with fawn-like eyes filled with hurt, others with sparks shooting from eyes narrowed like gun slits — askance at other Republicans urging Jeb Bush to seek the 2016 presidential nomination.</p>

You know who wants Jeb Bush to run for president? The pundits. It's not that they pine for another Bush in the White House; it's that they need a GOP front-runner, preferably a household name. The Republican race is too amorphous for their taste. Every story has to mention Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio and on and on. What journalists love is a two-person showdown, especially if each candidate hails from a different wing of the party, paving the way for lots of civil war themes. Christie was their guy. A brash, blunt blue-stater with...

Connoisseurs of hinge-moments – those instants at which a country’s future changes – have long-appreciated the 1994 Florida gubernatorial election. Jeb Bush lost. Meanwhile, across the country, his elder brother George was elected governor of Texas. George Junior complained – whined, perhaps – that Barbara and George Senior grieved Jeb’s loss more than they celebrated George’s victory. Until that moment, however, Jeb had been thought the Bush boy more likely to succeed on the national stage. Over the course of a single night in 1994, however, the wheel turned back to George. We know what happened next. Twenty years later...

Big money GOP donors are reluctantly leaning toward former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush for president in 2016, said talk show host Joe Scarborough. "The whispers are out there. You hear it among top [Republican National Committee] donors. There is not an excitement. I'll be really honest with you. Nobody's going, 'Oh, we got to get Jeb,'" Scarborough said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Monday.  Donors are eyeing Bush because they see him as the only nominee who could beat presumptive Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, Scarborough said, adding that contenders like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz aren't considered viable against the former...

Saturday’s Washington Post gave prominent placement to an article headlined “Influential Republicans working to draft Jeb Bush into 2016 presidential race” that detailed the establishment GOP’s desperate attempt to recruit the former Governor of Florida to run for president. The article by Philip Rucker and Robert Costa claims that “Concerned that the George Washington Bridge traffic scandal has damaged New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s political standing and alarmed by the steady rise of Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), prominent donors, conservative leaders and longtime operatives say they consider Bush the GOP’s brightest hope to win back the White House.” Rucker and...

The chore of determining who is the inevitable candidate for Republicans – at least in the minds of beltway insiders and the media – is clearly becoming more difficult. But the Washington Post takes a swing at the problem this weekend as they delve into the number of big donors who are now courting Jeb Bush to get off the bench and toss his hat in the ring. Many of the Republican Party’s most powerful insiders and financiers have begun a behind-the-scenes campaign to draft former Florida governor Jeb Bush into the 2016 presidential race, courting him and his intimates...