Free Republic

A letter to the editor today in the editorial pages of my local newspaper caught my attention. The writer lamented yesterday’s slaughter of 27 innocents in Newtown, Connecticut – as we all do. Then he identified the culprit – guns. We’ve never heard of a “mass-knifing” claiming so many victims, he pointed out. His implication was that, if we scrap the Second Amendment, there will be no more funerals for victims of mass murder. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Timothy McVeigh did not use a gun in 1995 when he killed 168 people, including 10 children,...

A new poll finds that a majority of voters would blame both President Obama and congressional Republicans equally if efforts to find a deficit deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff” fail. Fifty-six percent surveyed in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll say both sides would be responsible if a compromise is not reached. Nineteen percent would blame Obama and Democrats only, with 24 percent saying the GOP would be at fault. Those numbers could suggest a shift in public opinion as both parties work to find a way to prevent tax rate hikes and automatic spending cuts from taking...

Filling in on Rush Limbaugh’s Monday radio show, National Review columnist Mark Steyn said that Republicans lost big on Election Day because less engaged and more uniformed voters turned out in force. “We do very well in off years, in the midterms — 1994, 2002,” Steyn said. “Republicans can have good years then because essentially they’re low-turnout elections — people who are engaged in politics vote. In the presidential years, people voted — a broader pool of voters comes in, and they’re basically people who swim in the broader culture. They’re not people who know the name of their congressmen...

Speaking at The David Horowitz Freedom Center's "Restoration Weekend" in Florida on November 16, Pat Caddell indicted what he called the Republican "consultant-lobbyist-establishment" complex for losing a presidential campaign in 2012 President Barack Obama had no business winning. “No presidential campaign should be run by consultants,” Caddell said. “They should be run by people who are committed to the candidate and not into making big money.” Caddell said “Republicans never attempted to put a frame around the national election” because “the people who run the messaging in the Republican party and their consultants refused to do it.” Caddell, the former...

A new CNN poll shows that more Americans would blame Republicans if the country went off the fiscal cliff rather than President Obama. 45 percent of those polled by CNN said they would blame Republicans more; 34 percent said they would blame Obama. But Republicans might have a political opportunity if they can convince Americans that President Obama is not working to cooperate with Republicans. According to CNN, nearly half say Obama is not doing enough to cooperate with the Republicans, although seven in ten want him to compromise with the GOP.

<p>With all bad news on the tape now having a suitable "explanation", be it a prior president, a tropical storm, the weather being too hot, the weather being too cold, the weather being just right, but never, ever someone actually taking blame for the fact that life is what happens when corporate CEOs (and sovereign presidents) are busy making "priced to perfection" plans. So it is with what is now a confirmed flop of a Black Friday, which according to ShopperTrak saw sales drop by nearly 2% to $11.2 from 2011, which in turn was a 6.6% gain over 2010 (and would be revised to far lower once all the refunds and exchanges to cash took place in the two weeks later). This occurred despite a 3.5% increase in retail foot traffic to 307.7 million store visits. The nominal drop in retail sales also occurred despite a nearly 1% increase in the total US population over last Thanksgiving, and a 2% Y/Y inflation. But fear not: the ad hoc excuse for this "surprising" loss in purchasing power is already handy: it is all Black Thursday's fault, or the latest idiotic attempt by retailers to cannibalize their own future sales by diluting the exclusivity of Black Friday, and which will force all retailers to follow the sovereigns in a race to the bottom, as soon every day will be the equivalent of Black Friday. But at least retailers have another 364 years worth of excuses for the conceivable future to excuse any and all store weakness. Next year: it's all Black Wednesday's fault.</p>

Cliffs Hurt! We conservatives haven't been very politically adept recently, we may consider watching our step! OK, first of all I am a very conservative voter who considers himself a conservative RINO. I vote republican because I won't ever again vote for an independent that will take a vote away from the republican candidate. That said: I think the argument can be made that we should let the taxes go up on high income earners only if we exclude S corporations. It is small business that we are trying to protect. When democrats cry about this one, their hypocrisy can...

BMI Assistant Editor Julia Seymour appeared on "Your World" with Neil Cavuto to discuss the media's coverage of the Fiscal Cliff on November 15. Seymour cited a BMI study which found that the three major networks blamed Congress 16 more times than they blamed President Obama for the approaching Fiscal Cliff. Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mike-ciandella/2012/11/16/bmis-julia-seymour-fnc-networks-blame-congress-not-obama-fiscal-clif#ixzz2CRCrTZ29 BMI Assistant Editor Julia Seymour appeared on "Your World" with Neil Cavuto to discuss the media's coverage of the Fiscal Cliff on November 15. Seymour cited a BMI study which found that the three major networks blamed Congress 16 more times than they blamed President Obama...

Mitt Romney told his top donors Wednesday that his loss to President Obama was a disappointing result that neither he nor his top aides had expected, but said he believed his team ran a “superb” campaign with “no drama,” and attributed his rival’s victory to “the gifts” the administration had given to blacks, Hispanics and young voters during Obama’s first term. Obama, Romney argued, had been “very generous” to blacks, Hispanics and young voters. He cited as motivating factors to young voters the administration’s plan for partial forgiveness of college loan interest and the extension of health coverage for students...

In an article published in 2001, Jude Wanniski, the author of The Way the World Works, noted that since 1896, only Republican presidential candidates running on “pro-growth” platforms have won. Republicans advocating “austerity” have invariably lost. With the defeat of Mitt Romney, the election of 2012 continued this pattern, with one addition. Republican presidential candidates offering clueless confusion also lose. Democracies tend to evolve two political parties, a party of economic growth and a party of income redistribution. If a credible plan for economic growth is offered, the people will vote for it, provided that it does not involve crushing...

Ok, I was wrong. I thought the Republicans would win the Presidency. I was not the only one. Smart people like Michael Barone and Karl Rove thought so also, in addition to people like Dick Morris. A knowledgeable friend called me the Saturday before the election and told me John McLaughlin, the pollster, just told him Romney wins it going away. So what happened? First there is the big picture. I think there were three issues that hurt the Romney campaign along the way. The first is his turn to the right to win the primaries. My now politically-astute son...

Disbelief is the word that defines the Republican state of mind in the wake of the 2012 re-election of President Barack Obama. The obvious questions are: “How can Americans have re-elected a president who has presided over an economy where unemployment still hovers at 8 percent ?” And, “How can Americans have re-elected a president who still doesn’t grasp that his big government policies are what have blocked our economic recovery?” The Republican Party needs to take responsibility for this disaster. Nothing in the outcome of this election is a surprise. The realities which produced these election results have been...

The election post-mortem has identified all manner of causes for the Republicans’ defeat, from the “woman problem” and the “Hispanic problem,” as Peggy Noonan put it, to Romney’s fatcat persona and his inept campaign. But there’s a simpler reason, one consistent with the critics of democracy starting in ancient Athens––Obama and the Democrats promised voters more free stuff. The differences between the political mechanisms of ancient Athens and those of America today do not erase the similarities of mentality and sensibility popular rule creates in its citizens. Most important is the way democracy leads to radical egalitarianism: the belief, as...

Let’s face facts. Democrats gained in the House of Representatives, the Senate and the chief Democrat in charge was re-elected after one of the worst four year periods in American history, economically and constitutionally. How does that happen? Republicans/Conservatives gave voters credit for being smart while Democrats assumed they’re not. Let’s break down what Obama, Pelosi, Reid, the Obama SuperPACs, et al were saying for a year and a half: Republicans are prosecuting a war on women Romney only cares about his rich friends and Wall Street Romney is responsible for the death of a woman by somehow giving her...

On election night, as the camera panned the audience waiting to hear Barack Obama give his victory speech, I was struck that the audience was primarily young people and minorities. My thought was, "These are the very people who will suffer the most under a second Obama administration. Don't they know they are voting against their own best interest?" And then I thought about it and came to the conclusion: "They don't." They don't because they are, by and large, uneducated. Oh, some of them may have college degrees or even graduate degrees, but they are still substantially uneducated. I...

RUSH: So three million Republican voters stayed home on Election Day. Three million predominantly white voters stayed home. The media is all over the place with the fact that the Republicans lost "the white vote." They can't get the white vote. They did lose the white vote, but Democrats didn't get it. They just didn't show up, and it wasn't voter suppression that didn't turn 'em out. What would be the reason that three million voters didn't show up? Let's go through the possibilities. It could be that there are a number... We've talked to 'em. We've had 'em call....

The states examined are Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, and Michigan. The trend for Obama was across the board: fewer votes in all swing states. However, the Republicans were able to increase the votes for Romney in seven of the nine states.

Romney Adviser: It Was the Messaging By Robert Costa | November 7, 2012 Boston — A Romney adviser partly blames last night’s defeat on a weak message. “Turnout was the big problem, since we didn’t get all of McCain’s voters to the polls, but we really should have been talking more about Benghazi and Obamacare,” an adviser says, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Those are major issues and Romney rarely mentioned them in the final days.” The adviser expects Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief strategist, to bear the brunt of the blame, but not all of it. “There is a...

Newsmax Why Mitt Romney Lost Wednesday, November 7, 2012 02:24 PM By: Christopher Ruddy Newsmax Christopher Ruddy’s Perspective: It was the worst of times and the worst of times. With the 2012 election results in, there are no short- or even medium-term "silver linings" for Republicans. President Barack Obama has won a decisive victory and the GOP, expecting to gain Senate seats, actually had a net loss of three. The "morning after" will bring the expected explanations and after-game quarterbacking. Still, it is important that the GOP understand why we lost this one in hopes of future victory. Perhaps the...

Memorandum to the GOP: When running an election campaign it is often valuable to select a nominee who represents the rank and file of the Party. This is how other Parties do it. Perhaps you might get on board. Who? Well let’s start with who not to select. There was George H.W. Bush, who, while a nice, honorable public servant, won primarily because of the record Reagan established. He lost because the rest of us thought that when he mouthed the words “Read my lips, go to Texas,” he meant “Read my lips, no new taxes.” There was Bob Dole,...