Free Republic

Republican Sen. John McCain had long promised American voters that he would be the ultimate maverick presidential candidate and run "a respectful campaign." Americans "don't want us to finger-point and question each other's character and integrity," he told Ohio voters just five months ago. But that was then - before the economy was in free fall and before his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, had gained ground in key swing states. And this is now - the Arizona senator's campaign is pounding the drum to raise doubts about Obama's patriotism and what it calls his questionable background, particularly his past...

He's done it: McCain just sang the praises of Todd Palin as a fisherman and union man at a rally in Missouri, saying his values are the ones he wants to bring to Washington. You were warned here first. Todd Palin is McCain's blue-collar weapon. Sarah Palin continues to suck the oxygen out news coverage and public interest. Love her or hate her, people are fascinated. And the media is following like a Yukon gold rush. She has dominated the front pages since her surprise nomination more than a week ago. Given the typical American attention span, this may not...

Democrats do not think that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's arrival in the enemy camp changes Sen. Barack Obama's path to the White House. As far as they're concerned, Republican John McCain's running mate is President George W. Bush. As Obama told voters in Pennsylvania on Friday, "This race is not a personality contest." That bet is about to be tested. Independent observers in Ohio think Palin does change the race, enhancing the GOP's appeal - not among the women who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, but among white men. They say Palin's most potent weapon may even be her snowmobiler,...

Now that much of America is starting to pay closer attention to the presidential campaign -and with the race a virtual tie - Republicans have intensified their strategy to corral the undecided stragglers: reignite the culture wars. This version won't be as explicit as conservative Pat Buchanan's 1992 GOP convention call for a "cultural war" or even the 2004 race, where anti-gay marriage referendums drove cultural conservatives to the polls in 11 mostly swing states. Instead, this battle will be fought under the cloak of the candidates' personal biographies. Using the GOP paintbrush, the race pits the "ex-POW war hero"...

The U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling on Indiana's voter ID law will rank as among the court's worst – up there with Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 ruling allowing forced separation of the races. It wasn't overturned until 1954. Here's hoping it doesn't take 58 years to overturn Monday's misguided decision. The Indiana law is aimed at a phantasm: in-person voter fraud at the polls. In the words of the court's majority, "The record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history." To find fraud, the justices went back to New...

Some supporters say Clinton, Obama had nothing to gain by appearing on Fox TV - Presidential candidates rarely turn down a network television interview, especially on a highly rated program. But some prominent liberals are wondering why Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama agreed this week to sit down for interviews on the Fox News Channel, for years the highest-rated cable news network and the bastion of conservative TV news analysis. The dilemma for the candidates: Is appearing on Fox a smart political move before Democratic primaries in two largely conservative states - Indiana and North Carolina - or...

Washington -- In high-profile appearances before Congress today, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will cite progress in Iraq and urge a pause in troop withdrawals. But in little-noticed testimony last week, top military and diplomatic experts painted a vivid picture of how tight a bind the United States now finds itself in, how precarious is the position of U.S. soldiers and how difficult are the decisions the next president will face. Petraeus is widely applauded for rescuing U.S. policy in Iraq from catastrophe last year. Yet stalemates in Iraq and in Washington leave an unspoken objective: Keep a...

We admit it. The Chronicle editorial board was disappointed when Hillary Rodham Clinton refused our invitation for a meeting before we endorsed a Democrat in the Feb. 5 presidential primary. But it really hurts to learn that not only did Clinton snub us, but Tuesday she also met with the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. At the meeting, Clinton chatted up the paper's owner, Richard Mellon Scaife, the man who once served as the éminence grise/bankroller of what the then-first lady dubbed the "vast right-wing conspiracy." It's true. Clinton is fighting desperately for a huge win in Pennsylvania, while...

A growing chorus of Republicans says that the rough waters currently being navigated by Sen. Barack Obama may now make him an easier candidate to sink than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is not struggling with issues like race and religion.But those same Republicans may want to consider the dangerous straits ahead for their own presumptive nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, whose gaffe last week in Iraq - where he appeared to confuse Sunni and Shiite factions - raised eyebrows. In the wake of controversies over Obama's support from the divisive Rev. Jeremiah Wright, McCain may be pressed again to...

Whatever the outcome of Texas and Ohio voting tomorrow, there's enough dirt being thrown in the final throes of the Democratic campaign to arm Republican John McCain with an arsenal of attacks on Barack Obama. The Clinton campaign contends they are closing in Ohio and Texas after seeing their double-digit polling leads evaporate in both states. In a conference call with reporters, the campaign said voters will wake up Wednesday to newspaper headlines that show Sen. Hillary Clinton being being "successful" in both states, though they conceded that she would remain far behind rival Sen. Barack Obama in pledged delegates....

When a conservative talk show host introduced Sen. John McCain at an Ohio rally this week and referred to his possible opponent by his full name - "Barack Hussein Obama" - he highlighted a probable attack strategy, should Obama get the Democratic nomination: American xenophobia. If the ascendancy of Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic race shows that Americans' attitudes toward race and gender have evolved, the latest round of media images alluding - incorrectly - to an overseas Muslim upbringing for Obama will test the degree to which Americans fear foreigners in a post-Sept. 11 world....

It's a painful irony for Democrats: In the space of a year, the Iraq war that was the source of party's resurgence in Congress became the measure of its impotence. By the end of the 2007, a Congress controlled by Democrats for the first time since 1994 had an approval rating of only 25 percent, down from 40 percent last spring. Then the debate over the war split the party and cast shadows over other issues, spawning a series of legislative failures and losing confrontations with President Bush. What to do about Iraq has turned into a dissing match so...

Once their candidate for president has been chosen, the Democrats will confront two opposing forms of reality that will play a role in their success or failure next November. One evokes their hope of capturing the White House and maintaining control of Congress. The other is a sober warning of a deep-rooted problem they will encounter that could thwart their far-ranging plans. The good news for the Democrats is that the center in American politics has shifted moderately to the left – or (put another way) away from the right and toward a discrediting of the Bush-Cheney era. As The...

I have become obsessed with Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. Not that I would ever vote for either of them. Mitt Romney looks like the typical high school suck-up, the kid whom everyone hated, although everyone also conceded that he'd go far. He also had Daddy's money, and he looked as if he had Daddy's money. There is also the Mormon thing. One part of the American experiment that I really agree with is that everyone should be free to believe any damn thing they want, and to worship any damn thing they want, as long as it doesn't scare...

With the approval of two stalwart Democrats - Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and Charles Schumer of New York - the Senate Judiciary Committee approved Michael Mukasey's nomination for attorney general. Fellow Democrats have leveled much criticism at these two senators for their decision, since Mukasey has refused to label what he calls the "repugnant" practice of waterboarding as torture. But the truth is that they didn't have much of a choice. Mukasey is a well-regarded, experienced judge. He spent 18 years on the federal bench and developed an impressive amount of experience trying national security cases, including the government's...

As you may have heard, Donald Rumsfeld has been offered a one- year appointment as the Special Distinguished Visiting Something at the Hoover Institution, a right-wing think tank affiliated with Stanford University in a way not clear to me or, apparently, anyone else. The online petition opposing his appointment has been signed by more than 2,600 "members of the Stanford community," another fuzzy designation. The reaction of the Hoover Institution to the online petition has been a hearty laugh and another round for the table. It has never cared about the opinions of the Stanford community in the past, and...

WASHINGTON -- Ohio and Florida, which provided the decisive electoral votes for President Bush's two razor-thin national election triumphs, have enacted laws that election experts say will help Republicans impede voting by Democratic-leaning minorities in 2008. Backers of the new laws say they're aimed at curbing vote fraud. But the statutes also could facilitate a controversial Republican tactic known as "vote caging," which the GOP tried in Ohio and Florida in 2004 before public disclosures foiled the efforts, said Joseph Rich, a former Justice Department voting rights chief in the Bush administration who's now with the Lawyers Committee for Civil...

Washington - -- What is wrong with this picture: Two-thirds of the country oppose the Iraq war, but Democrats again are proving unable to achieve their promised "new direction, and President Bush is certain to keep the maximum possible number of U.S. forces in Iraq for the remainder of his presidency. Iraq is making the Vietnam quagmire look like a sandbox. Facing votes on another $200 billion in war spending and poll numbers that have sunk below Bush's, Democrats readily admit that voters are furious with them. The reason they can't end the war, they say, is that they don't...

Pool boys are supposed to conduct torrid affairs with lonely pool owners. James Razsa has passionate feelings about his client, but not the kind likely to turn romantic. Razsa cleans former President George H.W. Bush's pool, in Kennebunkport, Maine. An enduring American figure, the pool boy has long stood for one lowly half of the nation's class gulf. When the pool owner happens to have been the most powerful man on the planet, and the pool boy happens to be one of the planet's great despisers of power, the metaphor explodes into 1,000 points of light. "If every American had...

IN WASHINGTON, there is a stalemate about Iraq. President Bush continues to stay the course, buying time with surges and promising troop-force reductions if and when the security and political situation merit. The Democrats who control Congress lack the votes to force a withdrawal - and there is reason to wonder whether they would have the stomach to force an abrupt end to the war even if they could do it. It's defense versus defense. Neither party wants the blame for "losing Iraq." So the surge goes on. Even when it ends next summer, 130,000 U.S. troops will remain in...

Washington -- The upbeat assessment Monday on the state of the war in Iraq by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker appeared to provide President Bush with the breathing space he needs to forestall major congressional defections from his war policy. Although Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said gradual troop reductions could begin this month, it would not be until mid-July of next year that troop levels would drop from the current 168,000 to the levels they were before Bush announced the escalation last January that has sent 30,000 more soldiers to Iraq. Political analysts had predicted...

The nation will receive a long-awaited Pentagon report on the war in Iraq today - the day before the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Even though the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission said there was no credible connection between the terrorist attacks and former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the anniversary of the attacks and the debate about what to do next in Iraq are once again blurring together in the media blender. While Congress and the nation hear today from Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, television viewers in four states will see an anti-war ad...

Two larger-than-life politicians, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan, charged into the California governor's office with the help of young voters, many of whom were drawn to the Republican Party by a message of sunny optimism. But what those two very different Republican politicians did to attract millions of young adults looks to be a feat the Grand Old Party may not repeat anytime soon - either in California or on the national level in the 2008 presidential election. A Democracy Corps poll from the Washington firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner suggests voters ages 18 to 29 have undergone a striking...

California might be run by an action-hero-turned-governor, but there were few action heroes in Sacramento on Tuesday by the time the 52-day state budget impasse ended with agreement for a $145 billion spending plan. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, despite his Superman-like persona in the national media lately on issues like global warming and "reach across the aisle" style politics, got mixed reviews after he was publicly criticized by a handful of GOP senators who held up the budget for weeks. Some called him the big loser. "He didn't drive the process; it drove him," said Hoover Institution research fellow Bill Whalen....

Los Angeles (AP) -- If Fred Thompson is auditioning for the role of a lifetime, he could hardly be any better prepared. For millions, Thompson is simply Arthur Branch, the gruff, hard-nosed district attorney on NBC's "Law & Order." Many others may recognize him from strong, take-charge movie roles including an admiral in "The Hunt for Red October." As Thompson prepares for a likely run for the presidency — he said Wednesday "it will not be long" until he makes an announcement on the subject — his image has been cultivated as much by Hollywood as by his time as...

NOT SATISFIED with its full-scale attack on Iraq, the Bush administration is now launching an inexplicable, unwarranted and unworkable attack on California's economy and its social fabric. It is doing so by declaring war against employers who hire illegal immigrants - and against these immigrants themselves. No state will be hurt more than California, which is home to at least one-quarter of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. California's $32 billion agricultural industry is dependent on them. They also make up a significant percentage of the construction, restaurant, hotel and other sectors of the California workforce....

Thus The Economist sums up what it calls "a new blow to an increasingly isolated White House," although, it adds, he "may have outlived his usefulness" (especially after the 2006 GOP drubbing) Despite the pledge of undying friendship from a "grim-faced" President Bush, "Rove leaves the White House in anything but victory," opines Adam Nagourney at the New York Times. His legendary reputation was seriously diminished by the Republican defeat in the 2006 midterm elections, and has been eroded almost every day since then, . . .

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- To see the type of person who still backs him, President Bush need only look in the mirror. The president fits the composite of today's Bush supporter: a conservative, white, Republican man, an evangelical Christian who goes to church regularly. Hammered by bad news in Iraq, congressional investigations and recent failed domestic initiatives such as immigration reform, Bush's job approval rating has spiraled to record lows for his presidency. Two-thirds of Republicans and about one-third of independents still support him, but virtually no Democrats are left in Bush's camp. Bush says he leads and is not led...

President Bush, a recent story in the Washington Post tells us, is obsessed with the question of how history will view him. He has done himself no favors on that count by commuting the prison term of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. In Bush's statement explaining his decision, he said he was sparing Libby from prison because the 30-month sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton was "excessive." In the president's view, the court-imposed fine of $250,000 and the damage to Libby's reputation are punishment enough for the crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice. If this were a...

IN COMMUTING the sentence of former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby, President Bush sent the message that perjury and obstruction of justice in the service of the president of the United States are not serious crimes. Never mind the president's words about our system of justice relying on "people telling the truth" -- and that those who don't "must be held accountable." His bottom-line action speaks louder than all the platitudes and caveats in the president's statement. Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison after being convicted by a jury for his part in trying to stymie an...

When President Gerald Ford pardoned the disgraced former President Richard Nixon in 1976, the shock waves created a political tsunami that swamped the Republican's hopes of remaining in the White House. But Lewis "Scooter" Libby is no Richard Nixon, and President Bush's move to commute the 2 1/2-year prison sentence of the former White House aide famed for his role in the CIA leak case could turn out to be a mere ripple by comparison. With the war in Iraq, immigration and health care reform topping the list of Americans' most pressing concerns, Bush's decision Monday -- more than seven...

FOR THE last six years, Vice President Dick Cheney has seized myriad opportunities to reassert the executive branch authority that he believes was unduly curtailed after the Watergate scandal. Time after time, Cheney has directly or indirectly played a role in White House efforts to aggressively expand presidential powers and limit oversight by Congress, the press and the public. He refused to reveal the participants in secret meetings he convened to come up with a national energy policy. He and his legal advisers were driving forces behind the administration's attempt to wiretap domestic calls without judicial review and to routinely...

The phrase that will always be associated with Vice President Dick Cheney is "undisclosed location." Whenever there is a crisis in government, that's where Cheney is. Whenever anyone in Congress needs Cheney to answer questions, he is out at Rancho Undisclosed. Apparently, the undisclosed location is often just his official residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory, but he reflexively does not want that fact revealed. He doesn't want any facts revealed. He wants to avoid at all costs the notion that he is working for the American people and is thus accountable to them in any way. At a time...

Washington -- President Bush carried through on his often-repeated threat Tuesday to veto a war spending bill requiring a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, but on Capitol Hill key Republicans started moving away from the administration's hard line against compromising with Democrats. Republican lawmakers, who thus far had stayed solidly behind the president, say they could support binding benchmarks on the Baghdad government as the debate about the war goes forward in Congress. Amid the showdown atmosphere, Bush is scheduled to meet with Democratic and Republican congressional leaders at the White House this afternoon to discuss how to proceed with...

President Bush went to the Capitol on Thursday to rally Republicans behind his veto threat, confident that when push comes to shove, Democrats will remove their call for a withdrawal from Iraq from a bill to fund American troops in combat. Yet even as Bush spoke, he faced a second major front in his confrontation with Congress. The former chief of staff to embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told an oversight committee that Gonzales, contrary to his own statements, was deeply involved in the firing of eight federal prosecutors. As he has throughout his presidency, Bush is choosing a high-risk...

President Bush acknowledged the change in political order in the opening minute of his State of the Union address Tuesday with a gracious tribute to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, seated on the podium behind him. He then spent most of the next 49 minutes behaving as if the November election never happened. Bush pitched a health care policy he knows stands no chance in a Democratic Congress, an education plan Democrats have already rejected and an energy policy that did little to wow his opponents. On Iraq, Bush implored a Congress that is poised to pass a resolution condemning his...

WASHINGTON -- President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more U.S. troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration's statements on Iraq. President Bush unveiled the new version Jan. 10 during his nationally televised speech announcing his new Iraq policy. "When I addressed you just over a year ago, nearly 12 million Iraqis had cast their ballots for a unified and democratic nation," he said. "We thought that these elections would bring Iraqis together -- and that as we trained...

President Bush assured Americans after the November election that he would work with the new Democratic-led Congress in a bipartisan way. But instead of give-and-take, his first action was a thumb in the eye to Congress when he resubmitted divisive federal appeals court nominations. The four nominees themselves had better sense, deciding to withdraw their nominations. Their graceful exit last week could have signaled a new mood of compromise reflecting the changed political dynamic in Congress. But, no. The White House still insists on snubbing California. Federal judgeships in the 28-judge 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals traditionally have been...

A day after President Bush announced an escalation of the war in Iraq by declaring he'll send 21,500 more troops to Baghdad, White House correspondent Helen Thomas says the president would have to change his mind if more people took to the streets in protest. She tells The Chronicle's Marc Sandalow that Democrats in Congress need to show some courage and take a stand. While she doesn't believe they can stop Bush, she says they at least could vote on a resolution calling for the troops to come home. Listen/Download Audio | 9:39 min : 9.29 MB A reporter for...

Americans will face "difficult choices and additional sacrifices" in the coming year in Iraq, President Bush said Wednesday in a press conference where he also promised to work with both parties in Congress to formulate a new plan for success in the war. Bush refused to say whether or not he would support sending a "surge" of additional U.S. troops to Baghdad, a controversial option the White House has said is being considered as the president prepares to announce a new Iraq strategy in January. "Let me wait and gather all the recommendations from (Secretary of Defense) Bob Gates, from...

Politically weakened president gives no signs of altering course -- Events in Washington this week -- confirmation hearings beginning Tuesday for designated Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the release Wednesday of findings by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group -- bear all the markings of a turning point in the Iraq war. But like the war itself, now 3 1/2 years long, the shift is likely to prove a slow and agonizing slide toward an inevitable retreat, rather than the decisive pullout many voters thought they might get last month when they handed Democrats control of Capitol Hill. As politically weakened...

What he says isn't necessarily what he plans to do - Washington -- It would be reasonable to conclude after watching President Bush in the Middle East this week that the administration has no plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. "This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all,'' Bush said at a news conference Thursday morning in Jordan with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Yet some experts say it would be foolhardy to assume, just because Bush said it, that the statement is true. There is mounting evidence that the world of public...

Washington -- After six years of railing against Republican tax cuts for the rich and fiscal irresponsibility, Democrats will find themselves come January under enormous pressure to pass a hugely expensive tax cut -- without any way to make up the revenue. The alternative minimum tax, which slaps an extra income tax on many higher-income people, has become a political monster for Democrats, threatening to clobber prosperous professionals in such Democratic strongholds as California and New York. The tax was installed by Democrats in 1969 to make people with high incomes pay their fare share. However, because the rate was...

WASHINGTON-Republicans lost more than an election Tuesday. They lost their chance to extend the conservative Republican movement that emerged as a powerful force in American politics when Ronald Reagan seized the presidency in 1980. They may be able to get it back. Or they may be falling victim to one of the decisive shifts in the political landscape that occur about once a generation, when a new coalition consolidates around one party to dominate politics for decades. Such a shift happened in the presidential elections in 1800, 1828, 1860, 1896, 1932 and arguably in 1968 -- only to be interrupted...

Unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, George W. Bush has no Hollywood experience. The governor, after Californians gave him a hearty "thumpin' " in 2005, found a new script for 2006: "Blow up the boxes? What boxes? Girly men in the Legislature? They're great guys." The president is also becoming a quick enough study. His cue cards changed in 48 hours. On Monday, the Democrats were allies of al Qaeda. By Wednesday, they were patriots worth congratulating: "Stay the course? Yeah, but not that course, the other one." Bipartisanship may be this new course. Four times Wednesday, Bush mentioned the Baker-Hamilton commission, to...

The departure of Donald Rumsfeld from the Pentagon handed President Bush a precious opportunity to restore the confidence of senior commanders in the administration and send an unmistakable message of bipartisanship to the country. Unfortunately, the choice of Robert Gates as Rumsfeld's successor as U.S. secretary of Defense fails on both counts. Instead of choosing someone whose public record is and appears to be above reproach, the president has nominated a man who is widely regarded within the U.S. intelligence communities as having distorted intelligence during the Reagan administration for political purposes and self-advancement. These are exactly the errors that...

YES, AMERICA, there are San Francisco values, and this election displayed them in spades. Election returns show that city voters rank as the state's most liberal when it comes to candidates, social policy and taxes. San Francisco is midnight blue in a cerulean state. Phil Angelides, thumped by a 16 percent margin statewide, won by a better than 2-to-1 margin here over Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Each statewide Democratic candidate won at least 73 percent of the vote here, save Cruz Bustamante, who drew a healthy 58 percent in a losing bid for insurance commissioner. Maybe that's not surprising in a...

Washington -- Republicans woke Wednesday to a coast-to-coast wreckage in the midterm congressional elections that many acknowledged was of their own making. Tuesday's political earthquake -- destroying Republican majorities that took decades to build -- slammed the door on the Bush era and opened the door to recrimination, regrouping and a rethinking of the party's governing philosophy. "I can tell you none of us wants to spend a minute longer in the minority than we have to, but I think we recognize that this is not a loss where you can just repackage the same agenda and move ahead," said...

On the eve of midterm elections, Democrats criticized Republicans as stewards of a stale status quo while President Bush campaigned into the evening in a drive to preserve GOP control in Congress. "They can't run anything right," said former President Clinton, taunting Republicans about the war in Iraq, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and even the scandal involving the House page program that complicated GOP efforts to win two more years in power. Bush campaigned on Monday from Florida to Arkansas and Texas. But the day brought one more reminder of his poor standing in the polls when Republican gubernatorial...

Washington -- Democrats are nearly giddy at their prospects for retaking majority control of the Senate. "This is the harbinger of a wave," predicted Sen. Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat who heads his party's effort to retake the Senate, pointing to Democratic gains among independents in Arizona. Recapturing the Senate -- a glittering prize that could dash President Bush's hopes for cementing a conservative majority on the Supreme Court -- was a wild Democratic dream as recently as August. Yet the nation's top political forecasters now conclude that five GOP seats are likely to go to Democrats -- and...