Free Republic

Swing and a miss. It was the story of the night, the story of the debate, and it might soon be the story of Jeb Bush's campaign. His timing was logical and yet inopportune; CNBC's Carl Quintanilla had been quizzing Rubio about his mounting number of missed Senate votes, which prompted a Florida newspaper to call for his resignation. Rubio responded forcefully by decrying the newspaper's "double standard" of endorsing Democratic candidates who had similarly missed votes. The audience rallied behind Rubio, roaring with approval - and just then, Bush decided to jump in. "Marco, when you signed up for...

There was a disturbance in the force last night at CNBC's Republican debate, and it left no doubt of who won and who lost. The loser was CNBC, and the winners were all ten Republican candidates – in varying degrees, of course. (More on that later). And there is no doubt when this shift in the axis happened. Everything changed when Ted Cruz dressed down Carl Quintenilla and John Harwood – two of CNBC's far-left commentators – and literally mocked their absurd line of questioning. Cruz did not just criticize the questions; he made sport of them. He demonstrated just...

She lied to the nation in 2012, and she’s lying again now. You don’t look surprised. ‘We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with.” Those words, depraved words, were spoken by then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton, with President Obama by her side, on September 14, 2012. This was at Joint Base Andrews, during the most sacred of rites: the return of the remains of Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, Tyrone...

Speaking in front of the House Select Committee on Benghazi Thursday afternoon, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attempted to claim she didn't blame the September 11, 2012 attack on a YouTube video. "Where did the false narrative start? It started with you, Madame Secretary," Ohio Republican Jim Jordan pressed Clinton. "I referred to the video that night in a very specific way. I said some have sought to justify the attack because of the video. I used those words deliberately, not to ascribe a motive to every attacker but as a warning to those across the region that there...

The West has developed a dangerous concern for ‘proportionality.’ In the current epidemic of Palestinian violence, scores of Arab youths are attacking, supposedly spontaneously, Israeli citizens with knives. Apparently, edged weapons have more Koranic authority, and, in the sense of media spectacle, they provide greater splashes of blood. Thus the attacker is regularly described as “unarmed” and a victim when he is “disproportionately” stopped by bullets. The Obama State Department has condemned the use of “excessive” Israeli force in response to Palestinian terrorism. John Kirby, the hapless State Department spokesman, blamed “both” sides for terrorism, and the president himself called...

It began as whispers in hushed corners: Could it ever happen? And now, just three months from the Iowa caucuses, members of the Republican establishment are starting to give voice to an increasingly common belief that Donald Trump, once dismissed as joke, a carnival barker, and a circus freak, might very well win the nomination. “Trump is a serious player for the nomination at this time,” says Ed Rollins, who served as the national campaign director for Reagan’s 1984 reelection and as campaign chairman for Mike Huckabee in 2008. Rollins is not alone in his views. “Trump has sustained a...

From reset to the Iran deal, Obama’s mistakes are so comprehensive they almost look deliberate. How did Vladimir Putin — with his country reeling from falling oil prices, possessing only a second-rate military, in demographic free-fall, and suffering from an array of international sanctions — find himself the new play-maker of the Middle East? Putin’s ascendency was not foreordained. It followed a series of major U.S. miscalculations and blunders of such magnitude that it almost seems they must have been deliberate. What exactly was our road to perdition in the Middle East?1. Reset with Putin When Barack Obama came into...

When President Obama made a deal with the Iranians in July over the terror sponsor's nuclear program, he left four Americans behind. One of those Americans is Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. By the administration's own admission and standards Rezaian, who has been held in an Iranian prison for more than a year, is being held on trumped up, bogus charges. This morning, it is being reported Rezaian has been issued a verdict on those same charges after a closed door "trial." An Iranian judiciary spokesman said Sunday that a verdict has been reached in the espionage case of Washington...

The Texas senator may look like an also-ran, but he’s a legit contender. Where’s Ted Cruz? The outspoken Texas senator has been unusually quiet in recent weeks. But in GOP circles, there’s soft but growing chatter that he is likely to be one of the last men standing in one of the most chaotic and unpredictable presidential races in recent memory. You wouldn’t know it from his poll numbers. Cruz is running at about 6 percent nationally and in key states such as Iowa and New Hampshire. That’s well behind outsiders Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson, and those...

If Joe Biden jumps into the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton will be ready to go on the offensive. According to a Clinton campaign source, a team of opposition researchers working on behalf of Clinton is currently digging through Biden’s long record in office to develop attack lines in case the vice-president runs. The research effort started about a month ago and is being conducted by operatives at Correct the Record, the pro-Hillary superpac founded by David Brock, which is coordinating with the Clinton campaign. According to the source, the research has turned up material on Biden’s ties to Wall Street;...

It’s almost impossible to fathom what an unusual candidate Donald Trump is. Put aside his lack of political experience (except for his serial flirtations with running for president over the years). Never mind his violation of nearly every rule of thumb of politics: Always shoot up, never down. Avoid throwing reporters out of your press conferences. Pretend you don’t care about the polls. Maintain tight message discipline. Don’t wear hats! Disregard his constant feuds with nearly everyone, his blatant self-contradiction on basic policy questions, and his general outlandishness. Consider only these facts: Trump has been leading the polls for the...

If it had the wit, the Obama administration would be not angered, but appropriately humiliated. President Obama has, once again, been totally outmaneuvered by Vladimir Putin. Two days earlier at the United Nations, Obama had welcomed the return, in force, of the Russian military to the Middle East — for the first time in decades — in order to help fight the Islamic State. The ruse was transparent from the beginning. Russia is not in Syria to fight the Islamic State. The Kremlin was sending fighter planes, air-to-air missiles, and SA-22 anti-aircraft batteries. Against an Islamic State that has no...

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's questioning of Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards exposes the depravity and dishonesty of her organization. Richards and her colleagues act like cornered criminal defendants whose only defense is to dissemble and counterattack their accusers, for the truth is not in them. Planned Parenthood piously holds itself out as a benevolent, quasi-sacred entity, selflessly devoted to improving women's health. It has consistently denied critics' claims that it performs no mammograms, but at the hearing, Richards unremorsefully conceded the charge and pretended she never said otherwise. And it's not just about mammograms. Americans United for...

Almost exactly seven years ago, House Speaker John Boehner said of the Wall Street bailout bill, “I think this thing is a crap sandwich” — but he’d vote for it anyway. I remarked at the time, “It’s crap sandwiches for as far as the eye can see” — and I was right. Boehner finally had his fill of the meal, opting to push away from the table, as it were. On Friday, he announced he’ll be resigning the speakership and his seat. (snip) Meanwhile, it appears the dogs have no idea what to do now that they’ve caught the car....

President Obama applies the same principles abroad that he does at home. At home President Obama is well known for his preference for perceived parity over liberty. Most of his domestic agenda — Obamacare, executive-order amnesties, open borders, near-zero interest rates, quantitative easing, the piling up of $9 trillion in new debt, tax hikes, more regulations — is apparently aimed at shifting power and capital away from the upper middle class to the lower classes. From Obama’s first appearance on the national scene, his rhetoric has been directed against those whom he perceives as the inordinately privileged — much more...

The crashing and burning of the once-promising Scott Walker for president campaign is very illustrative of a major media dynamic in conservative politics. Regardless of who you might support currently, I think you’ll recognize it. And keep in mind that this is just an observation, not an editorial comment about whether it should or should not be this way. It is what it is. Consider: way back on March 24th, 2015 BT (Before Trump), I posited the notion here at Breitbart that the “most important primary of all” was not Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or even Florida. In fact,...

The more she castigates others, the more she convicts herself. What have I become? My sweetest friend. Everyone I know Goes away in the end. You could have it all, My empire of dirt. I will let you down. I will make you hurt. — “Hurt,” Nine-Inch Nails For nearly 40 years, Bill and Hillary Clinton have crafted joint power careers. But “in the end,” what have they become? What is left but their front foundation, their Soros-funded surrogates, and their lock-step loyalists — in other words, their “empire of dirt”? Hillary Clinton just released a brief video about the...

Here and abroad, the Obama administration damages whatever it touches. The next president and Congress will inherit what President Obama left behind. Whether Democrat or Republican, the president will have no choice other than to try to undo much of what Obama has wrought. But can he or she? THE MIDDLE EAST The policy of “leading from behind” and the crudity of “We came, we saw, he [Qaddafi] died” have left a human tragedy in Libya. Backing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was an inexplicable choice, and it almost ruined the country ... ISIS was airily written off as a...

Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is closing the door on adding more Democratic presidential debates, and said a controversial clause penalizing candidates for participating in unsanctioned debates would stand. Speaking at a breakfast with reporters hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, Wasserman Schultz, who has been under fire by Democratic presidential candidates and some within the DNC, said the debate schedule was final and there would be no changes. “We’re not changing the process. We’re having six debates,” she said. “The candidates will be uninvited from subsequent debates if they accept an invitation to anything outside of the...

Deep in the transcript of the interview ABC’s David Muir conducted with Hillary Clinton yesterday comes an indirect but very tough shot at the man she worked for and hopes to replace. In the course of answering a question about her mother, Clinton described her mother’s difficult upbringing and praised her for her hard work. Her mother’s experience, she said, and those struggling to get ahead today, inspire her presidential run. “I'm gonna fight for all the people like my mother who need somebody in their corner,” Clinton said, before adding: “And they need a leader who cares about them...