Free Republic

Republican strategists have a problem. The scale of what President Barack Obama proposes to do to the American economy is so enormous, so far-reaching and so potentially disastrous that the opposition party is having a hard time describing it. “How do you translate the numbers into something that people can grasp to represent the broader problem?” a Republican pollster asked in a recent conversation. John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders would love to hear an answer, but the pollster didn’t have one. GOP message mavens are struggling with something that academics call “insensitivity to scope.” It affects us...

Santa Barbara, California -- You drive up a steep, rough and winding road to reach Ronald Reagan's ranch in the Santa Ynez mountains. For eight years, from 1981 to 1989, this place north of Santa Barbara was the Western White House; Reagan spent nearly a year of his time in office here. Now, what he called Rancho del Cielo is pretty much deserted. But the ranch, tended by a lone caretaker, is still much like it was when Reagan was alive. It's not open to the public; these days, the old adobe house and 688 surrounding acres are owned and...

What does the future hold for Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter? A lot of uncertainty, soured relationships, and possible disaster. And that's just with his new-found friends in the Democratic Party. There's no doubt Senate Democrats wanted Specter's help with the president's agenda this year. His vote in the Democratic column could mean significantly better chances for the Obama administration's proposals on health care, energy, and education. So Specter's support will be valuable to his new party in the short run. The long run is another matter. Go behind the news conferences and photo-ops, and Specter's fellow Democrats aren't exactly welcoming him...

I asked William Anderson, a friend who is a political conservative, a medical doctor, and a lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard. "They are angry, but I think they are also scared, and I think it's because they have a sense that their triumph is a precarious one," Anderson told me. Democrats won in 2008 in some part because of the cycles of American politics; Republicans were exhausted and it was the other party's turn. Now, having won, they are unsure of how long victory will last. "They see that they have a very small window of opportunity to do all...

WINCHESTER, VA. – If you listened to the speeches at the Tax Day tea party held in the courthouse square of this northern Virginia town, population 25,733, you might not have caught the name of the man in the White House. Among many denunciations of high taxes and out-of-control government spending, there were just a couple of mentions of Barack Obama -- one when a local activist criticized the administration's cap-and-trade energy plan, and the other when a city businessman said he prays for the president.

Former White House adviser Karl Rove's bare-knuckled response to recent statements by Vice President Joe Biden has brought into public view a growing resentment on the part of Bush administration veterans over what they regard as repeated and unwarranted slams from the Obama White House. The current president and his team are being "gratuitous, slightly petty, and slightly obsessive in blaming Bush for things," one former White House adviser told me. "Completely gratuitous," said another. "Unfair," said a third. The hard feelings surfaced after an April 7 interview on CNN in which Biden recounted a visit with George W. Bush....

Barack Obama used to get very upset about federal budget deficits. Denouncing an "orgy of spending and enormous deficits," he turned to John McCain during their presidential debates last fall and said, "We have had, over the last eight years, the biggest increases in deficit spending and national debt in our history…Now we have a half-trillion deficit annually…and Sen. McCain voted for four out of five of those George Bush budgets." That was then. Now, President Obama is asking lawmakers to vote for a budget with a deficit three times the size of the one that so disturbed candidate Obama...

"James Madison was not specifically contemplating Barack Obama, or Nancy Pelosi, when he wrote Federalist No. 63. But reading the document -- one of the seminal arguments in favor of adopting the U.S. Constitution -- it's clear Madison knew their type. And he knew they would come along again and again in American history, if Americans were lucky enough to have a long history." -- Byron York, Chief Political Correspondent, The Examiner. Tonight, Byron York joins us with his take on how the Obama types are using a manufactured "crisis" to push forward a socialist agenda with far-reaching changes in...

In the past few weeks there's been a lot of talk about Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele's controversial statements, his dustup with Rush Limbaugh, and his decision to clean out the RNC's top ranks without, so far, replacing any of the fired key officials. But there is another issue about the new chairman that is the topic not of public discussion but of worried private conversation among some of the RNC's 168 members. That topic concerns the allegations of financial irregularities in Steele's 2006 run for Senate from Maryland. While some RNC members, including the chairman himself, view those...

A search of the Nexis database for articles or statements in which the words "Obama" and "bold" appear together yields 2,752 examples -- and that's just in the last 30 days.

I really despise Michelle Obama, maybe more than I detest her husband....your thoughts?!?! **** From Byron York: It didn't make most of the papers or the TV newscasts, but Desiree Rogers, the new White House social secretary, caused a bit of a stir recently when she appeared at New York's Fashion Week shows, sitting next to Vogue Editor Anna Wintour as she took in the latest from designers Carolina Herrera and Donna Karan. "The fashions were amazing," Rogers told Women's Wear Daily. "I particularly liked the dresses for daytime that were a classic silhouette. ..." Besides Herrera and Karan, Rogers...

Now, in this economy that is inflicting hardship on so many, the first lady is celebrated for her new vision of haute couture, while her social secretary socializes with the most glamorous names in the world of fashion. Change has indeed come to Washington.

I just got off the phone with a very plugged-in Republican strategist who told me that Republican reaction to President Obama's speech, which the party will roll out in the next few days, will mark the beginning of a new GOP approach to opposing the president's initiatives. (No, Bobby Jindal's ineffective response was not part of that new approach -- everyone seems a little embarrassed about that.) The Republican leadership in the House has concluded that in the stimulus debate, the GOP succeeded in dominating a number of news cycles but failed to score any points on actual policy. That,...

Some interesting insights for Republicans deep inside in the newly-released New York Times poll. (You can go to the entire, uncut poll here.) First of all, Obama's general job approval rating, 63 percent, is strong, virtually unchanged from 62 percent in a Times poll two weeks ago. Second, disapproval of Obama is fairly small but solidifying; it now stands at 22 percent, up from 15 percent in the first Times poll. All of the disapprovers appear to be coming from the ranks of the undecided; last time, 23 percent said they were undecided, and now it is 15 percent. For...

Back in 2006, when Democrats were hoping to win control of the House and Senate, party leaders worked themselves into a righteous outrage over the issue of out-of-control federal spending. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the Republican budget “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic” because it increased the amount of U.S. debt held by foreign countries. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., accused Republicans of going on “an unprecedented and dangerous borrowing spree” and declared GOP leadership “the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of our country … no other president or Congress even comes close.” President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden,...

The New Yorker has a new profile of Rahm Emanuel, which, while containing nothing particularly newsworthy, does add to the public record on the new White House chief of staff's fondness for the F-word. Although we all know the word has flown around previous White Houses, it's hard to cite any former chief of staff, or other top-ranking official, who has actually said it on the record in Emanuel fashion. SNIP Passing the stimulus would have been much easier if Al Franken were in the Senate, Emanuel says. "No disrespect to Paul Krugman, but has he figured out how to...

You’ve heard a lot about the astonishing spending in the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, signed into law this week by President Barack Obama. But you probably haven’t heard about a provision in the bill that threatens to politicize the way allegations of fraud and corruption are investigated — or not investigated — throughout the federal government. The provision, which attracted virtually no attention in the debate over the 1,073-page stimulus bill, creates something called the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board — the RAT Board, as it’s known by the few insiders who are aware of it. The board would...

Given the amount of polling data available these days, it’s hard to believe how totally disconnected Capitol Hill Republicans and their Beltway media pals are from the rest of the country. Last week, President Obama won a stunning victory with the passage of a stimulus package even larger than he initially proposed. The bill will pump hundreds of billions of needed dollars into the economy and give Americans the largest tax cut in history ($282 billion over two years, bigger than the tax cuts of either Bush or Reagan). But instead of joining the president and Democrats in solving the...

After rushing Congress to act, why did he wait for days to sign the "emergency" stimulus bill? Back during the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised something he called “Sunlight Before Signing.” Obama complained that “too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them.” So he pledged that, as president, he would “not sign any nonemergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House Web site for five days.” “Sunlight Before Signing” faded into darkness with the first bill that came across...

Who will investigate the Obama administration? By Byron York Chief political correspondent 2/12/09 The census controversy brings the first test of accountability and oversight in the new administration Rep. Darrell Issa is not working from a position of strength. As the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Issa wants to exercise some, well, oversight when it comes to the Obama administration’s controversial decision to transfer control of the Census Bureau from professionals at the Commerce Department to political aides in the White House. But as a member of the minority party on Capitol Hill, Issa doesn’t...

You see it all over Capitol Hill, in the hallways, the hearing rooms, the gathering spots. Republicans, coming off a devastating, across-the-board electoral defeat, are … happy. Being in opposition, after eight years of a Republican presidency and 12 years of GOP rule in Congress, suits many of them just fine. It’s not that they were glad to lose. There are a lot of indignities involved in being the minority, and a pretty small minority at that. But talk to Republican lawmakers and insiders these days, and they speak as if an enormous weight has been lifted from their shoulders....

You see it all over Capitol Hill, in the hallways, the hearing rooms, the gathering spots. Republicans, coming off a devastating, across-the-board electoral defeat, are … happy. Being in opposition, after eight years of a Republican presidency and 12 years of GOP rule in Congress, suits many of them just fine. It’s not that they were glad to lose. There are a lot of indignities involved in being the minority, and a pretty small minority at that. But talk to Republican lawmakers and insiders these days, and they speak as if an enormous weight has been lifted from their shoulders....

Just got off the phone with an influential Republican senator. I asked how things stood with the stimulus, and he answered instantly, "They've cut a deal with three of our guys. They're delaying us from offering amendments. I suspect that as soon as they've got it written, they will offer it as an amendment, vote on it, and that will be it." He didn't have details on what the deal might be, but most Republicans seem to suspect it will involve relatively small cuts — and very little change in the price tag of the bill from the House version...

On Capitol Hill, you can feel the Republicans' growing sense of confidence. They've scored a lot of hits on the stimulus bill, and now they're aiming higher. "We'll try to make the bill better," Sen. Jim DeMint said a few moments ago, "but this bill is so bad... you can't fix it by tweaking around the edges... The best thing to happen would be for President Obama to lead, to call a time out." Several Republicans now want to throw the whole bill out and replace it with a package that is nearly all tax cuts - "twice the jobs...

According to an account in the New York Post, President Barack Obama yesterday told Republican leaders, "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done." With George W. Bush now off the stage, it may be that Obama and some of his fellow Democrats view Limbaugh, and not John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, or any other elected official, as the true leader of the Republican opposition. This morning I asked Rush for his thoughts on all this, and here is his response: There are two things going on here. One prong of the Great Unifier's plan is to isolate...

According to an account in the New York Post, President Barack Obama yesterday told Republican leaders, "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done." With George W. Bush now off the stage, it may be that Obama and some of his fellow Democrats view Limbaugh, and not John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, or any other elected official, as the true leader of the Republican opposition. This morning I asked Rush for his thoughts on all this, and here is his response: There are two things going on here. One prong of the Great Unifier's plan is to isolate...

Limbaugh Responds to Obama [Byron York] According to an account in the New York Post, President Barack Obama yesterday told Republican leaders, "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done." With George W. Bush now off the stage, it may be that Obama and some of his fellow Democrats view Limbaugh, and not John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, or any other elected official, as the true leader of the Republican opposition. This morning I asked Rush for his thoughts...

Give Timothy Geithner credit. He has a story, and he’s sticking to it. Even if it’s not the whole story. When the treasury secretary-designate walked into his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday morning, he knew he would face questions, from Republicans at least, about his non-payment of Social Security and Medicare taxes in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. Democrats seemed to have no interest in the topic, but some Republican senators wanted to know why Geithner accepted reimbursement from his then-employer, the International Monetary Fund, for taxes that he had not, in fact, paid. They also wanted...

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a brief meeting this afternoon in which Republicans forced a one-week delay in a committee vote on the nomination of Eric Holder to be attorney general. Chairman Patrick Leahy wanted to hold the vote today, but ranking Republican Arlen Specter complained that members had not had enough time to question Holder at hearings last week. Under the committee's rules, the minority can be granted a one-week delay in the vote. Specter said he had held a meeting of committee Republicans this morning, "and there was a unanimous view that there has been insufficient time to...

What was he thinking? That is without doubt the question asked most often by nearly everyone looking into Treasury Secretary–designate Timothy Geithner’s failure to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes in 2001, 2002, and 2003. It’s certainly the question that will be asked at Geithner’s confirmation hearing on Wednesday. But it is also the question perhaps least likely to be answered to anyone’s satisfaction, because according to sources close to the confirmation process, Geithner doesn’t have an answer to that most basic question about his behavior. “His explanation was kind of, ‘I don’t know—it was stupid, obviously it was a...

What was he thinking? That is without doubt the question asked most often by nearly everyone looking into Treasury Secretary–designate Timothy Geithner’s failure to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes in 2001, 2002, and 2003. ... What senators learned at the gathering was not only that Geithner had failed to pay self-employment taxes during his time at the International Monetary Fund. They learned that the IMF had repeatedly informed Geithner, as it had all its employees, of his obligation to pay that tax. They learned that Geithner signed documents saying he would pay the tax. And they learned that Geithner...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) thinks Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner’s tax problem is a “hiccup.” I don’t know about you, but if I had an issue with my taxes that resulted in my having to pay the IRS $42,702, I would call it more than a “hiccup.” In any event, Reid is unconcerned that Geithner failed to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes when he worked at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2001, 2002 and 2003. Reid and his colleagues in the Senate majority leadership believe Republicans should be unconcerned, too. If it were up to the leadership,...

Although it has been dismissed by some observers as a “hiccup” in an otherwise smooth confirmation process, treasury secretary-designate Timothy Geithner’s failure to pay self-employment taxes during the years he worked at the International Monetary Fund is causing some Republicans on Capitol Hill to ask serious questions about his actions. First among those questions is why he accepted payment from the IMF as restitution for taxes that he had not, in fact, paid. The IMF did not withhold state and federal income taxes or self-employment taxes — Social Security and Medicare — from its employees’ paychecks. But the IMF took...

The first thing you have to understand is that this Roland Burris controversy is not about race — not at all, absolutely not, not even a little bit. Burris is, of course, the African-American, self-styled “junior senator from Illinois,” chosen by the scandal-ridden Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) to fill the seat of President-elect Barack Obama. We know the hubbub over Burris’s appointment isn’t about race because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Burris himself have told us so. “Roland Burris, one of the first things he said to us was, ‘Hey, this is nothing...

George W. Bush leaves office with a job-approval rating that once soared to historic highs, then fell slowly but steadily for five years before settling, in the last couple of years, into lows that no president has ever experienced for so long. The president’s final Gallup approval rating of 2008 is 28 percent; a number like that means some core Republicans don’t approve of Bush’s performance, and even among the many in the GOP who still approve, there are a number who are ready to see the president go. Bush knows that. The White House staff knows it. But the...

Sahuarita, Arizona — “I will end misguided defense policies,” Barack Obama said last February. “I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems. . . . I will not develop new nuclear weapons.” Obama’s words — delivered during the primary season to an organization that seeks to cut Pentagon spending in favor of increases for education and healthcare — come to mind easily here, at the Titan Missile Museum, in the Arizona desert about 20 miles south of Tucson. I’ve come to Arizona on a family...

Will the Blagojevich scandal damage the incoming Obama administration? Given Rod Blagojevich’s profane railings against Barack Obama, revealed on federal wiretaps, few observers believe — although none know for sure — that the Obama camp engaged in any pay-for-play dealings with the governor, and therefore few see any legal problems for Team Obama resulting from the criminal investigation. But that’s not the only way the incoming administration might be caught up in the Blagojevich affair. The probe is being conducted, after all, by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the man who prosecuted one of the most intensely investigated and politically-charged perjury-and-false-statements...

The Blago Scandal: What’s the Rush? Are Obama allies stoking a crisis to push an embarrassing scandal offstage? By Byron York How serious is the political crisis in Illinois? Each day brings new word that the emergency is intensifying; the latest came Friday, when Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan asked the state supreme court to declare Gov. Rod Blagojevich incapable of governing, arguing that the scandal surrounding Blagojevich amounts to a disability that prevents him from serving as governor. At a news conference in Chicago, Madigan also suggested that Blagojevich’s legal troubles are plunging the state into financial crisis, making...

I spent several years of the Clinton administration writing about one scandal or controversy after another. There was, of course, the Whitewater affair and the fight over the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr. There was the Lewinsky matter. Travelgate. The bitter controversy over Elian Gonzalez. The furor over Bill Clinton's last-minute pardons. And more. It seems like so long ago. So why am I suddenly hitting the search feature on my laptop ten times a day, looking for old articles? Why am I looking for names like Eric Holder, Gregory Craig, Rahm Emanuel, and John Podesta? Because change has come to...

- - Republican governors meeting in Miami say their party has to shift its emphasis from ideology to voters' everyday issues. The Republican Party, still grappling with last week's election results, should position itself as a pragmatic problem-solver for working people, GOP governors meeting in Miami said Wednesday. Without unequivocally stating that the party should move to the ideological center to appeal to moderate voters, leaders at the two-day Republican Governors Association meeting urged their colleagues to tackle education, energy and the environment to broaden the party's base. Largely absent from their discussions at the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Miami:...

Byron York, Jen Rubin, and Michelle Malkin all have smart takes on the McCain aides' smearing of Sarah Palin. The Anchorage Daily News has a couple videos of Sarah Palin talking to the press after arriving back in Alaska, and it looks like she's more than capable of defending herself, if she thought it was worth her time. Regarding the leaks against her, Palin said: “If they’re an unnamed source, then that says it all. I won’t comment on anybody’s gossip, or allegations that are based on anonymous sources. That’s kind of a small, evidently bitter type of person who...

Shippensburg, Pennsylvania — If John McCain wins Pennsylvania on Tuesday — a question that’s shaping up as perhaps the most critical of the campaign — it will be because of places like this. Situated on the border between Cumberland and Franklin counties, Shippensburg is in the south-central part of the state. Like other towns in the area, it’s between 90 and 95 percent white; about 15 to 20 percent of people over the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree or higher; and the median household income is about $45,000. Voters in the Democratic primary in this area chose Hillary...

Palin and CNN [Byron York] A bit more on CNN's "quote" from National Review in its story on Sarah Palin. In the CNN interview with Palin, aired today, reporter Drew Griffin said to Palin: GRIFFIN: Governor, you've been mocked in the press, the press has been pretty hard on you, the Democrats have been pretty hard on you, but also some conservatives have been pretty hard on you as well. The National Review had a story saying that, you know, I can't tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt or all of the above. PALIN: Who wrote that...

At John McCain’s rallies these days, the talk is of taxes and Joe the Plumber and the financial crisis and mortgage relief and an end to wasteful federal spending. Those are all perfectly fine things for a campaign to emphasize; polls show voters of all stripes are overwhelmingly concerned about the economy. But at McCain’s events, you’ll also find people who’ve come for another reason, one that is slipping in the polls of voters’ concerns but is deeply personal to them: the war in Iraq. “I just gave John McCain my Purple Heart,” Marine Sgt. Jack Eubanks told me a...

At John McCain’s rallies these days, the talk is of taxes and Joe the Plumber and the financial crisis and mortgage relief and an end to wasteful federal spending. Those are all perfectly fine things for a campaign to emphasize; polls show voters of all stripes are overwhelmingly concerned about the economy. But at McCain’s events, you’ll also find people who’ve come for another reason, one that is slipping in the polls of voters’ concerns but is deeply personal to them: the war in Iraq. “I just gave John McCain my Purple Heart,” Marine Sgt. Jack Eubanks told me a...

Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it's sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward or - well, all of the above. In fact, Palin may even have it worse than Quayle, since she's taking flak not only from Democrats and the press but from some conservative opinion leaders as well. Reporters raced to Alaska to look into her family life, including her teenage daughter's pregnancy; into her per diem expense requests; into her controversial firing of the state's public safety commissioner; into her husband's role as informal adviser; into the...

- - A boring debate ends in a lot of bad feelings. This was the worst-moderated debate in the history of presidential debates,” one McCain campaign insider told me just moments after John McCain and Barack Obama left the stage at Belmont University in Nashville. “The audience and the American people should feel robbed — that the one opportunity they had to ask questions of the presidential candidates was taken from them by Tom Brokaw.” Before the debate, there had been lots of talk about how the town-hall format would favor McCain, who has done hundreds of town halls in...

Just talked to a member of Team McCain preparing for tomorrow night’s debate in Nashville. There’s been a lot of talk about “taking the gloves off” and coming out swinging at the debate, but I didn’t get a sense of that from this conversation. “I think the point of the town hall debate is to connect with the American people,” the McCain person said. “Our first goal is to show that John McCain gets it.” When I asked what “it” was, the source said, “That he understands the concerns of the American people better than Barack Obama does.” The source...

In the hours before Sarah Palin and Joseph Biden took the stage here at Washington University, Barack Obama’s top advisers went out of their way to talk up Palin’s debating skills. “I expect that Gov. Palin is going to be very effective tonight,” chief strategist David Axelrod told reporters. “She’s been working hard at this.” David Plouffe, the campaign manager, upped the ante when he called Palin “one of the best debaters in American politics.” Maybe they were just trying to raise expectations, set about a millimeter off the ground after Palin’s interview with CBS’s Katie Couric. Maybe they really...

“If your neighbor’s house is burning, you’re not going to spend a whole lot of time saying, ‘Well, that guy was always irresponsible, he always left the stove on, he always was smoking in bed’ … There will be time to punish those who set this fire, but now is the moment for us to come together and put the fire out.” So says Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) about the Great Financial Crisis. And he’s right. But once the fire is out, I want to learn a lot more about what happened at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We know...