Free Republic

PORTLAND Me. - Wistful about fighting his last campaign, President Barack Obama touted a burst of U.S. economic growth on Thursday to try to limit Democratic losses in next week's elections, in a speech at one of the few voter rallies he is attending. Obama seized on government figures that said the U.S. economy grew at a rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter to suggest his policies are working and that electing Democrats will help the middle class. **SNIP** "We've created more jobs here in the United States over the last six years than Japan, Europe and all...

Kevin Wade's campaign ad (titled "Ebola Zone") begins airing on Delaware television Thursday, October 30, on broadcast TV and cable. The ad can also be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkNzyGDy7AM Incumbent Democrat Freshman Chris Coons is the Chair of the Africa Subcommittee in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate. Thus, Republican Kevin Wade accuses Coons of failing to perform his job for Delaware and the nation over the preceding year since the Ebola outbreak began in the Fall of 2013. Wade alleges that Senator Coons is the Democrats' and Senate's #1 voice on Africa as well as eyes and ears. On a question of...

... Though it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover...

President Barack Obama suffered a bit of an embarrassment on Sunday, when he made a rare appearance on the campaign trail but attendees chose to leave as he spoke. According to Reuters, Obama’s appearance came at a rally to support the Democratic candidate for governor in Maryland. With approval levels hovering around record lows, Obama has spent most of his campaign-related efforts this year raising money for struggling Democrats, who risk losing control of the U.S. Senate in the November 4 midterm election. Most candidates from his party have been wary of appearing with him during their election races because...

A Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission is warning about a government-backed study that “seems to have come straight out of a George Orwell novel.” Commissioner Ajit Pai — one of two Republicans on the five-member commission — warned in a Washington Post op-ed on Saturday about a National Science Foundation study of people's communications on Twitter, which he said amounted to government monitoring of people’s speech. ADVERTISEMENT “In the United States, the government has no business entering the marketplace of ideas to establish an arbiter of what is false, misleading or a political smear,” he wrote. “The federal...

Tom Cross got the name "Double Cross" while he was Minority Leader in State House the Democrats ran everything but the Republicans would always help with votes like Civil Unions, Same Sex Marriage, Tax Increases. There would always be 3-5 Republicans that would vote in favor of the Democrats and they would pass a bill by a couple of votes.

Editor's Note: ABC News published an astonishing admission today, revealing that President Barack Obama has not attended a single public campaign event for a Democratic candidate as the party heads into a white-hot election season. Just three weeks to go until the midterm elections and with control of the Senate hanging in the balance, candidates are scrambling toward the finish line. One key figure, however, has been largely absent: President Obama. President Obama has appeared at zero public campaign events this cycle, opting instead to tap into his fundraising prowess to boost Democratic candidates behind closed-doors. Obama’s absence on the...

-SNIP- Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee and now the tacit head of the Republican Party, visited Iowa as part of a feverish nationwide tour designed to help the GOP take control of the Senate. -SNIP- Romney is grappling with this question: If drafted, would he answer the party’s call? -SNIP- Former aides and senior Republicans say Romney appreciates the GOP masses crowing that he was right about issues such as Russia and health care. But what really intrigues him, they said, are the vulnerabilities among top-tier candidates in the Republican field. If Romney moves toward a race, it would...

As gossip websites buzzed about Gwyneth Paltrow and President Obama — her “you’re so handsome that I can’t speak properly” is already being mocked unmercifully — her Los Angeles neighbors lashed out Friday that the Paltrow-hosted presidential fund-raiser had come at their expense. Traffic stood still, children were stranded at school, residents could not leave their own driveways. That’s not the way life is supposed to be lived in Mandeville Canyon. In a post on the Nextdoor Mandeville Canyon website, a private social network for area residents, Bret Lewis said that the neighborhood did not need people like Ms. Paltrow...

Things are just humming right along: In what appears to be a significant October campaign shakeup, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu is replacing her campaign manager and hiring her former chief of staff as a senior adviser.The Democrat has pushed Adam Sullivan out of the manager role and replaced him with Ryan Berni, who ran her brother MitchÂ’s reelection campaign as New Orleans mayor. Berni is a former aide to Clintonista and Louisianan James Carville.Polls show Landrieu falling short of the 50 percent she needs to avoid a December runoff, and Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy has a slight lead in...

Meg Kissinger, a long-time reporter for the politically liberal Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, attempted to cover a Milwaukee campaign speech by First Lady Michelle Obama. She was stunned to discover that she was prohibited from talking to members of the audience. Michelle’s aide Mary Burke explained that “it is important that the message the First Lady is trying to communicate not be confounded by inappropriate crowd comments to any reporters. This is, after all, her event. She has a right to control how it is perceived and reported.” “To say that I was creeped out is an understatement,” Kissinger said. “We...

First lady Michelle Obama believes that Democrats running for Congress eagerly desire her presence on the campaign trail during the run-up to the 2014 midterm elections. However, she has avoided helping some Senate Democrats because she’s mad at them for failing to show adequate support for her deeply unpopular attempt to change people’s diets. The Daily Caller is not making this up. The New York Times has reported it. The first lady has expressed frustration with Senate Democrats because they didn’t do enough to fight Republican attempts to weaken the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act,” explains the Times. The 2010 law...

Is "campaign finance reform" a good way to regulate money in politics? Nationally syndicated, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and best-selling author George Will shows that, despite the innocent name given by its proponents, campaign finance reform is really a euphemism for controlling free speech. If the goal is to get money out of politics, the real solution is to get politics out of money. In other words, shrink government. In five minutes, learn the truth.

On hearing Friday’s news that Mary Burke’s job-creation plan was plagiarized from other Democrats running for governor, in Delaware, Tennessee, and elsewhere we thought, well…there are think tanks whose business is to share such ideas. But Burke reacted less calmly, firing the consultant responsible for the cut-and-paste job. Why? For duping her into thinking she had a jobs plan? More intriguing than Burke snatching ideas that may be interchangeable among Democrats is her apparently scant familiarity with what she is proposing. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel quoted her saying “This is my plan on how to drive Wisconsin’s economy forward,” later adding...

If you need Rob Astorino signs and you live in Wayne, Ontario and Seneca counties, I have some for you as well as window stickers.

As the midterm campaigns heat up, Democratic candidates are turning to the White House for help and an injection of star power. But it is the first lady, not President Barack Obama, —who in some places is emerging as the more sought-after campaigner. Some Democrats contend that Mr. Obama's sagging popularity limits where he would be helpful this election cycle. Bringing higher approval ratings and a less-partisan pitch, Michelle Obama already has hit the trail, appearing earlier this month in Georgia with Senate candidate Michelle Nunn. Next month, the first lady's campaign travel will include a visit to Iowa, where...

Senators are not permitted to use Senate cash to fly to fundraisers - but that didn’t stop Democratic Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu from taking 43 trips on her Senate office account. The Perkins Coie law firm reviewed Landrieu’s travel from her 18 years in the Senate: The report found that Landrieu's official office paid $33,727.02 -- about 11 percent of the total amount her official office paid for chartered flights during that time -- should have been prorated and paid by her campaign. Landrieu blamed the mistakes on "sloppy bookkeeping" in a written apology. Her constituents, however, may not be...

President Obama told congressional leaders at a White House meeting on Monday he wouldn’t need their authorization to expand his military campaign against Islamic terrorists. The president offered the assurance at a private White House meeting one day before a primetime address he’s scheduled to give to the nation. Wednesday’s address is a pivotal moment for the president just months before a midterm election in which the Senate’s majority hangs in the balance. Polls show that confidence in Obama’s foreign policy is eroding just as anxiety over the threat posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has...

First lady Michelle Obama is warning Democratic voters that Washington will “be even worse” if they let Republicans win in November. “Instead of leaders coming together on behalf of hardworking families and finding consensus on the issues that matter most, we’ll just see more conflict and more obstruction,” Mrs. Obama said at a voter registration rally Monday night in Atlanta. She said Republican victories in places like Georgia would result in “more lawsuits and talk about impeachment, more votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or even shut the government down — behavior that just wastes time and wastes taxpayer...

Inside the Strangest Job on the Campaign Trail "What about your gaffes?" Campaign trackers make sure candidates can't escape slipups.By Emma RollerKelli Farr remembers running through a cornfield after getting yelled at by a crowd of Sarah Palin fans.It was 2008, and Farr was working as a campaign tracker—someone employed by an opposing political party to follow a candidate on the campaign trail, documenting his or her every move, in hopes of capturing a slipup......Farr is now the vice president and director of tracking at American Bridge, a Democratic organization that is sisters with Media Matters and Correct the Record,...