Free Republic

Forty-one percent of Americans now characterize their economic views as "conservative," or "very conservative," the lowest since President Barack Obama took office in 2009 and on par with where views were in May 2008. This year's downtick in the percentage of Americans identifying as economically conservative has been accompanied by an uptick in the percentage identifying as economically moderate -- now 37% of Americans, up from 32% last year. The percentage of Americans calling themselves economic liberals has remained virtually unchanged from last year at 19%, and has not fluctuated much since 2001. The findings are based on Gallup's annual...

Here are a couple of excellent videos that summarize the problems with America: America's Warning - Wild Bill for America God made a Democrat - David Boze I was unsure whether to post these links in the political forum or the religion forum. Like many of today's topics, a good argument can be made for both. In any case, in my opinion, they deserve a watch and a wide circulation.

<p>How are they named here but in no other source??</p> <p>FOX19) - As we are continuing to look into the case surrounding the IRS and Cincinnati's connection there two big questions.</p> <p>Did the White House know about this scandal sooner than what they have claimed? Could criminal charges be filed against the local agents accused in the case?</p>

IRS was ill-equipped to handle the deluge of tax-exempt applications from 'social welfare' organizations and to police their political activities, experts say. In spring 2010, agents in the Cincinnati office of the Internal Revenue Service, which handles applications for tax-exempt status, faced a surge of filings by new advocacy groups, with little guidance on how to treat them. Their decision to deal with the problem by singling out tea party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny has now triggered a criminal inquiry, congressional investigations, the departure of two top IRS officials and the naming of a new acting commissioner...

My dear friends, I know I'm going to get it for this post but in love I must say it (2 Cor. 12:15). Someone has to and it might as well be me. For the past 5 years I have been feeling the spiritual temperature at Free Republic and other conservative forums and have found that moral and biblical relativism, biblical ignorance, conservative optimism, Christian ecumenicalism and the outright rejection of the TRUE Gospel of Jesus Christ (Acts 4:12, Rom. 10:2-4, 1 Cor. 15:1-4, Eph. 2:8-9) nearly dominate this and other conservative forums. Thank God for Free Republic, they do...

When a Tennessee lawyer asked the IRS for tax-exempt status for a mentoring group that trained high school and college students about conservative political philosophy, the agency responded with a list of 95 questions in 31 parts, including an ultimatum for a list of everyone the group had trained, or planned to train. 'Provide details regarding all training you have provided or will provide,' the IRS demanded. 'Indicate who has received or will receive the training and submit copies of the training material.' That question was part of the tax collection agency's February 14, 2012 letter to Kevin Kookogey. founder...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is swatting down criticism from GOP ranks that he isn’t conservative enough, saying in an interview airing Friday that he’s a “damn good Republican.” “Is it a fair question to ask that if you ran as a Republican for president of the United States, what Republican Party do you see that would support your candidacy out there right now? How would you survive a primary process on the current set-up of the Republican Party?” NBC’s Brian Williams asked Christie, who is considered to be mulling a 2016 run. “Listen, I think very well. I’ll worry...

This month's "In-Depth" featured writer Melanie Phillips and will be repeated tonight at Midnight EDT on C-Span2. Three hours of interesting commentary and replies to viewers by a wise and thoughtful woman who, for example, provides a spot-on defense of traditional marriage as being a "unique fusing" of two individuals which is necessary for society because it is the way "we produce humanity", yet partially blames traditional marriage for the current drive for gay-marriage because it has become merely a contractual, legal arrangement in many people's minds. Phillips is concerned with facts, but even more with how facts get hidden...

Anti-immigration, anti-European-Union, against wind farms and other absurd climate change policies, pro-family and anti-homosexual-marriage UK Independence Party, or UKIP, whose leader Nigel Farage you can see in this 1.30-minute video interview, (there is much more to be against than to be for at the moment in Britain) has today changed British politics, very likely forever. This far-right, real conservative party which not long ago had a support of barely 5% of the population has experienced a surge in popularity and is the triumphant winner of yesterday's local election in England and Wales, getting a quarter of the vote nationally....

Back in college I worked at the Borders in Thousand Oaks. I shelved books at 4 a.m. While working there, politics and religion came up a lot, and I was the sole defender of two ideologies: Christianity and conservatism. One of the most interesting conversations I ever had was with a fellow college student named Bob. Bob and I enjoyed talking about all the great issues of life. One day he looked at me and said something I’ll never forget. “Paul,” he said, “you wanna know the difference between Republicans and Democrats? I’ll tell ya. Everyone’s a Democrat until some...

Can the Tea Party and establishment, moderate-minded conservatives ever reconcile? At The American Prospect, Abby Rapoport cites a new study as evidence it won't happen. [T]he gap between the two groups is huge. In the YouGov survey the study uses, more than two-thirds of Tea Partiers put themselves in the two most conservative categories on economic policy, social policy, and overall policy. Only 23 percent of non-Tea Partiers place themselves in the most conservative categories on all three issues; nearly 40 percent don’t locate themselves in the most conservative categories for any of the three policy areas. Most jarring: On...

In the current debate over revamping the nation's immigration laws, there may be no elected official with more on the line than Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Rubio, a Republican and Cuban-American from Miami, was elected to the Senate with strong support from the Tea Party and other conservatives. Rubio's challenge is to convince conservative skeptics that by supporting an immigration overhaul, he hasn't betrayed them. Among other things, the Senate immigration bill tightens security on the borders and creates a pathway for immigrants who came to the country illegally to become citizens. Eight senators — four Democrats and four Republicans...

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (shown) clearly had a good month of March. First, he engaged in a March 6-7 Senate filibuster to ensure that “no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.” The 13-hour filibuster won plaudits across the political spectrum and raised Paul to a national figure even more than his stunning Tea Party-inspired election over the anointed GOP establishment candidate in 2010. Even enemies of the constitutionalist movement were driven to say that Rand Paul was engaging in...

Howard ("Howie") Phillips was unique. The year was 1987 and the Reagan administration had announced the INF Treaty to limit short-range nukes. Many conservatives were opposed. I elected to host a press conference to make that point publicly. The night before, we met privately. As ringleader, I issued a directive: No attacks on Ronald Reagan. Our beef was with the treaty, not with the Gipper. My co-conspirators agreed unanimously. But while we were meeting President Reagan was sitting down for an interview with Tom Brokaw and said about conservative opposition, "Some conservatives just believe in the inevitability of nuclear war."...

The landscape: David Brooks Is Unimpressed With Senator Ted Cruz - says it doesn't help that Sen. Cruz looks like Joe McCarthy. Ron Paul fans furious over Rand Paul's drone flip-flop Marco Rubio’s Radio Row on immigration

Feminism could destroy Russia, Russian Orthodox patriarch claims. Kirill, head of church and close ally of Putin says feminist organisations 'proclaim the pseudo-freedom of women' Feminism is a "very dangerous" phenomenon that could lead to the destruction of Russia, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church has said. "I consider this phenomenon called feminism very dangerous, because feminist organisations proclaim the pseudo-freedom of women, which, in the first place, must appear outside of marriage and outside of the family," said Patriarch Kirill, according to the Interfax news agency. "Man has his gaze turned outward – he must work, make money...

The key to giving Republicans a fighting chance to win the presidency, is to end immigration to America, which will permit the immigrants who are already in America to assimilate to American values. Asian voters supported Obama with higher percentages than Hispanics. Asians gave Obama 73 percent of their vote, while Hispanics gave Obama 71 percent of their vote. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-08/asian-voters-send-a-message-to-republicans.html I agree with Ann Coulter. More immigration will kill the Republican Party, and by extension, destroy American values and the American identity. The insane people at the Republican national committee, think that they can strengthen the Republican Party by importing...

Republican members of the Gang of Eight know they’ll have a tough time selling comprehensive immigration reform to a significant number of conservatives. Of course some in the GOP are still panicked by last November’s election results and will be inclined to sign on to almost any deal. But many of the more conservative Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill will have to be convinced that the Gang’s proposal is an acceptable way to go. It won’t be easy. Starting this week, with the release of the bill, the Gang will launch an extensive public information campaign — lots of press...

Margaret Thatcher not only broke a glass ceiling; she broke a class ceiling. Today we say goodbye to a towering figure of the 20th century. With the passing of Margaret Thatcher, we’ve sadly lost the last living member of that great triumvirate that included Ronald Reagan and John Paul II — those giants who defeated the evil empire of Soviet Communism and allowed the liberation of its captive nations. We’ve also lost one of the great champions of economic freedom and democratic ideals. Many will focus on the fact that Margaret Thatcher’s career was a collection of “firsts” for women...

Before us lies eternity: our souls are love, and a continual farewell. — “Ephemera,” W.B. Yeats LAWRENCE AUSTER, traditionalist writer and culture critic, was buried by friends and family on Tuesday, April 2 in Pennsylvania. His body was carried at 11:30 a.m. into the vestibule of the Holy Cross Catholic Church in Mount Airy in a simple oak coffin made by Trappist monks in Iowa, a fitting enclosure for a man who lived as austerely as a monk, without many of the basics of modern life, such as cell phone, car or cable television. The church was just two miles...

snip---------------- With few exceptions, states with the highest rates of gun ownership -- for example, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Alabama, and West Virginia -- also tended to have the highest suicide rates. These states were also carried overwhelmingly by George Bush in the 2000 presidential election. snip-------------------- "In states with a higher percentage of the population that belong to a church, it is plausible that religious views and doctrine about suicide are well-known through sacred texts, theology or sermons, and adherents may be less likely to commit suicide." snip--------------------- The sociologist said that although policies aimed at seriously regulating firearm...

As a conservative and a fledgling filmmaker with a few early-stage documentaries in the works, I've long been concerned about conservatism's struggle to relate to the culture. While our ideological opponents are partying with Beyoncé and having action movies made about their foreign policy decisions, the pop-culture portrayals of our party have led many voters to associate us more closely with segregation than economic liberty. As unfair and inaccurate as the characterizations may be, it's our job as a movement to fix the problem. Unfortunately, a new production by the conservative nonprofit Tea Party Patriots, called A Movement on Fire,...

At any book store in the country, you can find hundreds of titles from right-leaning authors — and they are selling like hotcakes. Over the past few years, the Tea Party groundswell and the presidency of Barack Obama has fueled a new and growing crop of conservative authors, as well as renewed interest in the canon of nonfiction works that have shaped conservative thought in American culture and politics. The following is a list of 13 books that are staples to any Republican bookshelf. While the list by no means comprehensive, its a good starter guide for any young conservative...

As a 15 year old, I never imagined my activism in politics would translate into controversy for me at school. My name is Benji Backer and I attend a public high school in Appleton, Wisconsin. I have always supported the public school system and plan to do so for the rest of my life. Many Americans who stand up for the public school system and the unions believe there is no attempt to sway opinion or that students with opposing beliefs are singled out. Unfortunately, experiences I have had with harassment and bullying prove that wrong. This is a timeline...

Is there anyone remaining with an IQ above room temperature who actually believes that the Republican Party believes in limited government, as defined by the U.S. constitution? If so, they have either been hibernating or have been in complete self-denial. Every election cycle the Republican Party counts on its “conservative base” to dutifully turn out and mark their ballot for whatever candidate has been selected by the GOP leadership. We are told ad infinitum that doing so will keep the Democrat liberal demons from furthering their agenda. The inside-the-beltway establishment has been chanting this mantra for years and in the...

A new poll for the Hill newspaper finds that “more voters trust the Democratic Party than the Republican Party on budgetary issues . . . even though a strong majority actually prefer Republican fiscal policies.” The poll of 1,000 likely voters was taken last week by Pulse Opinion Research. It asked respondents to choose between two different budget approaches without their being identified with a particular party. A total of 55 percent picked a plan similar to the one offered by House budget chairman Paul Ryan: Trimming federal spending by $5 trillion, not raising taxes, and reaching a balanced budget...

An unsparing piece keying off the same Rick Perry soundbite at CPAC that inspired this post. Perry said that it’s unfair to blame conservatism for the GOP’s losses in 2008 and 2012 because, after all, our nominees weren’t conservative. Emery’s response: Then why did Republican primary voters vote for them instead of for a solid conservative like, say, Rick Perry? Her answer? Between Reagan’s generation and the current crop of Rubio, Scott Walker, etc, there simply haven’t been many good conservative candidates. Instead, against establishment types who were national figures, the conservative movement flung preachers and pundits (Pat Robertson, Alan...

"At CPAC, the Future Looks Libertarian," read a dispatch on Time magazine's website. "CPAC: Rand Paul's Big Moment," proclaimed The Week magazine. Meanwhile, the New York Times headlined its story about the annual conservative political action conference "GOP divisions fester at conservative retreat." George Will, a man who actually knows a thing or two about conservatism, responded to the NYT's use of the word "fester" on ABC News' "This Week." "Festering: an infected wound, it's awful. I guarantee you, if there were a liberal conclave comparable to this, and there were vigorous debates going on there, the New York Times'...

If this last election taught us anything, it's that the left has achieved a mastery of manipulating the English language to make stances that are unappealing to most Americans seem reasonable. We saw this in full display as throughout the 2012 presidential campaign where whatever talking points the left used to describe their causes were dutifully amplified in the mainstream press. It really is a clever tactic to automatically start the conversation by seemingly placing themselves in the reasonable position while painting any opposition to debates framed as "war" or "rights" as the irrational or bigoted side. Here are a...

I used to hate politics. Then I met Ann Coulter.In case you haven’t seen PCU, allow me to explain: I am only one of many in my generation who grew into adulthood harboring a strong desire to avoid all forms of political discussion. For many of us growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, the deafening liberal attacks coming across cable news, talk radio, and then the internet defined politics as a source of talking-head tsuris and therefore best avoided at all costs.The unavoidable reality hit when I enrolled in grad school and promptly learned the phrase: “Everything is political.�...

The Republican National Committee’s internal evaluators argued that true conservatism loses the Republican Party elections in a new report released Monday. The evaluators were charged by chairman Reince Priebus with helping the GOP reach a larger voter base. A copy of their report was obtained by Breitbart News. On page 54 of the report, authors Henry Barbour, Sally Bradshaw, Ari Fleischer, Zori Fonalledas and Glenn McCall argue that true conservatism hurts the Republican Party in elections. “Third-party groups that promote purity are hurting our electoral prospects,” they wrote. That entire section was based on quotes from MSNBC host Joe Scarborough...

Washington DC - -(Ammoland.com)- When Obamacare passed in March 2010, a grassroots outrage ensued and months later, in Nov. 2010, the Tea Party voted out Democrats in red states and moderate Republicans who’d supported the measure. Liberals were blindsided, RINOs were dismayed, and because of the passage of Obamacare, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) only held the gavel for two years. Now, just three short years later, a grassroots movement has been awakened again. But this time it’s not the Tea Party reacting to healthcare. Rather, it is a collection of the approx. 80 million gun owning Americans reacting...

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- Sarah Palin may no longer hold public office, be a candidate for national office or have a paid contributor slot at a news network, but when put in front of a room full of conservatives, she still has no trouble riling up a crowd. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference here Saturday, Palin was interrupted more than half a dozen times by standing ovations throughout a short red-meat speech, where she dinged the Republican Party and called on the conservative movement to be more inclusive. Palin, who delivered the keynote address at the same event...

Invoking Ronald Reagan’s legacy, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz urged Republicans on Wednesday night to stick to their conservative principles no matter what in a keynote speech kicking off the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. … “I think 2014 has the potential to be a very, very good year at the ballot box,” he said, adding, “The number one way we could screw it up is if Republicans fail to stand for principle.” …

From its founding four decades ago, the Conservative Political Action Conference — known as CPAC and set to get underway Thursday — has come to function as an annual gut check for the political right. At the CPAC gathering of post-Watergate 1975, then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan famously exhorted the demoralized group to raise “a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people.” And CPAC was where, on the heels of his landslide presidential reelection a decade later, Reagan proclaimed: “The tide of history is...

Popular radio show host Sean Casey (The Morning Show with Sean and Frank) had CPAC chief Al Cardenas on his show today, and Sean asked Cardenas about my banning at CPAC (a story that has gone viral). If you recall, Al Cardenas told the Washington Post last week: "...this year we decided not to invite Pamela Geller for comments she made at CPAC critical of our officers [ Grover Norquist]. In each of these cases, their ad hominem attacks denigrate the debate and distract from the real point of CPAC....." But in his response to Sean Casey this morning, he...

When people are polled on their beliefs, the Republican Party is in the minority on nothing. So why is it so hard to get the message across? Republicans lost the presidential election by a hairs breadth, and the echo chambers rang with cries of fixing the message. Republicans were beaten up over the Obama tax hikes, and once again, the echo chambers rang with cries of fixing the message. Then came the debt ceiling and now the sequester. No matter the issue, Republicans seem to find themselves on the losing side of public opinion; baffled and with no plan to...

State Sen. Tom Lee, the new county Republican Party chairman, says the local party is moving its meeting site to make it more geographically inclusive of Tampa, northwest Hillsborough and university area Republicans. Lee said the new site, the Museum of Science and Industry, may also send more of a “big-tent message” than the previous meeting site in an evangelical church, The River of Tampa Bay in Mango.

The Republicans had better not squander the good will Sen. Rand Paul purchased for them in his filibuster over the Obama administration's potential use of armed drones to kill non-enemy combatants in America. I am not simply referring to the constitutional issue of whether the president can engage in such acts, though that's very important. I believe the significance of Paul's filibuster transcends the drone issue. It was about challenging the administration's lawlessness and accountability across the board and his runaway spending and statism. It was about championing freedom, God-given rights and the Constitution. Under questioning, Attorney General Eric Holder...

Ever since last November’s election, we’ve heard many talking heads in the mainstream media insist that the big problem with the Republican party is that they’re just not enough like the Democrats. They see President Obama’s re-election victory, as narrow as it was, as proof of a changing electorate that is moving away from conservatism and leaning more in favor of liberal ideas and progressive policies. The pundits probably really do believe that the country (at least enough of it) has finally caught up to liberalism, and that those stubborn right-wingers who continue to cling to their hallmark beliefs of...

Once a marginal group of anti-Europeans, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) is now a force to be reckoned with after its best-ever national election result spooked Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives. UKIP took 28 percent of the vote in Thursday's by-election in the southern English seat of Eastleigh... pushing the Tories into a humiliating third place. Although the anti-Brussels party has yet to win a seat in the British parliament, the result is its best in a string of good performances in mid-term votes in recent months. UKIP leader Nigel Farage said it was part of a trend. "What happened...

H. L. Mencken correctly observed: Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent. Mencken also was prescient: As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. But this is not about Mr. Mencken....

Beyond the Beltway, the Right is thriving Inauguration Day 2013 was a moment of jubilation for conservatives. After four years of lackluster economic growth and a series of personal and policy mistakes, the incumbent chief executive, a history-making Democrat, was replaced by a conservative with an attractive policy agenda and a skillful campaign team. In a concise, hopeful inaugural address, the newly elected Republican leader of the executive branch promised to focus the administration’s attention and resources on job creation and economic growth in the short run, while setting the stage for long-term solutions to the government’s fiscal woes. I’m...

One reads S.E. Cupp on Rush Limbaugh and the late Lee Atwater and has to wonder. One reads her compatriot young conservative friends in the New York Times and has to wonder. Do these conservatives even listen to themselves? Are they really conservatives — or just the latest, newest incarnation of that age old 20th century invention: the GOP moderate? The newest sparkling edition of a wannabe Ruling Class? Making the rounds of the bar scene in Manhattan and New York and longing to be hip? Or are we witnessing something else? Something simpler yet more troubling? A lack of...

In the states, Republicans are governing successfully. At the think tanks, conservatives are arguing intelligently. Around the country, activists are organizing energetically. All well and good. And important. But not enough... ...resistance in Washington today has to be central to the agenda for a conservative future tomorrow. If Republicans in Congress lack the nerve to stand up to President Obama, or the moxie to do so effectively, all other admirable efforts could end up being for naught... It’s not a new insight that at times resistance is a necessary prelude to revival and reform. Our British cousins have centuries of...

Professor George Lakoff describes himself as a cognitive scientist. In his book, Moral Politics How Liberals and Conservatives Think, Professor Lakoff illustrates the problem of accurately describing the dichotomy between contemporary liberalism and contemporary conservatism in America. From the section, The Worldview Problem for Cognitive Science in chapter two:~The job of the cognitive scientist in this instance is to characterize the largely unconscious liberal and conservative worldviews accurately enough so that an analyst can see just why the puzzles for liberals are not puzzles for conservatives, and conversely. Any cognitive scientist who seeks to describe the conservative and liberal worldviews...

As the Senate edged toward a divisive filibuster vote on Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be defense secretary, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, sat silent and satisfied in the corner of the chamber — his voice lost to laryngitis — as he absorbed what he had wrought in his mere seven weeks of Senate service. Mr. Hagel, a former senator from Mr. Cruz’s own party, was about to be the victim of the first filibuster of a nominee to lead the Pentagon. The blockade was due in no small part to the very junior senator’s relentless pursuit of speeches, financial...

The Buckley Rule has been much invoked in recent weeks, in this space and elsewhere, and on almost every occasion it has been both misquoted and misapplied. As one who was present at the formulation, I feel obliged to record the “originalist” intention. It was the winter of 1964 and the unresolved question at NR editorial meetings, week to week, was this: Whom should the magazine support for the Republican presidential nomination? To outsiders, the question would have seemed all but settled. Issue by issue, NR gave every appearance of being all in for Barry Goldwater. Heck, there were those...

The prospect of four more years of Barack Obama in the White House has caused several conservative voices (among them, The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger, Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer, and noted Ronald Reagan scholar Paul Kengor) to opine that President Obama’s second term portends the passing of the Reagan era, the reversal of his pro-growth policies and the attempted burial of Reagan’s credo, “government is the problem.” None of this is news. It is a given that Obama and his fellow progressives reject Reagan’s values and philosophy. They will continue to try to expand government. There is, however,...

Gallup had a poll recentlypublished a poll which shows that at the end of 2012, self-identified conservatives still outnumbered liberals in every state of the nation except for two -- Rhode Island has fewer conservatives (27.8%) than liberals (28.3% liberal), as does Massachusetts (28.3% to 30.5%). Gallup curiously does not play up the ideological gap. Instead, the February 1, 2013 article title given by Gallup was "Alabama, North Dakota, Wyoming Most Conservative States. Americans slightly less conservative, slightly more liberal[.]" This apparent interest in hiding the conservative advantage in America is pervasive; the Gallup Polls invariably have titles to news...