Free Republic

It’s a big week in the Republican presidential primaries. Today, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson both announced their candidacies, and Mike Huckabee is expected to make his official tomorrow. Now that the field is filling out (though there are still plenty of candidates in the running-but-officially-not-yet-running category), it’s looking a little unusual.In fact, the group of Republicans running for president is almost everything the Republican Party itself is not: it’s demographically diverse, it’s less wealthy than you might expect, and it’s extremely young. The question is whether voters will look at them and say that the GOP really has changed.By...

You know how Jeb Bush and other immigration enthusiasts are always telling us how conservative immigrants are, how they’re more religious and traditionalist? Appealing to their supposed conservatism is the key, we are told, to getting their votes, if only we would embrace amnesty and mass legal immigration. There are two problems with this argument: First, there’s a pretty clear consensus that Latin American and Asian immigrants (who comprise 75 percent of all immigrants) and their U.S.-born children do not vote based on social issues, assigning them low priority. Second, immigrants are not particularly conservative. There is a mountain...

In looking over the history of the past 500 years, four nations stand out for having completely and massively altered world civilization in a way that no others have, before or after: England, Spain, France, and Portugal. No other empires even come close. The Muslim conquests were landbound except for island hopping. Chinese and Mongolian conquests were landbound. Even in ancient times, Greek, Roman, and Persian conquests were essentially land operations, except for river fording. Yes, they all had navies, but were not defined by them. What separates the English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish was that these nations had vast...

Painful as it is to realize that both the Democrats and the Republicans will still be holding their primaries a year from now, that is one of the high prices we pay for democracy. Seldom does the initial “front-runner” in either party’s primaries end up being the actual candidate when Election Day rolls around. However, even if we cannot predict the outcomes of the primaries this far in advance, we can at least start trying to understand the candidates, the almost candidates, and the people who are running just for the publicity. One of the curious things this early in...

......Each candidate [Walker, Perry, Bush, Christie], sometimes in nearly identical language, told the audience of activists gathered in Nashua this weekend that they should be considered for the presidency because they didn’t just talk about conservative ideas, they had put them into practice as governors. Perry made the case most powerfully: >>>The next president of the United States really needs to be someone who has deep experience as an executive. And I’m talking about things you just can't learn with a book, things you can’t just learn sitting down. Because I’ll give you some examples. They didn’t hand me a...

After I write a column that rips Barack Obama up one side and down the other, talks about our debt or the fact that we essentially don’t have borders any more, there are usually conservatives who show up in the comments section or email me something like, “I agree with you 110%, but what’s the solution? What policy do we put in place to fix everything that’s going wrong? When are we going to have another Ronald Reagan ride in on a white horse and fix what’s wrong?” Here’s the problem with that: It’s the wrong mentality. It’s sort of...

Dear Dave, Yesterday evening you suggested I watch The Prince of Egypt, in your opinion the best movie inspired by the book of Exodus. Although I didn’t have time then, I got to it this morning. It impressed me mightily. The top 5 reasons why I loved it – and why everybody who reads this article should watch it if they haven’t already – are: 1. Moses never doubts God, only himself. This is a vital lesson for believers of all kinds; you can doubt your own abilities, but never doubt the most high God, who created everything, and without...

<p>“I suppose it’s fair to say:don’t you someday want to see a woman president?”Thus asks Hillary Clinton,newly declared for the presidency.Or is that re-declared?</p> <p>The problem? Hillary Clinton isn’t a woman. And any Republican who is running for president who thinks she is will deserve the loss coming their way.</p>

"I can’t have you participate in class anymore.” I was on my way out of class when my social welfare and policy professor casually called me over to tell me this. The friendliness of her tone did not match her words, and I attempted a shocked, confused apology. It was my first semester at the Hunter College School of Social Work, and I was as yet unfamiliar with the consistent, underlying threat that characterized much of the school’s policy and atmosphere. This professor was simply more open and direct than most. I asked if I had said or done anything...

The smoke is clearing after three weeks of gay political hysteria: first a dust-up involving Dolce and Gabbana followed by threats of a boycott that fizzled, then an outbreak of derangement over a religious law in Indiana. Take note of how differently these two incidents ended, because there is a lot of hidden intelligence to be gained by reading between the lines: the attack on Dolce and Gabbana seems to have failed, while the pushback against Indiana’s and Arkansas’s religious-freedom bills ended in victory for gay marriage enthusiasts. Dolce and Gabbana barely backtracked on their comments about IVF, yet they...

".......Since they came to power in 2011,Walker and his party have not only changed the way the state is governed,but they have changed the political playing field.In a few big ways and lots of little ways,they have seemingly made it easier for Republicans and harder for Democrats to win elections.Whichever way the pendulum swings next year, the 2016 race will be contested under a different set of political rules than those of previous decades, rules adopted by one party over the ardent opposition of the other.The most consequential of these changes involve redistricting,which has given the GOP a virtual lock...

Internal dissension not only blunts the Republican attack; it hands Democrats a convenient stick with which to beat them. No one on the right, whether conservative or Republican, thinks this is a healthy situation. Why, then, is it the case? What is it that unites Democrats that Republicans lack? Anyone who pays attention to politics can see that when Democrats attack, they speak from the same text, and when they vote, they march in lockstep. If one Democrat says the wealthy must pay their “fair share,” all Democrats do — regardless of the merits of the charge. If their leaders...

Some articles have compared him to our current president, both because of his early accomplishments in legal and social arenas and his status as a member of a minority group. Now, having officially given up his dual Canadian-United States citizenship, Ted Cruz announced, on March 23, 2015, he would be running for the presidency. While it’s a welcome sight to see someone other than a Clinton or a Bush in the political limelight, I think most moderates (and — forgive me — most sane, rational human beings) would agree that Ted Cruz is not a promising candidate for the Republican...

Sen. Ted Cruz has been making headlines on his trek to become the Republican nominee for the 2016 presidential election. Cruz’s tactics are abnormally overt for a potential candidate, spreading what can best be described as fire and brimstone political sermonizing across the country. His words and demeanor aren’t just authoritative or passionate, they’re practically ecclesiastical. This approach says a lot about the current dispositions and the potential future of the extreme conservative right. While Cruz’s strategy may seem off-putting and baffling to many, there is a carefully calculated set of tactics backing his words. His politicized, Baptist preacher shtick...

Phil Robertson is an embarrassment, not a hero, and the socially conservative movement needs to distance itself from him immediately. Don’t get me wrong — I agree that our culture is experiencing a terrifying shift towards censorship. People have become so easily offended that it’s almost impossible to say anything without someone getting upset about it; and concepts like trigger warnings, safe spaces, and microaggressions are threatening free speech. But none of this changes the fact that Phil Robertson is an ignorant buffoon, and that many of his comments — despite the fact that he does have every right to...

In the last two days, big-money Republican donors have received information about the benefits they could receive for raising tens of thousands of dollars for the presidential campaign of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Cruz has already raised $500,000 after announcing Monday he is running for president. NBC News reports that 60 percent of his donations have come from large donors, while 40 percent have come from online donations. According to a three-page pamphlet sent out by Cruz for President and obtained by The Daily Caller, voters who raise at least $500,000 for the Texas Republican will be considered a co-chair...

As part of its annual college rankings, The Princeton Review ranks the US colleges with the most conservative students. While a few of the schools on the list are big sports and party schools, 20% of the colleges in the ranking are military schools. Over half of the most conservative colleges on the list also appeared on the Review's lists of the most religious students, students who are stone cold sober, and students who don't smoke. A whopping 17 of the 20 schools were ranked on The Princeton Review's list of future Rotarians and Daughters of the American Revolution. Texas,...

Somewhere along the way, I picked up the notion that when someone announces their candidacy for the Office of President of the United States, they are announcing their intent and desire to be the president of all Americans, irrespective of race, religion or other considerations. As a result of this tradition—and while recognizing that such an announcement does, in the reality of our times, serve as the launching point for the grueling primary gauntlet most candidates will be forced to endure—the moment of tossing one’s hat into the ring has, without exception so far as I can tell, traditionally taken...

Major Japanese network showed the announcement of the presidential run by candidate Ted Cruz, did a great voice over, showed that the field has no clear front runner, and mentioned Cruz's trademark "Courageous Conservatism", in addition to his promised gutting of the unpopular Obamacare. All in all a fair clip.

2016: That sound you hear from Washington is the gnashing of teeth after Sen. Ted Cruz announced that he'll run for president. The irrepressible Texan's principled conservatism makes many nervous — and that's good. As those of us who've interviewed Cruz know, he's hardly the brittle, conservative killjoy that the mainstream media try to portray him. On the contrary, he is charming, funny, scarily smart, a brilliant debater and more than well qualified to lead this nation. He also knows the issues extraordinarily well and has staked out clearly identifiable positions on all of them. Which is why the media,...