Free Republic

GIVE US A KING!" or "THE MADNESS OF KING SAUL" Donald Trump's despicable comments about Megyn Kelly are God's mercy toward the U.S. We've been allowed to see the madness of Saul in time to reject him. If anything has ever illustrated our debased view of manhood (as explained in the Intro to my book 7MEN), Donald Trump is it. He is not gentlemanly or chivalrous or heroic. He is a win-at-all-costs Saul who would mesmerize us for a time and lift our hopes, only to destroy us in the end. His viciously nasty comments toward Rosie O'Donnell were not...

About 12 hours after the first prime-time GOP debate a message from a group called True Conservatives PAC showed up in my email with the title “you’re a useful idiot.” The beginning of the email is listed below.It’s obvious Trump has struck a chord with people who are apoplectic at the GOP Establishment and for good reason. But people should stop to ask whether Trump is a conservative or if he’s using the crowded GOP field to promote himself. There’s also the entire “Trump is a Democrat plant” theory rolling around, which may or may not be true. But...

Oh, you’re goddamned right this is Vegas, baby! because the Planet Hollywood Las Vegas Resort and Casino is the only truly appropriate venue for a show like the one we have right here. For your consideration: the carefully coiffed golden mane, the vast inherited fortune, the splendid real-estate portfolio, the family name on buildings from Manhattan to the Strip, the reality-television superstardom, the room-temperature-on-a-brisk-November-day IQ. The only thing distinguishing that great spackled misshapen lump of unredeemed American id known as Donald Trump from his spiritual soul mate, that slender lightning rod of unredeemed American id known as Paris Hilton, is...

“Sanctuary cities” have been in the headlines for weeks. Late last week, the House of Representatives voted to strip federal funds from sanctuary cities, which refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts. And in early July, an illegal immigrant who had been deported five times and convicted of seven felonies shot and killed a young woman while she was walking with her father and a friend along a pier in San Francisco, a city famous for its sanctuary policies. Sanctuary cities have existed for decades – the first one was established in Los Angeles in 1979 – as places...

Scott Kevin Walker, fresh from a free-spending yet folksy campaign in which he carried his lunch in a brown paper bag and promised to create 250,000 jobs, delivered his first inaugural address as governor of Wisconsin on January 3, 2011. “I stand before you not as the governor of one party or another, or the governor of one part of the state or another,” he declared. “Today, I stand before you as the governor for all of the people in the state of Wisconsin.” Days later, Walker traveled from Madison, the state capital, to Beloit, a working-class town battered by...

The Donald’s life has been seven decades of buffoonery. If there was a good reason to distrust presidential candidate Mitt Romney, it had to do with his views on abortion. Not his position per se — as difficult as it is to understand the pro-choice tendency, there are people of good faith on both sides of the abortion question — but the fact that he arrived at that position so late in life and at a moment when his change of heart was politically convenient. Even if we assume that this was not simple cowardly political calculation, as in the...

The long-simmering disconnect between the Republican Party's conservative base and its leaders in government has degenerated into a full-blown schism. While President Obama accelerates his increasingly radical agenda, the GOP, despite its congressional majority, can barely muster an objection, let alone block his momentum. Other than to offer a toothless public rebuke of Obama's destructive schemes, what was the point of the 2014 GOP congressional landslide? It's no longer just a small percentage of conservatives questioning the GOP. Our people are furious — and rightly so. I've recently shared my opinion that Donald Trump's explosive surge is because of his...

The time was the late 1940s, the place Greensboro. A mother had sent her two young sons to the neighborhood grocery. A gang of local toughs waited just outside the store. One came at the older brother from the front, one from the back and the third went for the money in the boy’s pocket. The younger brother, who was only 6, stood back while his sibling managed to fight off the young would-be robbers. The little fellow took it all in, though, and came away with some very important life lessons: Be prepared to defend yourself. Show no fear....

Yes, Pope Francis is encouraging civil disobedience, leading a rebellion. Listen closely, Francis knows he’s inciting political rebellion, an uprising of the masses against the world’s superrich capitalists. And yet, right-wing conservatives remain in denial, tuning out the pope’s message, hoping he’ll just go away like the “Occupy Wall Street” movement did. Never. America’s narcissistic addiction to presidential politics is dumbing down our collective brain. Warning: Forget Bernie vs. Hillary. Forget the circus-clown-car distractions created by Trump vs. the GOP’s Fab 15. Pope Francis is the only real political leader that matters this year. Forget the rest. Here’s why: Pope...

It’s a strong field in terms of resume and talent. Perhaps the strongest the Republican Party has ever had. This only makes it harder for conservatives to discern who’s who and whom to support, especially coming off several cycles where the pickings were slim if you were a movement conservative. Hopefully we’re about to change that. Between our in-depth presidential profiles here at Conservative Review, as well as the unique behind-the-scenes access to the process that living in Iowa provides me, the candidates are clearly falling into one of three categories regarding message and how they would govern if elected...

Three years ago, a group of ambitious and partisan district attorneys convened a special kind of investigation to target and punish conservatives. This week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that investigation was unconstitutional and unmoored from both reason and law. The legal theories underlying the Wisconsin high court’s decision are important, but before we consider them, we must recognize the human cost of this litigation and the politics that animated public officials’ attacks on conservatives for engaging in free speech. Some district attorneys in Wisconsin were disappointed by the failure of a prior John Doe investigation to derail Wisconsin’s union...

Businessman Donald Trump on Thursday said the country has to provide health care for the poor and that he’s “actually a conservative with a heart” who can work out deals with hospitals to make it happen. “I want people taken care of in the country, okay? You can call it anything you want, but I want — including people that don’t have anything,” Mr. Trump said on “The John Fredericks Show.” about “We gotta do that.” Mr. Fredericks, a Virginia-based radio host who has predicted that Mr. Trump will win the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, had asked Mr. Trump how...

EVERY four years, when presidential primary season rolls around, Republican voters long to find a new Ronald Reagan. This year a striking number of conservatives wonder if Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin might fit that bill—in such numbers that Mr Walker shot into the top ranks of a crowded Republican field, as soon as he made his White House run official on July 13th. Activists are not on a literal-minded quest: their new Reagan need not look dashing on a horse, or flash a film-star smile. That is lucky for Mr Walker, a Sunday-schoolish preacher’s son whose own supporters, at...

Madison— Secretary of State Doug La Follette sued Gov. Scott Walker on Tuesday, arguing the budget he signed Sunday violates the state constitution by interfering with his ability to maintain state records.The spending plan Walker approved cut La Follette's budget by about half,transferred some of his duties to Walker's Department of Administration and called for moving La Follette's office from rented space into smaller space in the basement of the state Capitol.The lawsuit comes a day after the Republican governor launched his presidential campaign.La Follette is a Democrat.The state constitution requires the secretary of state to"keep a fair record of...

Don't Give Money to People Who Hate You, Shop Small Business and Become Independent, Build Likeminded Communities, Focus on the family Lately I’ve been looking at Organic Opposition instead of Organizational Opposition. The latter is still important, but people are rightly disappointed and angry with everything from the GOP to assorted national groups and bewildered by a wide array of candidates. Organic Opposition doesn’t require organizations or a movement. It’s about living in ways that naturally oppose the left. Most of the people here already live in ways that the left resents without even thinking about it. Organic Opposition is...

avid Brooks has some surprising advice for social conservatives: Fight the culture war. No, not culture war oriented around sexuality. The other culture war. Brooks admits he’s to the left of most social conservatives. Yet he describes himself as a “friend and admirer,” and offers us a different course from either Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option or Robert George’s principled rejection and resistance. Brooks’s advice is to put aside the culture war oriented around the sexual revolution. It’s alienated large swaths of the American people, been a “communications disaster,” and is, in the near term, “destined to lose.” Instead, Brooks suggests...

BILL O'REILLY: All the polls say the same thing. Americans who identify themselves as conservative outnumber liberals by about two to one. Yet, social power has shifted to the left wing precincts. The reason? Organization. The far left is dominating the Internet, the entertainment industry, including the journalistic media. Outside of talk radio and Fox News there are few non-liberal voices heard nationwide. The intensity of the far left is almost frightening. Many of these people will do almost anything to destroy their opposition. So conservative Americans find themselves somewhat demoralized as they see the Supreme Court siding with the...

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/place-ayn-rand-ten-dollar-bill

The clock is ticking down toward the eventual Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which will supposedly “settle” the gay marriage question once and for all. Most of the observers I’ve seen making predictions seem to feel that they will codify marriage as a right which crosses all boundaries except in cases of children and close familial ties, and some seem to feel that opponents of gay marriage won’t even get all four conservative justices on their side. My own views on the general topic are well known and there’s no need to go into the whole thing...

Dear Reader (including those of you self-described “transreaders” who do not in fact read this “news”letter but want to be considered the sort of person who does), I am writing this from the back parking lot of a random Ramada in Williamsburg, Va. I’m sitting in my car in a Tommy Bahama shirt and pinstripe suit pants smoking a cigar. It’s a pretty sketchy look, even before I take off my shirt to finish getting properly dressed. A passing cop would probably assume that I’m waiting for a hooker, a drug dealer, or maybe someone from the development office at...