Free Republic

Welfare reform has been touted by Bill Clinton as one of the great achievements of his administration. But hold on a minute. GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says it’s one of his major successes as speaker of the House. Rick Santorum, whose bid for the Republican presidential nomination has been resuscitated by the Iowa Caucuses, even claims to have been an author of the landmark welfare-to-work legislation. With all those claiming paternity, I’m reminded of the proverb: “Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.” Unfortunately, the name of former U.S. Rep. E. Clay Shaw, who represented South Florida...

To the Honorable Republicans Ladies and Gentlemen of next year’s Congress of 2009: Time for “Contract with America 2”

OPEN LETTER to the 2009 Republican Congress

In 1994, Newt Gingrich became that rarest of creatures: a successful revolutionary. That’s when his decades-long emasculation of the Democratic majority finally broke them -- as he always knew it would – and the Republicans, with Gingrich at their helm, retook the House for the first time in 40 years. Then, in 1998, he entered the next, and usually final, stage in the revolutionary’s lifecycle: the humiliating fall from grace. His brand of unalloyed conservatism and partisan overreaching repulsed the country, and voters responded with the worst electoral drubbing any opposition party had received since Johnson walloped Goldwater in 1964....

Following the Republican landslide victories of the 1994 midterm elections, conservatives watched in amazement as Republican “moderates” proceeded to completely squander the ground they had gained, culminating in the defeat of Bob Dole in ‘96. In the aftermath of this year’s elections, ominous signs point towards a repeat performance. Apparently, Republican Party operatives didn’t really comprehend why, in the middle of Bill Clinton’s first term, they won big. And to this day, political analysts still don’t seem to grasp the situation. Among conservatives, the conventional wisdom is that the newly realigned GOP Congressional majority had wrongly presumed too much of...

Tom Delay Renews Contract With America From the 2004 Republican Party Platform (pg. 74): "We believe the Second Amendment and all of the rights guaranteed by it should enable law-abiding citizens throughout the country to own firearms in their homes for self defense...We oppose federal licensing of law-abiding gun owners and national registration as a violation of the Second Amendment and an invasion of privacy of honest citizens." During the 3rd debate between President Bush and Kerry, a question about the assault weapons ban of 1994 was posed to Bush who responded that he was for it, but that he...

Font Size: From Dawn to Decade-nce By Radley Balko  Published   04/16/2004  The New York Times reported last weekend that a powerful member of the U.S. Congress recently secured $120 million in federal highway funds for a 200-foot high, mile-long bridge for his district that will connect a town of about 8,000 to an island with 50 residents. He found another $200 million for a bridge connecting a city in his district to a port that has exactly one regular resident. Those two projects alone account for more money than was earmarked in total for 41 states in the highway...