Free Republic

Independent Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders lit into President Donald Trump in advance of Trump’s Florida campaign kickoff rally, calling him a “racist” who won’t tell his supporters how he “tried to throw 32 million people off of healthcare.” On Tuesday’s edition of MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, host Andrea Mitchell asked Sanders for his reaction to the possibility that Trump might live-tweet the Democratic debates. “Well, I’m surprised that he has the time to tweet, I thought he would be watching, you know, some Fox TV program,” Sanders quipped, before really going in on Trump. “Look, he...

Mayor Pete Buttigieg revealed his plan Thursday of how to compete with President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. “What we’ve got to learn is how to kind of stiff-arm him, it’s almost sort of a ‘crazy uncle’ management,” he said. Buttigieg commented on his future plans to debate Trump in a conversation with Washington Post reporter Robert Costa. He said that Democrats should correct Trump during debates but not get distracted by his controversial views. ~snip~ Buttigieg accused Trump of faking a disability to avoid getting drafted into the Vietnam war. “I don’t mean to trivialize disability, but I...

In an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, Senator-elect Mitt Romney (R-UT) expounds on his controversial op-ed that attacked President Trump. "What I did in my op-ed was not just talk about the president and my relationship with him and how we’ll work together, but also I laid out my perspectives and priorities on a very broad basis on everything from trade to China to our allies around the world, immigration and so forth," Romney said. Romney told Tapper while he is "not looking for the next election," he has not decided who will endorse in 2020. "I haven’t decided who...

Dr. No seems to have become Dr. Yes. Kind of. Tom Coburn, the former Republican senator from Oklahoma known for his often contrarian views, said Wednesday that Judge Merrick B. Garland should get a vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee, going against his old colleagues who have staunchly opposed even considering President Obama's Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year....

I’ll be the first to admit I get a kick out of Joe Biden. Let’s just be frank – very few American politicians can make a swearing in ceremony for 100 senators actually entertaining. That’s a talent, to be sure, but the media’s double standard on Bidenisms is appalling and has to stop. Biden’s trip to Iowa this week was meant to be a reminder that he’s thinking about running for president in 2016. Coming days after Hillary echoed The Terminator, South Park, and Independence Day in the Hawkeye State, it was natural that the veep trekked there himself. Massive...

Our famously gaffe-prone vice president, Joe Biden, has outdone himself. He stumbled through not one, not two, but three gaffes in less than 24 hours. For him, that's a personal best or, more accurately, a personal worst.. Yet if it is better to be criticized than ignored in politics, he can take little comfort from the way that hardly anyone outside of the Republican National Committee, whose website called it "Gaffetastic," seemed to care.

Richard Viguerie has an interesting observation regarding the methodology of Ron Paul’s campaign intended to leave Paul as the last not-Romney standing, Ron Paul Goes Bird Hunting: "Experienced bird hunters and fighter pilots know you don’t aim for the leader of a flight — you start at the back of the flight and work your way forward. This is apparently what Congressman Ron Paul is doing to his opponents in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Rather than aim at purported frontrunner Mitt Romney (who should be the number one target of his libertarian supporters), Ron Paul has been...

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Republican presidential contender Ron Paul likened fellow Texan Rick Perry to a “candidate of the week” on Friday and said his Republican opponent’s poll numbers would fall quickly once voters get to know him better. “He was the one saying, ‘Oh yeah, I’m all for secession,’ and that kind of talk,” Paul told The Associated Press. “The only thing I would advise is looking into him, looking at his record, and not just taking him at face value. Texas has had a lot of changes in these last eight years, not exactly positive either.” In a 2009...

Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan, said a rueful John F. Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. George W. Bush knows today whereof his predecessor spoke. For as he prepares to "surge" 20,000 more U.S. troops into a war even he concedes we "are not winning," his erstwhile acolytes have begun to abandon him to salvage their own tattered reputations. Case in point, the neoconservatives. As the Iraq war heads into its fifth year, more than half a dozen have confessed to Vanity Fair's David Rose their abject despair over how the Bushites mismanaged the war...

Back in 2004, I published The Real Matrix, in seven parts (read them here). I had little idea how the process outlined there would accelerate in 2005 and 2006. Indeed, even those still "plugged in" ought to be wondering why the U.S. Senate just gave thumbs-up (62 yeas vs. 26 nays) to an immigration bill that most of the public does not want, and that would clearly be destructive of this country's long-term best interests – educationally, culturally, and economically. Those of us out here in the Desert of the Real are aware that the Senate just took us one...