Free Republic

The Progressives won on Tuesday. I don’t mean the people who voted Democrat who call themselves “progressive.” Though they won, too. I mean the Progressives who’ve been waging a century-long effort to transform our American-style government into a European-style state. The words “government” and “state” are often used interchangeably, but they are really different things. According to the Founders’ vision, the people are sovereign and the government belongs to us. Under the European notion of the state, the people are creatures of the state, significant only as parts of the whole. This European version of the state can be nice....

<> Though many of the state margins were narrow President Obama ran the table winning every swing or battleground state with the possible exception of Florida where votes are still being counted as of 5:30 this morning. President Obama also won the popular vote by 2 million votes. The President won 303 electoral votes to 206 for Romney. We knew about 11 pm that the President had won when Ohio was called for him. Democrats also held the Senate. Elizabeth Warren won with a good margin in Massachusetts. Claire McKaskill won in Missouri beating Akin-he of the legitimate rape...

1. Republicans retained control of the U.S. House of Representatives.2. Voters in Alabama, Montana, and Wyoming all passed measures limiting Obamacare.3. Tea Party candidate Ted Cruz, one of the conservative movement’s brightest rising stars, overcame establishment GOP opposition to clinch a U.S. Senate victory in Texas.4. Corruptocrat Beltway barnacle Rep. Pete Stark was finally kicked out of office in California.5. Despite entrenched teachers’ union opposition, a charter school initiative in Washington state triumphed.6. Despite entrenched Big Labor support, a radical collective bargaining power grab in Michigan failed.7. Oklahoma voters said no to government race-based preferences in college admissions, public contracting,...

As we seem to be well into the “if only they had done what I would have done” stage of post-election analysis, I’m happy to admit that I believe that if the Romney campaign had offered a more coherent agenda and case regarding our economic predicament and positioned it within a broader argument about the nature of American life they could well have had far more success... First of all, the figures we have so far (even acknowledging that the exit polls were incomplete and imperfect, and that there are still some votes here and there to be tallied) suggest...

I know you're polled out, but with all the navel-gazing today about demographics and the future of the GOP, I figured people might want a link to the numbers behind last night's disaster. Here's CNN's version, Fox News's version, and WaPo's version, which breaks the trend lines down by arrows. (Mouse over for the numbers.) Noteworthy: The sample does apparently include respondents from all 50 states. There was some question about that after news broke last month that the exit pollster would exclude voters in 19 states, but WaPo reported at the time that that was only true of individual...

Mitt Romney's campaign got its first hint something was wrong on the afternoon of Election Day, when state campaign workers on the ground began reporting huge turnout in areas favorable to President Obama: northeastern Ohio, northern Virginia, central Florida and Miami-Dade. Then came the early exit polls that also were favorable to the president. But it wasn't until the polls closed that concern turned into alarm. They expected North Carolina to be called early. It wasn't. They expected Pennsylvania to be up in the air all night; it went early for the President. After Ohio went for Mr. Obama, it...

A winter storm battered the Northeast coast Thursday after cutting power to at least 115,000 homes and dumping record snowfalls in the New York City area. The National Weather Service warned of wind gusts as high as 60 mph along the coast, “minor to moderate” flooding from storm surges, and more snow, particularly in New England, early Thursday. More than 600,000 people were without electricity as a result of superstorm Sandy and the new storm. NBCNewYork.com reported that more than 198,000 Long Island Power Authority customers, 55,000 Con Edison customers in New York City and Westchester County, 197,560 Jersey Central...

A lot of Buzz already about Sarah running in 2016. From Palin4President comes a wealth of information. Some snippets: "Romney lost because he simply couldn't turn out the vote. McCain/Palin turned out 6.2 Million more voters than Romney/Ryan did and that is all it would have taken to beat Obama this time around if you look at the numbers. Perhaps Romney should put some thought into what is was that McCain had that helped produce an extra 6.2 million votes, that helped create the tidal wave of the 2010 mid-term victories... here's a hint... she wears lipstick." "A team of...

RUSH: So three million Republican voters stayed home on Election Day. Three million predominantly white voters stayed home. The media is all over the place with the fact that the Republicans lost "the white vote." They can't get the white vote. They did lose the white vote, but Democrats didn't get it. They just didn't show up, and it wasn't voter suppression that didn't turn 'em out. What would be the reason that three million voters didn't show up? Let's go through the possibilities. It could be that there are a number... We've talked to 'em. We've had 'em call....

Was the election stolen? Remember all those lawsuits by Democrats demanding that any voter identification laws be repealed? Well, now we know why they filed them. They needed to steal the vote in certain key states so that Obama could be reelected. Curiously, Obama lost in every state that requires a photo ID to be produced before voting. A list of closely contested state elections with no voter ID, which narrowly went to Obama include: Minnesota (10), Iowa (6), Wisconsin (10), Nevada (6), Colorado (9), New Mexico (5) and Pennsylvania (20). This amounts to a total of 66 electoral votes....

Virginia's 13 electoral votes went to President Obama for the second straight election, and the proprietor of a store in the south central city of Bedford is not hiding his dismay. Lyons Jewelers hung up multiple signs on the windows of the shop indicating the shop would not be open for business Wednesday, including one saying the store was closed to "mourn the loss of the America that our forefathers endowed to us," WDBJ reported. "Lyons will reopen tomorrow to continue the fight against a president who seeks my demise" and "Shame on VA & USA" read two other signs....

There are few things that keep me up at night, but this is one of them. It may be cynicism, but more likely it’s the long sad experience of watching the courts over the years. So when your side finally wins one that should have you celebrating, and yet you walk away with a knot in your gut, it’s probably warranted. Senior Judge Laurence H. Silberman’s majority opinion in Parker v. District of Columbia was a thing of beauty, affirming armed self-defense as an individual right pre-existing the Constitution. It was almost hard to believe. Maybe that's what’s bugging me....

In a city where President Obama received more than 85 percent of the votes, in some places he received almost every one. In 13 Philadelphia wards, Obama received 99 percent of the vote or more. Those wards, many with large African American populations, also swung heavily for Obama over John McCain in 2008 --snip-- Randall Miller, a history professor at St. Joseph's University, said politicians almost never get 99 percent of the votes anywhere except, perhaps, the towns where they were born.

U.S. Election--my report from Germany If you're getting this mail from me, you may not be totally happy with the result of yesterday's election. Let me share what I experienced last night in Stuttgart, and this may be enlightening. Right now, we have more than four years of Obama's crew staring us in the face. Last night, I spoke (in German) on behalf of Republicans Abroad at the (State Parliament) Landtag in Stuttgart's US Election Night Party. It was a 90 minute podium discussion. In the crowd there were 800 ppl (German 2/3 and American 1/3) there with 798 of...

Again, a rejection of a RINO who has a Youtube video of him bashing a coal-fired power plant, all the way to articles of him flip-flopping on practically any subject you can think of running as a conservative (and then losing in the general election), isn't tantamount to conservatism being over. Let's face it - Romney had a long track record of being a RINO. There are plenty of past threads here detailing his RINO past as governor, as well as his flip-flops before, during and after the primaries. Yet the GOP-e thought that putting up someone whom they said...

With the 2012 election results in, there are no short- or even medium-term "silver linings" for Republicans. SNIP SNIP On to why our pilot Mitt Romney and his plan were so flawed. 1. Paul Ryan. Romney's choice of Ryan was almost inexplicable. A good conservative, Ryan was unqualified for the job of vice president, and therefore the job of president. A sitting member of Congress, he held no leadership position on the Hill. Romney's VP selection was the most important one of his campaign, and by it he telegraphed his lack of political wisdom to the nation. With his VP...

Conservatives need to take a collective breath and look closer at the numbers before they buy into the idea that GOP nominee Mitt Romney's defeat was due to some kind of national demographic shift that now makes Democrat presidential candidates' armor impenetrable. Before you give in to the hysteria, here are a few things to keep in mind. First, Barack Obama's re-election showing was actually pretty unimpressive for a guy whose philosophies voters have supposedly adopted. As of this writing on Wednesday, Obama's vote total stood at an unimpressive 60,119,958. That's about what John Kerry got in 2004 (59,028,444). President...

‘In 2008, Obama rode the energy of hope and change into the White House,” says Andrew Bouchet, former national political director for Rick Santorum. “This year, he had no energy but he had spent the intervening years building an awesome Machine. Last night, he rode the Machine back into the White House.” The Machine indeed won. “Starting months ago, Democrats began spending $350 million building a get-out-the-vote infrastructure that swamped us,” Ed Rollins, who served as campaign manager for Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection bid, told me yesterday. “Then they demonized Romney in the swing states, and by the time he...

Blaming Tuesday's defeat solely on Mitt Romney would be a mistake. It's true that he wasn't a perfect candidate, but there's no such thing as a perfect candidate. It's true, too, that he's proven flexible as to his policy positions; but the (Groucho) Marxian line that "if you don't like my principles, I have others" is widely applicable to politicians. The question for conservatives and Republicans is what, if any, adjustments might be needed to the principles we ask aspiring politicians to pretend to hold.The standard GOP lines on foreign policy, spending, the economy, and abortion were undoubtedly important...

Gay marriage advocates cheered victories in voter initiatives in Maryland and Maine on Tuesday night and seemed poised to win in two other states. The votes were first setbacks at the ballot box for opponents of same-sex marriage after more than 30 victories. With 93 percent of the vote counted in Maryland, Ballot Question 6, which legalizes gay marriage in the state, was leading by 52 percent to 48 percent, and supporters were already claiming victory in the heated and expensive battle. “Today the marriage equality map expands to Maryland, giving thousands more loving couples the opportunity to make lifelong...