Free Republic

W e now know why President Obama had to struggle so hard to spur the economy and allow it to grow more than 2 percent a year. And that was the high-water mark. In the last quarter of his presidency, growth had slipped to 1.5 percent. Today it’s obvious what Obama’s problem was. He had the wrong policies‚ lots of them. How do we know this? Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, and the Republican Congress reversed Obama’s policies. The result, from the day Trump was elected, has been a more robust economy. Nearly 4 million jobs have been added, and unemployment...

Donald Trump has achieved two things besides locking up the Republican presidential nomination. The first is widely acknowledged: He now has a real chance of beating Hillary Clinton. Sean Trende, the best of the big-picture political writers, puts the possibility Trump will win the presidency at 30 percent. That sounds about right, for the moment anyway. The second achievement is the effect Trump’s rise has had on the political environment. It's helped Republicans. GOP leaders had feared they'd lose the Senate overwhelmingly, maybe the House too, and lots of governors as a result of a Trump wipeout in November. But...

I had the pleasure of attending an informal discussion held by writer/political pundit Fred Barnes recently, where the topics ranged from his biography of Jack Kemp-co-written with McLaughlin Group colleague Morton Kondracke-to his thoughts on the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump. Taking place prior to the New York primary, and subsequent devastating losses by Ted Cruz to the now presumptive Republican nominee, it served as a fascinating overview of the internal divisions within the conservative establishment, which are even more pronounced now that the worst nightmare of many has come to fruition. Even as Fred Barnes-like a handful of other...

Newt Gingrich has been a friend of Donald Trump’s for the past decade. He hasn’t endorsed Mr. Trump’s presidential bid, but they talk frequently. Mr. Trump is anti-left wing and anti-political correctness, Mr. Gingrich says, while acknowledging this: Mr. Trump is not a conservative....

Among a very long list of harms inflicted upon the United States by Barack Obama and his party, perhaps the worst was Caesarism. Obama relished the worship of millions in 2008. From his star turn at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he was treated not as a political candidate, but as a savior. Progressives fell into a swoon, typified by Newsweek editor Evan Thomas' 2008 comment, "I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above -- above the world; he's sort of God." Now, a similar kind of unreasoning adulation is greeting (improbably enough) Donald Trump. Fred Barnes...

Have Republicans Grown Tired of Supporting the Rule of Law? by MONA CHAREN August 28, 2015 Among a very long list of harms inflicted upon the United States by Barack Obama and his party, perhaps the worst was Caesarism. Obama relished the worship of millions in 2008. From his star turn at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he was treated not as a political candidate but as a savior. Progressives fell into a swoon, typified by Newsweek editor Evan Thomas’s 2008 comment that “I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above — above the world, he’s sort...

Here are five things I learned about the Trump constituency:--They view Trump as different from all the other presidential candidates. He’s not just their favorite candidate. Their tie to him is almost mystical. He’s a kind of political savior, someone who says what they think. --They love the Trump swagger and attitude. Luntz asked what they liked the most, the Trump persona or his policies. Persona got 23 votes, policies six. --They cut Trump an enormous amount of slack. They are quite forgiving.They were given a list of 21 “negatives” about Trump and asked to pick the seven they thought...

Republicans have been slow in recognizing the real damage Donald Trump is doing to their party. The harm is not to the party’s image. What Trump has done is exacerbate the increasingly bitter rift between the party’s leaders and its grass roots. He’s made the GOP’s future dicey. The quarter of the Republican electorate Trump has attracted consists largely of this alienated group. Since he voices their resentment of Republican elites – especially their arch-enemies in Congress – he’s become their champion. And champions are hard to dethrone. Trump doesn’t have to run as an independent to be a serious...

To win the Senate, Republicans must win North Carolina. While it’s mathematically possible to take the Senate without ousting Democratic senator Kay Hagan, the chances of that happening are close to zero. For Republicans, North Carolina is necessary. It’s the key to control of the Senate. Obama Hagan It’s number six on my list. That is, there are five states where capturing Democratic seats appears more likely—West Virginia, South Dakota, Montana, Louisiana, Arkansas. Then comes North Carolina. Assuming Republicans don’t lose any of their own seats, those six pickups would give Republicans a 51-49 majority. And with it, the political...

When Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to President Obama, spoke at a Politico event last week, he was asked what would constitute success in 2013 for the White House. One of his answers was making headway to “rebalance our economy.” The goal, he said, is an economy that’s “not top down.” Like their boss, Obama aides often speak in euphemisms. So here’s the translation: The Obama administration will continue to pursue redistribution of wealth and income, taking from the well-to-do and giving to the poor and middle class (at least to the lower middle class). The president has his own...

Fred Barnes seems to have reversed his opinion on Governor Palin's presidential prospects. He said the following at the non-partisan Alabama Policy Institute: When moderator and API president Gary Palmer asked the panelists for their take on potential 2012 presidential candidates, Moore brought up the names Chris Christie, Paul Ryan and Mike Pence. “Moore forgot Sarah Palin!” exclaimed Barnes, who said that Palin is the most solidly conservative possibility with a tremendous following. While he considered Jim DeMint to also be a good potential candidate, Barnes said “Never underestimate Sarah Palin.”

If Fiorina beats Boxer, liberalism will suffer a grievous defeat.

Barbara Boxer under pressure is like a reckless driver in traffic. She’s out of control and extremely careless. “You know, like, I don’t want to go back to the days when thousands of people died every day because they had no insurance,” she declared in a debate in late September. Boxer, as best one could tell, was referring to the era before President Obama’s health care plan was enacted. If true, at least 730,000 people were dying annually in America for lack of health insurance. (To do the math, it’s a minimum of 2,000 deaths every 24 hours multiplied by...

The Democratic strategy in the 2010 election is simple: Change the subject. And given the subject on everyone’s mind, who can blame them? That subject is the economy and related matters like spending, the deficit, debt, and President Obama. These are the last things Democrats want to talk about. Instead they’d like to reduce each race for the House and Senate to the personal level. Their aim is to emphasize the individual flaws of Republican candidates. In the Democratic game plan, the economy and national issues are taboo. This microstrategy is one of pure desperation. It’s all that’s left when...

The bad news for Democrats keeps pouring in. Now it comes from Wal-Mart moms -- women with children under 18 who shop at Wal-Mart. They tend to be Democrats and more of them than not voted for President Obama in 2008. But they’re leaning Republican this year. And despite the happy economic talk from the White House, they believe the economy is hurting their families and their situation will be just as bad a year from now. In Washington today, Wal-Mart officials unveiled a national survey of their female customers, who pollsters said amount to 16 percent of the electorate....

President Reagan had a sign on his desk that said, "It's amazing how much you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit." If President Obama had a sign, it would say, "It's amazing how much you can accomplish if you don't care what the public thinks."

The GOP lacks a standard-bearer for 2012 - but the list of contenders will be growing in the fall. Texas governor Rick Perry's impressive primary victory over Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is a signal. After the midterm election this November, the field of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 (or later) is going to get bigger and possibly better. The list is long: Mitch Daniels, John Kasich, Meg Whitman, Bobby Jindal, Haley Barbour, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, and Jim DeMint. And Perry. You'll notice I haven't mentioned Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich. They're already national figures....

President Obama spent seven hours last week acting like a committee chairman, not a president. Rather than preside over the nationally televised health care “summit” of Democratic and Republican members of Congress, Obama was a participant. He big-footed Democrats and responded to Republican statements himself. He talked and talked and talked, considerably more than anyone else and for a total of two hours. When Obama delivered a concluding monologue, the TV cameras panned to a drowsy and bored group of senators and House members, the Republicans especially. Did Obama lower the presidency to the level of mere legislator? Perhaps. But...

How quickly the president and congressional Democrats have turned to tricks and ploys and sham events. --- How the mighty have fallen! Only seven or eight months ago, President Obama and congressional Democrats were on their way to remaking America along liberal lines and positioning themselves for decades of political dominance. Their lopsided majorities in the House and Senate, plus the White House, gave them unassailable command of Washington. Today, they still have those majorities and the presidency, but they’re no longer in command. Their hopes of enacting the most ambitious agenda of liberal legislation since the days of FDR...

President Obama’s greatest need is to escape the ideological grip of congressional Democrats and the liberal base of the Democratic party (they’re one and the same). But he either doesn’t recognize this or, as a conventional liberal himself, isn’t so inclined. This self-inflicted difficulty has put Obama in worse political straits than President Clinton faced after the Republican landslide of 1994. Certainly there was nothing in Obama’s State of the Union address last week to indicate he understands the fix he’s in or has devised a credible way to get out of it. His message, though he didn’t put it...