Free Republic

Let me be the latest conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama bandwagon. It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance. Or would they? But let’s get that part out of the way. The only reason my vote would be of any interest to anyone is that my last name happens to be Buckley—a name I inherited. So in the event anyone notices or cares, the headline will be: “William F. Buckley’s Son Says He Is Pro-Obama.” I know, I know: It lacks the throw-weight of “Ron Reagan Jr....

Modern conservatism began as a movement of dissident intellectuals. Richard Weaver wrote a book called, “Ideas Have Consequences.” Russell Kirk placed Edmund Burke in an American context. William F. Buckley famously said he’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard. But he didn’t believe those were the only two options. His entire life was a celebration of urbane values, sophistication and the rigorous and constant application of intellect. Driven by a need to engage elite opinion, conservatives tried to build an intellectual counterestablishment with think tanks and magazines....

WASHINGTON -- If you're a Democrat who needs help getting the votes of rural white folks, the go-to guy is David "Mudcat" Saunders, a central-casting political consultant recently made famous by a parade of magazine writers led by The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash. But sometimes you can learn more about a people and their place through literature than by hiring consultants. So I called Ron Rash, poet, author and purebred Appalachian whose newest novel, "Serena," should be at the top of Barack Obama's reading list. Sarah Palin might enjoy it as well. Described by one blurber as "an Appalachian retelling...

David Brooks spoke frankly about the presidential and vice presidential candidates Monday afternoon, calling Sarah Palin a "fatal cancer to the Republican party" but describing John McCain and Barack Obama as "the two best candidates we've had in a long time." In an interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg at New York's Le Cirque restaurant to unveil that magazine's redesign, Brooks decried Palin's anti-intellectualism and compared her to President Bush in that regard: [Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley...

The McCain campaign knows that Obama isn't a Muslim or a terrorist, but they're willing to help a certain kind of voter think he is. Just the way certain South Carolinians in 2000 were allowed to think that McCain's adopted daughter from Bangladesh was his illegitimate black child. But words can have more serious consequences than lost votes and we've already had a glimpse of the Palin effect. Dana Milbank of The Washington Post reported that media representatives in Clearwater were greeted with taunts, thunder sticks and profanity. One Palin supporter shouted an epithet at an African-American soundman and said,...

LEWIS CENTER -- Rudy Giuliani blasted prominent conservative columnists who have criticized Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin as being unqualified and even worthy of being removed from the GOP ticket. The former New York City mayor spoke at a press conference at the Ohio Victory campaign’s grassroots leadership conference Saturday. Giuliani was asked what he would say to columnists who’ve criticized John McCain’s selection of Palin, such as Kathleen Parker, George Will and David Frum. “I think they look like a bunch of jerks after the debate the other night,” Giuliani said. “I think they should all say they...

<p>WASHINGTON -- What did they do with the other Sarah Palin?</p> <p>I mean the one who bases foreign policy experience on the proximity of Russia to Alaska and who speaks cutely about Vladimir Putin poking his little head into American airspace. Where did they put her?</p>

. . . I rehash all of this not to dwell on Palin’s problems, which are increasingly irrelevant as McCain heads towards defeat, but to implore conservatives to stop ignoring reality just because they happen to like a candidate’s personality and biography. Besides being bad for the quality of conservative thought, it embraces the caricature that conservatives are indifferent to knowledge and have no use for expertise, which has become an all too legitimate critique of how conservatives have responded to the misrule of the Bush administration. That was not always the case, but if conservatives insist on making elaborate...

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a Dumpster, but since she didn't, I should "off" myself. Those are just a few nuggets randomly selected from thousands of e-mails written in response to my column suggesting that Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down. Who says public discourse hasn't deteriorated? The fierce reaction to my column has been both bracing and enlightening. After 20 years of column writing, I'm familiar with angry mail. But the past few days have produced...

A month after Gov. Sarah Palin joined Senator John McCain’s ticket to a burst of excitement and anticipation among Republicans, she heads into a critical debate facing challenges from conservatives about her credentials, signs that her popularity is slipping and evidence that Republicans are worried about how much help she will be for Mr. McCain in November.... "I think she has pretty thoroughly — and probably irretrievably — proven that she is not up to the job of being president of the United States," David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush who is now a conservative columnist, said in...

Are certain conservatives setting Sarah Palin up to fail? With the recent news that conservative commentator Kathleen Parker has joined the ranks of anti-Palin conservatives George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum and Ross Douthat (as well as moderate-conservative David Brooks), one has to wonder how these folks will respond if McCain and Palin lose to Barack Obama and Joseph Biden on November 4. It’s likely that Parker, Will, Krauthammer, Frum, Douthat and Brooks will attempt to blame Palin for a GOP loss, arguing that she was not ready for prime time and that her supposed lack of knowledge drove away...

The future of conservatism is bright. All those liberal Republicans who were arguing that the GOP needed to “rebrand” itself and move leftward are now crying in their coffee. Arlen Specter is feeling lonely. Break out the world’s smallest violin. I’m verklempt. Bloomberg News: At a Tuesday reception for moderate Republicans, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter hushed the cocktail chatter when he began ticking off a long list of like- minded lawmakers who no longer hold office. “Today, we’re in a phone booth,” Specter said. To conservatives at the Republican National Convention this week, John McCain’s choice of running mate Sarah...

If you want to know why ... John McCain came to pick a total unknown with a Down Syndrome baby as his replacement as war-president, you have to understand the immense importance of the Christianist base. McCain isn't one of them, however much he tries to re-tell his life-story to make it so. They know it, he knows it, and he needed a religious running mate. He might have succeeded with Pawlenty, who is a solid pick that a mature and responsible campaign would have selected in a heartbeat. Instead - partly out of insane cynicism (did he really believe...

NR has learned that the McCain campaign has been calling key state GOP officials around the country the last couple of days and sounding them out about the consequences of a pro-choice VP pick. The campaign is asking about the reaction of conservative grass-roots activists to such a pick and whether a pro-choicer can be sold to them. This is an indication that the McCain campaign is serious about the possibility of a pro-choice VP nominee and that McCain leaving the door open to Tom Ridge last week may not have been merely a friendly nod to a longtime supporter....

This is an AP article. I did a search and didn't see it posted anywhere and I'm not sure if AP articles were still prohibited here. Anyway, Ridge believes Republicans will accept a pro-abortion VP.

Top social conservative leaders in key battleground states are urging John McCain not to pick a running mate who supports abortion rights, warning of dire consequences from a Republican base already unenthused about their nominee. McCain’s comments Wednesday to the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes that former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge’s pro-abortion rights views wouldn’t necessarily rule him out quickly found their way into the in-boxes of Christian conservatives. For those who have been anxiously awaiting McCain’s pick as a signal of his ideological intentions, there was deep concern that their worst fears about the Arizona senator may be realized. “It...

WASHINGTON — Democrats and the media have used the term so much that it's almost an article of faith. But the so-called "Republican attack machine" waiting with piles of unregulated cash to chew up Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is anything but. Obama cited the threat of unregulated attack groups — called "527s" because they're authorized to raise unlimited cash under that section of the Internal Revenue Service code — to justify dropping his pledge to take public financing — along with its spending limits — for the general election campaign. Yet there's no 2008 equivalent to the 2004 Swift...

John McCain has cursed and bullied fellow Senate Republicans on a host of issues over the years. Yet McCain's colleagues are setting aside any hard feelings to embrace his White House bid -- for their own good. In doing so, many are also distancing themselves from Republican President George W. Bush, widely derided for the unpopular Iraq war, ailing economy and soaring gas prices. "We are going from rallying around one of the most disliked guys in the world, to a guy who is very well liked in America, but not so popular in the Senate," a Senate Republican leadership...

For four months John McCain had a clear field while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were at each other's throats. Given the opportunity, the Arizona Senator failed to define the debate in favorable terms, spending much of the valuable primary months defending himself on charges that his campaign staff was top heavy with lobbyists. Conversely, McCain has so far eluded the anti-Republican tidal wave that threatens to sweep away the party's candidates at every level, from county councils to the U.S. Senate. Amid the early wreckage -- GOP partisan identification in the tank, three defeats in rock-solid GOP House districts,...

Why the Conservative Crisis? To me, Conservatism is mostly the child of Wisdom and Common Sense. But what do we do when common sense is no longer common and wisdom is no longer held in esteem? That is the current state of Conservatism in America. Slandered and slapped, belittled and maligned. Many conservative Americans are shifting nervously in their seats, unsure of what they were once sure of. The power of a constant drone of the media, academia, and even popular culture can make even the most headstrong believers hesitate. When the perception is built that almost nobody believes as...

As congressional Republicans contemplate the prospect of an electoral disaster this November, much is being written about the supposed soul-searching in the Republican Party. A more accurate description of our state is paralysis and denial. Many Republicans are waiting for a consultant or party elder to come down from the mountain and, in Moses-like fashion, deliver an agenda and talking points on stone tablets. But the burning bush, so to speak, is delivering a blindingly simple message: Behave like Republicans. Unfortunately, too many in our party are not yet ready to return to the path of limited government. Instead, we...

I've never been a fan of John McCain. Not only is he not a conservative, he may have done more damage to the conservative movement than any other Republican over the last few years. Look back at the Gang-of-14, global warming, McCain-Feingold, coddling terrorists at Gitmo, illegal immigration -- on and on and on, and you'll remember John McCain working feverishly with liberals to defeat conservatives. For that reason, John McCain was not someone I backed for the Presidency. My order of preference for President was Duncan Hunter (whom I consulted for), Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and then,...

The Republican Party is dead. That’s what the smart people say. The “brand” has lost its meaning. I don’t know if the party is dead, but I do know it has lost its soul. It has abandoned its traditions and principles, and America seems to be just about done with it. Ironically, those who want to save it are the ones who have killed it. When Arnold Schwarzenegger says he wants to chart the course of the Republican Party, you might as well turn off the lights and go out of business. The Republican Party has lost its purpose by...

Wednesday, May 14, 2008 "You're Going to Lose If You Keep This Up"   [Kathryn Jean Lopez] As Sean Hannity issued the above warning to congressional Republicans today on his show, the House — including enough Republicans (100) to amass a veto-proof majority — passed the pork-laden farm bill. We editorialized on the bill: The program is nothing more than a massive income transfer from American taxpayers to a small handful of very large producers who grow just a few crops; the program can’t be serving the purposes its defenders claim it does — ensuring a stable food supply and...

. . . Democrats will control Congress. If they also control the White House, we will have a series of legislative packages that will make the Great Society look like a libertarian government. . . . The country is in trouble. We have forgotten our founding principles, and we move inexorably toward a European style socialist state, with the only winners being an enormous bureaucracy. This will accelerate the economic decline. The argument is to give the Democrats their head, and pick up the pieces after the inevitable crash. I think that overlooks the resilience of tax and tax, spend...

Soul searching Republicans are turning to an unlikely savior, one-time party heretic and now presumptive White House nominee John McCain, as they try to stave off an electoral disaster. Stung by the Democratic seizure of three staunch conservative seats in Congress, Republican lawmakers fear a shellacking in November's general election, after losing control of both chambers of Congress in 2006. The rise of McCain as their champion is not without irony, since the 71-year-old Arizona senator has quarreled with his own party for years on issues as diverse as immigration, campaign finance reform and global warming. But it is precisely...

All Republican leaders must resign Written by Viguerie on Wed May 14 11:48:26 -0400 2008 Republican leaders in the White House, the Congress, and the Republican National Committee and its affiliates, along with most Republican leaders at the state level, have failed – or outright betrayed – the conservative voters who put them in their positions.The result is that the party’s “brand� has become a negative, to an extent greater than in the Watergate era, perhaps worse than in the days of Herbert Hoover. The number of new Republican voters is flat while Democratic voter registration is skyrocketing.Contributions to GOP...

Special election races for Congress have arguable value as bellwethers for upcoming general elections. Mostly these races get decided on local issues rather than national themes, as in Louisiana, where the Republicans ran a lousy candidate, considered the only person who could have lost the seat. They do demonstrate the strength of national party efforts, though, and when one party loses three special elections in districts previously thought safe, that sends a message — and rightly has Republicans worried about their chances in November: A Democrat won the race for a GOP-held congressional seat in northern Mississippi yesterday, leaving the...

RUSH: I've been waiting for this, and I am prepared for this. I just got an e-mail, not a subscriber. This is in the general e-mail account at ElRushbo@eibnet.com. It's from a woman called Sandy Bose. I guess that's how you pronounce it. BREAK TRANSCRIPT "Dear Rush: Since Operation Chaos, the GOP has lost three congressional seats. I'm a conservative. I have nothing. I have no candidate for president. I have no national party unit, and no Rush, who is consumed with Operation Chaos. Enough is enough. Sandy Bose." I've been waiting for this. I've been waiting for somebody to...

In a major blow to national Republicans, a Mississippi congressional seat that once voted for President Bush by a twenty-five point margin elected a Democrat on Tuesday. Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers beat out Republican candidate Greg Davis, the mayor of Southaven, by a 54%-46% margin, a spread that several Republican strategists on Capitol Hill characterized as a startling wake-up call for a party in dire straits. Voters cast ballots for the fourth time in three months for the seat, vacated when Republican Roger Wicker was appointed to fill the remainder of Senator Trent Lott's term. After winning the...

Lot's of very glum faces among House GOP members this morning as they emerged from their weekly closed-door session. The political situation is not good, and they aren't even trying to deny it. Rep. Tom Davis stomped on the concrete floor of the Capitol basement when asked by reporters about Republican fortunes at the moment. "This is the floor," he said, by way of explanation. "We're below the floor." Inside the meeting, Davis had just presented his colleagues with what he said was a 20-page memo outlining his prescription for a way out of this mess. He did not offer...

It goes without saying that the GOP is taking a dreadful thrashing right now. Conservatives are unmotivated, Democrats are obliterating Republicans in the fundraising arena, and the GOP's poll numbers have dropped off a cliff. George Bush, the face of the Republican Party, has an approval rating of 30% and according to Rasmussen Reports, one of the best polling agencies in the business, 41.4% of Americans consider themselves to be Democrats while only 31.4% say they are Republicans. Worse yet, voters trust the Democrats more than Republicans on the economy, government ethics, the war in Iraq, health care, Social Security,...

McCain has recently been making efforts to reach out to all sorts of people not traditionally associated with the GOP. He appeared on the View, the Daily Show, before black civil rights activists in Alabama, etc. When is he going to make a serious effort to reach out to conservatives? How about promising to appoint strict constructionist judges? How about re-assurances on gun ownership rights? What about reducing the out-of-control spending of this administation? Does he take conservative support for granted? Does he even want them? Maybe he sees that Obama and his kooky spiritual advisor have totally freaked most...

While Democrats duel, the unofficial Republican nominee considers a vice president. John McCain should start by asking what he needs. The admiral’s son fits two legs of his own party’s three-legged stool: foreign policy (zinging terrorism) and economic (scoring spending). Alas, he is out to sea with social and cultural conservatives, the one group without which national Republicans once routinely lost, and will surely lose again. According to a new Pew Research Forum poll, 44 percent of the electorate terms itself “born-again.” Politically, these Christian, mostly Protestant, evangelicals are the Republican Party’s largest block: 35 percent of George W. Bush’s...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) is calling on Republicans to seek "real change to avoid a real disaster" in the wake of another Democratic victory in a special election on Saturday. In a letter to House Republicans posted on www.newt.org, Gingrich urges House leaders to call an “emergency meeting” of House Republicans to address what he describes as a “catastrophic collapse of trust in Republicans.” “If a majority of the House Republicans vote for real change, they should instruct Republican Leader John Boehner [Ohio] and his team to come back with a new plan by the Wednesday before the...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - John McCain toured still hurricane-damaged areas of New Orleans and declared that if the disaster had happened on his watch, he would have immediately landed his plane at the nearest Air Force base. The Republican presidential candidate is campaigning this week in what he calls forgotten areas of the country. He offered a pledge Thursday to New Orleans residents that their situation will not be forgotten and that such a botched disaster response will never happen again. McCain was unsparing in his criticism of the Bush administration. He said Congress must share some of the blame,...

John McCain is a hero for his service in Vietnam. Most conservatives would be thrilled to support him, if only he would give them reason to. Why is it that conservatives have such a hard time lining up behind John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president? Is it, as some liberals suggest, just "pique" -- that we didn't get our way, and now we're throwing a tantrum? Or are the differences between McCain and conservatives very real, very serious matters that go to the heart of the principles of conservatism? The truth is that the differences with McCain are...

Sen. John McCain this morning said "greedy" Wall Street investors are partly to blame for what he said is probably an economic recession the nation is now suffering. "There has to be a modification of the greedy behavior of some of these people," he said, using the word "greedy" repeatedly in remarks to the Associated Press annual meeting at the Washington Convention Center today.

Senator John McCain, who drew criticism last month after he warned against broad government intervention to solve the deepening mortgage crisis, pivoted Thursday and called for the federal government to aid some homeowners in danger of losing their homes, by helping them to refinance and get federally guaranteed 30-year mortgages. “There is nothing more important than keeping alive the American dream to own your home, and priority No. 1 is to keep well-meaning, deserving homeowners who are facing foreclosure in their homes,” Mr. McCain said in a speech on economic themes that he gave at a window company in the...

The RNC is not the GOP. It’s only a collective national action committee for the state Republican parties, a fund raising and steering committee. Yet for far too long, the RNC has assumed increasing power over the political process to the detriment of the party. Voter complacency and apathy towards the political process has left control of the party in the hands of a few centrist party elites and conservative voters have lost faith in their own party as a result. (snip) The Message in the Money? Is McCain Listening? Is the RNC Listening? So Who has Whom in Check...

Associated Press SANTA ANA PUEBLO, N.M. -- Republicans want to attract different voters. The top campaign official for the presumed GOP presidential nominee, John McCain, is identifying five groups of target voters. Rick Davis told a meeting of Republican state chairmen at Santa Ana Pueblo Friday that those groups include young voters and Hispanics. They also include what he calls "Wal-Mart moms," "Rehab Republicans" and "Facebook independents." Davis said it's not just McCain who would benefit from their support. He said they could help GOP candidates further down the ticket. He defines Rehab Republicans as longtime GOP members who haven't...

... If there's a single thread that runs through the e-mails I receive from peevish Republicans, it's that none of the current candidates possesses the conservative purity of Ronald Reagan. One could almost get the idea that Dutch was betrayed by Pontius Pilate and crucified on Calvary. But that wasn't exactly the case. The fact of the matter is that Gov. Reagan gave Gov. Jerry Brown a run for his money – or should I say our money? – when it came to raising taxes here in California. But, in spite of the additional revenue, he was responsible in large...

Democrat Bill Foster won the Illinois House seat occupied for more than two decades by former Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert, who retired before the end of his term. The result shows that Democrats not only have political enthusiasm on their side but that Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who endorsed Mr. Foster, is a campaign asset down ballot, at least in his home state. ...To his credit, Mr. Oberweis did talk about lower taxes, smaller government and other Republican themes. But as in his past campaigns, the issue he hit hardest was illegal immigration. One of his infamous Senate ads featured...

Aside the most obvious case -- his own -- John McCain cited two recent examples of GOP candidates taking a hard-line on immigration to no avail (And note the elbow thrown at a certain former colleague who came after McCain in the primary). My colleague Josh Kraushaar writes up McCain's comments: On NPR’s “Morning Edition” today, John McCain suggested that strong anti-immigrant rhetoric contributed to two recent, high-profile GOP Congressional losses – of former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, who badly lost to Sen. Bob Casey in 2006, and Jim Oberweis, who lost the heavily Republican seat of former House Speaker...

McCain won't bow to the Religious Right. At United Jewish Communities conference, three representatives from the presidential campaigns of Senators John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, talked with an audience about why their candidate benefits the Jewish community.

Alan Keyes Leaving Republican Party By John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com JLof@aol.com After 20 or so years of working within the GOP to try and reform it into a more Christian/conservative Party, Dr. Alan Keyes is leaving the Republican Party. He will soon make this announcement and explain why he can no longer, in good conscience, remain a Republican. Many things over the past two decades or so have contributed to Alan’s decision to leave the GOP. One recent example: A secret meeting of some conservative “leaders” discussing not how to oppose John McCain but what promises McCain might make to...

Perhaps the most obvious way McCain could upend the normal dynamics of this year’s election would be a bold vice presidential choice. He could pick a hawkish and principled Democrat like Joe Lieberman. He could reach beyond the usual bevy of elected officials by tapping either David Petraeus or Raymond Odierno — the two generals who together, in an amazing demonstration of leadership and competence, turned the war in Iraq around last year. He could persuade the most impressive conservative in American public life, Clarence Thomas, to join the ticket. There are other unorthodox possibilities.

Conservatives and party regulars were not happy about the selection of Carly Fiorina to head the Republican National Committee’s “Victory 2008” campaign raising funds for the presidential election. She was one of the nation’s most visible CEOs before she was fired by Hewlett-Packard in 2005 for not generating enough profits. Federal Election Commission records show Fiorina contributed nothing to the Republican Party the last eight years. Her only political giving was to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign—$2,100 in 2006 and $2,300 in 2007. Fiorina was at McCain’s side when he campaigned in the critical Michigan and Florida races. Fiorina has...

http://www.breitbart.tv/html/54994.html"I'm a proud conservative liberal republic -- conservative Republican. Hello, easy there. Let me say this. I am a proud conservative Republican and both of my possible or likely opponents are liberal Democrats."

Former Republican National Committee chairman — and the man who reportedly advised President Bush in early 2001 not to regulate carbon dioxide — has switched sides and is now being paid to lobby for greenhouse gas regulation on behalf of the eco-activist group Environmental Defense. According to Greenwire’s John Fialka (Feb. 21), ED board member and hedge fund tycoon Julian Robertson is putting up the cash to hire DC lobbying powerhouse Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Ken Mehlman and former Democratic congressman Vic Fazio will lead Akin Gump’s efforts. "Their first mission is to find the right political formula...