Free Republic

Ted Cruz has earned a defector from the shuttered campaign of Marco Rubio: Phil Gramm, the former Texas senator once cited by Mr. Cruz as “the senator I most admire.” Mr. Gramm, 73, who began his career in Congress as a Democrat and became a top economic adviser to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, called Mr. Cruz “a fearless leader and fighter for conservatives.” Mr. Cruz, a Texas senator, praised Mr. Gramm for his opposition to health care legislation during President Bill Clinton’s administration. “Phil stood firm and unequivocally with the American people,” Mr. Cruz said. The endorsement comes as...

Marco Rubio got a nod from another politician who previously ran for the Republican presidential nomination. Former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, who ran an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1996, told U.S. News and Report that Rubio's "got a Reaganesque quality to him. He can state strong positions and still smile. His optimism shines in an era where people are not very optimistic." While he said his vote would go to Rubio, if Gramm were a betting man, he would invest his money in Republican front-runner Donald Trump.

US Politicians Duped By The Brotherhood In the United States, one individual maintained a pretense of "moderation" which would later embarrass the left and the right. According to the testimony of Dr. Michael Waller to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Abdurahman Alamoudi was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. A man born in Eritrea in 1951, he arrived in the US in 1979 and became a naturalized US citizen on May 23, 1996. From 1985 onwards he became involved in many Muslim groups. In 1990 he founded the Washington DC-based American Muslim Council (AMC), which Waller states "has...

There is a whiff of Fascism emanating from the Obama White House. Reports say that the head of GM is quitting under duress from the Obama administration:

Time magazine's recent list of "25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis" included many obvious choices, and a readers' poll named Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee from 1995-2000, as the No. 1 culprit. Conspicuously absent was the current chairman, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. Yet on the same day the list was published, Time also had this Dodd ditty: "This is, of course, the same Chris Dodd who was Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee beginning in 2007, when the banks began their meltdown. He was the one who received the most campaign cash of...

The Clinton administration has turned the Community Reinvestment Act, a once-obscure and lightly enforced banking regulation law, into one of the most powerful mandates shaping American cities—and, as Senate Banking Committee chairman Phil Gramm memorably put it, a vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks. Under its provisions, U.S. banks have committed nearly $1 trillion for inner-city and low-income mortgages and real estate development projects, most of it funneled through a nationwide network of left-wing community groups, intent, in some cases, on teaching their low-income clients that the financial system is their enemy and, implicitly, that government, rather than their...

Politics: A dubious and dangerous idea seems to be gaining strength — that government caused the financial crisis by giving capitalism free rein. If anything, it hasn't done enough of that.OK, we'll say it if no one else will: Thank heaven for Gramm-Leach-Bliley. If you've been listening to the fulminations from Congress and the campaign trail, you know that we're talking about the 1999 law that dismantled the Depression-era barriers between commercial and investment banking. Democrats largely supported it at the time, and one of their own, Bill Clinton, signed it. Now they frame it as a Republican bill that...

Of all the themes that recur in this column, one fills my inbox with angry e-mails like no other. It is the notion that you can and should take control of your own life and your economic destiny. It’s my deeply held conviction that if you learn how to do the right things and make good decisions, you will never need to participate in any “recession.” People hate this. Every time I say it, I get barraged with indignant feedback from people who tell me I don’t understand how tough it is. This was never more true than after my...

McCain Adviser, Phil Gramm, Leaves Campaign NEW YORK (CBS) ― Phil Gramm, a top adviser to presidential candidate John McCain, is resigning from the role as campaign co-chairman after his comments that the United States had become a "nation of whiners" who constantly complain about the state of the economy. The former U.S. senator from Texas and past presidential candidate made the remarks earlier this month. McCain immediately distanced himself from the comments, but they have been criticized constantly as McCain tries to show he can help steer the country past its current financial troubles. Gramm had also suggested that...

"Nation of whiners"? I don't know how you flesh out with mathematical exactitude ex-Sen. Phil Gramm's famous assertion of last week concerning how we talk about the economy. I'll say this: There's a lot of whining go on, and if, as Phil avers, he was "talking about our leaders," not our people in general, he makes a serious point with something of the blunt force requisite to the task. Alas for him! The glory of the First Amendment to the Constitution is that it lets you say practically anything about practically everything. The fly in the buttermilk is you can't...

It says a lot about the current state of affairs in America – and nothing good – that people get offended and outraged when someone tries to tell us things are really not so bad. Former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas has apparently lived too long and done too much to care. We need more people like this. It would be fantastic if the presidential candidate Gramm is advising – John McCain – would think and talk like this. (He isn’t. Oh well.) In an interview last week with the Washington Times, Gramm said what needs to be said...

Greetings from our nation's capital! Here, a robust public transportation system helps shield the local populace from the pain of high gasoline prices. But that's not to say there aren't mobility problems. In fact, this year, DC has witnessed a sharp increase in high-profile political figures who have been tossed "under the bus." Really, it's a wonder that they run at all anymore. The single-most overused cliché among pundits and journalists these days, "under the bus" connotes a public cutting-of-ties with a former ally. The action, like a sucker-punch on its hapless victim, often, but not always, comes as a...

When I first heard former Senator Phil Gramm refer to our economic condition as a “mental crisis” and suggest that too many Americans had become “whiners,” my immediate reaction was, too bad too few Americans would comprehend the hard truth he just set before them… (snip) Technically speaking, as if the facts matter any more, Phil Gramm is right on both counts, though it was dumb of him to think he could just blurt out the truth to an ignorant American electorate at this late date. He wins the “dumb” award for not knowing how the “whiners” would react to...

McCain should throw it right back in Obama's face, he should say: Sen. Obama understands the power of perception to influence behaviors, I mean that's why he started using the Presidential Seal – even before he had the nomination. Or say: Obama knows a lot about perception, that's why he wants to speak at the Brandenberg Gate... Or whatever he can say without seeming to take too cheap a shot. If anybody from the McCain campaign is reading this, please, wake up! I wrote my college thesis on perceptions and how they impact economic expectations. And the eminent Martin Feldstein...

McCain slammed economic adviser Phil Gramm for his “mental recession” and “nation of whiners” comment. He said he didn’t agree with him and even proposed a position in a McCain administration -- ambassador to Belarus, “though I’m not sure the citizens of Minsk would welcome that,” McCain said. “I don’t agree with Sen. Gramm,” McCain said at a news conference this afternoon. “I believe that the person here in Michigan who just lost their job, isn’t suffering from a ‘mental recession.’ The mother here who is trying to get enough money to feed her children, isn’t ‘whining.’” “Phil Gramm doesn’t...

       Terry Shoffner   "They didn't live up to what they promised to do. Power corrupted them. They spent lots of money and tried to buy votes. Republicans concluded that they could make voters love them by governing the way Democrats did." So says former Texas senator and current John McCain economics adviser Phil Gramm. When he rode off into the political sunset in 2002 for a high-rolling investment banking job at UBS, there was joy among many of his liberal colleagues on Capitol Hill. For two decades the man who came to be called "Dr. No" had earned...

What follows is a transcript of my recent interview with former Texas Senator Phil Gramm. Mr. Gramm boasts a long, distinguished, pro-growth track record. Currently a UBS investment banker, Gramm has long been a steadfast supporter of free markets, a staunch free trader, tax cutter, budget cutter, and entitlement reformer. He also happens to be GOP presidential nominee John McCain’s chief economic advisor. As a recent piece in Fortune magazine put it, [Gramm] “is the ultimate pure play in free market faith.” I remain quite confident that Mr. Gramm would help steer a McCain presidency in the right direction. Kudlow:...

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Now that the faltering economy has replaced national security as the overriding issue in the presidential campaign, John McCain is portraying himself as a budget-shrinking, flat-tax-embracing, healthcare-privatizing champion of free markets. But is this Reaganesque zealot the real John McCain? The big question is whether McCain's radical agenda is simply designed to rally the Republican base, or would prove a blueprint for a McCain presidency. Given the Arizona Senator's maverick record, voters have every reason to distrust the new McCain. He twice opposed the Bush tax cuts and keeps dropping disturbing lines like, "I don't know...

Final Section: In a democracy, power is useless unless you can use it; what candidate would have more credibility in using power and rallying public support for a long and difficult struggle? Who would be more effective than John McCain in using American military power in its highest and best use--the deterrence of adversaries? A president--who knows war and has the authority to unite our people to make war when we must--can thwart enemies, unite friends and win peace. John McCain would be that president. Greatness seems to visit those who know themselves, what they believe in and why. Abraham...

At the time of writing, John Snow is still the US Treasury Secretary, which makes it a little difficult to tell the overall direction of the President’s cabinet reshuffle. New faces at the Office of Management and Budget and as Chief of Staff are important, but not exactly high profile. Despite a call from Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard for Dick Cheney to step down as Vice-President and take over from Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, we cannot expect anything so radical. Cheney would be replaced, in the Barnes vision, by Condoleezza Rice, who in turn would be replaced...