Free Republic

Republicans will hold at least 246 House seats come January, according to election results on Saturday, giving the GOP a commanding majority that matches the party's post-World War II high during Democratic President Harry S. Truman's administration. The GOP retained control of two seats in runoffs in Louisiana, expanding the advantage for Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who can afford defections from his increasingly conservative caucus and still get legislation passed. Combined with the Republican takeover of the Senate, Congress will be all-GOP for the final two years of President Barack Obama's second term.

When Louisiana Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu lost her re-election runoff on Saturday it put Barack Obama in the record books as the two-term president with the most midterm losses for his party. The record previously was held by Harry Truman. Truman’s Democratic Party lost 74 seats in 1946 and 1950, while under Obama the Democrats have lost a total of 75 seats in 2010 and 2014. He could lose one more if Republican Martha McSally beats Democratic Rep. Ron Barber in Arizona in an election recount, Breitbart News reports. McSally is currently ahead by only 200 votes. …

Leadership comes in many forms and with many levels of risk, but history gives us a few moments when leaders stood alone and were proven right. [...] In late June 1948 the Soviets cut all road, rail and water access to Berlin, a city controlled by the Western Allies yet surrounded by Soviet-controlled territories. The Soviet’s goal: take Berlin from the Allies by forcing the US-UK-French alliance into one of two options: try to protect a city of 2.1 million starving Germans, or war. The Soviets expected the West to surrender the city quickly. [...] The US was in the...

In his inaugural address Wednesday, incoming New York Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to establish an intellectual pedigree for his focus on economic inequality. He invoked Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Al Smith, Frances Perkins, Fiorello La Guardia, Jacob Riis, David Dinkins, Mario Cuomo, and Harry Belafonte. It reminded me of when Democrats, eager to prove their national-security bona fides, tell audiences they hail from the party of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy. As if there wasn’t some other Democrat after Kennedy who dabbled at war and peace, some guy from Texas. De Blasio’s speech was a bit...

"O.K., so I SAID I accept responsibility - what else do you want from me?" Mmmm, I don't know, maybe your resignation? Everyone's witnessed the insincere, cynical style of apology from one side of it or the other, or both. In childhood, maybe your parents caught you being rude to a brother or sister or playmate. To correct your behavior and smooth out the wrinkle in the relationship, they told you - “O.K., I want you to apologize to Johnny”. Depending on how compliant with parental authority you were, you might do it forthwith or you might respond, “Why should...

I just listened to yet another disturbing piece of propaganda by Oliver Stone, the Untold History of the United States. It is about the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As can be expected in a good leftist piece of propaganda, the point made is that the US was the bad guy (including Truman) , who bamboozled poor Japan and Poor USSR during that time. The horrible US dropped 2 atomic bombs on Japan, knowing that Japan was going to surrender without its use within a couple of weeks anyway. Then the laughably improbably logical gymnastics come...

Ann Coulter’s new book Treason has raised some eyebrows within the conservative camp. While making legitimate points about where liberals have been wrong on foreign policy issues, the conservative pundit and author arguably went too far by 1) defending Joseph MacCarthy and 2) accusing all liberals of treason. Joe McCarthy was an individual who severely damaged the cause of anti-Communism. Why would a conservative try to legitimize him? And what purpose is served by accusing all political opponents of “treason”? Doesn’t such a broad-brushed charge profoundly trivialize the word “treason” itself  and make it more difficult to discuss actual cases of treason in a serious way?...

At the Potsdam conference with Harry Truman and Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill learned that the voters of the nation he had led for five years through World War II had just voted to throw him out of office. "It may well be a blessing in disguise," said his wife Clementine. "At the moment, it seems quite effectively disguised," replied Churchill. Republicans must feel that way today. For they have survived their own Dunkirk. They may have left their helmets, canteens and rifles behind, but they did finally get off the beach. That Republicans suffered a rout, as the British did...

Never has, never will.

Looking back all the way to America's Civil War, there have been three dominant presidential coalitions. The first was Abraham Lincoln's. With his war to restore the Union and his martyrdom, Lincoln inaugurated an era of Republican dominance that lasted more than seven decades and saw only two Democratic presidents: Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson. The second coalition was FDR's, where he and his vice president Harry Truman won five consecutive presidential elections. Only Gen. Eisenhower could break that streak. The third was Richard Nixon's New Majority, cobbled together after his narrow 1968 victory, where he annexed the Northern Catholic...

Republican operatives in Washington are praising Scott Brown's latest campaign ad. The ad, a contrast spot being run by the Republican Massachusetts senator, shows that Brown's Democratic opponent, Elizabeth Warren, is to the left on economic issues of John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. Instead of being in the mainstream, Warren, along with President Barack Obama, is shown to be an opponent of free enterprise. The ad is called, "Let America Be America Again." "Devastating," says one Republican operative. "Long--but does a really good job of showing how radical the Obama/Warren view of...

In a local interview with WJLA, President Obama urges Mitt Romney to say that he was running Bain Capital after 1999, though Romney insists he did not actively manage the company at that time. "Well, here's what I know, we were just talking about responsibility and as president of the United States, it's pretty clear to me that I'm responsible for folks who are working in the federal government and you know, Harry Truman said the buck stops with you," Obama said. Now, my understanding is that Mr. Romney attested to the SEC, multiple times, that he was the chairman,...

On front page of website, no registration required.Shockingly, neither Carter nor the present occupant of the White House are choices...

As his never-ending campaign goes on, President Barack Obama keeps trying to mimic past presidents who were able to succeed at the job. Unable to run on his own dismal record; he is stealing their strategies, imitating their rhetoric and co-opting locations they made famous in a desperate attempt to wrap his weak and ineffectual presidency in their achievements.

Harry Truman is the one president widely admired today who was generally reviled in his own times. There was no cult of personality around Truman while he was in the White House; to the contrary, he eventually logged the lowest approval ratings in Gallup’s history, just nudging out Richard Nixon on the eve of resignation. His legislative record was anemic. He failed to curb the anti-communist fervor known as McCarthyism, and the carnage of the Korean War is part of his resume. The fact Truman endures is a testament to two factors: the first, his exemplary decision to assert American...

It’s often been said that Barack Obama is an audacious leader. But perhaps it's better to consider the possibility that he is just a politician who lacks a sense of irony, at least when it comes to himself. For example, last weekend in Detroit, the president said: The time for Washington games is over. The time for action is now. No more manufactured crises. No more games. Now is not the time for the people you sent to Washington to worry about their jobs; now is the time for them to worry about your jobs. This would perhaps be a...

War Strategy: When Bush and Petraeus proposed the surge in Iraq, Democrats demanded that the general testify before Congress. So why has the Senate blocked a similar invitation to our commander in Afghanistan? Those with memories longer than the 24-hour news cycle recall that in the dark days of the Iraq War, David Petraeus was summoned to Washington to explain the surge strategy that would eventually lead to victory in Iraq. Democrats hoped for a show trial. MoveOn.org took out a full-page ad in the New York Times labeling the commanding general of our efforts in Iraq "General Betray-us." Then...

Here is video of Sen. John McCain nearly two years ago saying that President Harry Truman did the right thing in dropping the atomic bomb on Japan on August 6, 1945. McCain was asked if it was the right thing to do while campaigning in New Hampshire on August 10, 2007, and he responded that it was. McCain pointed out that the decision actually saved both American and Japanese lives. EXIT QUESTION: I wonder how President Obama would answer that question if asked today? . . . . . (Watch Video)

The first country to recognize the State of Israel was the United States. That recognition almost didn't happen. It was by the will of the President, Harry Truman, that the UN Partition Plan was implemented. Throughout the months leading up to May 1948, the president made his wishes clear, he wanted a Homeland for the Jewish People, not because of political reasons, but because it was the right and moral thing to do. The Secretary of State who Truman called the greatest living American, was just as opposed to the creation of the nascent Jewish state as the president supported...

Poe: "They are leftists, dedicated to overthrowing our Constitutional system," and "they will go to any length to conceal their radicalism from the public." Understanding the Alinsky Method of "Community Organizing" Written by Bob Dill Sep 24, 2008 at 12:00 AM Meet the Real Obama and Cult of Alinsky " The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9 KJV) It is becoming readily apparent that the "change" being proposed vaguely by Sen. Barack Obama is...