Free Republic

President Biden has finally laid out his plan to fight inflation. But the strategy demonstrates what many have long suspected: He doesn’t have a clue what to do about rising prices. Biden’s plan, revealed in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, has three parts. First, let the Federal Reserve do its job. Second, enact a series of micro reforms to bring down prices in discrete economic segments, such as housing, prescription drugs and freight transport. Third, bring down the federal deficit by raising taxes on corporations and the rich. That’s it. That’s the plan. Each part is either disingenuous...

At the end of the day, senators care more about protecting themselves and their colleagues from unpredictable, inconvenient floor votes than they do about passing legislation.Official Washington’s conventional wisdom about the Senate filibuster is a fairy tale. It is utterly unmoored from the choices being made by individual senators, party caucuses, and the body as a whole. Every person who has ever told you that the mean, nasty, outdated legislative filibuster is the source of Senate gridlock and the obstacle to common-sense legislating in Congress has either swallowed, or is peddling, a lie. In an op-ed in the Washington Post...

It’s been decades since Democrats had to confront a genuine challenge from the far left... The cracks in the party were most evident last week after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) casually deployed the race card against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). To be sure, Ocasio-Cortez’s side swipe — implying Pelosi singled her and her progressive allies out for criticism because they are women of color — was bad enough. But the real depth of the challenge Democrats face is better seen by looking at comments from Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti... Observers may wonder why Ocasio-Cortez and her chief...

President Trump will officially announce that he’s running for reelection at a massive rally in Orlando on Tuesday. The early line on his chances: He’s not the favorite, but he’s far from down and out. The leak of unfavorable reelection numbers from Trump’s own internal polling, which show him behind Democratic candidate Joe Biden in many key swing states, has triggered a rush to judgment among many analysts. While carefully acknowledging things could change, they note that Trump’s job approval rating has been negative through most of his presidency and that he trails most prospective Democratic nominees in the key...

President Donald Trump is known for boasting about having “the best words,” but Kellyanne Conway’s husband, attorney George Conway, is having none of it. On Friday, George Conway, who has been critical of the Trump administration even though his wife is a senior White House adviser, upped the ante by ripping the president’s oratorical skills. Conway’s post on Twitter linked to a Washington Post column by Henry Olsen that lambasted what he called Trump’s ”rambling and disjointed explanation” for why he is declaring a national emergency to fund a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. For Conway, the key quote...

I haven’t seen anyone really go out on a limb yet and make predictions about the Republican primaries. So it's time to engage in some wildly premature political punditry. This, of course, is risky. There are so many variables. What happens if one candidate drops out and scrambles things? What is more, factors in the political universe - say, God forbid, another terrorist attack - can quickly swing public opinion. (Remember how Ben Carson’s numbers declined after the Paris attacks?) It is with all these caveats disclosed that I boldly present my picks. The good news is that these predictions...

Four Easy Steps for Beating Donald Trump by HENRY OLSEN September 25, 2015. The Republican elites are all in a Twitter titter about whether Donald Trump can be defeated. They needn’t worry. Beating Trump will be as easy as counting backward from four to one. Four bankruptcies, three wives, two parties, one big problem for America. That six-second tagline to an ad sums up why, when the chips are down, the Donald’s getting fired. This mantra will take Trump down because his appeal rests on trust. Voters angry with elites for various reasons trust that Trump will have their backs...

Conservatives and libertarians have criticized the IPAB “death panel” that Obamacare endows with the authority to make top-down decisions about Americans’ health care. They’ve discussed how mandates for religious employers, businesses, and individuals run counter to the Constitution and the principle of personal choice. They’ve issued calls for Republican governors to resist Medicaid expansion in their respective states in order to impede the law’s implementation. But now a number of conservative groups have issued a blanket Obamacare ultimatum: “If you fund it, you’re for it.” Conservatives of all stripes are united in their opposition to Obamacare. But we are not...