Free Republic

Republican National Committee Chairman Robert M. (Mike) Duncan 310 First Street, SE Washington DC 20003 Dear Mr. Chairman, The Election as well as the Inauguration is over. The “Other” Party won. President Obama is now our President for better or worse.

Republicans are making a huge mistake by turning away from the principle of small government. Is it time for conservatives to give up our fight against Big Government? Some people think so. Mike Huckabee, the Baptist preacher and former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate, complained in May to the Huffington Post that the greatest threat to the GOP is "this new brand of libertarianism" that says "look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government." That, Huckabee said, is "not an American message. It doesn't fly. People aren't going to buy that, because that's not the way we are as...

In the wake of the November election's repudiation of Republicans, there is a controversy among pundits about what Republicans need to do to stage a legislative comeback, much less, avoid extinction from the political landscape. First off, let's be perfectly clear. Whenever an opponent suggests something so drastic, such as, that the conservative movement is dead in America, you can bet the hubris of those prognostications will be the stumbling block that ultimately makes the current liberal wave, a short-lived cultural tsunami. But the general controversy is in deciding whether the Republican Party needs to moderate its current social platform,...

John McCain's top pollster, Bill McInturff, said this evening that attacking Barack Obama over his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright would not have helped McCain's campaign and could have destroyed his presidency, had he been elected. Some Republicans were angry during the campaign that McCain had -- reportedly for reasons of principle, and out of concern that he'd be viewed as racist -- refused to air ads with Wright's inflammatory sermons, and believed they were fair game and a silver bullet against Obama. An outside group did air one such ad in the closing days of the race. "I said...

GOP nominee John McCain's campaign knew it was losing and was happy when it was over. President-elect Barack Obama's campaign wasn't prepared for Reverend Jeremiah Wright. McCain would likely want a "redo" on how he handled the economic crisis. And GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin may be the candidate of the future for the GOP.

The Republican party must stop "shouting at the world" and start listening to minority groups if it is to win elections in the 21st century, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday. In an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria for Sunday's "GPS" program, President Bush's former secretary of state said his party's attempt "to use polarization for political advantage" backfired last month. "I think the party has to take a hard look at itself," Powell said in the interview, which was taped Wednesday. "There is nothing wrong with being conservative. There is nothing wrong with having socially conservative views...

AN iron law of recent American politics dictates that any Republican setback at the polls will be quickly pinned on the pro-life movement. You might think that the Republican Party’s 2008 debacle would be an exception to this rule. John McCain probably mentioned earmarks about a thousand times more often than he let the word “abortion” slip his lips. The Republican ticket’s weak attempts to play the culture-war card — a Bill Ayers here, a Joe the Plumber there — had nothing whatsoever to do with Roe v. Wade. And why should abortion opponents, of all conservative factions, take the...

See the ad here. It's almost as if McCain didn't want to win. Well, at least he's gone.

AN iron law of recent American politics dictates that any Republican setback at the polls will be quickly pinned on the pro-life movement. You might think that the Republican Party’s 2008 debacle would be an exception to this rule. John McCain probably mentioned earmarks about a thousand times more often than he let the word “abortion” slip his lips. The Republican ticket’s weak attempts to play the culture-war card — a Bill Ayers here, a Joe the Plumber there — had nothing whatsoever to do with Roe v. Wade. And why should abortion opponents, of all conservative factions, take the...

Members of the cultural right have called Juan Hernandez a "border obliteration activist," an "American traitor," and an "agent of the Mexican government." John McCain's presidential campaign called him something different: director of Hispanic outreach. For 14 months leading up to the election, the Fort Worth, Texas, native was a high-level volunteer at McCain '08 headquarters, where he attended daily senior staff meetings and advised the Arizona senator and his top lieutenants about how to appeal to Hispanic voters. Part of that strategy was highlighting McCain's record of championing comprehensive immigration reform. Meanwhile, down the hall, another portion of the...

Dennis Sanders’ recent post proclaimed clearly that the recent republican losses can be attributed to the religious conservative. Did John McCain lose sole[l]y because of the Religious Right? No. Dreher is correct that there are a lot of reasons that McCain lost. But the fact is, the Religious Right did play a role in loss nevertheless. Americans still have the whole Terry Schiavo fiasco in their minds, and young people don't understand why people who claim to be religious are so interested in banning same sex marriage or not allowing women to get an abortion if they are raped, or...

If money talks, we'll likely soon hear the real reason why Barack Obama beat John McCain. Both men and the national parties will report to the Federal Election Commission today how much money they raised in October and November. And what the numbers will probably show is that Mr. Obama outspent Mr. McCain by the biggest margin in history, perhaps a quarter of a billion dollars. It's been reported that the Obama campaign accepted donations from untraceable, pre-paid debit cards used by Daffy Duck, Bart Simpson, Family Guy, King Kong and other questionable characters. If the FEC follows up with...

Borrowing a line from the Republican-revolution playbook of the 1990s, President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday told the nation's governors that he wants them to reassert states as the laboratories for solutions to the nation's big problems. "That's the spirit that I want to reclaim for the country as a whole," Mr. Obama told the National Governors Association, gathered in Philadelphia. "One where states are testing ideas, where Washington is investing in what works, and where you and I are working together in partnership on behalf of the great citizens of this nation."

President George Bush said he doesn't view the 2008 election as a repudiation of his presidency, but of his party. "I think it was a repudiation of Republicans," Bush said during an interview with ABC News that aired Monday. "And I'm sure some people voted for Barack Obama because of me." But he said he thought most people voted for the president-elect because they "decided they wanted him to be in their living room for the next four years explaining policy." "In other words, they made a conscious choice to put him in as president," he said. Bush said his...

Calling the 2008 elections a “repudiation of Republicans,” President Bush shouldered at least some of the blame for his party’s poor results in November. “I’m sure some people voted for [President-elect] Barack Obama because of me,” the outgoing president said.

What if the McCain campaign had run ads using footage of Barack Obama dancing with Ellen DeGeneres to show his coziness with celebrity? Or followed up on its Paris Hilton ad with others featuring Donald Trump and Jessica Simpson? All of that was on the drawing board of Fred Davis III, the advertising whiz that John McCain has used for almost all of his campaign media and one of the most talented conservative political operatives in America. Oh yes, he also had an Internet ad up his sleeve that would attack Obama's celebrity by associating him with Oprah. But in...

One of the lessons from this election is the destruction of the myth that Republicans who support amnesty for illegal aliens would do well among Hispanic voters. No presidential candidate worked harder on illegal immigration amnesty than John McCain. In 2005, he sponsored an amnesty bill that became known as the McCain-Kennedy bill (co-sponsored by Sen. Kennedy). When that bill failed, he tried again the following year, with a variant of the McCain-Kennedy bill. That bill also failed. Unfazed, he tried yet again in 2007. If any one of those bills had passed, at least 10 million illegal aliens would...

An immigration activist says the Republican Party lost any real chance of retaining the White House the day John McCain won the GOP primary. William Gheen is president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, or ALIPAC. Throughout the presidential campaign, Gheen ardently refused to support John McCain because of the Arizona senator's continued support to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. Gheen believes McCain was counting on GOP voters to march into the booths at the last minute, hold their noses, and elect him out of fear of Obama. He notes while many Republicans reluctantly made that choice, a...

10. Land use -- Review executive orders concerning the Antiquities Act designations of lands by the government. Under Bill Clinton, millions of acres of lands were locked up by executive fiat and, because these actions were not established by law, they can be undone by executive action of a subsequent President. 9. Oil drilling -- Continue to push the Outer Continental Shelf planning process so that newly opened OCS acreage can be leased for future oil drilling. 8. Oil shale leasing -- Issue the final leasing regulations for oil shale leasing in the Western United States. Without these, the U.S....

[VIDEO] On November 4, millions of Americans were shocked that a man of Barack Obama's limited experience, extreme liberal positions and radical political alliances could be elected Preseident of the United States. For many Americans, the explanation was rather simple - the news media, completely enamored with Obama, simply refused to do their job. On Election day twelve Obama voters were interviewed extensively right after they voted. These voters were chosen for their apparent intelligence/verbal abilities. The rather shocking video seeks to provide some insight into which information broke through the news media and the clutter which did not. Because...

Under the myopic mantra of "not conservative enough," the nation just rejected its best known American hero and real Washington watch-dog and elected the most inexperienced far left freshman member of the U.S. Senate, aka the elitist good ole boy network, as Commander-in-Chief. Despite the fact that John McCain has a history of being "conservative" on 16 of 20 national issues (80%), according to too many "conservatives," he was not conservative enough to gain their support in the 2008 general election, even after bringing conservative Washington outsider Sarah Palin aboard. So, "conservatives" put Barack Hussein Obama and leftist Democrats in...

Well, as it happens, our new president has no slave ancestry, and neither branch of his parentage could have been owned by anybody, or at least not by anybody American. (Muslim-run slavery, though, is an old story in Africa as well as a horribly contemporary one.) And there were not a few elected black American representatives 40 years ago, even if mainly in Northern states. The objection I make is therefore twofold. First, the election of Obama is the effect not the cause of the changes. (One of my questioners appeared to think that our president-elect had been responsible for...

But I thought we wanted change? Changing the way government works may have been the winning message on Election Day, but three out of four Republicans (75%) are worried that Barack Obama will change things too much as president. Half of unaffiliated voters (49%) share that concern, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.Democrats take the opposite view, with 52% worried that the new president won’t change things enough. Just 19% fear he’ll go too far.Overall, 46% of voters are worried Obama will change too much, while 32% say he will change too little. Another 22% are undecided....

Senator Jim DeMint let John McCain and George Bush have it at a gathering of top level Republicans at Myrtle Beach yesterday. The South Carolina conservative spared few words in lambasting the Arizona senator :

MYRTLE BEACH, South Carolina (CNN) – South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint on Friday became one of the first high-profile Republicans to publicly criticize John McCain following his electoral defeat, blaming the Arizona senator for betraying conservative principles in his quest for the White House.

Fox News anchor Shepard Smith, host of the highest-rated evening newscast on cable television, calls suggestions of a bias toward Barack Obama by the mainstream media "preposterous." Anchor says blaming news coverage for Obama win is 'ridiculous' His sentiment was aired out during a roundtable discussion on his network's "Strategy Room" program. During the discussion, comedian Nick DiPaolo said, "The mainstream media being so in the tank for Obama ... ." "Oh, please. That's preposterous," interrupted Smith. "The mainstream media reflected what was happening in this nation. It did not drive it. The blogs didn't drive this movement. The media...

MIAMI The Republican Party will file federal lawsuits Thursday seeking to overthrow the McCain-Feingold federal campaign finance regulations, Republican National Committee Chairman Robert M. "Mike" Duncan revealed Wednesday night at a private dinner with the nation's Republican governors. The move is considered a slap in the face of the Republican Party's failed 2008 presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was dramatically outspent by Democrat Barack Obama, and of President Bush, who signed McCain-Feingold into law in 2002. "We will bring two federal suits tomorrow to strengthen the Republican Party," Mr. Duncan told The Washington Times. Mr. Duncan said...

After a losing presidential campaign, the candidate quickly (and often cruelly) is painted as an object lesson in what not to do — but that should not happen in 2008. In order to truly revive itself, the GOP should be more like the real John McCain in the future, and less like the conservative cast of the past decade: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Tom Delay. And it certainly should not look to the likes of Mitt Romney or Sarah Palin to lead a restoration. You do the math: America has a moderate majority — 50% of Americans are...

(CNN) – Sarah Palin told local reporters in Alaska that unhappiness with the Bush administration’s Iraq war policy and spending record were responsible for the GOP ticket’s defeat this year.

Please FREEP this poll.

Palin Blames Bush for Election Loss AOL posted: 7 MINUTES AGO Nov. 10) - Why did the Republicans lose the presidential election? Sarah Palin, the party's vice presidential candidate, lays the blame at the feet of the Bush administration. In an interview with the Anchorage Daily News and KTUU Channel 2, Palin says, " I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years ... So people desiring change I think went as far from the administration that is presently seated as they could. It's amazing...

Q -- Why did your campaign lose? A -- I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a $10 trillion debt in a Republican administration, how have there been blunders with war strategy under a Republican administration.

Advice for critics of the president-elect when they feel themselves sliding towards irrational rage. -------------------------------- I suggest that everyone stand back, take a deep breath, and wait. Wait, and observe. It will become clear enough as Obama chooses a Cabinet and advisers. And then it will become even more clear as he takes office and begins the work of government. More clarity will come as he handles the inevitable crises and tests that will occur on his watch. The goal of each of us should be to react only to evidence, not fear. That’s not easy. But our task is...

There's a coming crisis looming that may make every situation the world has faced since World War II look like a children's game. President-elect Obama isn't ready for it. Are you? There is already historical precedent that Israel will attack Iran during the U.S. Presidential transition. Israel attacked a target in Lebanon in December of 1988 - during the Reagan-Bush transition. In a Jerusalem Post article Historian Benny Morris describes that operation, and notes: The operation took place one month after US President George H. Bush was voted into office, and a month before he was sworn in, replacing the...

There are probably many reasons why John McCain lost his bid for the presidency to Barack Obama. Some will say the political tide was running against the senior Senator from Arizona and there was little chance a Republican could win our nation's highest office in the year of the Democrat, but I'm not buying that premise. John McCain became the Republican Party's presidential nominee due to the tampering of both the conservative and liberal media. Therefore, Republicans were forced to make the best out of a bad situation. Yet there is no excuse for the pitiful effort made by McCain...

And so, my own final judgment of this campaign is that John McCain’s failure to assess the depth of his opponent’s desire for power — power for its own sake — was his own fatal flaw. And the moment of truth in this campaign: When Larry King asked John McCain less than a week before the election whether he believed Barack Obama was a socialist, McCain firmly answered, “No.” In fact, he should have said, “Verily, I do not know what Barack Obama is and neither does anyone else, except perhaps the man himself.” To which McCain might have added...

PHOENIX, Nov. 9 (UPI) -- Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain lost his bid for the White House mainly because anti-incumbent fury doomed him from the start, analysts say. McCain made many missteps, but they didn't matter much because it was clear no Republican stood much of a chance in the 2008 election with voters overwhelmingly blaming President George Bush and the GOP for the nation's problems, The Arizona Republic reported Sunday. McCain, who represents Arizona in the Senate, lost to Democratic opponent Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois last week in an electoral college landslide. He never stood a realistic chance,...

Republicans are consoling themselves by telling anyone who will listen that we still live in a "center-right country." They're right. That's the good news. The bad news is that they've lost the center. According to exit polls, Barack Obama won moderates by a whopping 21 points on Tuesday, 60-39 percent. That more than doubled John Kerry's nine-point margin over George W. Bush among moderates in 2004. The ideological composition of the electorate was remarkably unchanged from 2004. The percentage of self-identified conservatives and moderates -- the center-right -- held steady. Conservatives were 34 percent of voters and moderates 44 percent,...

Environment: From California to Missouri, four of five environmental initiatives lost at the ballot box. Voters are clearly still not ready for exorbitant costs and excessive regulation without clear benefits.President-elect Obama may have felt "a righteous wind" at his back during the campaign, but it did not translate into environmental victories at the ballot box, where one green initiative after another failed for a variety of reasons. California voters shot down both clean-energy propositions on the ballot. Proposition 7 would have required utilities to generate 40% of their power from renewable energy by 2020 and 50% by 2025. It lost...

Rahm Emanuel was picked by Obama to be his new Chief of Staff. Emanuel is another thug from Chicago, and has a vast record of liberalism. He is know for being a real ass, and has been quoted as saying "F--- the Republicans." Yep, that's real change, and bipartisinship. Anway, I thought I'd list some of his political record and political views here. Thanks to ontheissues.org. Rahm Emanuel on Abortion Voted YES on expanding research to more embryonic stem cell lines. (Jan 2007) Voted YES on allowing human embryonic stem cell research. (May 2005) Voted NO on restricting interstate transport...

In my previous life, I witnessed far more difficult postmortems. This one is easy: The patient was fatally stricken on Sept. 15 — caught in the rubble when the roof fell in (at Lehman Bros., according to the police report) — although he did linger until his final, rather quiet demise on Nov. 4.

Unity: n. the state of being one; oneness -- especially when your chosen political party happens to win an election. Barack Obama is now my president. Though I wonder whether irascible Democrats who rode around with those snazzy bumper stickers reading "He's not my president" for the past eight years realize the irony of their call for national harmony. Let's hope there's none. Winning elections is one thing; governing is quite another. It is impossible to deny that Obama ran one of the sharpest, most diligent and exhilarating campaigns in modern American history or, for that matter, that the liberal...

John McCain on Sen. Obama's dormant remarks on the coal industry: “We found out yesterday what Senator Obama really thinks about coal. In a new video talking about his policies on coal, he told the San Francisco Chronicle, “if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them.” “Now, I believe we need to control emissions,” added McCain, “but I’m not going to let our coal industry go bankrupt. I’m not going to let coal workers lose their jobs and I’m not going to let energy prices increase even more for our families.”...

Obama himself at various times in his memoirs—never have presidential autobiographies sold so many copies, and yet have been so little read by the press—talked about people seeing in him what they wished. And now on the eve of the election, I confess I have no idea about who he is or what he stands for. If he is elected, I can only hope for the best, and pray a few sober old Clintonites like Paul Volcker or Robert Rubin will step forward. What is a “Huge Sum”? Does Obama really, as Joe Biden promised, wish to shut down coal-generated...

10) No elected official in American life has contributed more to the security of the nation than John McCain. Latterly, McCain was the most senior and most forceful advocate of the strategy that has saved the day in Iraq. For that reason alone, he deserves your vote. 9) Over a quarter-century in public life, John McCain has defended the interests of the taxpayer, not only speaking for lower taxes (that’s easy) but fighting for the essential precondition of lower taxes, less government spending.

Obama wants to reshape the agriculture industryIf he is willing to "bankrupt" the coal industry over global warming, what's he going to do to the agriculture sector which "actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector"? Don't forget about biden's EVIL corn syrup...evil corn syrup

Still undecided? Know someone who is? Please read and give to others: "...this piece is intended to serve as a quick reference for comparing the views of Sens Obama and McCain on key issues, and to do so from a conservative perspective."

Change we can freeze to death by: Let me sort of describe my overall policy. What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there. I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that...

West VIRGINA must be PO'ed : the server is BUSYYYYYY.