Free Republic

Give Hillary this much credit — in this case, she acted more like a leader than Barack Obama. That’s not a high bar to clear, especially in Obama’s second term. At the beginning of that second term, Hillary urged Obama to get serious about his oft-stated and unpopular goal of closing down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, stressing that “we need a White House lead” on the issue. The Huffington Post’s Ryan J. Reilly got the memo in a FOIA request: Weeks before she stepped down as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton wrote a memo urging President Barack Obama...

As has been made abundantly clear by his incessant mewling and pathetically thin skin, Donald J. Trump is not in fact an unwaveringly resolute tough guy of the type you would hope to find standing next to you in the trenches, but an insecure attention seeker who cannot help but pander to his audiences' prejudices. In the past few days, Trump has been asked variously whether, if elected, he would use his power to close mosques; whether he believes that Muslims should be registered in a special government database; and whether or not it would be a good idea to...

Ted's release new ad clobbering Obama on his feckless leadership in the face of ISIS terror.

Tell us something we don’t know, Mr. President. We could have guessed as much by the puny air campaign more worthy of the Grand Duchy of Fenwick in The Mouse That Roared than by what was once the world’s only superpower. We wouldn’t be mounting any air campaign at all, had not the radical Islamists of the “JV team” Islamic State had not cut off the heads of two American journalists, Steven Sotloff and James Foley. Our delusional commander-in-chief, who still believes the massacre at Ft. Hood by jihadist Nidal Hasan is a case of “workplace violence” and that...

In 14 years of continual combat, has there ever been a greater disconnect between our warrior class and the civilians who purport to lead them? American politicians still don't understand our enemy, still don't understand the capabilities and limitations of the American military, and -- worst of all -- they still seem unwilling to learn. They come from an intellectual aristocracy that believes itself educated simply because it's credentialed -- and they tend to listen only to those who share similar credentials. They've built a bubble of impenetrable ignorance, and they govern accordingly. During World War I, German general Max...

Silence spoke powerfully today on Morning Joe. After a clip rolled of a listless President Obama speaking about the Paris attacks, Joe Scarborough asked Mika Brzezinski what amounted to a rhetorical question: "does he look like he is engaged and understands the level of threat?" When after a few seconds Mika failed to reply, Scarborough tried rephrasing the question, but still elicited no response. Her silence was so telling, so excruciating, that Mike Barnicle--ever the good sycophant--piped up to slavishly assert "I think he looks fully engaged." View the video here.

I think debating is one thing... but doing and leading is another. The two are different as night and day. Someone can have a great debate, e.g. Td Cruz always debates well, he's about as professional as it gets at it, but does he possess the trait that leaders have, i.e. that people will instinctively follow them? We hear that Jeb Bush did well last night, but will it change his persona of someone who might have the math down, but doesn't have the instincts when the going gets tough? I bet the people at Apple would follow Steve Jobs...

Watch the video at the link.Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, R-Texas, unloaded on Republican leadership in the House and Senate and vowed to follow through on his promises should he be elected president. In an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Cruz said Republican leaders, especially in the Senate, are "making it easier for Barack Obama and [Senate Minority Leader] Harry Reid to add trillions in debt." "The truth of the matter is Republican leadership are the most effective Democrat leaders we've ever seen. They've passed more Democratic priorities than Harry Reid ever could," Cruz said. But even after House...

WWIII over CIA backed rebels? No thanks We needed a President and Secretary of State who could stymie Russia on the diplomatic front. We needed a President who was up to the task of managing the world stage. We needed a Commander in Chief who would be either feared or respected by our allies and enemies alike. We don’t have that. Instead, we’re faced with Middle Eastern chaos, a rapidly expanding global terrorist force, and a refugee crisis that is spreading to every corner of the globe. The President’s response has, so far, consisted of a feckless UN speech and...

WWIII over CIA backed rebels? No thanks. We needed a President and Secretary of State who could stymie Russia on the diplomatic front. We needed a President who was up to the task of managing the world stage. We needed a Commander in Chief who would be either feared or respected by our allies and enemies alike. We don't have that. Instead, we're faced with Middle Eastern chaos, a rapidly expanding global terrorist force, and a refugee crisis that is spreading to every corner of the globe. The President's response has, so far, consisted of a feckless UN speech and...

…is neither Russia’s Vladimir Putin nor China’s Xi Jinping, nor at this time, Ayatollah Khamenei – it’s none other than America’s Barack Hussein Obama. This is not because of any aggressive, risk-laden actions he has taken, far from it. It is because of those he has failed to take at critical times to credibly dissuade strategic competitors and potential aggressors, such as Russia and China, from actions that may suddenly compound into destabilizing confrontations, even war. When the Middle East cauldron spawned the barbaric ISIS, Obama’s indecisive, pusillanimous response allowed this Islamic malignancy to rapidly metastasize, compounding and accelerating an...

Speaker of the House John Boehner is going, going, gone. Ben Shapiro fears that in his last month of power, Boehner will roll over and roll Barack Obama’s agenda all over his restless and restive caucus. Whether within the Beltway or the Bible Belt, conservatives are learning to accept that politics is an ongoing numbers game, one in which We the People have to do more than sit on the porch and complain about the state of affairs. We get to change them, if we are willing. The fight is rolling ahead, and already I have networked with fellow conservatives...

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) is bracing for what could be the toughest weeks of his speakership as several dozen conservatives in his party are threatening to topple him unless he is more ferocious with Democrats during the upcoming fiscal showdowns. That internal Republican feud has increased the chances that Washington, for the second time in two years, could stumble into a shutdown of the federal government. The speaker’s lieutenants are openly girding for battle with the small but influential bloc of anti-Boehner conservatives, who have signaled that if Boehner cuts any deal that they don’t like with Hill...

adical leftwinger Jeremy Corbyn on Saturday won the crown of Britain's main opposition Labour party in a landslide victory, becoming the nation's most left-wing political leader for over 30 years. The 66-year-old socialist, whose policies have been compared to those of Greece's Syriza and Spain's Podemos, was named leader after clinching 59.5 percent of the 422,664 votes cast by Labour party members and supporters. The newly-elected leader condemned "grotesque levels of inequality" and "an unfair welfare system" in his victory speech to party members in central London. The veteran campaigner also called for Britain's Conservative government to show more "compassion"...

“I don’t like to analyze myself because I might not like what I see.” — Donald Trump, in an interview for Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, by business journalist Michael D’Antonio. “Trump was willing to say and do almost anything to satisfy his craving for attention. But he also possessed a sixth sense that kept him from going too far.” — D’Antonio’s conclusion to the book. One often-underappreciated virtue of U.S. presidential campaigns is that their extreme length makes it very difficult to conceal what makes a candidate tick. (Barack Obama in 2008 was an exception,...

As the primary season for the 2016 presidential election heats up, we hear all sorts of rhetoric surrounding the meaning of good leadership. Men and women from all over the country try to convince us that they are full of integrity, compassion, decisiveness and all sorts of other abstract qualities that seem impossible to measure or quantify. But what is God’s plan for leadership, not just for our elected officials, but for everyday people? Every Christian exercises leadership in some capacity. Whether we are at home, at church, at school, at work, in our peer groups or in our communities,...

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the nation needs a president with an Ivy League education. “I went to an Ivy League school,” he said on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.” “I was an excellent student at the Wharton School of Finance, which is the best in the world, one of the hardest to get into in the world, maybe the hardest, but maybe one of the hardest to get into, even back then.” “That’s the kind of thinking our country needs, that mindset,” Trump added. “The fact is, that’s the kind of mindset or thinking we need...

House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) had been planning to call up on the House floor last week a measure from Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) that would have removed him as Speaker of the House if it succeeded—intending to embarrass Meadows—but abandoned the plan after his entire leadership structure learned that they did not have the votes to re-elect him as Speaker before the August recess. “[House Majority Leader Kevin] McCarthy was making phone calls—he was whipping it—and so was [House Majority Whip] Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA),” a senior conservative movement leader who’s had many personal and direct discussions with...

Seven long years into the presidency of Barack Obama, The Washington Post continues its obsessive quest to suggest that Obama may be lying when he professes to be a Christian. The latest fringe assertion from the Post about Obama’s religion emanated this weekend from national political correspondent James Hohmann. A previous instance occurred in February. Both recent times when the Post raised questions about Obama’s private religious beliefs, the newspaper also focused on Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker. The reasons that the Post has used reporting about Walker to channel its bizarre questions about Obama’s Christianity remain unclear. At a...

From time to time as the 2016 campaign unfolds we will publish here the full text of some candidate speeches on important topics. We launch this series with Carly Fiorina's national security address at the Reagan Presidential Library the evening of July 27. The full text is below, as is a complete video... You'll notice here — and hopefully in the upcoming debates — that the business executive speaks in clear, simple declarative sentences. No fudge words or rhetorical escape clauses. Clean, crisp, no nonsense. She outlines the problem, then states clearly what she would do. That style drew frequent...