Free Republic

I sincerely wish that GOP candidates who cannot win the presidency would simply not run and save us all the trouble. Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Lindsey Graham, Rick Perry — none of these people is going to be the next president of the United States and each of them could do his country and his party a service by staying out of the race. Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee both stand a slim shadow of a ghost of a chance but I wish they’d drop out, too. Presidential Candidate is not supposed to be a prestigious line on your CV....

The Daily Beast has retracted an article claiming that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker cut all provisions requiring the state’s universities to report sexual assaults. Before finally admitting she “screwed up,” the source of the post tried to defend herself on Twitter. As reported by Politico: The post, published Friday, cited a report from Jezebel that wrongly interpreted a section of the state budget to mean that all assault reporting requirements were to get cut altogether. In fact, the University of Wisconsin system requested the deletion of the requirements to get rid of redundancy, as it already provides similar information to...

It wasn’t enough for the residents of Wingnut Nation to argue in defiance of facts that Barack Obama was not born in America. Some of them even cling to the belief he is an agent of radical Islam sent to destroy our country by, I don’t know, raising the minimum wage. Despite all the preaching, pleading and warnings of doom from Donald Trump, American voters elected this man to the highest office in the free world. Twice. So what’s next? Step right up, Rudy Giuliani, America’s mayor. He charges the president, leader of these United States, with the high crime...

February was crucial month for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, but in surviving his national baptism by fire he has solidified his place as a force to be reckoned with for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination. In being thrust in the spotlight by a less-than-friendly media, his detractors on both the right and left hoped he would prove to be "not ready for prime-time" and be chased from the race before it really began. As we head into March, Walker is not only still on his feet, but may be building a wave of momentum that can carry him not only to...

How desperate is the media for Scott Walker attack pieces? So desperate it’ll pick up material from a third-rate Gawker blog that even most of the left thinks is a joke and run with it. The Daily Beast has retracted an article from one of its college columnists that claimed that the Wisconsin governor’s budget would cut sexual assault reporting from the state’s universities. The post, published Friday, cited a report from Jezebel that wrongly interpreted a section of the state budget to mean that all assault reporting requirements were to get cut altogether. In fact, the University of Wisconsin...

A week or so ago, the MSM wanted Rudy Giuliani boiled in oil for daring to question Obama's love for America. They were shocked and outraged. How dare Rudy be so rude to Obama? They ran to Republicans for comments, hoping they would throw Rudy under the bus. As I watched the MSM go nuts over Rudy's “rudeness”, I thought, give me a break. This man (Obama) just unlawfully took over the internet. Obama refuses to acknowledge the radical Islamic Holy War and slaughter of Christians. ISIS publicly raped a three-year-old girl. Women are forced to divorce their husbands to...

Kudos to Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone who, in liberal San Francisco, instructed his Catholic schoolteachers last week to teach and to act publicly in harmony with Catholicism. Imagine: expecting Catholic institutions and their employees to behave as if they were Catholic. The pushback from the media and “concerned” politicians was predictable. But as you may have noticed, they’re pretty much all already off chasing the next ambulance, and the question is fading from view.There’s a crucial lesson here. The archbishop – or any Church prelate these days – should follow the playbook of the savvier sort of politicians (on this one...

"....Scott Walker as a political performer is pretty uninspiring. He doesn't have George Bush's pretzel-mouthed Texas charm or Sarah Palin's hockey Mom magnetism. He can't fall back on an ethnic American dream parable like the one Marco Rubio can run on. He's just a doughy, finger-pointing white guy of the type the Republican Party has been churning out to fill state assembly seats or run in back-bench congressional districts seemingly since the beginning of time. He's exactly the kind of politician the modern Democratic Party is set up to beat...."

When Scott Walker pronounced himself agnostic about President Barack Obama’s patriotism and Christian faith, it must have seemed like a clever formulation. “I’ve never asked him, so I don’t know,” he said. And about Obama’s Christianity: “I’ve never asked him that.”Walker quickly found his pitch unequal to the presidential big leagues. His argument can’t be generalized into a rule. I have never met Billy Graham, for example, but I’m pretty sure what he believes. As political attacks go, this one is particularly heavy-handed—the equivalent of saying: As far as I know, my opponent is not a swindler and a degenerate....

Gov. Scott Walker refuses to let the media dictate the conversation. “There has been much discussion about a media double standard where Republicans are covered differently than Democrats, asked to weigh in on issues the Democrats don't face," the potential GOP presidential candidate wrote Wednesday in an op-ed for USA Today. "As a result, when we refuse to take the media's bait, we suffer." The Wisconsin Republican's commentary comes on the heels of comments made by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who questioned whether President Obama “loves America” during a private dinner featuring Walker. Since then, the media...

"........ Here is their joint wisdom, pooled in a kind of Communications 101 crash course—a guide for first-time candidates. Media Bias: Get Over ItIn a pitch this week, Walker encouraged supporters to help him fight back against “the clueless and mindless journalistic herd.” The Republican National Committee argued journalists are asking less relevant questions of GOP candidates than they are of Democratic candidates. Hillary Clinton and Democrats should have to answer for comments made by other Democrats, the RNC said. “If you’re a Republican, you’ve got to know you’re going to be held to a double standard,” RNC Communications Director...

".......More to the point, I take issue with his suggestion that I think “Republicans had better work with the media.” It is true that I don’t believe the media are inherently evil or “out to get you.” But I also think — and this is important for candidates to know — that the press are not your friends. Ed’s framing, I think, implies I support what might be thought of as collaboration or appeasement. But what Walker did was (inadvertently) work with the media — in the sense that he played right into their hands. He made this an irresistible...

[T]he Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is set to roll out something called the Critical Information Needs study, which will embed government “researchers” into media organizations around the nation to make sure they are doing their job properly. The purpose of the CIN, according to the FCC, is to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters about “the process by which stories are selected” and how often stations cover “critical information needs,” along with “perceived station bias” and “perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.”

In principle, there is no point at which the purge can stop — not until the entire discourse space has been purged, and people throughout it have been set eternally on edge to denounce any reappearance of the expurgated thoughts. ‘I do not believe that the president loves America.” So said the mayor who stood for America in the days after 9/11. It would be worth asking how many Americans think Giuliani’s observation is true, and discussing whether, and to what extent, it is in fact true. It is plainly a legitimate question. It would be dangerous for the fate...

While the members of the press are busily congratulating themselves for having “gotcha-ed” Scott Walker on a variety of matters utterly unrelated to his ability to serve as commander-in-chief, the governor of Wisconsin is quietly consolidating the support of Republican voters ahead of 2016. According to a new Quinnipiac University survey of the Hawkeye State, Walker leads a pack of 12 prospective Republican candidates ahead of the 2016 caucuses with a full 25 percent. This is the second poll to show nearly a quarter of Iowa’s Republican caucus-goers backing Walker. Last week, the GOP firm Gravis Marketing found Walker netting...

And when the questions are this far afield, this cartoonish, this ridiculous, Republicans and Democrats alike should commend a politician whose response is, like most of ours would be, “Huh?”As a member of the political press, I have to say, the media’s recent attempts at exposing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as an unsuitable presidential candidate have been nothing short of embarrassing. If you were dropped into America from Mars — nay, Canada! — you’d have the distinct impression that we only elected amateur psychologists, who were required to peer into the soul of some guy named Barack Obama, who is...

"....In Walker's defense, Tim Graham of the Media Research Center (“Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias”) offers this exegesis: “Walker, the son of a Protestant minister, hears the question very differently: asking if someone is a Christian is a very personal question, asking whether someone has committed themselves to Jesus in their heart. It’s like asking if he knows how often Obama prays. His reluctance to answer for someone he doesn’t know is not a ‘No.’ " Nice try, but the political context of the question was clear and it’s the one Milbank mentioned: the conviction that “Obama is a...

Bigotry is borne of ignorance and the nasty snark the Political Wire’s Taegan Goddard launched at Scott Walker’s Christian faith Tuesday is a perfect example of a secular leftist who finds everyday Christianity freakish. Sadly, it is also the result of a media environment where bigoted attacks on the faith against conservatives are becoming more and more acceptable.

"“We are aware of the exchange Keith Olbermann had on Twitter last night regarding Penn State. It was completely inappropriate and does not reflect the views of ESPN. We have discussed it with Keith, who recognizes he was wrong. ESPN and Keith have agreed that he will not host his show for the remainder of this week and will return on Monday.”" "I apologize for the PSU tweets. I was stupid and childish and way less mature than the students there who did such a great fundraising job."

".......But even when prompted with the facts, Walker — in Washington for the National Governors Association meeting — persisted, saying, “I’ve actually never talked about it or I haven’t read about that,” and, “I’ve never asked him that,” and, “You’ve asked me to make statements about people that I haven’t had a conversation with about that.” This is an intriguing standard. I’ve never had a conversation with Walker about whether he’s a cannibal, a eunuch, a sleeper cell for the Islamic State, a sufferer of irritable bowel syndrome or a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. By Walker’s logic,...