Free Republic

She’s gonna make it after all. Considering the location of the Republican convention, the theme song had already been written for Sarah Palin’s vice presidential campaign. It comes from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, based in the Twin Cities. “Who can turn the world on with her smile? Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile? Well, it’s you, girl, and you should know it; with each glance and every little movement, you show it. Love is all around, no need to waste it. You can have a town, why don’t you take it? You’re...

Last January, on the night of John McCain’s back-from-the-dead victory in the New Hampshire primary, I asked a longtime adviser how McCain had survived the collapse of his campaign a few months earlier. “You know, in the darkest days, I think there were a lot of us who just respected him so much we just wanted to band together to make sure to restore his dignity,” the adviser told me. “But the chance of this actually happening was pretty remote.” And yet it did happen. After McCain won New Hampshire, he kept on winning until there he was, onstage last...

John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin was the most inspired decision of his long race for the White House. The ads lampooning Barack Obama's messianic pretensions were skillful as well. But the Palin pick accomplished several goals at once. It is, it must be acknowledged, a terrible year to be a Republican. A decidedly unpopular Republican president is finishing his second term. Republican party identification is at its lowest point in 16 years (27 percent, according to the Pew Research Center). All indicia of excitement — money raising, turnout at political events, buzz — strongly favor the Democrats. Further, the...

“There are two questions we will never have to ask ourselves, ‘Who is this man?’ and ‘Can we trust this man with the presidency?’ ” — Fred Thompson on John McCain, September 2 This was the most effective line of the entire Republican convention: a ringing affirmation of John McCain’s authenticity and a not-so-subtle indictment of Barack Obama’s insubstantiality. What’s left of this line of argument, however, after John McCain picks Sarah Palin for vice president? Palin is an admirable and formidable woman. She has energized the Republican base and single-handedly unified the Republican convention behind McCain. She performed spectacularly...

“What is wrong with these people?” was the nigh-upon-universal reaction among conservatives at the GOP convention this week. Liberal reporters inquired of conservative journalists, Republican delegates, right-leaning janitors, free-market short-order cooks, even the guys walking around in elephant suits: Will Sarah Palin drop out? What about the Eagleton Option? For those who don’t know, the Eagleton Option refers to Thomas Eagleton, George McGovern’s first VP pick in 1972, who was forced to withdraw because allegations of mental illness. A hybrid of myth and deceit peddled by the chattering bandersnatches of the Democratic Party’s backup communications offices at MSNBC and other...

Sorry sight last night, post-Palin speech, seeing the Fourth Estaters pooh-pooh Republican charges that the media are pro-Obama. But perception is reality in politics, and according to a new SurveyUSA poll, this limited to Washington State registered voters, folks believe the press is pressing for the Democrat candidate. When asked "Is the media rooting for Barack Obama? Rooting for John McCain? Or trying its best to be fair to both?" 52% said "for Obama," 8% said "for McCain," 35% said "being fair to both." Interesting: 28% of Democrats, 28% of liberals, and 42% of moderates chose "for Obama." It would...

I'm now watching Democratic pundits say, "Gloves are off. We saw last night that Sarah Palin is an experienced and practiced pol. We don't need to be defensive about going after a woman." Pre-speech: Inexperienced, backwater rube. Post-speech: Polished veteran attack machine McBrilliant!

By the way, a propos the post below, I would caution our pal David Frum to ease up on this kind of analysis: The Palin choice will intensify GOP support among downscale white voters - while adding to the GOP's difficulties among more educated white voters.You'd be surprised how crowded it is down at the "downscale" end.

As National Review's in-house demography bore, I've been struck this last week by the left's fierce hostility to Sarah Palin's fecundity. One gentleman - well, okay, maybe not a "gentleman" but certainly an impeccably sensitive progressive new male - wrote to me from Shelton, Washington: This abortion prohibitionist hag won’t cut it among women with brains.And BTW she is a good example of reproduction run amok. 5 kids; 1 retard. I wonder if the bitch ever heard of getting spayed. Each to her own, Mister Sensitive. You can be a 44-year old mother of five expecting her first grandchild and...

<p>The FReepers are comparing her to Reagan. I didn’t put too much credibility into it, I mean, you can expect that kind of reaction from the FReepers. But then the people on my dog training forum are comparing her to Reagan. And the people on my cooking forum are comparing her to Reagan.</p>

Though the order “Lights, camera, action!” was given by Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili, the wartime drama now unfolding in the Caucasus was devised, scripted, directed, and produced in Moscow by Vladimir Putin and his fellow siloviki (or former KGB kleptocrats.) For almost two decades Russia has sought to divide and destabilize the new independent states in its former backyard by helping to establish, finance, and protect “breakaway” ethnic statelets such as South Ossetia and Abkhazia within the sovereign territory of Georgia. These statelets fulfill two important functions. First, they provide the siloviki with country estates. Almost none of the officials...

Today America faces a big test. Will we stand up for Georgia? Or will we betray her in the way that the United States so often betrays its friends and allies abroad? A depressingly consistent aspect of American foreign policy since the Korean War has been to let down peoples who fight for us, trust us, or depend on us. Remember the Montagnards of Vietnam who fought so valiantly with our Green Berets during the Indochina conflict? Most of them ended up dead or in reeducation camps and it was decades before the survivors were even given visas to come...

The breakup of the Soviet Union left a number of loose ends, border issues located largely on the periphery of the old Soviet empire, unsettled disputes that the Russians refer to as frozen conflicts. The war that has broken out in Georgia is one of these, a festering political dispute in which the implications of the issues involved are far more important than the territory in question. In retrospect the conflict is not entirely surprising; the last few months have seen a number of violent incidents in the separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia — shellings, bombings, kidnappings, shootings,...

New York Times: Senator Obama, for his part, will not be cast as the avenging hero in “The Rescue” any time soon — and not because of the color of his skin or his lack of military experience. He doesn’t seem to want the role. You don’t see him crouching in a duck blind or posing in camouflage duds or engaging in anything more gladiatorial than a game of pick-up basketball. If Mr. Obama’s candidacy seeks to move beyond race, it also moves beyond gender. A 20-minute campaign Web documentary showcased a President Obama who would exude “a real sensitivity”...

What can you say about a people who welcome a child murderer as a hero? Most Americans are familiar with the brutal murder of wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer on the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985. Terrorists led by Abu Abbas (who was later given safe haven in Baghdad by Saddam Hussein) took the ship captive and threw Klinghoffer overboard. But few recall that the ship was seized to bargain for the release of, among others, Samir Kuntar from an Israeli prison. Kuntar had taken part in an earlier terror attack. In 1979, as a 16-year-old, he and four others had...

My new book White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement places conservatism within the big picture of modern American history. The book traces the origins of modern conservatism to the 1920s. It explains why conservativism triumphed in the late twentieth century and why it is has fallen into disarray under the leadership of President George W. Bush. The review of my book in the New York Times by former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum shows that at least some diehard defenders of the Bush administration do not wish to enter into in a serious conversation about...

If the New Yorker cover had been a satire of McCain ...... then it probably would've run in the National Review. Here's P-I cartoonist David Horsey's idea of what it might look like. If the McCain cover also existed, which would you say is worse? P.S. - A New York Times piece on how difficult it is to make jokes about Obama quotes comedian Bill Maher making a good point: ""If you can't do irony on the cover of The New Yorker, where can you do it?"

Is it just me, or is Scientology all over the National Review campaign blog? campaignspot.nationalreview.com What are they thinking?

‘Someone wins, someone doesn’t win, that’s life,” Nancy Kopp, Maryland’s treasurer, told the Washington Post. “But women don’t want to be totally dissed.” She was talking about her political candidate, Hillary Clinton. Democratic women are feeling metaphorically battered by the Obama campaign. “Healing The Wounds Of Democrats’ Sexism,” as the Boston Globe headline put it, will not be easy. Geraldine Ferraro is among many prominent Democrat ladies putting up their own money for a study from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard to determine whether Senator Clinton’s presidential hopes fell victim to party and media sexism. How else to explain why...

<p>Sen. Barack Obama issued a statement this afternoon after a video tape emerged showing Father Michael Pfleger 'speechifying' from the pulpit of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.</p> <p>In the statement Obama said he was "deeply disappointed" in Pfleger after his sermon was captured on videotape showing the priest mocking Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and white people from the pulpit of Trinity, the home church of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Sen. Obama.</p>

All it takes is one gaffe to taint a Republican for life. The political establishment never let Dan Quayle live down his fateful misspelling of “potatoe.” The New York Times distorted and misreported the first President Bush’s questions about new scanner technology at a grocers’ convention to brand him permanently as out of touch. But what about Barack Obama? The guy’s a perpetual gaffe machine. Let us count the ways, large and small, that his tongue has betrayed him throughout the campaign: Last May, he claimed that tornadoes in Kansas killed a whopping 10,000 people: “In case you missed it,...

‘That’s enough. That — that’s a show of disrespect to me.” That was Barack Obama, a couple of weeks back, explaining why he was casting the Reverend Jeremiah Wright into outer darkness. It’s one thing to wallow in “adolescent grandiosity” (as Scott Johnson of “Powerline” called it) when it’s a family dispute between you and your pastor of 20 years. It’s quite another to do so when it’s the 60th-anniversary celebrations of one of America’s closest allies. Last week, President Bush was in Israel and gave a speech to the Knesset. Its perspective was summed up by his closing anecdote...

Almost everywhere I went last week — TV, radio, speeches — I was asked about the 60th anniversary of the Israeli state. I don’t recall being asked about Israel quite so much on its 50th anniversary, which as a general rule is a much bigger deal than the 60th. But these days friends and enemies alike smell weakness at the heart of the Zionist Entity. Assuming President Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic fancies don’t come to pass, Israel will surely make it to its 70th birthday. But a lot of folks don’t fancy its prospects for its 80th and beyond. See the Atlantic...

Is American public education a form of child abuse? A week ago, the Washington Post’s Brigid Schulte reported on a student named Randy Castro who attends school in Woodbridge, Va. Last November at recess he slapped a classmate on her bottom. The teacher took him to the principal. School officials wrote up an incident report and then called the police. Randy Castro is in the First Grade. But, at the ripe old age of six, he’s been declared a sex offender by Potomac View Elementary School. He’s guilty of sexual harassment, and the incident report will remain on his record...

Was there any major American personality in the last half-century who seemed more remote from the sensibilities of most American Jews than William F. Buckley? Buckley, who passed away last week at the age of 83, was the fervent Catholic patrician whose work helped create the modern American conservative movement in the 1950s at a time when nothing could have been more removed from the thinking of most Jews in this country than his National Review. Though much has changed in the 53 years since NR's debut, given that most Jews are still, at the very least, reliable supporters of...

A whole bunch of good articles on Buckley.

Buckley's primary intellectual achievement was to fuse traditional American political conservatism with libertarianism, laying the groundwork for the modern American conservatism of U.S. Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and U.S. President Ronald Reagan.bttt

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY: R.I.P., ENFANT TERRIBLEFebruary 27, 2008 William F. Buckley was the original enfant terrible. As with Ronald Reagan, everyone prefers to remember great men when they weren't being great, but later, when they were being admired. Having changed the world, there came a point when Buckley no longer needed to shock it. But to call Buckley an "enfant terrible" and then to recall only his days as a grandee is like calling a liberal actress "courageous." Back in the day, Buckley truly was courageous. I prefer to remember the Buckley who scandalized to the bien-pensant. Other tributes will...

I first met Bill Buckley in 1961. He was debating Steve Allen at the time, on international relations. It was a formal debate, not at all like what we see today. Allen had just made his point that American troops were scattered like Topsy all over the globe, often in places unknown to the American people, such as Indochina, a country, Mr. Allen believed, that no one in their audience could point to on a map. Bill replied something to the effect that certainly any child could do so. As the only child immediately available in an audience otherwise very...

William F. Buckley, author, columnist, TV talk show host, and founding editor of National Review magazine, died today at age 82. Buckley was one of the people most responsible for making the conservative movement a powerful force in the United States during the past six decades. Especially through his influential magazine, Buckley set the agenda for the American right and made it appealing to a mass audience. His editorial approach and political philosophy combined to create an ecumenism on the right that allowed the various factions to work together, although the relationships have always been strained to some degree. However,...

NEW YORK - William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right's post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House, died Wednesday. He was 82. His assistant Linda Bridges said Buckley was found dead by his cook at his home in Stamford, Conn. The cause of death was unknown, but he had been ill with emphysema, she said. Editor, columnist, novelist, debater, TV talk show star of "Firing Line," harpsichordist, trans-oceanic sailor and even a good-natured loser in...

RUSH: I went to Washington last night for dinner, and I told the staff, I didn't tell you people this, but I told the staff when we finished the program I had to record the Morning Update, and I said, "I gotta scram. I gotta go to Washington for dinner," and they didn't say anything. I got back about two in the morning, and my 16 gig iPhone had arrived yesterday, I'm thinking, "God, I want to get back and activate this thing." So I went to my library about 2:30 to start activating it and after a half hour,...

THE BOOK ON McCARTHY Having been around the block a time or two, I guess nothing should surprise me, but I have to admit I was profoundly shocked by Ronald Radosh’s onslaught against my work — and honor — in what professed to be a review of my new book about Senator Joe McCarthy (“The Enemy Within,” Dec. 17). Had this Radosh effusion appeared in The New Republic or Washington Post — where it would have been more fitting — I probably wouldn’t have bothered to reply. As it appeared instead in the once-beloved pages of National Review, with which...

New Poll About to Come Out Showing Huck with Big Lead in South Carolina

It’s tempting to rerun my column on Pakistan from a month ago. Not because I predicted the assassination of Benazir Bhutto or offered any other great insight, but rather for the opposite reason: “Everyone’s an expert on Pakistan, a faraway country of which we know everything: General Musharraf should do this, he shouldn’t have done that, the State Department should lean on him to do the other… Well, I dunno. It seems to me a certain humility is appropriate when offering advice to Islamabad.” Oh, well. In the stampede of instant experts unveiling their Pakistani solutions-in-a-box, some contributions are worthy...

Republicans have an opportunity on immigration, if only they will seize it. The Democrats are positioning themselves to the left of public opinion. Howard Dean denounces Republicans for using “outrageous phrases like ‘illegal aliens.’” Hillary Clinton ties herself in knots for days over granting drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, almost everyone in public life favors — or, at any rate, feels compelled to claim to favor — tougher enforcement measures. Yet Republicans are blowing the opportunity. They are engaged in petty backbiting over one another’s records. Since very few politicians have good ones on this issue, that’s a strategy...

Our readers know Mark Steyn well. His witty and learned commentary appears in every issue of National Review, and in many other English publications across the world. What Steyn’s American readers may not know is that a Muslim advocacy group in his native Canada is doing its best to muzzle him. On December 4, the Canadian Islamic Congress announced that it had filed a complaint with three of Canada’s “human rights commissions” over an October 2006 article that Steyn had published in Maclean’s, Canada’s leading news weekly. “This article completely misrepresents Canadian Muslims’ values, their community, and their religion,” said...

This is the time of year, as Hillary Clinton once put it, when Christians celebrate “the birth of a homeless child” — or, in Al Gore’s words, “a homeless woman gave birth to a homeless child.” Just for the record, Jesus wasn’t “homeless.” He had a perfectly nice home back in Nazareth. But he happened to be born in Bethlehem. It was census time and Joseph was obliged to schlep halfway across the country to register in the town of his birth. Which is such an absurdly bureaucratic over-regulatory cockamamie Big Government nightmare it’s surely only a matter of time...

As regular VC readers know, I am one of several conspirators who is supporting Fred Thompson's campaign for President. I cannot speak for the others, but my reasons for supporting Thompson include his commitment to federalism, his candor on important issues other candidates would prefer to avoid (e.g. entitlements), and his record on regulatory reform and government oversight over the past thirty years. For National Review's pentultimate issue (the one before they endorsed Mitt Romney), I authored an article making the conservative case for Thompson. For those without subscriptions to the print magazine, here is an excerpt: Sen. Fred Thompson...

The other day, Jonah put some distance between himself and NR’s endorsement of Mitt Romney. I’d like to do the same. Romney strikes me as impressive, but also as terribly flawed. Over the next couple of days, I’ll do my best to explain. In the meantime, one observation. Endorsing Romney, the editors explained that they had decided against Fred Thompson largely because “Thompson has never run any large enterprise.” This brought to mind another Republican candidate—one whose management experience, like that of Fred Thompson, was limited to having served as a partner in a law firm. Abraham Lincoln.

Many conservatives are finding it difficult to pick a presidential candidate. Each of the men running for the Republican nomination has strengths, and none has everything — all the traits, all the positions — we are looking for. Equally conservative analysts can reach, and have reached, different judgments in this matter. There are fine conservatives supporting each of these Republicans. Our guiding principle has always been to select the most conservative viable candidate. In our judgment, that candidate is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. Unlike some other candidates in the race, Romney is a full-spectrum conservative: a...

HH: We lead off with a newsmaker today, National Review endorsing Mitt Romney on a cover story that has sent shock waves across the Republican national primary electorate. Joined now by the editor of National Review, Rich Lowry. Rich, good to have you, thanks for joining me. RL: Hey, Hugh, thanks for having me. HH: Take me inside first the process by which National Review arrived at its endorsement. RL: (laughing) I don’t know, Hugh. It’s a really tightly held process here. It’s like selecting the Pope. We can’t reveal too much, but… HH: How many people got a say...

Joe McCarthy Demythologized by: Malcolm A. Kline, December 12, 2007 In a recent critique of Blacklisted By History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies that appeared in National Review, historian Ron Radosh makes numerous assertions about the book by M. Stanton Evans that are completely unsupported by the work itself. We will deal with just one of that multitude in this column. “In a similar fashion, Evans supports McCarthy’s outrageous assertion about Gen. George C. Marshall,” Radosh writes. “It is fair game to argue that Marshall had a wrong and naïve view of...

As linked from Drudge... Romney for President By the Editors Many conservatives are finding it difficult to pick a presidential candidate. Each of the men running for the Republican nomination has strengths, and none has everything — all the traits, all the positions — we are looking for. Equally conservative analysts can reach, and have reached, different judgments in this matter. There are fine conservatives supporting each of these Republicans. Our guiding principle has always been to select the most conservative viable candidate. In our judgment, that candidate is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. Unlike some other candidates...

Good for Fred. Good for his excellent, broad based, tax-cut plan — including a flat-tax option and a corporate tax cut. Good for him for snapping back at Fox’s Chris Wallace when he tried to pull a fast one by citing Fred Barnes and Charles Krauthammer as proof-pudding that Fred can’t win. Good for Fred for mentioning National Review and Investor’s Business Daily for speaking positively about his candidacy. (So, is it true that Fox is dedicating itself to Rudy?) Good for Fred for showing fire, energy, and animation throughout the interview. It’s the same fire in the belly that...

Fred Thompson may have started his presidential campaign late, but he is the first candidate in either party to come out with solid plans to reform Social Security and immigration. And while most candidates have called for increasing the size of the military, Thompson laid out a detailed plan to achieve that end in a Tuesday speech at the Citadel Military College. On these issues, Thompson has set a standard for specificity, conservatism, and soundness that we would like to see the other Republican candidates measure up to. Thompson would borrow the best Democratic idea on Social Security, creating investment...

The Giuliani candidacy has polarized politically conservative Christians and Jews — perhaps less over Rudy’s position on abortion than, more subtly, over a question of emphasis. Who’s right? The Jewish “neoconservatives,” who make up more than half of Giuliani’s star foreign-policy advisory team (Norman Podhoretz, Daniel Pipes, Michael Rubin, Martin Kramer, and David Frum)? Or Christians, like Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, who would not rule out supporting a third party candidate if Giuliani gets the nomination? To adjudicate the dispute, I propose an appeal to the part of the Bible on whose authority Jews (like myself) and Christians...

It’s Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week — the brainchild of David Horowitz, warrior for truth on American college campuses. Horowitz’s Terrorism Awareness Project website describes the effort as “the biggest conservative campus protest ever… a wake-up call for Americans on 200 university and college campuses.” And so later this week, Horowitz will be returning to Columbia University, his alma mater, “to confront the two Big Lies of the political left: that George Bush created the war on terror and that Global Warming is a greater danger to Americans than the terrorist threat.” Horowitz — who has former United States Senator Rick Santorum,...

Canadians often grumble about the outsized influence of Quebec in national politics. The province doesn’t even make up a quarter of the country’s population anymore, and yet it seems able to determine the limits of what governments in Ottawa can do on everything, from taxes and spending, to Canadian involvement in Afghanistan, and even Canada’s position on global warming. Americans frequently are told that Canada cannot be more helpful on a particular issue, “…because of Quebec." The Conservative minority government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper made several direct appeals to Quebec voters in its Throne Speech that officially opened a...

National Review Online: Could Dr. Paul really surprise us all? By Dave Kopel - National Review Online | Ron Paul This weekend, I attended and spoke at the Second Amendment Foundation’s annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, which was held at a convention center in northern Kentucky, a few miles away from Cincinnati. What I saw and heard there changed my mind about the viability of Ron Paul’s presidential candidacy; Paul is going to far outperform the expectations laid out for him. First, for some background: twenty years ago, the Second Amendment Foundation (the second-largest pro-Second Amendment group in the U.S.)...