Free Republic

"Not so long ago, Republicans said they had sworn off nation-building. Following the failure of the neoconservative project in Iraq and Afghanistan, GOP leaders seemed to have learned their lesson. But apparently not. Now nation-building is back with force, with a massive aid package to Ukraine that makes that country a US client state. Up next: a debate over expanding NATO. Many Republicans in Congress have already lined up to support both, almost reflexively. Why?"

Matthew Continetti, writing in Commentary, credits leading neoconservatives, such as Irving Kristol and his son Bill Kristol, with "modernizing" conservatism so that the Republican Party — which neoconservatives reluctantly joined after they lost influence with the Democrat party — could suitably govern a modern democracy. And he laments the fact that since the rise of the Tea Party movement, neoconservatives have gradually lost influence with a populist-nationalist Republican Party. Leading neoconservatives like Bill Kristol and Jonah Goldberg (then at National Review) publicly opposed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. As a result, neoconservatism is now a movement without a political...

The way to solve America's issues and connect with Republican voters is not to parrot libertarian talking points that enable leftist power.I am always wary of those who purport to speak for their respective generation, and a recent New York Post op-ed by a self-espoused libertarian student at New York University put on full display exactly what the Republican Party must abandon in the years ahead. In close to 700 words, writer Rikki Schlott calls for the GOP to “compromise on social and environmental issues and stand up to leftist extremism,” ignoring that these two are different sides of the...

“The neocons in the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia and Netanyahu have created a situation where it is going to be very difficult for President Trump to avoid a war with Iran," she said. "They have built all the building blocks, placed the dynamite and lit the fuse. It is going to be up to Donald Trump and his leadership whether or not he is going to cut that fuse and say, 'Hey, we need to get back on track and put the interest of the American people in our country first.'" The Iraq War veteran also criticized Trump's recent...

President Donald Trump has become irritated at an emerging impression his hawkish national security advisers are marching him closer to war with Iran despite his isolationist tendencies, according to people familiar with the matter. Instead, Trump is signaling his intent to speak with the Iranians as tensions rise in the Persian Gulf, and his national security team has taken steps they hope could facilitate a new diplomatic opening. The likelihood of such an opening appears slim. But Trump has raised concern with the heightened rhetoric, believing a large-scale military intervention with Iran would be devastating to him politically, people familiar...

All human institutions are essentially a reboot of high school, and within the political scene the Never Trumpers are convinced that they are the cool kids despite being the chess club of American politics. No, they aren't the cool kids. They’re geeks, they haven't won a tournament in years and, more importantly, they're the freaking chess club. In contrast, we normals are just that, the members of the student body who have lives and after-school jobs and girlfriends and who don't care about the dorks padding their resume with student body presidencies or, in this case, jobs at the Eagle Liberty...

"They are obliged to spell out in clear terms why immigration—to say nothing of the importation of seasonal, temporary, and skilled labor—is an economic necessity."

In the modern era, in most of America’s past presidential elections the two major political parties presented a fairly clear distinction on the great issue of war and peace: Republicans opposed America’s entry into World War I, and into World War II until we were attacked at Pearl Harbor; Democrats eventually led the opposition against the Vietnam War, and to the two Persian Gulf wars conducted by the two Republican presidents Bush. However, under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton the idea that one party would be the “peace” party and one War Partyparty would be the “war” party has been...

This mysterious political arcanism appears in Patrick Buchanan's column today America First or WWIII. It could actually something, it's been used rather a bit, as messianic atheistic secular humanism has. I wish someone would come up with a pithy catch-all for Obama's mania for punishing traditional Americans for his perception of their ancestors' sins. Search for manichaean neocons.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is having a bad week. First, he is body-blocked from getting on camera in Mike Huckabee’s media circus with Kim Davis. Then he gets upstaged by Donald Trump at a purported Iran rally that Trump converted into a campaign event. It is a sad state of affairs for a media hog like Cruz when he gets overshadowed by even hoggier opponents. How long will Cruz play Robin to Trump’s Batman? It is not fun to be Ed McMahon when Mike Huckabee sits in the host chair. Cruz would like to think of himself as the smartest...

On this Thanksgiving Day I am truly thankful.IÂ’m thankful for my son Liam, my dog Lexie, the best sister and brother a guy could have, plus their families, niece and nephews all. IÂ’m thankful that, for me at least, Christmas runs from Thanksgiving to Three Kings Day. IÂ’m thankful too for living in San Diego, on the ocean, and for having lived in Denver, Palm Beach, Washington, DC, and Chicago. IÂ’m thankful that I get to write for a living. IÂ’m the luckiest guy I know. When I was 14 I knew what I wanted to do with my life,...

NRMLUNIT wrote: Elizabeth Warren for president. That will give Ransom one more thing to complain about. It's all he ever does. - I Blame Elizabeth Warren for Eric Cantor, Economists and Global CoolingDear Comrade LoonIT,Come on, Loon.I don’t just complain, although I will admit that I’m very good at complaining. I also agitate, exasperate, bother, annoy, traumatize, enrage and vituperate. Especially vituperate. That’s my favorite. And that’s just what I do to Republicans.But why not complain? The economy still sucks despite unprecedented liberal spending. The banking system and healthcare systems are more broken than ever before because of unprecedented liberal...

From at least the time of the 1980’s, the Republican Party and the “conservative movement” have been dominated by, not conservatives, but neoconservatives. The so-called “libertarian” influence in the party is growing—and neoconservatives are none too pleased by it. Libertarians, neoconservatives assert, are “isolationists,” “naïve,” even sophomoric, idealists whose detachment from reality borders on being “unpatriotic,” for libertarians threaten to compromise national security, making citizen and soldier alike unsafe. After all, when his own country is in the midst of a protracted, bloody war, a person who uses his considerable influence to convince large numbers of Americans that their country...

The Obama administration should send ammunition to the Syrian rebels, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Wednesday. The comments from a potential Republican front-runner in 2016 suggest both parties are coalescing around a more forceful U.S. role in the two-year-old civil war.

As violent mobs shouting Islamist slogans rampaged against U.S. diplomats across the Middle East and Southeast Asia in the weeks following the fatal Sept. 11, 2012 attack on U.S. officials in Libya, Russian President Vladimir Putin saw a chance to kick the United States when it was down. He did it by expelling the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose work -- advising private groups on democracy, as it has done since the 1990s -- he evidently resented. For good measure, he just cancelled the longstanding Nunn-Lugar program of cooperation on destroying and securing old Soviet weapons of mass destruction....

For Americans of the Greatest Generation that fought World War II and of the Silent Generation that came of age in the 1950s, the great moral and ideological cause was the Cold War. It gave purpose and clarity to our politics and foreign policy, and our lives. From the fall of Berlin in 1945 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, that Cold War was waged by two generations, and with its end Americans faced a fundamental question: If the historic struggle between communism and freedom is over, if the Soviet Empire and Soviet Union no longer exist,...

The controversy over the videotape of Harvard Law School student Barack Obama speaking in support of his professor Derrick Bell during Bell’s one-man 1990 uprising against the law school’s failure or refusal to hire a black woman as a professor has caused a predictable back-and-forth about what it might mean for Obama to have a favorable view of Bell. Michael Powell of the New York Times reflected conventional opinion in liberal media circles when he tweeted: “Derrick Bell, Radical? We’re to pretend our history cleansed? He fought 4 Civil Rights in Mississippi.” It is incumbent on Powell and others, if...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I mentioned his name yesterday -- Jeffrey Lord was in the political office of the White House during the first term of Reagan, maybe both terms. Jeffrey Lord now writes at the American Spectator. Jeffrey Lord, like me, didn't understand all this stuff at Newt yesterday. AP has a story referring to me now as "conservative radio titan." And they describe me as trying to defend Newt on this yesterday, and in the process, nevertheless, recounting all of the things that Newt had said. I wasn't trying to defend Newt, as AP said. All I was saying...

The first time one of Ron Paul's supporters called me a Neocon I was insulted and hacked off which was exactly the response the name caller was looking for. However since then, the more times I have been called that the more enamored to it I have become. Yes....I admit it...I am a Neocon. Thank you for labeling me as such, all you napalm spreading Paul-ites who are the self-proclaimed "Defenders of the Faith", "Proclaimers of the Truth" and "The Founding Fathers Favorites". Your name calling has finally produced something meaningful. The American Heritage Dictionary's definition of neoconservativism is "an...

Since the end of the Cold War, neo-conservatives have routinely employed two powerful words to criticize traditional conservatives uneasy with their big government approach to international affairs: appeasement and isolationism. On ABC's "This Week," Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) employed both words, labeling Republican criticism of the military adventure in Libya as "isolationist" all while making an allusion to the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s ...