Free Republic

U.S. Senate candidate and former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore invokes President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan with and added twist. Moore said, “I support President Trump’s agenda of making America great again. But I submit to you that we can only make America great again if we make America good,” Moore’s campaign announcement spelled out what he believes isn’t good: divorce, abortion and same-sex marriage. Moore made the statement in his downtown Montgomery office a day after announcing his bid for the Senate seat previously held by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “I am definitely not establishment,” Moore said with...

As the Democratic Party rebuilds itself for the 2018 and 2020 elections, Democratic strategists have been preoccupied with a pressing question: why did so many voters who backed Barack Obama in 2012 switch to Donald Trump four years later, and what can be done to win them back? Top Democratic pollsters have conducted private focus groups and polling in an effort to answer that question, and they shared the results with me. One finding from the polling stands out: a shockingly large percentage of these Obama-Trump voters said Democrats’ economic policies will favour the wealthy — twice the percentage that...

Every detail was designed to mark Hillary Clinton’s moment in history — from the glass ceiling at Manhattan’s Javits Center, where her supporters were gathered, to her and hubby Bill’s suite at The Peninsula hotel, selected so she could personally see Trump Tower, home to the foe she was set to crush. Then came the voter returns. In this exclusive excerpt from their fascinating new book “Shattered,’’ political reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes take readers inside Hillary Clinton’s world on the night that changed her life — and the nation — forever. Hillary’s communications team decamped to the Javits...

When given the choice between attending the White House Correspondents dinner — a swampy D.C. event brimming with uber-rich, out-of-touch media elites — or headlining a rally jam-packed with the kind of real working-class Americans who elected him to the White House, our new president chose the latter. President Trump’s bold decision proved once again that he’s not just a brilliant businessman — he also has excellent political instincts. Why should the president attend a high-profile media event aimed at giving gravitas and ratings to a hyper-partisan industry that has covered his campaign, transition and first 100 days with an...

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein both spoke at the White House Correspondents Dinner last night. Time has posted their speeches in case you were otherwise occupied at the time. They had some advice for President Trump. In part they revisited past glories covering the Watergate scandal and taking down President Nixon. They have a few loose ends to tie up. For example, they still haven’t discovered what Nixon’s guys were looking for inside the offices of the Democratic National Committee. Watergate served its purpose, however, and the boys have moved on. Edward Jay Epstein asked whether the press had uncovered...

"The stench of failure hangs over [the] White House. The people know it, judging by the opinion polls, Corporate titans know it." The President "seems to concede some major misjudgments. . . . What is lacking is any clear sense of direction." "What we are witnessing," says David Broder, is a "one-year phenomenon" of a president who is "more spectator than leader." As the Middle East is in chaos, the president---photographed in [golf] clothes, [is] heading off for a weekend at [Mar-a-Lago]. At some point down the road, the phasing out of the [Trump] presidency will confront the Republican Party...

Senator Bernie Sanders has said it is “likely” he would have beaten Donald Trump in the 2016 election, but that “it doesn’t matter” now that Mr Trump is president. He was speaking on Showtime’s The Circus when he was asked about populism in the US and how Mr Trump had tapped into it to win. “What I recognised was pain. All over this country people are hurting and they are hurting very badly. Trump understood that, by the way, and that's why he said, 'The whole system sucks. I'm going to blow it up,’” Mr Sanders said. Mr Sanders has...

GENEVA, OHIO — Dennis Dixon didn’t vote for Donald J. Trump. For the first time in his 46 years, the self-described “moderate Midwestern Republican” sat out a presidential election because he was less than thrilled with both major candidates. “I wrote in John Kasich,” he says, with a trace of humor. Dixon stands in the showroom of Griffiths Furniture along West Main Street — a charming business district, its sidewalks decorated with grape-vine etchings to celebrate the produce for which this Ohio wine region is known. He is not one of those voters who doesn’t wish success for the president....

(Video-Compilation of protesters removed from Trump's rally) A number of protestors were forcefully removed from the New Holland Arena in the Farm Show & Expo Center while President Donald Trump spoke Saturday night. Pennsylvania State Troopers and the Capitol Police had a busy night as they were forced to secure and remove a number of protestors from inside the rally. No information has been provided about any pending criminal charges for those that were removed. The first person to be removed was screaming "Trump is a traitor!" The man, who has yet to be identified, began screaming and waving a...

President Trump did what he does best on Friday afternoon in a speech to the National Rifle Association: He trolled other politicians. Here's Trump on Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) "I have a feeling that in the next election you're going to be swamped with candidates," Trump told the crowd. "You'll have plenty of those Democrats coming over and you'll say 'No sir. No ma'am, perhaps ma'am. It may be Pocahontas, remember that. And she is not big for the NRA that I can tell you." ("Pocahontas" is Trump's derogatory nickname for Warren who faced a major controversy when she ran...

Unless the world ends before Saturday, most assessments of Donald Trump’s first 100 days will include a mix of the good, the bad and the ugly. The emphasis will reveal more about those doing the grading than Trump himself. If you liked him from the start, you can cite real progress, such as growing economic confidence and Trump’s successful meetings with foreign leaders. He is trying to keep faith with his campaign promises, though he failed at repealing ObamaCare. If you were immune to his message and the messenger from the beginning, you still are. You see stumbles that suggest...

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are both trying to explain their positions on the 1994 crime bill, a touchstone of the tough-on-crime attitudes that are blamed for the mass incarceration of people of color now. TRANSCRIPT: AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: South Carolina holds its Democratic primary tomorrow. And during their events in the state, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have been talking about ways they would change the criminal justice system of today, but they're also being challenged on their positions on the issue as far back as 20 years ago. NPR's Tamara Keith reports. TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Hillary Clinton was...

The recent release of the Clinton campaign expose Shattered is causing yet another round of introspection about what Democrats did wrong in 2016 and how to fix the problem. The Clinton campaign’s own failures of targeting and messaging are already the subject of much discussion and have been rehashed ad nauseam. Matt Taibbi’s take on the navel-gazing, operative-centric view of the pundit and consultant classes is probably the best of the book’s reviews so far and well worth reading. A large number of powerful people still have a difficult time accepting the movements that coalesced behind Sanders on the left...

Good lord. It’s one thing to blow an election once, but to lose hypothetically to a guy with a 42 percent approval rating again? Is there no limit to the humiliation the Clintons will suffer at Trump’s hands? We’ll have our answer when Ivanka and Chelsea inevitably square off in 2024. The same ABC/WaPo poll found that when 2016 voters were asked who they actually did vote for last November, 46 percent said Clinton versus 43 percent who said Trump — the same number he gets in this hypothetical rematch. In other words, given the option of a do-over, virtually...

Anecdotal stories about disillusioned supporters of Donald Trump are overdone. The fact is that, on a broad scale, Trump supporters say they aren't disappointed. In fact, a poll showed they were more pleased than disappointed, by about 5 to 1: "...The Pew Research Center released a poll showing very little buyer's remorse among Trump voters. The poll showed just 7% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say Trump has performed worse than they expected him to. Fully 38% - five times as many - say he has performed better." A new Washington Post-ABC News poll confirms this - in spades. And,...

Democratic Rep. Mark DeSaulnier told an 11-year-old girl at a middle school in California Wednesday that President Donald Trump is more dangerous than a terrorist. While speaking at a town hall at Stanley Middle School in Lafayette, Calif., DeSaulnier moved to the Q&A portion of the event after his talk and answered the final question from Eden, an 11-year-old girl, with a bang, East Bay Times reported Saturday. “From the mouths of babes,” DeSaulnier said. “I think you should be concerned. This is dangerous stuff. I’ve said a few times, the most dangerous person in America isn’t a terrorist, it’s...

I was always a big Bernie Sanders fan. In the darkest days of the Bush administration, he was a big deal. I still remember in 2006 when he won his U.S. Senate seat and thinking it was just the beginning; democratic-socialism was finally blowing up the way it should and that he was a legend in the making. Last year I learned some things that made me question why I always loved Bernie Sanders. He was playing dumb about knowing or helping up-and-coming populist Democrats such as himself, and was instead letting the DSCC and the Obama administration pick safe,...

WASHINGTON-Here inside the Beltway bubble, we don't really know what's happening in real America. (To that end, the satellite radio monopoly has given a radio show to Salena Zito, chronicler of the salt of the earth for those people for whom Hillbilly Elegy is too heavy a lift.) Unlike many of the cynics and elitists hereabouts, I maintain an optimistic view of my fellow Americans out in the boonies. I think they're all going to get together next October and announce that it's all been an elaborate prank. I hope that's the case because, otherwise…yikes. From The Buffalo News: "I'd...

In the whirlwind first weeks of President Trump’s administration, it often seemed as though he was trying to enact his entire agenda within his first 100 days in office. On Day 1, he moved to undo parts of the Affordable Care Act. Within his first week, he instituted a federal hiring freeze; issued orders on abortion, immigration and manufacturing; and took the first steps toward building his signature border wall. And on the one-week anniversary of his swearing in, he issued the first iteration of his ban on travel from certain Muslim-majority countries. In retrospect, the travel ban looks like...

I have observed many ideas about and reactions to the election since November that perplex me. One idea that stands out among Hillary fans is that Bernie was too dirty in the primary and has a lot of ground to make up if he is to win the support of the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party going forward. I will not address the absurdity of this idea here, but I highlight it to make a point: Hillary fans still have no idea what happened in 2016 that led to Donald Trump being president. This is particularly troubling given the...