Free Republic

George Will, a conservative columnist for The Washington Post, went after House Republicans who recently voted against more aid to Ukraine in a Wednesday opinion piece in the Post. In the opinion, highlighted by Mediaite, Will said the 112 Republicans House Republicans who voted against Ukraine aid “voted last Saturday to endanger civilization,” calling them “ignoble.” “Hoping to enhance their political security in their mostly safe seats, and for the infantile satisfaction of populist naughtiness (insulting a mostly fictitious ‘establishment’), they voted to assure [Russian President Vladimir Putin’s] attempt to erase a European nation,” Will wrote in his column. Opponents...

Conservative commentator George Will criticized 2024 GOP primary favorites former President Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in a column Friday, saying that both candidates will come out of the GOP primary weaker. “The 2024 Republican nomination question was supposed to be: Could anyone harpoon the Great Orange Whale? Who knew that he would harpoon himself, repeatedly? Or that DeSantis, playing Captain Ahab, would pay Trump the sincerest form of flattery by imitating his persona as an unhappy warrior?” Will wrote in a Washington Post column.

In the Post, George Will predicts that neither Donald Trump nor Ron DeSantis will be the Republican presidential nominee in 2024. Inter alia, Will bases this on what he considers to be voters’ inevitable “rebellion against inevitability”: Voters, however, become contrary when told that the game’s outcome is known in the top of the first inning. Hence what G.K. Chesterton called the game of “Cheat the Prophet”: People listen politely to explanations of what is inevitable, then make something else happen. As a rule, there’s a lot to this. Americans did not like being told in 2007 that the next...

Journalist Chris Wallace said Republicans did President Biden a favor with their heckling of him during the State of the Union address Tuesday. “I mean, they literally played into his hands. You know, I don’t know if the people at the White House as they were drafting it at Camp David this weekend envisioned that happening the way it did, but it played out perfectly,” Wallace said on CNN following the speech. Republicans heckled Biden after he accused some in the GOP of wanting to cut funding for Social Security and Medicare, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) shouting “liar”...

CNN anchor Chris Wallace said Friday on “New Day” that President Joe Biden mocking Republicans at a DNC event Thursday night is an example of “what a good retail politician” he is. Biden said, “We also passed a once-in-a-generation investment in our nation’s roads, highways, bridges, railroads, ports, airports, water system, high-speed Internet. We got a little help from Republicans, but not a lot, but enough to get it passed. But the truth is, there were a lot more Republicans taking credit for that bill than we actually voted for it. I see them out there. ‘And now we’re going...

CNN anchor Chris Wallace said Friday on “New Day” that Republicans characterizing the FBI’s action at Mar-a-Lago as a “raid” using “Gestapo” tactics are out of touch with reality.

Floundering in his attempts to wield political power while lacking a political office, Donald Trump looks increasingly like a stray orange hair to be flicked off the nation’s sleeve. His residual power, which he must use or lose, is to influence his party’s selection of candidates for state and federal offices. This is, however, perilous because he has the power of influence only if he is perceived to have it. That perception will dissipate if his interventions in Republican primaries continue to be unimpressive. So, Trump must try to emulate the protagonist of “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.”...