Free Republic

Is a Jackson revival under way? I'm referring not to the late King of Pop but to the 19th century populist president whom his opponents called "King Andrew." According to Michael Barone, in the 2010 elections Republicans have a chance to knock Democrats out of as many as three dozen insecure congressional seats in "Jacksonian districts." By itself, this would merely reinforce the identification of the Party Formerly Known as Lincoln's with the white South. But in a time of popular anger over banker bonuses and lobby-hobbled government, the themes of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian populism have appeal far beyond the...

Via Oprah, Facebook and a bus trip that resembled a campaign swing more than a book tour, Sarah Palin reappeared on the national stage last week, minus her governorship and running-mate status, but with a new role as principled “rogue” to add to her previous credits as plain-spoken patriot and hockey mom. Party leaders weigh the benefits and risks of catering to “tea party” protesters like these, who dislike the House health care bill. Whatever else it said about America, her return brought into focus a big question for Republicans as they watched the intense reactions she generated: To what...

As political alliances go, few are more cemented in the public consciousness than the bond between the Republican Party and business. But, upon closer inspection, the GOP–big business relationship doesn't seem so cozy... --snip-- In the Senate, South Carolina's Jim DeMint accuses PhRMA, the D.C. lobbying powerhouse that represents the pharmaceutical industry, of a similar brand of self-serving deal-making. "PhRMA is infamous for sitting down and doing business. As long as they get their drugs sold, they'll support just about any policy." And sure enough, PhRMA reportedly cut a deal with the White House in which the organization promised to...

The economic crisis of the past year, centered as it has been in the financial sector that lies at the heart of American capitalism, is bound to leave some lasting marks. Financial regulation, the role of large banks, and the relationships between the government and key players in the market will never be the same.More important, however, are the ways in which public attitudes about our system might change. The nature of the crisis, and of the government's response, now threaten to undermine the public's sense of the fairness, justice, and legitimacy of democratic capitalism. By allowing the conditions that...

It's good, occasionally, to take a trip down memory lane. It helps to put things into perspective. Hugo Chavez ought never to have been elected president. By rights, he ought to be growing old in a jail cell somewhere. Well, it's been seventeen years, maybe he’d be in a half-way house by now. As an army officer in 1992, he led a military revolt against the legal, constitutional government of Venezuela, and attempted to overthrow the democratically elected president of the time, Carlos Andres Perez. He gambled that once the shooting started, the minister of defense and the rest of...

Want to see what populist-driven liberalism will do for the private sector? Take a gander at the latest comments from Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Frank, who told CNBC Congress had been focusing on executive compensation prior to the federal government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), since “TARP was an infield covering” as he put it, said it’s time for a punitive compensation system to discourage “excessive risk taking.” The Massachusetts congressman was asked by Dennis Kneale on CNBC’s June 10 “Power Lunch” how much executives should be punished if a company loses money...

The ASEAN Plus 3 Summit, which was to take place in the Thai resort of Pattaya, had to be cancelled due to attacks by anti-government protesters. Some 1,000 protesters broke the glass doors to the Royal Cliff Beach Hotel where the summit was to take place and stormed inside, demanding the resignation of the Thai prime minister. The leaders of other Asian countries fled to the roof and escaped by helicopter. Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and a few of the first ladies even shed tears of fear. Scenes usually reserved for action films, and unimaginable at global summits, ended...

Obama: Dear kind anti-American world, America has been terrible for 232 years. Even my wife was ashamed to be an American until recently, last November to be specific. I’m king now, my wife is proud of American for the first time in her life, and I’m with you on the subject of “bad arrogant America” and that horrible man, George Bush. We all hate America and Bush. We can build upon this common ground. For the first time in world history, you can now like and trust America, because I’m not George Bush. I’m going to tax the American people...

If international terrorists, theocratic thugs and communist dictators like you, that’s a bad thing in America An anti-America trash talking tour might gain you rock star status in some parts of the world, but how will Americans feel about it back home? The Dixie Chicks got off easy, with smashed CDs on American streets and plummeting record and ticket sales that left them on the entertainment industry unemployment line back home. Obama may not get off that easy…

I've cobbled together some excerpts about Huey Long that may demonstrate where America is heading as a result of Obama's populist politics...read more Expect nothing less than these great results under Obama's populism. Simply put, the ends are inevitable. History proves that. Liberals love to point to Long's policies and tell you how great they were. What they won't do, however, is point you to the long-term results of those policies. They simply won't. It is far better for them to maintain their demented view of a failed utopia than to acknowledge reality.

Last night, for the first time, I watched the movie, The Fugitive, from start to finish. The film is about a surgeon, falsely accused and convicted of murdering his wife, who escapes during a prison transfer, and is pursued by a US marshall. For Chicagoans, the film is one of the great movie portrayals of the city. But I now believe the classic moment in the movie comes in the 82nd minute. Harrison Ford, playing the falsely accused doctor, Richard Kimble, tries to lose himself from his pursuers by joining in the St. Patrick's Day Parade. This parade always draws...

Remember the word "covet", as in "shall not"? Envy is a deadly sin. It is a deliberate decision to ignore our shared humanity and favor, instead, things we can't take with us. Inducing someone else to commit a deadly sin is an even worse act. Class envy, albeit one of the two foundations of the modern Democratic Party's soul (identity politics being the other), is very divisive and fuels mob rule. It is a tool that exploits happy people who were previously neither aware of their forced group membership nor of their antipathy toward other groups. It is a tool...

"We must teach our children to hate," Vladimir Lenin instructed his education commissars. The Bolshevik godfather declared that hatred was not only "the basis of communism" but "the basis of every socialist and Communist movement." Class envy has been a defining staple of the left for centuries, from the frenzied mobs leaping around the French guillotines to the Soviets to, well, the new masses circling AIG executives today. The difference is merely the degree of response -- a question of socially acceptable force or violence. Historically, this behavior is both foreign and antithetical to the American experience. Unfortunately, modern Americans...

Taking advantage of the populist revolt against Wall Street and the American International Group Inc. bailouts, House Democrats have passed a vengeance tax on TARPed financial firms that amounts to a 90 percent marginal tax rate on bonuses. This is being done in the name of AIG outrage, and nobody wants to defend the insurance company - including me. The financial-products division helped blow up the global credit system, and it shouldn't be rewarded. Yet one wonders about this 90 percent tax rate. If it passes the Senate, will it ever be repealed? This could be the ultimate class-warfare spread-the-wealth...

This is the Democratic Party's moment, its power now greater than any time since the mid-1960s. But do not expect smooth sailing. The party is a fractious group divided by competing interests, factions and constituencies that could explode into a civil war, especially when it comes to energy and the environment. Broadly speaking, there is a long-standing conflict inside the Democratic Party between gentry liberals and populists. This division is not the same as in the 1960s, when the major conflicts revolved around culture and race as well as on foreign policy. Today the emerging fault-lines follow mostly regional, geographical...

Only months after the 2008 primaries, most Americans probably don't remember Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul. But that doesn't mean the conservative populism they championed during their campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination is as fleeting as their dark-horse candidacies. Since rank-and-file House Republicans began criticizing October's Wall Street bailout, a growing faction of the GOP has been channeling the country's rage at Corporate America with us-versus-them rhetoric and appeals to economic patriotism. And they are getting help from a Democratic Party whose actions often imply subservience to Big Money. Recall that the majority of House Democrats voted to ratify...

Holding signs reading "Stimulate Business, Not Government," "Families Against Porkulus" and "Say No To Generational Theft," protesters opposed to the $787 billion stimulus package have been mobilizing across the country. It started last Monday in Seattle, then moved Tuesday to Denver, where President Obama signed the stimulus bill into law. That was followed by another one in Mesa, Ariz., where Obama unveiled a mortgage rescue plan. Another protest was planned for Saturday outside the office of Rep. Dennis Moore in Overland Park, Kan. The Democrat voted for the stimulus. His office didn't return calls seeking comment. A New Populism? As...

Rod Dreher: A populist prairie fire from the right? very few generations in America, we go through a "creedal passion period," the late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington taught. Like the Great Awakening of the 1740s and the 1960s cultural revolution, these are times of great unrest when the morally outraged masses react against a perceived violation of the American "creed." "Power is now seen as corporate. So the next outburst of creedal passion may be against hegemonic corporate capitalism," the professor prophesied in 2001. Don't be surprised if 2009 is the year that the creedal-passion dam gives way and...

FWIW - Went to have a haircut. There are four hairdressers/barbers at the shop. All voted for Obama. Today they were all talking about how angry they are with Obama for deleting all of his promises from his website and now talking about not giving them all the goodies they wanted from him. Reality's a bitch, ain't it?

If the Obamanation is elected and further corrupts our entire system of government, the number of those who actually pay income taxes will become the minority; subject to the increasing tyranny of the parasitic non-taxed. Tape-worm city...

The downside of appealing to Joe Six-Pack.She killed. She had him at "Nice to meet you. Hey, can I call you Joe?" She was the star. He was the second male lead, the good-natured best friend of the leading man. She was not petrified but peppy. The whole debate was about Sarah Palin. She is not a person of thought but of action. Interviews are about thinking, about reflecting, marshaling data and integrating it into an answer. Debates are more active, more propelled—they are thrust and parry. They are for campaigners. She is a campaigner. Her syntax did not hold,...

I confess that from the beginning I didn't get the Sarah Palin nomination. Everything about it seemed wrong, from her chirpy Matanuska Valley girl accent, to the MTV morals of her family life, to her complete lack of any experience or even of any stated views on national or international affairs. But now I get it. It represents the last gasp of the effort to turn the Republican Party of 2008 into the Democratic Party of 1896. Or at least I hope it does. The 1896 presidential race represented the high point of populism in America. The Democratic candidate, William...

Observing the Sarah Palin phenomenon, does anyone feel like they're trapped in a singularly creepy remake of "Night of the Living Dead"? George W. Bush has been a political corpse for years. But Palin resembles a female version of Bush, brought back from the grave to win the election. You wouldn't think that the Republicans would want to exhume Bush. After all, his presidency has been a historic disaster, and the American people know it. But Bush was successful at one thing: winning elections. With its policies and ideology in ruins, Bush's political game plan is all that the GOP...

News & Opinion Monday, September 8, 2008 ROBERT SHRUM: The Republicans’ Lipstick Populism It was appropriate that the Republicans convened in the city named for Saint Paul. For on the road to the convention, John McCain had a conversion experience worthy of the saint, transforming his lobbyist-run, insider campaign into a full-throated appeal to cultural populism. The combination of purple anti-Washington rhetoric and blue-collar melodrama will henceforth be known as “Palinesque.” The question now is whether this hit show has enough gas to run until November. -snip- Will Americans take seriously a pledge to stand for “the people, not the...

WASHINGTON -- Last August, John McCain's campaign was a guttering candle, out of money but flush with half-baked ideas that were unlikely to be improved by further baking. Anyway, to have many ideas is to have too many for a campaign's concluding sprint, and McCain's revival has not been robust enough to bring him even with Barack Obama. Now McCain's rejuvenated hopes rest on his ability to recast this election, focusing it on who should lead America in a world suddenly darkened by Russia's war of European conquest. To begin the recasting, he should weed from the unkempt garden of...

To CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" host, we live in a world of absolutes - because the potential of a government bailout of two publicly traded government-sponsored enterprises condemns the entire concept of free market capitalism. On the July 22 broadcast of Dobbs' show, he attacked proponents of free-market capitalism because of the potential trouble of the two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE). "Well the - it's a, it's quite a mess, quite a mess indeed," Dobbs said. "And I love the idea that all these free traders, free marketeers now got to have the government...

I did not hear till now about an analysis of OBAMA's stance , created mediatic image and above all his voice and way of speaking. Probably it has been done somewhere but AS AN EUROPEAN i was struck by the way he speaks like some kind of preachers or populist political leaders reminding us very bad memories. It reminds me some leaders hypnotizing crowds and leading them to real nightmares. The rythm,the loudness,the tone of his voice beside the repetition of mantras("change","yes we can"...)give a scary impression... But this it not surprising if he learned from J.WRIGHT

Hightower’s New World by: Bethany Stotts, May 07, 2008 As reported in an earlier Accuracy in Academia article, the famous populist Jim Hightower is attempting to inflame college students against the evil American corporations and restrictive consumerist expectations. Promoted by the progressive Campus Progress (a program of the Center for American Progress), Hightower’s new book Swim Against the Current encourages readers to break with corporate and “right-wing politico” traditions and adopt more values-oriented positions including • opposing the Iraq War; • mass organization against evil corporations and the Powers That Be; • government-subsidized elections; • fighting climate change in the...

Campus Populist by: Bethany Stotts, April 11, 2008 Campus Progress (CP), a program of the Center for American Progress, argues that “30 years of heavily-funded conservative organizing has made its mark” on universities and it’s time to push back. To that end, CP recently promoted a new book highlighting the successes of countercultural “uncorporations” and political activists. “I come to you as a Democrat, by the way, but I get very disgusted with my party leaders sometimes. You know, like gratifying Bush’s illegal domestic spying program by making it legal. I got an email from a guy saying he hoped...

I've got my tongue so far into my cheek on this one, they may have to operate. Edwards is so easy to ridicule.

...PROVIDENCE, R.I., Feb. 24 -- Blasting "companies shamelessly turning their backs on Americans" by shipping jobs overseas and railing that "it is wrong that somebody who makes $50 million on Wall Street pays a lower tax rate than somebody who makes $50,000 a year," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton increasingly sounds like one of her old Democratic rivals, former senator John Edwards of North Carolina. Eager to recapture the white, working-class voters who favored her in some of the early primaries but who have since shifted to Sen. Barack Obama, Clinton traded her usual wonky style this weekend for a fiery,...

The rhetoric of Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton about the sad state of America is reminiscent of the suspect populism of John Edwards, the millionaire lawyer who recently dropped out of the Democratic presidential race. Barack Obama may have gone to exclusive private schools. He and his wife may both be lawyers who between them have earned four expensive Ivy League degrees. They may make about a million dollars a year, live in an expensive home and send their kids to prep school. But they are still apparently first-hand witnesses to how the American dream has gone sour. Two...

Barack Obama hits the nail on the head when he says, "there is one United States of America". There are no "blue states", or "red states", rich, poor, conservative or liberal Americas. Super Tuesday showed that Americans are less divided than many thought. In fact, America showed on tuesday that it has become one big bucket of mindless crabs. Huckabee, McCain, Hillary, and Obama have brilliantly realized that America is engulfed in fear. Fear has stripped America of its human qualities leaving a husk of primal survival instinct. Like crabs in a bucket- Americans are in a mindless frenzy willing...

By far, the most significant story of the 2008 Republican primaries has been the unlikely candidacy of Mike Huckabee and his_single-handed_resuscitation of Christian conservatives as a force to be reckoned with in the Republican_Party. Yet, regardless of how he fares on Super_Tuesday_and_beyond, Mr. Huckabee will perhaps be best remembered as the man who, however unintentionally, helped persuade evangelicals to vote a Democrat into the White House in 2008 – and possibly in future races, as well. Since the 1970s, conventional_wisdom has held that evangelicals are driven by a single-minded_concern with defending "moral values," while mainline Protestants focus on issues of...

Washington, D.C. - Mike Huckabee's populist rhetoric may work in the private sector, but it has no place in politics, says the Libertarian Party. "Huckabee's continual call for populism in American policy is making it clear that he will not be a President that is committed to limiting government, lowering taxes and increasing personal freedom," says Libertarian Party Executive Director Shane Cory. "Huckabee would make a great charity director or chairman of a nonprofit agency," says Cory, "but, as President, he would completely undermine the liberty movement in the United States that seeks to decrease the role of government in...

Hugo Chavez offered us his opinion on innovation and entrepreneurial drive. "Anyone who is distributing food ... and is speculating, we must intervene and we must expropriate (the business) and put it in the hands of the state and the communities," Chavez said during the inauguration of a new state-run market in Caracas. – Reuters 24 Jan 2008. If all of this sounds familiar and reminds us of someone else who seems to be single-handedly wrecking a once-prosperous economy, it’s because it is. Hugo Chavez is copying a page of Econ 101 notes off of Zimbabwean Dictator/Idiot Robert Mugabe. Hugo...

Anxious lower middle class families are shaping up to be the crucial political constituency of this year's election. Polls show that financial security is their biggest concern. They worry about health and education costs, about retirement, and about their prospects for getting ahead. Their insecurity has markedly reduced public support for free trade and contributed to public concerns about immigration. They also appear to be behind a great deal of the generally uneasy mood of the electorate. The Democratic candidates have noticed and are championing an old-fashioned economic populism that stokes voters' fears and seeks to direct them toward welfare...

THE ISSUE Republicans have three different winners POINTS OF DEBATE None of the Republican candidates save for Ron Paul and Fred Thompson offer anything resembling freemarket conservatism THE STAR’S VIEW It’s no wonder Republicans are having a hard time settling on a candidate Republican voters are having a hard time settling on presidential candidates, now that the party has three separate winners after its first three major primaries. In Michigan on Tuesday, Republican Mitt Romney salvaged his political campaign, which had been withering following losses in New Hampshire and Iowa. Arizona Sen. John McCain failed to attract the significant numbers...

Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson continued his full-court press in South Carolina Saturday morning by meeting with about 100 supporters in North Charleston and continuing to take jabs at a rival. While Thompson didn’t name names, his comments at Perkins Family Restaurant echoed what he said in Thursday night’s debate about former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee being too liberal for the Republican base. “A lot of people nowadays think that we have to be moving away from our traditions of the Republican party,” he said. “Most of the populist rhetoric you hear winds up in bigger government and more government...

MANCHESTER, N.H. – It is the historic mission of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary to give us the establishment candidate in each party, and then the insurgent candidate. The two pairs then battle it out in South Carolina to give us the probable nominees for November. Year 2008 looks no different, with this exception: The insurgents, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee, swept the first contests and now have the momentum. And both establishments are reeling. Twenty-four hours before New Hampshire, the GOP establishment has not even settled upon a champion. If Mitt Romney wins the Granite State, he...

Move over, Bill Clinton. There's a new king when it comes to looking into the camera and not telling the truth to the American people . . . and his name is John Edwards. To his credit, George Stephanopoulos caught Edwards out on a central tenet of Silky's candidacy . . . but then let things slide. Edwards was a guest today on This Week, and it didn't take him long to don his scourge-of-greedy-corporations mantle. Central to Edwards' pitch is the claim that you don't sit down with corporate interests, you fight them. View video here.

Many have discussed whether certain candidates have "fire in the belly." What I'm wondering is whether, at this point in our national history, conservatives in general have fire in their bellies. Given Gov. Mike Huckabee's remarkable performance so far in the GOP presidential contest in the name of conservatism, and especially after seeing his interview on the "Tonight Show," I question how brightly that flame is flickering. When Ronald Reagan was running for president in 1980, conservatives had more reasons to be discontent. We had been conditioned to believe that inviolable economic principles dictated that there was a necessary trade-off...

Yes, corporate profits are slowing and jobs are softening. Despite 52 months of ongoing jobs gains and 1.3 million new payrolls in the past year, December jobs registered only 18,000 and the unemployment rate ticked back up to (a still historically low) 5 percent. Despite years of gains from a booming business sector, corporate profits are in fact falling at about a 6 percent clip. But the last thing we need now is root-canal economic populism from the campaign trail and the mainstream media telling us that Americans are unhappy. Unhappy? According to a Gallup Poll released last week, “Most...

Despite his current standing in the polls, Mike Huckabee remains an under-funded and chronically disorganized long-shot when it comes to actually winning the GOP Presidential nomination. While easily the most gifted TV communicator in the field, the former Arkansas governor displays some serious vulnerabilities as a candidate for the White House and his innumerable critics and rivals have attacked these weaknesses with gleeful ferocity. Even if he fails to win a place on the national ticket, however, Huckabee’s startlingly strong campaign provides potent benefits for both his party and his country. In the two weeks remaining before the Iowa Caucuses...

Since the 1960s, conservatives have chafed and seethed against liberal elitism. Liberals have used their influence in the courts and government bureaucracies to win political victories they never could have won at the ballot box. Conservatives have reacted by turning to populism -- to a defence of the commonsense wisdom of ordinary voters against the pretensions of know-it-alls. Conservatives have drawn strength from populism. But you can overdo any good thing --and I am beginning to think that on this one, we've zoomed the car into the red zone. For me, the lights started flashing in 2005, during the battle...

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...

When they debated economic issues in Dearborn, Mich., most of the Republican presidential candidates talked about how good the economic statistics look. Mike Huckabee was the candidate who offered sympathy for the public’s anxieties. So it has been throughout the campaign. Huckabee, more than the other Republican candidates, understands that even in a time of economic growth Americans are worried about their health care, their wages, and their country’s future. He seems to understand his party’s strategic options better than his Republican rivals, too. Since conservative positions on controversial moral issues have helped Republicans, there is no reason to abandon...

Abstract: "The Irony of Populism: The Republican Shift and the Inevitability of American Aristocracy" analyzes the shift in the role of the Supreme Court following the movement towards a democratic Senate which culminated in the Seventeenth Amendment. The Supreme Court's shift is presented as the inevitable result of the system of mixed government that underlies the constitutional order, which orders American Government into democratic, aristocratic, and monarchical parts. While in the original conception of the constitution the Senate was the aristocratic part, the Senate would become part of the democratic part with the Seventeenth Amendment and prior procedural changes. Into...

A subprime lender with ties to Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards has moved to foreclose on more than 130 homes in South Carolina since the S.C. native went to work for its parent company, an analysis of courthouse records shows. The lender, Green Tree Financial, also was once the subject of a $30 million class-action verdict involving thousands of South Carolinians. Edwards’ ties to the company are disquieting to some supporters of the North Carolinian. On the campaign trail, Edwards has insisted he is the champion of lower-income families. Edwards’ ties to Green Tree also could hurt him with voters...

A spectre is apparently haunting America – the spectre of “populism”. “New populism spurs Democrats on the economy,” cried the front page headline in The New York Times the other day. Republicans rail against unseemly “class warfare”, while centrist Democrats fret that hard-edged populist appeals will spook suburban voters. “It is not unusual,” The New York Times explained, “for candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination to move left in the primary season.” However, rhetoric aside, there is little reason to view today’s supposedly wild-eyed Democrats as “populist” or “leftwing” at all. Consider John Edwards, who the press and Republicans have...