Free Republic

NRO: Is this your first interview since the election? Rep. Pat Toomey: Yes it is. NRO: Given that you lost, what do you think your campaign accomplished? Toomey: Well I'm still sorting that out, Ramesh, and trying to figure out what if anything it accomplished. When you consider the obstacles we faced and how close we got, it makes it clear that there is a real interest in seeing the Republican party govern as a conservative party, certainly in Pennsylvania. NRO: What does the campaign say about the strength of the conservative movement, most of its institutions having backed you?...

Having spent the weekend enjoying the restrained and civil rhetoric on offer at the pro-abortion march, a number of liberals are upset that Karen Hughes has violated decorum. Rep. Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, says that Hughes "compared the 9/11 terrorists to Americans who marched on the Mall," and that this comparison is "outrageous." Jon Stewart has beaten her up for the remarks, and Gloria Feldt of Planned Parenthood has demanded an apology since proponents of legal abortion are "Americans...and patriots, too." The controversial remarks were uttered during an interview with Wolf Blitzer of CNN. Blitzer asked her about...

Except that we've captured Ho Chi Minh, we've taken Hanoi, there's no draft, and the boat people have mostly come back. Not all of the comparisons are, however, to our advantage: It took nine years for the Democrats to be willing to cut off funding for the military then. It took seven months this time.

Conservatives were a majority of the House Republican conference by the mid-1980s; they did not become a majority of the Senate Republican caucus until after the 1994 elections. Even those elections swept in at least as many conviction-less Republican hacks as they did conservative activists such as Rick Santorum and Spence Abraham. The 2004 Senate Republican candidates are remarkably conservative. Indeed, it is almost certain that the Republican caucus will move rightward even if the party does not win seats this fall. The four seats that are most likely to be lost are currently held by Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Peter...

THE most important election this year is the presidential election. A strong case can be made that the second most important election is the one that will occur on April 27, when Pennsylvania Republicans will decide whom to nominate for the U.S. Senate: the incumbent senator, Arlen Specter, or the conservative challenger, Congressman Pat Toomey. For conservatives who generally support President Bush but are concerned about the Republican party's drift under his stewardship, the Specter-Toomey race, and a handful of other primary elections, offer the opportunity to make a midcourse correction. This is important for conservatives, because we are in...

TWO THINGS I DIDN'T KNOW [Ramesh Ponnuru] before reading Opinion Journal's Political Diary (which is subscription-only) for today: 1) Kerry and Edwards were, respectively, the most liberal and the fourth-most liberal members of the Senate in 2003, according to National Journal; and 2) the Main Street Individual Fund, which exists to help liberal Republicans such as Arlen Specter, has found a big backer in George Soros.

When is a litmus test not a litmus test? When John Kerry says it isn't. The Massachusetts senator just announced that if he ever has the chance to nominate a Supreme Court justice, he will make sure that justice pledges to uphold Roe v. Wade.Here's Glen Johnson in the Boston Globe: "In making his pledge about Supreme Court nominees, Kerry denied he was establishing his own litmus test, an accusation that congressional Democrats routinely level against Republicans who say they favor appointing only judges who oppose abortion." Very few Republicans say any such thing, by the way, but never mind....

So everyone has been jumping on General Wesley Clark for saying that he supported a right to abortion up until the moment of birth. This position, the critics have said, is extreme and outrageous. I certainly agree with those characterizations. But hasn't anybody noticed that the position Clark announced is the position of all of his Democratic rivals and of the party he now calls home? If his position is extreme and outrageous, so is theirs. Clark has now "clarified" his views. The latest formulation is that he supports a woman's right to choose abortion before viability, and supports her...

The Center for Reproductive Rights says that it has suffered “irreparable harm” because of a leak. The organization is a leader among American legal activists committed to the right to abortion. Somehow, several internal memoranda about the group’s future direction made their way to an organization on the other side of the debate: The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. The memos have caused some political embarrassment to the center—and may cause more damage to it still now that an attempt to quash the memos has failed. The memos may also raise the political stakes in an emerging debate about...

Federalism and the Right. In several recent debates, various conservatives have been accused of betraying their professed commitment to federalism. The accusations have sometimes come from liberals, but more often from libertarians and other conservatives. It's no use replying to the liberals that they are no respecters of federalism themselves; since federalism is not part of their political creed, violations of it are not betrayals of principle. But many libertarians say they believe in federalism too. So it has been possible for the conservatives in the dock to accuse the libertarians of hypocrisy right back. If the accusers were right...

The campaign-finance decision is yet more proof that the "conservative Rehnquist Court" that has occasioned so much scholarly and political debate does not actually exist. What we have is, at best, a centrist O'Connor Court. The decision also demonstrates a weakness in the conservative response to that Court. One sometimes runs across conservatives who are hostile in principle to judicial review and want to abolish it. I'm not one of them, although I definitely understand the impulse. I do, however, want to strengthen constitutional checks on the power of the federal judiciary. For example, I'd like to see Congress exercise...

Last week President Bush repealed the tariffs on steel imports that his administration put in place two years ago. Democratic candidate for President Howard Dean called the move, "another example of this administration playing politics with people’s lives." Several of the other Democratic candidates also strongly criticized the repeal and predicted negative economic and social effects. Some conservatives like Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) also registered their concern. In our July/August 1998 issue, Ramesh Ponnuru deflates Pat Buchanan’s arguments in favor of such protectionist policies. The Holes in Buchananomics It’s not Pat Buchanan’s fault his new book, The Great Betrayal: How...

No conservative can be happy about giving at least $400 billion in additional taxpayer funding to an entitlement program. Many conservatives would have been willing to go along with the expansion of Medicare if they thought that the program would simultaneously be reformed in a major way. Most conservatives outside Congress don't believe that the current Medicare bill offers nearly enough reform. Accordingly, it is being opposed by the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and other conservative organizations. A few brave Republican congressmen, notably Reps. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania...

Not for the first time, one has to give the White House political team some credit: They have split Ted Kennedy from the AARP, and the resulting Democratic backbiting has been very helpful to Republicans. But Republicans had better remember that the split is likely to be temporary. Earlier today, Speaker of the House Denny Hastert issued a press release defending the AARP from the attacks of various Democrats. He said, "I have had years of discussions with the AARP and respect their opinions. I can say that AARP has always been steadfast with one goal in mind — to...

It looks increasingly as though the effect of Wesley Clark's campaign will be to waste the Democratic party's time. His entry was exciting, and his first name — "General" — pushed him to the top of the polls. But his entry may also have been his peak. The excitement was bound to fade as he became another candidate. And the longer he has campaigned, the more his flaws have become apparent. If in two months' time it is obvious that Clark isn't going anywhere, what will have been the effect of his candidacy? The main effect, it seems to me,...

OUTRAGEOUS CHENEY QUOTE [Ramesh Ponnuru] My eyes just about popped out of my head when I read this passage from a front-page story in the Washington Post today: "Cheney was less forthcoming when asked about Saudi Arabia's ties to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 hijackers. 'I don't want to speculate,' he said, adding that Sept. 11 is 'over with now, it's done, it's history and we can put it behind us.'" I was going to write an attack on Cheney for Corner readers, but I figured I should check the transcript of Cheney's remarks to make sure he...

During the August recess, congressional Republicans heard plenty from constituents about the prescription-drug bill — all of it bad. Liberals and the AARP have ginned up opposition to the bill as too stingy. Conservatives say it costs too much. And everyone worries that the bill will give many seniors worse coverage than they already have. The administration has long recognized this last point, but argued that under current trends people were going to lose their drug coverage anyway. But this response never made much political sense. Put yourself in the place of a congressman. Your constituents are going to lose...

During the August recess, congressional Republicans heard plenty from constituents about the prescription-drug bill — all of it bad. Liberals and the AARP have ginned up opposition to the bill as too stingy. Conservatives say it costs too much. And everyone worries that the bill will give many seniors worse coverage than they already have. The administration has long recognized this last point, but argued that under current trends people were going to lose their drug coverage anyway. But this response never made much political sense. Put yourself in the place of a congressman. Your constituents are going to lose...

To people who are not interested in the above topics, or in the history of the Catholic Church: This is a long post, and you may want to skip it. Andrew Sullivan recently wrote two items about the Catholic church’s historical record on slavery on his site. He suggests (in a post that seems to be unlinkable, but is on the page he has up now) that the Vatican weighed in on the pro-slavery side of the American debate even after the Civil War. He quotes an 1866 statement by the Vatican: “Slavery itself. . . is not at all...

The Republicans' latest gambit in the judicial confirmation battles — accusing the Democrats of applying anti-Catholic litmus tests — has been politically productive, but also provocative. It has been criticized by such Democratic senators as Richard Durbin, by the liberal journalist Richard Cohen, and, closer to home, by my colleague Byron York, writing on NRO. York is the best conservative journalist on the judicial-confirmation beat. Actually, the "conservative" modifier in that sentence may be superfluous. It is no exaggeration to say that Republicans on the Hill and in the Bush administration have relied on York's reporting to know what's going...