Free Republic

With their boycott of games earlier this week to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, athletes in the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball have crossed a bridge that they may find difficult to return from. Though professional athletes have become increasingly politicized since former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began his “Star Spangled Banner” protests in 2016, the widespread cancellation of games, including NBA playoff contests, is unprecedented. The walkout in support of Blake, who was wanted on a sexual-assault charge and whose own girlfriend called the cops on him, hardly represents the...

Shortly after Barack Obama won reelection in November, New Jersey governor Chris Christie pointed out that Republicans’ cloudy political prospects had a bright silver lining. “One of the reasons you have 30 Republican governors in America, and why we’re the only organization to add Republican strength,” Christie said, “is because people see us getting things done.” Christie’s stance countered most of the elite postelection commentary, which gleefully pronounced the Republican Party’s political irrelevance. But the governor was right. Since Obama first took office in 2008, Republicans have picked up a net nine governorships, bringing their total to 30 states,...

Everyone knows the potent force of the Christian right in American politics. But since the mid-1990s, an increasingly influential religious movement has arisen on the left, mostly escaping the national press's notice. This new religious left does not expend its political energies on the cultural concerns that primarily motivate conservative evangelicals. Instead, working mostly at the state and local level, and often in lockstep with unions, its ministers, priests, rabbis, and laity exert a major, sometimes decisive, influence in campaigns to enforce a "living wage," to help unions organize, and to block the expansion of nonunionized businesses like Wal-Mart. The...

Everyone knows the potent force of the Christian right in American politics. But since the mid-1990s, an increasingly influential religious movement has arisen on the left, mostly escaping the national press's notice. This new religious left does not expend its political energies on the cultural concerns that primarily motivate conservative evangelicals. Instead, working mostly at the state and local level, and often in lockstep with unions, its ministers, priests, rabbis, and laity exert a major, sometimes decisive, influence in campaigns to enforce a "living wage," to help unions organize, and to block the expansion of nonunionized businesses like Wal-Mart. The...

Yes, Rudy Giuliani Is a Conservative Steven Malanga And an electable one, at that. Not since Teddy Roosevelt took on Tammany Hall a century ago has a New York politician closely linked to urban reform looked like presidential timber. But today ex–New York mayor Rudy Giuliani sits at or near the top of virtually every poll of potential 2008 presidential candidates. Already, Giuliani’s popularity has set off a “stop Rudy” movement among cultural conservatives, who object to his three marriages and his support for abortion rights, gay unions, and curbs on gun ownership. Some social conservatives even dismiss his achievement...

Black Republicans are making a run for a number of big elections this year. In Maryland, Michael Steele wants retiring Democrat Paul Sarbanes' Senate seat. Keith Butler is also running for Senate, from Michigan. Lynn Swann, the former Pittsburgh Steelers star, wants to be governor of the Keystone State. Randy Daniels would like to be governor of New York. And gunning for governor in a key presidential electoral state there is the great black hope for the Republican Party, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. The "great black hope" is probably the last phrase Blackwell would use to describe himself...