Free Republic

Dear Never Trumpers: The Cruise Is Over How a generation of "conservative" intellectuals finally turned into Democrats A lot has happened since my well known essay "The Collapse of the Never Trumpers" appeared in 2018 — and none of it has been good for that tribe of pundits or their garden gnome leader, Bill Kristol. In fact, most of them have seen their careers collapse so spectacularly that only Michael Avenatti could really understand. George Will has semi-retired to a life of boring students to death as a commencement speaker at small colleges. Jonah Goldberg and Steven Hayes used to...

Donald Trump 69.4% Joe Biden 24.2% Clayton Kershaw 4.8% Anna Netrebko (Met Opera) 1.6% 111,595 votes · Final results

Jonah Goldberg is leaving National Review in the coming months to start a new conservative media company with Steve Hayes, who was editor-in-chief of The Weekly Standard when its owner shut it down in December. Details: Goldberg and Hayes tell me they plan a reporting-driven, Trump-skeptical company that will begin with newsletters as soon as this summer, then add a website in September, and perhaps ultimately a print magazine. •Hayes, the likely CEO, and Goldberg, likely the editor-in-chief, are the founders. •Hayes tells me about the startup, which doesn’t have a name now: "We believe there’s a great appetite on...

Trumpism (if not Trump himself) has given oxygen to some of the ugliest impulses among us. Near the end of his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump laid out his theory of a vast globalist conspiracy. “Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors,” Trump said. “It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a...

After Ted Cruz won every delegate up for grabs at the Colorado Republican convention, Donald Trump began complaining that the process at such conventions is unfair. His claim is that party insiders should not be making these choices, but rather that the power should be vested with the voters. As a consequence, Cruz is “stealing" delegates from Trump, and in so doing defying the will of the voters. Trump's accusations are specious and disingenuous. The process that has been playing out is perfectly legitimate. Trump's real problem is that he is being outhustled by the Cruz campaign. The Republican nomination...

Bill Kristol, founder and editor of The Weekly Standard, tells Newsmax TV he hopes a third-party candidate will emerge if Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are anointed the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees. "I just don't think [Trump] has the character or temperament to be president of the United States ... [and] we're certainly not going to vote for Hillary," Kristol said Friday to J.D. Hayworth on "Newsmax Prime." "There are a lot of fine Republicans and conservatives in the country, some of them are retired generals, some of them are businessmen, some of them are civic leaders, some of...

Trump is a master at sensing and exploiting decay. His showmanship impresses, his bullying intimidates, his bravado seems bracing. But while decadence may explain a demagogue's success, it is no excuse for yielding. We at The Weekly Standard are certainly not immune to its appeal. But at key moments, the votaries of freedom must be able to resist the temptations of decadence. They must gather their forces and fight. For now, that means fighting to deny a "buffoon and opportunist" who makes "idiotic and racist" comments the nomination of the Republican party. Trump has so far won about 38 percent...

In theory, Ted Cruz's best states are behind him. But at the Detroit debate, Cruz was clearly the class of the field and it's clear that no one should count him out as the delegate race moves into its next phase. The delegate math is complicated, but the basic gist goes something like this: Donald Trump has a commanding lead at the moment, but it is not a given that he will reach the 1,237 threshold he needs to clinch a majority. Simply put, Trump has failed to break through the ceiling of support he's held since New Hampshire even...

Russia and Israel seem to have a growing affinity for each other. A few weeks ago, Israel abstained from a vote in the UN censuring Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported [link at URL] that this is a sore spot for the White House and a diplomatic novum on the world scene. A senior Israeli official said that Israel's absence from the United Nations vote was viewed around the world as an extremely irregular measure, a departure from a long-standing Israeli policy of voting with the United States in the UN. While the Americans viewed...

No, Mike Castle Didn't Vote to Impeach President Bush BY Mary Katharine Ham September 14, 2010 2:00 PM As the Republican primary for the Senate seat from Delaware manages to become even more heated than it's been thus far, the newest charge of O'Donnell backers is that Rep. Mike Castle voted to impeach President George W. Bush. Those backers are referring to this vote, taken in June 2008. As you can see from the roll call, fully 24 Republicans voted to impeach President Bush, including conservatives like Pete King of New York and Kevin Brady of Texas. One imagines that...

The sale of The Weekly Standard should put paid to any lingering illusion that the neoconservative empire was anything but a Potemkin Village. Whatever happens from this point on, the news of Rupert Murdoch’s repudiation of his ugliest stepchild is as refreshing a pick-me-up as the morning’s second Bloody Mary I am enjoying, anchored off Spetzai on the Bushido with Chronicles’ incomparably hospitable columnist, Taki. The only thing needed to make my happiness complete would be for the boys of National Review to take the hint and sell out for oh, maybe $2 million. Allegedly, Murdoch sold the magazine for...

Congratulations to The Weak-ly Standard. The "conservative" magazine did a wonderful job promoting Democrat senatorial candidates Jim Webb, Harold Ford Jr., and Jon Tester in it's last two issues immediately preceding Tuesday's election. The Standard wrote a long tribute to Webb, calling him a "blood and soil conservative". Despite Harold Ford Jr.'s very low ACU lifetime congressional voting record of 19, the Standard tried to portray him as being similar to his conservative opponent Bob Corker on the issues. Apparently, the magazine was enamored of the notion of having little Harold in the U.S. Senate. But, most outrageously, the last...

THIS IS A REPOST SINCE 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly declared that the United States is in a new kind of war, one requiring new military forces to hunt down and capture or kill terrorists. In fact, for some years, the Department of Defense has gone to the trouble of selecting and training an array of Special Operations Forces, whose forte is precisely this. One president after another has invested resources to hone lethal "special mission units" for offensive--that is, preemptive--counterterrorism strikes, with the result that these units are the best of their kind in the world....