Free Republic

Dearly as I esteem Ross Douthat, I thought his blogpost today on the press and Sarah Palin did not hit the nail on the head. Ross: "No politician, from Bush to Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi, is hated so intensely by so many Americans [as Sarah Palin]. And this is what’s so problematic, to my mind, about much of the Palin coverage: The media often acts as though they’re covering her because her conservative fan base is so large (hence the endless talk about her 2012 prospects), when they’re really covering her because so many liberals are eager to hear...

Perhaps anticipating that the media would begin ripping Sarah Palin’s interview with Sean Hannity earlier tonight underestimated the speed of the news cycle. Less than an hour later and a network away, Palin’s fellow conservative David Frum responded to her comments with a good-natured plea for her to just “stop talking now.” On MSNBC’s The Last Word, Lawrence O’Donnell noted that he would have wanted to hear Palin explain the difficulty of finding an appropriate timing to respond to the attacks on her, introducing the review of her performance on Hannity without deeply analyzing any particular part of it. Frum...

Democrats insisted on the most liberal bill they could pass. In Washington, political defeats always produce finger-pointing, so the conventional wisdom has suddenly turned on a dime and decided that Republicans were wrong to have opposed ObamaCare. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was especially taken yesterday with blogger and Bush speechwriter David Frum's argument that if only Republicans had negotiated with Democrats, they could have somehow made the bill less awful than it is. Mr. Frum now makes his living as the media's go-to basher of fellow Republicans, which is a stock Beltway role. But he's peddling bad revisionist...

I have to say I got a big chuckle out of Romney’s healthcare chapter. Two years ago, I published a book on conservative reform that urged conservatives to pay more attention to the social costs of obesity. Those lines prompted National Review’s book reviewer to ceremonially drum me out of the conservative movement. Two years later, the candidate endorsed by National Review in 2008 has this to say: “One of the biggest behavioral contributors to sickness and death is our big waistlines, and the cascading negative health impact of that excess weight.” (191) Romney then proceeds through a very well-informed...

President Obama seems full of double talk these days, all smoke and mirrors, as Angelina Jolie reportedly has described him. (I’m loathe to borrow words from a celebrity but it is a spot on assessment.) Listening to the president’s comments lately, one would think the Republicans were in the governing majority over the past year and it was their fault the president couldn’t push through his costly, government expansion agenda. This is of course despite the reality that last year, the Democrats had solid majorities in both the House and Senate. Now that Obama is not delivering on his promises...

David Frum responds to Jennifer Rubin's article in Commentary titled "Why Jews Hate Palin." First off, Frum is right that the poll that Rubin cites doesn't really prove her case because 37% approval from Jews is actually very good . . . Frum then goes on to assert: Palin excites intense support among a core group of conservative Republicans....She polls poorly...among independents. I'll give Frum credit for changing what he considers Palin's core group of support from "social conservatives" to the broader group of "conservative Republicans." After all, with some recent polling showing Palin to hold a robust 79% favorable...

When Glenn Beck made his Fox debut, some shrewd conservatives responded with a wink. Maybe the show was paranoid and hysterical. Maybe Beck was none too scrupulous about facts and truth. But why be squeamish? The other side did as bad, or nearly. And see how usefully he mobilized the base! Those shrewd conservatives assumed Beck was working for them. Big mistake. Beck is working for himself – and he chooses his targets according to his own scheme of priorities.... Glenn Beck is not the first to make a pleasant living for himself by reckless defamation. We have seen his...