Free Republic

BY EDWARD LUCEA & KRISHNA GUHA Nationalisation, long regarded in Washington as a folly of Europeans, is gaining rapid ground among US opinion-formers. Stranger still, many of those talking about federal ownership of banks are Republicans. Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator for North Carolina, said that many of his colleagues, including John McCain, the defeated presidential candidate, agreed with his view that nationalisation of some banks should be “on the table”. Mr Graham said that people across the US accepted his argument that it was untenable to keep throwing good money after bad into institutions such as Citigroup and Bank...

The Democrat-led Senate Finance Committee is going through the pretense of a markup on their version of the $1.1 trillion sham stimulus bill passed by the House on Wednesday evening. Props to every single House Republican who -- to the last man and woman -- stood against socialism in voting against the mother of all spending bills. Now the bill’s fate rests in the hands of the RINO-infested Senate, where hopes of Republican unity in defense of the country from this socialist onslaught is a lot less likely. The usual suspects include Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, the RINO...

President-elect Barack Obama’s outreach to Republicans may be generating goodwill on the other side of the aisle, but the honeymoon is likely to be short-lived. There’s just too much distance between Obama and congressional Republicans on too many key economic, social and foreign policy issues. There are, however, some Republicans who stand to have a less adversarial relationship with the new administration. Either their past history or present statements put them at the top of the list of GOP members who are expected to work closely with the White House, even if it means bucking their own party. Here is...