Free Republic

Gen. George McClellan commanded Union forces during the Civil War. He famously and constantly retreated across the map despite having larger forces than Gen. Robert E. Lee. At one point, meeting with his generals in the White House, Abraham Lincoln commented, "If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time." Ultimately, Abraham Lincoln dismissed him. Gen. McCellan seems alive and well, having returned as the senior consultant to the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill. After Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives in January 2011, they fought a significant...

We always knew that Obama has a glass jaw, that he can’t take a punch. But it’s a little surprising that he’s started staggering around the ring so soon after November, his approval numbers bleeding away, desperately counting the seconds until the bell rings at election time in 2014 to save him from further pummeling. It’s also hilarious. On paper he’s a bruiser. This is a guy who won a knockout reelection bout even though the economy was in the toilet. He hit the GOP with an uppercut over the Fiscal Cliff. He’s got an awestruck media in his corner...

Do you remember what the mainstream media mainly talked about as the country careened toward the fiscal cliff? Did they talk about the harmful economic effects of impending tax increases? Did they talk about which tax increases would be worse than others? Did they talk about the need to get rid of waste in government without causing economic harm? No. None of that. The taking heads and opinion writers focused like a laser on one and only one question: who was going to get the blame if we went over the cliff. Up next will be the debt ceiling deadline...

We have junk food, junk mail and junk bonds. Now, thanks to our dysfunctional and devious Congress, we have junk laws like the “Taxpayer Relief Act.” Junk laws are really nothing new. The people we send to Washington to represent us have been passing legislation larded with pork or special privileges for their friends in business, agriculture and labor since the country was born. Insiders have always known how this cynical bipartisan game is played. But now, thanks to the failure of Congress to deal with the government debt crisis it in large part created, the average American is starting...

WASHINGTON - The latest sign President Obama fears he's headed for defeat came this week when he said he'd seek a "grand bargain" with Republicans to reduce a $16 trillion debt. Over the course of his campaign, Obama has ignored the monstrous debt he's piled up over the past four years in an orgy of unprecedented annual spending increases and budget deficits. Now, with little more than a week left before Election Day, and the presidential race in a dead heat, he suddenly wants a compromise with Republican leaders in Congress to curb spending and borrowing. Well, he's four years...