Free Republic

RUSH: Another interesting story here from Real Clear Politics: “Political Campaigning May Be Mostly Pointless.” What do you think this story is? Snerdley, you’re highly tuned to this kind of stuff. If you see that headline, “Political Campaigning May Be Mostly Pointless,” what’s this story about? It is about the fact that Hillary Clinton spent more money than anybody spent in the campaign and it didn’t get her a single vote, that Donald Trump didn’t spend a dime, and he won. And so, again, this is the political establishment being flipped upside down. Money has always equaled victory. Whoever had...

The Associated Press, PolitiFact, CNN, Snopes and all of the other "fact-checkers" should be busy this weekend and well into next week vetting the howlers contained in Rebecca Traister's New York Magazine Friday afternoon interview of a politician who has been in the public eye for decades. But it's a virtual lock that they won't bother, because the person Traister interviewed was Hillary Clinton. Mrs. Clinton's montage of mendacity is virtually guaranteed to escape the scrutiny of "fact-checkers" because, as I noted at NewsBusters in mid-April, they "overwhelmingly select facts presented by Republican and conservative politicians and pundits, while ignoring similar howlers generated by...

On Tuesday night, the leftish PBS documentary series Frontline aired a documentary titled “Bannon’s War” which seemed awfully reminscent of their anti-Cheney documentary suggestively titled “The Dark Side.” If you’re not a liberal PBS fanatic, it was another boring and predictable slog, attacking Bannon and Trump with lots of black and white photos and scary-sounding orchestral music. It was more eye-opening to see the Frontline director and writer Michael Kirk appearing on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal to promote his anti-Bannon film on Tuesday morning, where made a flat-out false statement about Bannon’s resume, saying “He’d never been in the military.” What?...

On the left, there is obsessive talk of impeaching Donald Trump. Despite the fact that the press reports which supposedly form the foundation of such talk are almost always based on anonymous sources, and despite the fact that the Trump administration has successfully refuted most if not all of them, the obsession continues. On his Wednesday night show, after successfully swatting away pathetic pro-impeachment arguments made by guest Krystal Ball and her citations of weak-kneed Republicans who can't seem to resist bending with the Beltway wind, Tucker Carlson got fed up. The segment (posted in full here) opened with a...

After spending months trying to get Trump voters to express regret for their support of the President, on Thursday, NBC News political analyst Nicolle Wallace took to the Today show to eagerly announce that she finally found a regretful supporter. He turned out to a liberal millennial who backed Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary before voting for Donald Trump in the general election.          Wallace led off the segment by reminding viewers of her crusade to understand Trump voters: “So we began this journey five months ago with the goal of meeting and listening to the people...

During Wednesday’s White House briefing, NBC reporter Hallie Jackson asked if President Trump was “expending too much political capital on a race that Republicans should be winning easily,” referring to Georgia’s special congressional election. In response, Press Secretary Sean Spicer blasted the absurd liberal media narrative that it was a “symbolic” or “emotional” victory for Democrats despite their candidate falling short. "“I thought that some of the coverage was a little intriguing as I watched it....Democrats went all in on this race. They spent over $8.3 million. They said on the record that their goal was to win this race....

On Thursday, the U.S. military dropped a MOAB (Mother Of All Bombs) on an ISIS tunnel complex in Nangahar Province in Afghanistan. Shortly after that, USA Today posted a breathtakingly ignorant graphic purporting to show that the MOAB contained over 70 percent of the destructive force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. This epic fail occurred even though the following comparison was known early on: The MOAB has the force of 11 tons of TNT. For comparison, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 had the force of 15 thousand tons of TNT. The destructive force of the...

In a ridiculous discussion that sounded as though it belonged in a forum of a left-wing website, the panel on Sunday’s Meet the Press bemoaned how the country’s attitude towards women cost Hillary Clinton the White House. Moderator Chuck Todd read from the recent NYT column of Nicholas Kristof, who described Clinton’s idea of Trump voters as “I don’t agree with him, I’m not sure I really approve of him, but he looks like somebody who’s been president before.” Paraphrasing Clinton, Todd suggested that “she believed misogyny played a much larger role in this than it’s been analyzed by many...

The wagon-circling campaign to protect Obama administration and intelligence community officials who surveilled Donald Trump and his transition team during his presidential campaign and post-victory transition is moving into hyperdrive. On Monday, CNN's Don Lemon proclaimed that "there is no evidence whatsoever" supporting Donald Trump's claim about having been "spied on illegally" (note the inclusion of the word "illegally," which is crucial), and declared that he would not "aid and abet the people who are trying to misinform you." Lemon's stridency as he delivered his rant on CNN Tonight appeared to betray "he protests too much" behavior, while subsequent events...

He's done it before, but he quadrupled down this time. CNN's serial plagiarist Fareed Zakaria, who insists that former President Barack Obama's administration was "largely scandal-free," contended on Don Lemon's CNN Tonight show Friday evening that Donald Trump owes his whole life, his success and his election to the presidency to "bullsh*tting." As Matthew Balan at NewsBusters observed in early August, Zakaria described Trump as a "bullsh*t artist," and went to the left's favorite characterization of anyone they disagree with or don't like: CNN's Fareed Zakaria ripped Donald Trump with an uncensored expletive on Monday's Wolf program over the billionaire's...

MSNBC’s resident Hillary Clinton super-fan, Andrea Mitchell, came across as particularly desperate Wednesday as she dedicated a segment of Andrea Mitchell Reports to dreaming of a possible recount in three key swing states. “Some Clinton supporters are trying to mount a campaign to ask for an audit in key states to see if a recount should be ordered,” she reported, “According to a group of election lawyers and computer scientists… there is quote, ‘Persuasive evidence that election results in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan may have been manipulated or hacked.’” The report Mitchell was staking her hopes and dreams on was...

Following the recent discovery of e-mails, possibly pertinent to the Hillary Clinton private server investigation on a device belonging to Anthony Weiner, FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress Friday to inform them. Beyond the waves that the letter created, it appears to have left NBC’s reporter and Clinton super-fan Andrea Mitchell absolutely distraught over when this means for her candidates’ campaign. “This is just the worst possible situation for the FBI, for the country, for Hillary Clinton certainly,” Mitchell exclaimed during Meet the Press on Sunday. Mitchell praised Clinton for going “nuclear” on the FBI director as...

Tax dodger and riot starter Al Sharpton had a bone to pick with GOP nominee Donald Trump, on his MSNBC Sunday show Politics Nation, for playing coy with accepting the outcome of the election. Sharpton brought on Trump’s Senior Campaign Adviser Boris Epshteyn to browbeat him over the comments saying, “Boris, just how big would Clinton's win have to be for Trump to admit it is, quote, “Not questionable?”” But Epshteyn quickly turned the tables and left Sharpton confused by merely mentioning the explosive new Project Veritas videos. Sharpton was on the attack right out of the gate. The MSNBC host, without...

Following the recent reporting from major news sources about Donald Trump’s alleged sexual assaults against numerous women, he has railed against the media for colluding with Hillary Clinton campaign. In spite of Media Research Center data which shows how lopsided recent coverage of the candidates had been, CNN’s Brian Stelter denied any such effort by the media to sway the election on Reliable Sources Sunday. “This is not just false, it's ludicrous and it's damaging,” he complained. “In Trump's world, journalists are really just Clinton campaign workers in disguise collaborating with her in an attempt to rig the election,” he...

The nation's top liberal newspapers found "beauty" in a New York Times book review comparing Donald Trump to Hitler. The Washington Post has a new opinion article this weekend titled "Donald Trump is a walking, talking example of the tyrannical soul." Post book reviewer Carlos Lozada recently claimed "it is impossible to miss the similarities between Trump and totalitarian figures in American literature — in rhetoric, personal style and even substance."But when authors sound hyperbolic about Hillary Clinton, they are clearly out of control. On page one of Sunday's Washington Post, they promoted Lozada's latest review: "These books will help you hate Hillary...

Over there in the Washington Post there is yet another mainstream media jab at Rush. This time it is Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, freaking out about….Rush Limbaugh specifically and conservative media in general. The header on his Post piece reads: Republicans are paying the price for their addiction to their own media Boot says, in part, this: “This election year is memorable for many reasons but among the most important is showing Republicans the cost of their infatuation with “alternative” news sources. The rise of the conservative alternative media can be traced back...

The entire genre is a fraud, and deserves to be called out as such The worst thing about a presidential campaign year - and Lord knows there are many contenders for that dishonor - may not be the terrible ads or the awful debates. The worst thing in my view is the growing prominence of the media “fact-check” genre of journalism. If you ever engage in online discussions about politics, I’m sure you’ve seen it. Person A makes an assertion about something. Person B responds not by saying anything at all, but by posting a link to a media “fact-check”...

During Monday night's presidential debate, former DNC chairman and 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean tweeted: "Notice Trump sniffing all the time. Coke user?" Even the tabloid site TMZ described Dean's tweet as a "low blow." Unbowed, Dean doubled down at MSNBC on Tuesday, to the point where a clearly uncomfortable Kate Snow tried to maneuver him into backing away a bit. He wouldn't, which is fine with Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post, who told the network's Peter Alexander on Wednesday that "we should probably be talking more about" Dean’s speculation. At the Washington Free Beacon Tuesday afternoon, David Rutz reported that...

Governor Mike Pence appeared on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, where their Presidential Debate Moderator Martha Raddatz relentlessly grilled him about Donald Trump’s involvement in the “Birther movement.” Under pressure, Pence defended himself by reminding Raddatz that members of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign leaned on questions of citizenship to take jabs at then Senator Barack Obama. But Raddatz wasn’t having any of it, “I want to talk about the facts. What's the proof of that?” At first, Pence tried to stick to the issues by noting that the American people don’t care about the birther issue and are not talking...

[snip]At the presidential level, Hillary Clinton’s push for the Democratic nomination was nearly derailed by a candidate whose campaign manager was a comic-book-store owner with no experience in elections outside of Vermont. And while Clinton’s staff-heavy operation ultimately prevailed, her worst showings came in caucuses—the sort of contests where on-the-ground organizing is supposed to make the biggest difference. Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, is a field-organizing specialist. On the Republican side, the most expensive and professional presidential campaigns proved remarkably ineffective. Ted Cruz’s campaign paid almost $6 million to a state-of-the-art analytics firm that touted its slicing and dicing of...