Free Republic

Nancy Pelosi is going about her business during this post-election period, apparently oblivious to the storm that’s raging among her caucus members. In truth, it isn’t so much that there is much disagreement between radical Democrats and the “moderates.” The problem, as the moderates see it, is “messaging.” The radicals make Democratic proposals sound, well, radical. Centrist Democrats want a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. They prefer to soft-pedal some of the more extreme rhetoric coming from the radicals while embracing the ideas. They don’t want to call it “government-run health care.” They want their...

Was Abraham Lincoln a conservative? Some people say right/left distinctions are no longer meaningful. In my own life I was born into a progressive family and absorbed that way of thinking. When I became older, I have learnt quite painfully how important and valuable maintaining western traditions is, when my own rights were trashed by modern misandry, leading me to create this blog: https://freedom-demokrasi-and-civilised-humanity.com/2017/11/08/freedom-demokrasi-and-civilised-humanity/ Where I write this it is already President Lincoln’s birthday. Who has ever been to Lincoln's birthplace Sinking Spring Farm in Kentucky? Did you learn anything about the man there which came to you from the...

Governor’s races in South and Midwest could be lost if party brand becomes too liberal. Centrist Democrats were wiped out in the 2014 elections and in their absence emerged a resurgent liberal movement, embodied most recently by the surprisingly competitive presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. But the suddenly ascendant left — its populist overtones becoming part of the mainstream Democratic pitch — is worrying Democrats who want to compete on Republican-leaning turf. The party lost every competitive gubernatorial and Senate race in the South last year. And Democrats didn’t fare much better in the heartland. Now, as Bernie...

It used to be common for people to urge us to learn “the lessons of history.” But history gets much less attention these days, and, if there are any lessons that we are offered, they are more likely to be the lessons from current polls or the lessons of political correctness. Even among those who still invoke the lessons of history, some read those lessons very differently than others. Talk-show host Michael Medved, for example, apparently thinks the Republicans need a centrist presidential candidate in 2012. He said, “Most political battles are won by seizing the center.” Moreover, he added:...

<p>A most revealing window into our president’s political core: To impose a tax that actually impoverishes our communal bank account (the U.S. Treasury) is ridiculous. It is nothing but punitive. It benefits no one — not the rich, not the poor, not the government. For Obama, however, it brings fairness, which is priceless.</p>

The year 2012 looms large in the mind of Barack Obama. After two years of decline in the number of those who view his policies, his performance, and his personality favorably, Barack Obama has begun yet another process of reinvention on the road to reelection. Will he succeed in bamboozling voters once again? The policy shifts following the November shellacking the Democrats received from voters are clear. Foremost among these shifts to the center is the tax deal reached with the Republicans. There will be others to come, as renewed attention is devoted to transforming the tax code itself to...

Writing in the March 1 issue of the Pasadena Star News, Tim Kelly, a psychologist and Director of the DePree Public Policy Center at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, calls for President Obama to govern from the political center and avoid the alleged divisive extreme right wing politics of his predecessor, George W. Bush ("Obama must govern from the center to be successful" - see link: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_11813772). But Kelly's call for President Obama to embrace a policy of "principled centrism" not only is historically and politically ignorant, it is dishonest and childish as Jewish thinker Dennis Prager has recently reminded us....

Last week I made the open-and-shut case for John McCain: In a dangerous world entering an era of uncontrolled nuclear proliferation, the choice between the most prepared foreign policy candidate in memory vs. a novice with zero experience and the wobbliest one-world instincts is not a close call. But it's all about economics and kitchen-table issues, we are told. OK. Start with economics. Neither candidate has particularly deep economic knowledge or finely honed economic instincts. Neither has any clear idea exactly what to do in the current financial meltdown. Hell, neither does anyone else, including the best economic minds in...

Roland Arnall certainly never has tried to hide his support for the Republican Party. He personally donated $5 million to help run a pro-Bush ad in 2004 and Ameriquest, a mortgage company Arnall founded, gave $250,000 to President Bush's inaugural in 2005. Arnall and his wife, Dawn, also helped raise more than $200,000 each to secure Bush's re-election. But another donation of Arnall's has received little attention. In 2004, Arnall donated $5 million to help fund the Republican National Convention in New York City. Arnall gave the donation in the name of RoDa Drilling LLC, a company he co-owned...

The Rudy GOP Shifts to the Center By Alan Nathan FrontPageMagazine.com | April 9, 2007 Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani often enjoys poll scores above all presidential rivals from both sides of the political aisle. For many, he inarguably projects the kind of appeal that says to voters, “You matter more than a party’s agenda.” However, that likely centrist advantage in the general election can be kryptonite in the primaries because centrism has so often been antithetical to the ideologues selecting each party’s nominee. But things are changing and Giuliani’s tough stances in defense of moderate positions are...

It is too early to make definitive statements about 2008, but the evidence points to a change in the tone, if not the substance, of the Republican message. Although moderation is in the eye of the beholder and difficult to define, the GOP message and messenger are much more likely than in the recent past to be less beholden to, or a member of, the party's strongly conservative wing. (snip) Since the nomination of Ronald Reagan in 1980, moderates have fared poorly in Republican presidential primaries. The GOP has stood for lower taxes, toughness on defense and opposition to abortion,...

Things are goofy in California. I mean, goofier than usual. Republicans are afraid they've lost influence with the governor, which wouldn't be so strange if the governor wasn't also a Republican. What's even stranger is that -- in a true blue state such as California, where Democrats control the Legislature and most of the top offices in the executive branch -- Republicans haven't figured out most Californians no longer care what they think, and this includes the chief executive from their own party. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn in for a second term on Jan. 5 after coasting to re-election....

Liberalism as a strategy and philosophy is a failure. Progressivism is meeting a similar fate. To continue to govern as a majority in California, the Democrats have had to again redefine their agenda. The easiest path is to redefine centrism leftward. The Governor is coming right along. He used the word "centrist" several times in his inaugural speech today. Unfortunately, it no longer has the same meaning. It wasn't that long ago when Governor Pete Wilson was known as a "moderate" or "centrist" leader. He ran balanced budgets, applied entrepreneurial solutions to the State's problems, rejected extreme environmentalism, funded education...

SACRAMENTO - When he is sworn in for a second term today, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will evangelize for "the party of California" -- a politics that values centrism, compromise and accomplishment over polarization, entrenchment and gridlock. "We must think of ourselves as belonging not just to the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, but to the Party of California," he will say, according to snippets of his prepared text released by aides. "Because California is a collective ideal worth preserving."Saying that neither Democrats nor Republicans have a monopoly on good ideas, Schwarzenegger will stake his claim for the middle-ground between...

Liberal Democratic Party leaders are far more worried about government power than they are about fighting America's enemies, the founder of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council said. In yet another stinging critique of the Democrats' liberal wing, DLC founder and chief executive Al From said his party could lose this year's midterm elections if it continues sending a message to voters that it is weak on national security issues in the war on terrorism. "Despite all that has happened since November 2004, I fear the 2006 national election could turn on whether voters' unease with the Democrats on national security...

The latest imbroglio over the revelation that the government eavesdropped into the international phone calls of U.S. citizens does not set the Moose's antlers on fire. The Administration is going to have to offer a better explanation for why they failed to go to court to get authorization. And we should also have an inquiry into a leak that might have endangered national security. In the aftermath of 9/11, America learned that it was ill-prepared for this new threat. Old laws dealing with new technologies were an anachronism. The "FISA" process, if not the authorization, was often burdensome and slow...

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Thursday decided to name his breakaway centrist political party Kadima, which is Hebrew for "Forward." His strategists said the two other names considered, Hatikva, Hebrew for hope, and the National Responsibility lost out, the Jerusalem Post reported. "Kadima broadcasts positive messages about momentum and moving forward," one Sharon strategist said. "It scored just as well in our focus groups and studies as the National Responsibility Party, but it is much less cumbersome." Sharon also opened an office for the party in Tel Aviv Thursday, and was to meet with 14 members of the Knesset, or...

On two propositions most good-hearted civic-minded people agree: It is good to have centrist politics, and it is good to have high turnout in elections. But what if it should turn out that the two are in fundamental conflict? For that is what political history, here and abroad, suggests. Consider the 2004 election in the United States. George W. Bush, his opponents contended, with some justice, governed as anything but a centrist. Installed in office with a bare majority of the Electoral College, he pushed successfully for massive tax cuts, for conservative positions on cultural issues, for military action not...

Mrs. Clinton's path to moderation represents a triumph of spin over reality. Mrs. Clinton witnessed how her husband was twice elected president as a self-described "new Democrat." Seeking to re-invent her liberal image for 2008, she clearly knows that American voters have repeatedly rejected authentic liberals like herself. She no doubt remembers what happened to Hubert Humphrey in 1968, George McGovern in 1972, Walter Mondale in 1984, Michael Dukakis in 1988 and John Kerry in 2004. So, Mrs. Clinton's political handlers understandably want to soften her hard-earned liberal credentials. Beyond the impeccably liberal record she has established in decades of...

The Democrats' postelection war about what they should stand for is heating up again, with centrists challenging liberals to "real fights" within the party about staking out a tougher position against terrorism. In an attack on the party's dominant left wing, anti-war base, and a warning for new Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean "to do no harm," the centrist-leaning Democratic Leadership Council said it is "a delusion to think that if we just turned out our voters, we could win national elections." Instead, the DLC called on the party to dramatically change its message to "recapture the muscular progressive...