Free Republic

Sixty years ago, I first gazed out on the Strait of Hormuz from the Musandam peninsula of Oman. I was there as private secretary to my godfather, Selwyn Lloyd, who had been Britain’s foreign secretary during the Suez Crisis. The previous evening our host, Sultan Said bin Taimur, the ruler of Oman for nearly 40 years, commented gloomily: ‘When two fish are fighting in these waters, the British are behind it.’ I estimate that I must have made at least 250 visits to the Gulf states in the intervening six decades. The key question which would surely now be asked...

More than half of Americans say there’s no chance of them voting for former President Donald Trump to return to the White House in 2024, according to a national poll released Wednesday. With Trump, 77, the clear front-runner in the Republican primary, 53% of Americans told the AP-NORC Center survey they would “definitely not” support him next November – with another 11% saying they would “probably not” pull the lever for the 45th president.That leaves just 36% who say that they would “probably” or “definitely” support Trump in his third consecutive bid for the presidency. But Trump’s high disapproval rating...

During last night's Republican presidential debate, the Wall Street Journal's Gerard Baker made a critical mistake: He tried to pin Donald Trump down on policy specifics. In this case, it was about trade policy, a subject about which Trump evidently knows very little. Baker asked the billionaire "which particular parts" of the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal he objected to. If he were familiar with the deal, Trump could have raised any of several issues. Instead, he continued with the same word salad about China that he has been issuing forth since long before the TPP had been negotiated...

".....The reform-minded Trump of decades past is a far more attractive figure than his current incarnation, at least in the eyes of the pro-legalization advocates of today. “Well, I certainly think he had it right in 1990, and what he said then actually seemed to understand the situation,” David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Daily Beast. “My sense is that looking for consistent philosophy or even policies in Donald Trump’s statements is a pretty fruitless exercise.” Boaz also pointed out that Trump recently voiced his support for medical marijuana, and that when asked about...