Free Republic

I am headed out this week for my 12th presidential campaign, but unlike the first 11, I will not have the company of my favorite traveling companion, Mary McGrory. The great liberal columnist, surely the most elegant newspaper writer Americans have read over the past half-century, has been ill since last March and recently accepted the generous buyout offer given to veteran employees by The Post. Incomprehensible as it seems, she has finished her journalistic career. Traveling the campaign trail with McGrory was an experience like no other. When I had the good fortune to be hired in 1960 by...

November 11, 2003 New York leads the country again, paying $141 per thousand dollars of personal income in state and local taxes. This is 72 per cent more than the national average, according to a new Citizens Budget Commission study. New York has been traditionally liberal — meaning, in practice, that it has been dominated by rapacious pressure groups, each seeking to live off the taxpayer. It illustrates Frédéric Bastiat’s description of government as the system through which everyone attempts to live at the expense of everyone else. Even if your self-respect prevents you from being part of the greedy...

<p>WASHINGTON - The can of worms that Howard Dean opened with his ill-conceived effort to identify himself as "the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks" is not one that can be resealed with the words of regret the former Vermont governor belatedly offered. By inadvertently reopening the deepest wound within the nation, the race issue, Dean hurt himself and did a disservice to his party.</p>

Does America need a recall? Posted: October 13, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc. "Now that the miserable recall experience is over," is how David Broder mordantly began his Washington Post column on the grass-roots uprising that ousted Gov. Gray Davis of California. In calling this populist uprising a "miserable" experience, Broder speaks for an elite that denounced the recall as a "circus" and "chaos." He does not speak for the people. The people loved it. The recall was topic number one on the beaches and at the bars. Arnold Schwarzenegger drew crowds like a presidential candidate...

W's New Deal Favorite excerpt: "The real similarity, Rauch says, is the daring Bush and FDR both displayed -- and the size of the policy and political gambles both were willing to take. I have commented previously on the surprise in seeing how Bush, who campaigned as a nice guy who would calm the roiled waters of Washington but not upset the status quo, has defied the basic assumptions about everything from the role of the federal government in education (making it much more intrusive) to the conduct of foreign policy (making it much less deferential to the views...

Anyone who compared the frequency of their news conferences -- and their fondness for such encounters -- would automatically place George W. Bush and Franklin D. Roosevelt as polar opposites. Where FDR enjoyed sparring with reporters and invited them into the Oval Office twice a week, Bush has made such sessions so rare that each one becomes a special event. But as last week's Rose Garden news conference demonstrated, in one respect Bush and Roosevelt were very much alike. In both of them, self-confidence was overflowing. As a counterpuncher to criticism and as a doubt-free exponent of his own beliefs,...

Let the Senate advise DAVID BRODER: LET THE SENATE ADVISE Bush should consult with Democratic leaders about possible Supreme Court nominees. It would greatly disappoint the warring armies of interest groups in Washington, D.C., salivating for a fight over the next U.S. Supreme Court vacancy. But there is a way out of such a debilitating battle -- with all its ominous implications for the independence and reputation of the judiciary -- if key players at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are willing to show some flexibility. The path around such a knock-down-drag-out fight has been opened by Democratic senators who...

Last year, when Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe was pushing through the presidential primary calendar changes that he hoped would accelerate the choice of the 2004 Democratic nominee, he was asked how many of his party's potential contenders he thought could meet the stiff financial challenge of the front-loaded contest. McAuliffe, to my surprise, said enough Democratic money was around for "five or six -- maybe more" of the contenders to mount full-scale campaigns. Those who accept partial public financing of their campaigns -- and so far, all of the nine declared candidates indicate they will do that --...

Without intending to, Grover Norquist has done the Democrats a huge favor. The president of Americans for Tax Reform and influential presiding officer at a famous weekly strategy session of conservative organizations honored The Washington Post last week with an op-ed article modestly headlined "Step-by-Step Tax Reform." In it, Norquist, who is most noted for pressing candidates at all levels to sign a pledge that they will never raise taxes, hailed the Bush administration for pushing through a fresh tax cut in each of the three years it has been in office. It will continue to do so, he said,...

<p>WASHINGTON-It may be sheer coincidence, but the discipline that has marked the Republican Party under the command of George Bush has broken down repeatedly in the last three weeks-and the president seems unable to restore order.</p> <p>House and Senate GOP leaders sniped at each other over their disagreement on the size of the new Bush tax cuts. Newt Gingrich took a hard shot at Colin Powell's State Department and, in turn, was rebuked by many other conservatives. Sen. Rick Santorum stirred up a bit of controversy with his comments on homosexuality, and there was grumbling from the right flank about the president's push for a global anti-AIDS campaign.</p>