Free Republic

When the proceeds of growth are not widely shared, the consensus in favor of pro-growth measures cracks. A decade and a half ago, I filled my days writing speeches urging Congress to grant President George W. Bush fast-track trade authority. If memory serves, I wrote more speeches on that one subject than on any other. Obviously, I didn’t earn my pay: Despite Republican majorities in both Houses, Congress balked. This past year, President Obama has worked as hard for fast-track authority as President Bush ever did. It now seems that his efforts will prove as unavailing. This time, if anything,...

Annd it came to pass that the earth turned and another campaign season spun into view and the liberal commentariat rose from its siesta to begin its usual moping about the perverse political powers wielded by the Fox News Channel. This time, the sentinel waking the commentariat to the alleged Fox menace is not a liberal but a self-described conservative, Bruce Bartlett. Bartlett, a prolific writer on politics and economics who has worked for congressional Republicans (Ron Paul and Jack Kemp), Republican presidents, (Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush) and conservative and libertarian policy shops, broke with his party a...

Following a brief feint in which the White House masterfully exploited the servility of congressional Republicans to create the impression that Barack Obama was still firmly in command of the country’s destiny, the revolt of liberal lawmakers over a proposed free trade has made it clear that the president is very much a lame duck. The internecine fight among Democrats over the Trans-Pacific Partnership has elevated Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to the status as chief liberal opponent of a Democratic White House. “The government doesn’t want you to read this massive new trade agreement. It’s top secret,” Warren said...

President Obama’s executive action last week is only an interim step. More amnesty is coming, much more. It must. More amnesty is coming, first, because the president’s action creates an unsustainable status quo. Millions of people are about to obtain work permits and Social Security numbers—but not (or so the president says) any right to health coverage or other social benefits. What happens if they get sick? What if they lose their jobs? Suffer a debilitating injury at work? According to Obama, these people are “as American as Sasha and Malia” except for the small technical complication of lacking “the...

DAVID FRUM, The Atlantic September 28, 2014If there has been one consistent theme to the Obama administration’s foreign policy, it has been the yearning for some kind of deal with the ruling Iranian regime. President Obama reportedly sent a sequence of messages to Iran’s supreme ruler, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the early months of 2009. The U.S. president held his tongue during the first 10 days of violently repressed protests against the falsified Iranian presidential election of 2009. Obama resisted the tough Kirk-Menendez sanctions against Iran’s central bank until the Senate approved them on a vote of 100-0. When...

What’s that, Daily Beast? “How Ted Cruz Can Win in 2016″? Oh, you are still around, and still doing this sort of thing? That’s great. Let’s take the bait, I guess. Our dutiful “hot take” artist today is David Frum, the famous apostate Republican who has dedicated the last few years to building a new Republican Party that is more moderate, more rational and less dedicated to taking dead-ender stands on cultural issues. He is not, in other words, the sort of Republican Ted Cruz appeals to. Frum has devoted more words to Cruz’s savvy than to his worldview, but...

Via RCP. Wait, wait, wait — before you start shaking your first at him, isn’t his point here oddly simpatico with what tea partiers say every day about Beltway squishes like King himself? It all depends on what benchmark you use to define “Republican.” The Republican establishment of the past 10 years has been fiercely interventionist, willing to bend on civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism, and happy to back new entitlement programs like Medicare Part D so long as their guy’s in the White House. Rand Paul, by contrast, tilts towards isolationism, wants to sue the NSA...

As Americans ran from gunfire at the Navy Yard in Washington DC, commentator David Frum took to Twitter to talk gun control and suggest that gun control opponents were to blame for the shooting:

Paul needled him last night on Hannity’s show for taking a “gimme, gimme, gimme” attitude towards federal spending on Sandy relief. Here’s Christie needling him back by accusing Paul and his home state of Kentucky of being a couple of deadbeats: “I find it interesting that Sen. Paul is accusing us of having a ‘gimme, gimme, gimme’ attitude towards federal spending when in fact New Jersey is a donor state and we get 61 cents back on every dollar we send to Washington,” Christie said. “And interestingly, Kentucky gets $1.51 on every dollar they send to Washington. So if Sen....

TWENTY YEARS ago the leaders of Europe agreed on a bold step: a new currency called the euro. They promised that the euro would improve life for everybody—and denounced all opposition as ignorant, xenophobic, and backward. Their words gained extra plausibility because many of the opponents of the euro really were ignorant, xenophobic, and backward. Yet the backward critics were right, and the enlightened proponents were wrong. And so it is with the immigration debate in the United States. Nothing unifies the American elite like immigration. From Barack Obama to Paul Ryan, from the editorial board of The New York...

The most arresting idea in Adam Winkler's impressively learned study of US gun law, Gunfight, is the suggestion that contemporary American gun culture was more or less invented by the Black Panthers. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the party founders, had studied law and discovered California allowed the carrying in public of loaded rifles and shotguns, provided that the guns were not pointed at anyone. They seized on this law to stage theatrical confrontations with an Oakland police force they deemed hostile and oppressive - and then, most dramatically, in May 1967, to walk armed into the chamber of the...

I have my problems with Jeb Bush, but this passage of his speech at CPAC is not one of them. "It is not a validation of our conservative principles if we can only point to the increasingly rare individual who overcomes adversity and succeeds in America," Bush said. "Here’s reality: if you’re fortunate enough to count yourself among the privileged, much of the rest of the nation is drowning. "In our country today, if you’re born poor, if your parents didn’t go to college, if you don’t know your father, if English isn’t spoken at home, then the odds are...

As we all know, CNN Contributor and Daily Beast columnist David Frum is really nothing more than a mercenary opportunist, and one who's increasingly desperate for attention. But who knew he was willing to go this far after the news was released of a shooting massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, CT: davidfrum@davidfrum Shooting at CT elementary school. Obviously, we need to lower the age limit for concealed carry so toddlers can defend themselves. 14 Dec 12 Reply Retweet Favorite - Later in the day, Frum used the pages of the Daily Beast to "explain" his tweet and to...

David Frum blames the media for Mitt Romney's loss. Not the liberal media, of course--we are talking David Frum, after all. No, Frum blames the conservative media, or as he calls it, "the conservative entertainment complex." Frum touted his upside-down take on the media during a Morning Joe appearance today while promoting his instant e-book, "Why Romney Lost." Joe Scarborough liked the line so much he asked Frum to repeat it. Frum refused to name names, saying he does so in his book, but there's little doubt whom he was targeting. View the video here.

Welcome to 21st century America, where everybody is a victim. Once upon a time, victim status was the reserved property of a few minority groups. No longer! Americans have opened the doors of self-pity to all. White or black, rich or poor, straight or gay, male or female: all believe themselves uniquely persecuted and oppressed. This July, a humble fried chicken sandwich became the symbol of two competing persecution narratives: gays vs. Christians. The sandwich is made by Chick-Fil-A, a 1,600-store restaurant franchise owned by the billionaire Cathy family of Atlanta, Georgia. The Cathy family have generously supported Christian causes:...

After tonight, Newt Gingrich has to be considered finished. You don't get to be the nominee if you don't win primaries, and if Gingrich can't win Alabama and Mississippi, it's hard to imagine any other state in the country where he can win. While Gingrich may remain some kind of factor, in almost every remaining state, this race devolves to a Romney-Santorum battle. That's great news for Santorum, who has been hoping and yearning for a two-man race. It's acceptable news for Romney, who knows that party donors and insiders dread a Santorum candidacy as likely to lead to a...

Mike Huckabee is expanding his media reach to a radio program scheduled to start airing in April. However, the show is scheduled to be in direct competition with none other than Rush Limbaugh. In a column for The Daily Beast today, David Frum thinks Huckabee’s new show might end up hurting Limbaugh’s numbers, and gave some insight into the reasons surrounding decisions by advertisers to leave Limbaugh’s program. Last month, Huckabee announced he would be doing the radio show for Cumulus Media Networks, while continuing to work the weekend shift on his Fox News show, Huckabee. His show has been...

Ace of Spades already skewered David Frum over his disgusting attacks on Andrew Breitbart after we all learned Andrew had died. The little puke followed up that attack with another snide comment on Twitter. davidfrum @davidfrum An actual giant of conservative thought, James Q. Wilson, has died today. bo.st/zONXFv Appreciation TK at DailyBeast site 2 Mar 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite He can’t help himself. You can almost see the jealousy dripping from his keyboard. Apparently, Frum is trying to stake out a position as the Republican who gets called on by CNN to criticize Republicans. You know, like Meghan McCain but with...

I wish I could offer up a better retort to this pathetic sh**bag ( Ace does it better than I ever could) but all I have to offer is this — piss off and die. Via Daily Beat/David Frum: “Of the dead, speak nothing but what is good.” It’s an ancient rule and a wise one, but one that does not do justice to the life and career of Andrew Breitbart, dead today aged 43. It is impossible to speak nothing of a man who traced such a spectacular course through the contemporary media. But to speak only “good” of...

Bravo for Ann Coulter. That's not a sentence you might expect to read in this space, and I'm sure my endorsement will please nobody less than Ann herself. That said: bravo.