Free Republic

Jason Reitman’s 2018 film, “The Front Runner,” has been playing a lot on cable recently. It’s the dramatization of Sen. Gary Hart’s brief 1988 presidential run, with Hugh Jackman playing the role of Senator Hart. The film is striking for 2020 due to its portrayal of Hart as a policy-focused candidate, someone uninterested in the “frippery” of campaign politics.  Striking, because the 2020 campaign seems to be much-less about the serious contrasts between this season’s “front runners” when it comes to policy than it is about image and style.It was starkly summed up by “The Late Show Host” Stephen Colbert’s post-DNC...

In a quip destined to be one of the most memorable of Thursday night's vice presidential debate, Joe Biden jabbed Paul Ryan for seemingly comparing his political chops to those of the late President John F. Kennedy. Ryan was in the process of arguing that it's possible to cut tax rates while keeping in place tax preferences for middle class Americans and growing the economy — something he said has been done before — when Biden cut him off. "You can cut tax rates by 20% and still preserve these important preferences for middle class taxpayers," said Ryan, who was...

Joe Biden is leading the Democratic field in some early polls asking voters about the party’s prospective presidential candidates in 2020. But in his old stomping grounds in the U.S. Senate, there are plenty of skeptics who point to the former vice president’s age, his support for the Iraq War and his two failed presidential bids as reasons to doubt he would be successful. “It’s hard to see someone [winning] who voted for the Iraq war. People are looking to turn the page,” one senior Democratic aide said. A second senior Democratic aide said “polls show that voters want someone...

In the aftermath of the Democratic National Convention, the party's nominee, Michael S. Dukakis, has expanded his lead among registered voters over Vice President Bush, the probable Republican nominee, according to a Gallup Poll... Fifty-five percent of the 948 registered voters interviewed in the poll said they preferred to see Mr. Dukakis win the 1988 Presidential election, while 38 percent said they preferred to see Mr. Bush win. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points... This represented a shift in Mr. Dukakis's lead from the 47 percent to 41 percent advantage he...

Former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis called Donald Trump "nuts" Friday over his views on immigration, adding that he believes Bernie Sanders should stay in the Democratic primary fight. "I think he's nuts," the 1988 Democratic nominee told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "He's the grandson of German immigrants. He ought to be ashamed of himself." "I'm very proud of my background," said Dukakis, whose parents immigrated from Greece. "This is the guy who's the grandson of somebody who came over from Germany. And I don't know what he's talking about for one thing. It's preposterous." The former Massachusetts governor -- whose...

President George H. W. Bush lost his bid for reelection in 1992. And it hurt. Until now, however, we didn't know how much. But with the special Fox News Reporting - Destiny and Power – The Private Diaries of George Herbert Walker Bush, we take a deep look at the man, actually hearing his own thoughts and feelings through the audio diary he kept while in the White House. It will be the first time this material has been released to the public. You can see this new special Friday, Nov. 6 at 10 p.m. ET on The Fox News...

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s devastating opinions on same-sex marriage and Obamacare, some conservatives are asking themselves: Has America reached the point when we have become like ancient Rome in its final days, all bread and circuses, that we cannot make our way back to the ideas on which we were founded? Do the actual words of the Constitution matter anymore? Should we give up the fight for limited, constitutional government and simply accept that the left has won? Of course not! Conservatives have never been quitters as two of our greatest heroes—Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan—demonstrated when...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry may have forgotten a thing or two about the Al Gore presidential campaign he helped lead in 1988. In an interview with an Iowa radio station on Monday, the Republican presidential contender explained his role as the Gore campaign’s Texas chairman by saying that “this was Al Gore before he invented the Internet and got to be Mr. Global Warming.”

In an interview with an Iowa radio station on Monday, the Republican presidential contender explained his role as the Gore campaign’s Texas chairman by saying that “this was Al Gore before he invented the Internet and got to be Mr. Global Warming.” But in fact, global warming was already a significant theme for Gore in 1987 and 1988 — long before his activism led to several books, a Nobel Prize and a part in an Academy Award-winning film. It was also well before the right gave him the "Mr. Ozone" nickname and talk radio heaped endless mockery on the future...

Making it to the White House will shift prejudices not only in America, but far beyond. Hillary Clinton was on my mind even before word came of the death of Mario Cuomo. The former governor of New York will be remembered by those who have long forgotten, or never knew, his record running that state chiefly for his oratory and his knack for an enduring phrase. Eight minutes spent on YouTube watching his 1984 rebuttal of Ronald Reagan’s depiction of the US as a “shining city on a hill” will not be wasted. It was Cuomo who memorably told us:...

I was only 11, so I was wondering who was the preferred candidate of those of us who were old enough to vote back then. Of course H.W. Bush won the nomination. I remember Bob Dole, Pat Robertson, Peter DuPont, and I think Jack Kemp running. Did Bush have trouble convincing conservatives to vote for him, or did everyone just figure that if he was good enough to be Reagan's Vice President, he was good enough for the nomination?

Actually the Democrats have been race baiting for decades. And it’s not going away. Using fear and race-polarizing agitation to drive minority voters to the polls is going to be the increasingly overt face of the Democratic Party. They can’t win any other way. What’s new is that the mainstream media has suddenly discovered all of this.Through the years, these same news outlets have wasted no time at all in spotting anything that even hints of Republican race baiting. Take the presidential campaign of 1988.Willie Horton was a black murder convict who raped a white woman and stabbed her boyfriend...

Kennedys honor George H.W. Bush's ‘read my lips’ flip-flop with Profile of Courage award The Kennedy foundation is praising George H.W. Bush for risking “his reputation and ultimately his political career by forging an important compromise on the budget in 1990.” Jack Schlossberg, President Kennedy’s grandson and a Yale University student, will present the award to Bush at a ceremony in May. George H.W. Bush’s epic “read my lips: no new taxes” promise cost him a second White House term, but it’s earning him a 2014 Profile in Courage award from the Kennedy clan. Despite his fervent pledge against a...

According to Gallup, Barack Obama is now leading the race for president with his highest share of support to date: According to a Gallup poll published in the NYT, 1988: Fifty-five percent of the 948 registered voters interviewed in the poll said they preferred to see Mr. Dukakis win the 1988 Presidential election, while 38 percent said they preferred to see Mr. Bush win.