Free Republic

Left-wing politicians think voters are stupid. Why do American voters reject big government candidates like John Kerry? Why do European voters reject more power for the socialist bureaucrats in Brussels? The answer, in both cases, is that they are stupid. Or at least that is what left-wingers are convincing themselves according to this article: "Whatever the rights and wrongs of the populist rejection of the EU treaty, the manner in which the 'No' campaign is disparaged by professional politicians betrays a powerful anti-democratic temper. It appears that professional politicians attempt to account for their isolation from the electorate by pointing...

Has anyone noticed the degradation of political activism as reflected in the quality of e-mail forwards? During the election, when this country was in the grip of political passion, the internet hummed with outraged forwards explicating and excoriating the current snakepits and malevolence of public policy. Every citizen in possession of a computer (and that's every citizen! Some citizens have several, one in every color for every mood!) forwarded madly his or her opinions. These forwards, judging by volume and pitch, were not just opinions: they were expressions of the forwarder's innermost soul, as radical in their way as the...

You’d think before liberals started passing judgment on their opponents, they’d at least pull out the old dictionary every once in a while. Instead, the party of ’tolerance,’ ’compassion,’ and ’inclusion’ continues to take childish potshots at President Bush. The latest “I know you are but what am I” Democrat is Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who last week said the following in the Las Vegas Review—Journal about President Bush: “I think this guy is a loser...He’s driving this country into bankruptcy...He’s got us in this intractable war in Iraq where we now have about 1,600 American soldiers dead and...

Duplicity is the name of the game for America’s liberals. It has been standard practice of the Democratic Party for decades to create a problem through poorly conceived and unrealistic legislation, decry and obstruct any attempts by Republicans to fix the problems the Democrats created as “racist,” sexist,” or any of the other myriad of “-ists” they concoct, and then when the problem is not solved, blame the Republicans for doing nothing about it. There is no “vast left wing conspiracy” orchestrating all of this deceit from behind the scenes. No secret bunker under Berkley’s city hall where Hillary Clinton,...

It looks like Teresa Heinz Kerry is rubbing off on her husband. And on Sen. Hillary Clinton. For the Republican Party, this is a very good thing. You'll recall that last month, Mrs. Heinz Kerry put on her shiniest tinfoil hat and blamed the Democrats' loss in November on rigged voting machines. As reported in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Mrs. Heinz Kerry openly questioned the election results and fixated on areas of the country where optical scanners were used to record votes. "Two brothers own 80 percent of the machines used in the United States," Mrs. Heinz Kerry intoned, and it...

Settled jurisprudence was fairly settled against prior restraints on free speech, except for "shouting fire in a crowded theater" immediate causes of grave harm. Then, along came the McCain-Feingold electoral reforms. McCain-Feingold's supposedly greater interest of restricting the role of big money in campaigns allowed legal and donor restrictions on campaigning. The media is exempt from restrictions. Critics of McCain-Feingold called it an incumbent protection act to reduce the resources of challengers. Realists said McCain-Feingold would result in contributions flowing some way anyway. Opponents of McCain-Feingold warned it restricted free speech, and this could increase. If free speech is surrendered...

It seems Republicans have been taking their recent landslide victory for granted both too much and too little. After winning 19 senate seats and reclaiming the presidency by a whopping 3.5 million margin in the largest popular vote in history, Republicans are apparently losing sight of those particular aspects of their social agenda which specifically accounted for this monumental success. Worse: the Democrats have been taking notes. Ironically, after months of incessant weeping and gnashing of teeth, the left may have ultimately learned more from the sobering election results than the GOP even has - so much that they have...

Something occurred to me as a result of leftover November buzz (what happened in November?) about the American youth, that much-hyped group who were meant to have blown this election (oh that) out of the water. One question? Why did this youth vote necessarily ally itself with the challenger – why did that word, “youth,” send shivers down the spine of the incumbent? Why did their slogan, “Vote or Die” necessarily attach itself to the sly “Vote for Change”? Well, so here’s what occurred to me – there’s a disconnect somewhere in this formula, and there is, more importantly and...

Prior to September 11, 2001, Afghanistan’s repressive Taliban regime was known to most of the world only on account of a single controversy involving its decision to destroy two ancient Buddhist statues. Of course reaction to this incident was one of universal outrage, loudly condemned across the political spectrum as an abominable example of religious tyranny. Yet this desire by the Taliban to obliterate all religious symbolism with which it took umbrage has an ominous parallel within the borders of America in the systematic efforts by the ACLU and its ideological supporters to expunge every Christian expression from the public...

The unbelievable news came in on late last week. Some leaders in the Democratic Party, and I use the term loosely as are you a leader when you don't control anything, want Terry McAuliffe to stay on. Let's get this straight. This is the man that has raised money but has been at the helm of the Democratic Party under the biggest string of losses in the Party's history. Therein lies the problem. Americans just don't understand what is good for them. Especially in those fast growing Red States in the South and West, Democrats discuss with other Democrats at...

In 2000, 2002, and again in 2004, “we the people” saw to it that Washington (and the country) would be led by conservatives who represent the ideas and the will of the moral conservative majority in America. The old saying applies for my fellow conservatives, “lead…don’t follow, or get run over!” To the Democratic members of congress I say, most Americans are far more tolerant than those whom they tolerate. Don’t continue to mistake this tolerance as acceptance, or support for immoral un-American behaviors. Nobody is that tolerant, as you can see in your election results. Most Americans are not...

As a Bush re-election later this year looks increasingly likely, some left-wingers worry that Howard Dean is too risky a candidate to put up against a popular President. There is, of course, the obvious comparison to McGovern and the fear that a true believer may inevitably be a sure loser. There is also the worry that Dean may not in fact be so true a believer in the first place: he did support Newt Gingrich's Medicare reforms, after all, and has been a little too cozy with gun rights advocates; might he not betray the Left in order to appeal...

Below is the floor peech of Rep. Ric Keller (R.-Fla.) regarding Electoral Vote count delivered on January 6, 2005. There's a wise saying we've used quite a bit in Florida over the past four years that the other side would do well to learn -- GET OVER IT. Isn't it ironic that the only people who refuse to "move on" are the people from MoveOn.org and their hero Michael Moore? My colleagues across the aisle have two sides to choose from, the John Kerry side that acknowledges the election is over and President Bush has won. Or the Michael Moore...

Friends, This morning, Congressional Democrats return to their obstructionist habits of wasting American taxpayer resources on grandstanding for their Left-Wingnuts. California Senator Barabra Boxer (D) is set to object to the Ohio Electoral Votes, on what basis, nobody knows. But the result will be the futile delay of the confirmation process for Bush's 2nd term, returning the Senate to its chamber for a wasted debate on the subject. Meanwhile, other Democrats prepare their assault on Bush's appointment of Gonzales, intended to replace our nations retiring Attorney General, again, wasting taxpayer resources for partisan political purposes. I started the New Year...

Imagine: After months of prayer and preparation during campaign season, you wake up the day after the election and realize that all your hard work has actually paid off. You participated in the voting process and made a difference! Your candidates won! You played a vital role in our Republic and influenced the outcome of Election 2004! No need to imagine. It’s real. Such is the reality here in Washington, D.C., after the elections last November 2. Not every man and woman who supports the pro-family movement may have won their campaigns, but most of them did. The beauty of...

Back before the November election, many mainstream media pundits - trying desperately to get John Kerry elected -- began to harp on President Bush's unwillingness to stop certain federal gun control laws from expiring as scheduled. But their propaganda efforts came to naught because this issue was a non-starter with the American people. The fact is, in this day of post-911 increased security consciousness, most average Americans simply don't want more gun control. They want more guns on hand to defend themselves and their loved ones in the face of possible life-threatening danger. Soccer moms are now taking handgun proficiency...

Interesting and funny post by someone at redstate.org Nice Wad; Got a Brain to Go With That? By: Thomas Section: Democrats Ladies and gentlemen, I give you George Soros. I give you MoveOn.org. I give you America Coming Together. I give you the Media Fund. I give you Howard Dean's resurrection of Gene McCarthy's campaign, with a thousand well-funded baby soldiers, and the transformation of the modern Democrat campaign. I give you Democrat voters so terribly fired up -- and they mean it!! -- that they'll give 'til it hurts, and vote, and stamp, and stomp, and rally, to toss...

It may have all started with James Carville’s infamous political phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid.” The phrase was not intended to insult the American public. Certainly, they were not stupid. It was the sitting president that was stupid, of course. In his presidency, he had won a war in the Middle East, chased the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, and generally enjoyed overwhelming approval ratings until America began to focus on the economy…because they were told it was bad, bad, bad. Lets see, was it a recession…..or was it a depression? Whatever. Of course, the economy in 1992 was not...

Post mortems in the liberal press on the role that Vietnam veterans played in presidential candidate John Kerry's defeat mask the key role of the liberal press, which tried to suppress the vets' story and is distorting it now. I was there at the creation of a veterans group and all along, and know better. The American people deserve to know better too. In 1971 I organized Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace. John O'Neill enlisted to counter the smears of American servicemen in Vietnam. No one else spoke up for us, so we had to. The mainstream press was...

US Treasury Secretary John Snow said all options remained open for a bipartisan panel that will examine potentially far-reaching reforms to the American tax code. "The president will ask the panel and ask me to give him the very best thinking across the board on how to produce broad-based reform of the tax system. So everything is on the table," Snow said. The panel, which President George W. Bush has yet to appoint, will make its recommendations as soon as possible in 2005, and proposals could go to lawmakers before the end of next year, Snow told the "Fox News...