Free Republic

MIAMI - Sen. John McCain won a breakthrough triumph in the Florida Republican primary Tuesday night, edging past former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and seizing precious campaign momentum for next week's string of contests across 21 states. "It shows one thing: I'm the conservative leader who can unite the party," the Arizona senator said in a brief interview with The Associated Press. "It's a very significant boost, but I think we've got a tough week ahead and a lot of states to come." The victory was worth 57 national convention delegates for McCain, a winner-take-all's haul and the largest single...

You can thank me (or throw eggs at me), not the miscounting in Florida, for Al Gore not being the president of the United States. You see, Tennessee did not vote for its favorite son in 2000. I was a voter in Tennessee in 2000. Had Gore been able to carry the state that knew him best, there would have been no need for recounts in Florida. Throughout the three weeks of recounting, the media descended upon Florida. No one came to Tennessee to ask us why we had not voted for our own former U.S. Senator. We did not...

Former U.S./U.N. ambassador John Bolton returned to U.N. headquarters in NYC on Friday to launch his new book "Surrender Is Not An Option" (Threshold Editions- Simon & Schuster - 486 pgs.) The controversial U.S. diplomat quit his U.N. post in November 2006 when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee stalled a vote on his nomination. For the preceding 18 mos. Bolton served as UN ambassador under a temporary Congressional recess appointment that was to expire on January 1, 2007. With a Democratic Congress taking office and a rejected nomination likely, Bolton asked President Bush to withdraw his name rather than face...

The most unsettling danger is that post-election combat by party warlords will become a permanent part of the political process. Curtis Gans, the director of the committee for the Study of the American Electorate, expects between 118 million and 121 million Americans to vote next week, up sharply from the 105 million who voted in 2000. The larger figure would represent a turnout of 60 percent of eligible voters, the highest since 1968, and is just one indicator of the passions aroused by this campaign. But regardless of turnout and your preferred candidate, we all ought to hope for this...