Free Republic

Winter is coming. And with it, the Republican Party could see a third season of its presidential primary dominated by Donald Trump. The collective wisdom after the Paris terrorist attacks—that voters would gravitate toward a battle-tested, policy-minded candidate with experience to lead in such turbulent times has yet to take hold. In fact, Trump not only continues to top polls, but a new survey of Iowa voters shows he is considered the best candidate to handle terrorism.

For another thing, conservatives will almost surely see this as a betrayal. The administration came up with the idea of sequestration, and it turned out to be only tangible victory Republicans could claim on spending. You might remember the 2010 Pledge to America that promised to roll back government spending to pre-stimulus/bailout levels, cutting at least $100 billion in the first year after taking power. Republicans failed to achieve this improbable goal. And almost every year since, government spending has gone up, though the GOP keeps adding seats by promising to achieve the opposite. So the central question is: how...

Elevating Paul Ryan to the House speakership, where he will be one of the main public faces of the Republican party, suggests that the party’s poobahs and panjandrums still haven’t learned their lesson. Ryan as chairman of Ways and Means worked. Ryan as the de facto leader of the GOP does not, for three reasons: GOP to its own voters: Drop dead. Eric Cantor lost his primary last year because he was out of step with Republican voters on immigration. Speaker-designate Kevin McCarthy was forced to pass on the big chair because he was out of step with Republican voters...

The Healthcare Annex, according to WikiLeaks, “seeks to regulate state schemes for medicines and medical devices. It forces healthcare authorities to give big pharmaceutical companies more information about national decisions on public access to medicine, and grants corporations greater powers to challenge decisions they perceive as harmful to their interests.” Dr. Deborah Gleeson, who gave professional review and analysis to WikiLeaks said, “The purported aim of the Annex is to facilitate ‘high-quality healthcare’ but the Annex does nothing to achieve this. It is clearly intended to cater to the interests of the pharmaceutical industry.” Gleeson added, “Nor does this do...

Turning the insurgents’ own tactics against them, the party used a ‘firehose primary’ of rabid voters to give the congressional nomination to an insider’s insider. Meet the latest exhibit in the Republican elite’s crusade to wrest the party from the sticky fingers of its Tea Party rebels: newly minted Virginia House nominee Barbara Comstock. Last Saturday, state delegate Comstock emerged victorious from her party’s nominating race to represent the 10th Congressional District. Of the six contenders, Comstock enjoyed the highest name recognition and by far the most love from the party establishment. Before her 2009 election to the state legislature,...

Being a former member of the Republican party, I don’t often indulge my occasional desire to offer the GOP messaging advice. But every time I hear Barack Obama say something like this . . . It took time to free the slaves. It took time for women to get the vote. . . . I wish the Republicans would response with an ad that says: “Yes, it took time to free the slaves. Time and a Republican president. One who had the courage of his convictions.” As for women’s suffrage, the debate about the relative timing and importance of enfranchising...