Free Republic

On Sunday night, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) shared one of the worst kept secrets of the Democrats: Hillary Clinton is a drag on the party. In a television interview, the embattled senator unloaded on the former first lady for dissing Donald Trump’s base and dumping on America’s hinterlands. As McCaskill said, “For those of us that are in states that Trump won, we would really appreciate if she would be more careful and show respect to every American voter and not just the ones who voted for her.” Ouch. McCaskill is guilty of nothing but telling the truth. So long...

If you abandon truth, objectivity, and merit, the only path remaining for you to achieve success is the acquisition of leverage. Hillary Clinton, likely around the time she posed for the above picture, committed to a life of acquiring leverage as a means to accomplish whatever goals she’d identified as personal success. The question of whether she ever wanted anything beyond power itself remains open, of course. A more generous reading of her life might identify Hillary’s time as a supposedly passionate young radical -- in thrall with Saul Alinsky -- as evidence that she did indeed once have ideological/ethical...

The Dowager Empress of Chappaqua's doomed campaign begins to creak to a close. Veteran Democrat strategist Doug Schoen has the gory details: There is now more than a theoretical chance that Hillary Clinton may not be the Democratic nominee for president. How could that happen, given that her nomination has been considered a sure thing by virtually everyone in the media and in the party itself? Consider the possibilities. The inevitability behind Mrs. Clinton’s nomination will be in large measure eviscerated if she loses the June 7 California primary to Bernie Sanders. That could well happen...A Sanders win in California...

Until recently, the conventional wisdom among Beltway elites was that Hillary Clinton would waltz, or at least walk unassisted, to the Democratic nomination in 2016. Now that narrative has come under attack, amid mounting evidence that Hillary’s most recent quest for power has already failed.Consider, for example, the embarrassingly sparse crowd at Georgetown University on Wednesday, where Clinton delivered a lecture on “Smart Power: Security Through Inclusive Leadership.” As Hillary Clinton takes stage for policy speech at Georgetown Univ, scores of student seats, balcony are empty. pic.twitter.com/y2DzUprk8E— M. Scott Mahaskey (@smahaskey) December 3, 2014 View from balcony as Hillary...

Everyone loves Hillary Clinton these days. She's got an approval rating way higher than that of Joe Biden or of President Obama, who can barely muster 50 percent on a good day. [cut] Charlene Lamb, deputy assistant secretary for international programs at the State Department's Bureau of Diplomat Security, told a House committee Wednesday that she personally rejected a request for additional diplomatic security in Libya, [cut] During the lively opening round of the vice presidential debate, Biden said the issue of diplomatic security in Libya never reached his desk. "We weren't told they wanted more security. [cut] That's an...

According to proprietary reporting from Ed Klein, Bill Clinton is concerned that Barack Obama is about to throw Hillary Clinton under the bus. On The Kudlow Report, Klein said that President Clinton is reaching out to friends in the legal profession trying to figure out what his wife should do if she’s subpoenaed - called in to testify about events in Libya. Joe Klein went on to say if you listen to the language used by Joe Biden in the debate closely – Bill Clinton's move may be more than simply precautionary.“Biden said something like we were unaware – nobody...

At last night’s debate, Joe Biden said “we weren’t told” that the Benghazi consulate had requested additional security in the days leading up to the attack on the 9/11 anniversary. Today the White House is making sure everybody realizes that by “we,” Biden was referring only to the White House and not the administration as a whole. The ball of blame has been overhead smashed back to Hillary Clinton’s side of the court. “These kinds of issues are handled in the State Department by security officials,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said during Friday’s press briefing. Security matters “are decided...

My guess is no, they wouldn’t dare, but the Daily Caller and Tom Maguire make a fair point. In the span of about 18 hours, we’ve had Biden and Carney each insist that blame for Benghazi’s security failures lies outside the White House. It’s State that’s responsible for protecting U.S. diplomats in the field, which means if the buck doesn’t stop with Obama here, then it must stop with you-know-who. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, as cabinet members are expected to take the heat for the president when something goes badly wrong. But in this case you-know-who has her...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s handling of the Libya attack has opened up a new front in the presidential campaign just weeks before Election Day, as Republicans seize on it to question the president’s performance as commander in chief. The dispute over the episode escalated after Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said during the debate on Thursday night that “we weren’t told” that Americans on the ground wanted security bolstered, despite testimony that requests were made to and turned down by the administration. Mitt Romney’s campaign on Friday accused the vice president of trying “to mislead the American public.”...