Free Republic

“Remember,” said Ronald Reagan, “we have opponents; we don’t have enemies.” That’s why President Reagan was so successful in gaining the respect and affection of the American people. Even people who did not like his policies liked him. President Obama’s troubles in office stem in no small part from is willingness to treat American opponents as enemies. (He treats America’s true enemies as friends, but that’s another matter.) The readout from Election Day is that Mr. Obama’s Democrats suffered “a massacre.” That word from Britain’s prestigious Economist is being used even as Christians and Muslims in Syria and Iraq are...

Something has gone haywire in the California Democratic Party. It is supposed to be the party that cares about poor families, blue-collar workers and the unemployed – allegedly unlike the Republican Party, which Democrats regularly disparage as being devoted to the wealthy and indifferent to economic suffering. But in Sacramento, the policies pursued by the Democrats who control the Legislature could scarcely be more hostile to what are supposed to be its prime constituencies. Increasingly extreme environmental laws have created a depression in Central Valley farming communities. These laws, high taxes and heavy regulation in general threaten to drive away...