Free Republic

In the wake of the Republican failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act on Friday, leading figures in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party are rallying behind a single-payer health insurance and a raft of other bold reforms. These lawmakers and grassroots leaders have long believed that the problems plaguing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, are rooted in the original health care law’s attempt to accommodate, rather than gradually replace, the private, for-profit health insurance system. Now that efforts to eliminate the law wholesale are effectively dead, they are again arguing that the best way to...

It's a given that Newton liberals have little patience for anyone or anything Republican. If candidates are Republican, they must be stopped. If policies are Republican, they must be stopped. If their neighbor, colleague or parents of their kids' friends are Republican, they must be stopped from entering their liberal safe space. They'll sometimes tolerate Republican politicians if they at least appear to bend over backwards to accommodate Democrats. Charlie Baker can be tolerated, for now, and for as long as the Boston Globe approves of him. But their tolerance will stop at his re-election bid next year when they'll...

And yet Paul Ryan walked straight into the Barzini trap that president Trump set for him. By insisting that the voters desired "Repeal and Replace" when in fact all anybody wanted was "Repeal, full stop," Ryan's inner wonk superseded his duties as the speaker of the House to ensure the votes were there for the "Replace" part of the equation. That they weren't should be the end of his speakership. Apparently, Ryan had been listening to the die-hard never-Trumpers too much, and actually thought he could skate on his opposition to the insurgent outsider, whose entire campaign was based on...

My latest Counter Propa article explains why Democrats are blaming the wrong person for Trump’s attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act. I’ve been told I speak too often about Hillary Clinton. Let it go, they say. It’s over, she lost. Bernie endorsed Clinton. Let’s unite and defeat Trump. There’s only one problem. When people like Claire McCaskill label Bernie Sanders as “too liberal” and “extreme” to be president, don’t complain when a Republican who’s too conservative and extreme becomes president. The only reason Democrats are obsessed with Russian hacking (NSA has only “moderate confidence” in the narrative, by the...

Some of President Trump's supporters expressed a more favorable view of him following a number of recent controversies surrounding his administration, according to an online poll released Thursday. In a handful of cases, while most registered voters expressed a negative view of Trump after the controversies, a plurality of Trump voters felt more favorably toward him, according to the Politico/Morning Consult poll. Nearly 20 percent of respondents said the polled controversies did not change their opinions of the president. Some of the controversies in the poll include the resignation of Trump's first national security adviser Michael Flynn last month, Attorney...

Just over 3 percent of those who backed Donald Trump for president now regret their vote, according to a Mood of the Nation poll from Penn State's McCourtney Institute of Democracy. "Of the 339 poll participants who originally voted for Trump, only 12 (3½ percent) said they would do something different," Michael Berkman, director of the institute and Eric Plutzer, who directed the poll, wrote in The Washington Post. Here are some of the reasons given by those surveyed, according to Berkman and Plutzer: •"I don't like his decisions so far." •"Trump's actions since the inauguration." •"… Trump cannot get...

Rep. Devin Nunes on Wednesday threw a huge wrench into the middle of the investigations surrounding President Donald Trump, his claims of being wiretapped by his predecessor, and Russia's meddling in the election. And he now finds himself in a central role after making Republicans and Democrats alike scratch their heads over what appeared to be an unprecedented move. Nunes, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, called for a sudden 1 p.m. press gathering Wednesday, with its subject unclear. But once it began, he fired off what sounded like a bombshell revelation: The intelligence community, he said, had "incidentally...

“Bring a halt to all business being done in the name of this potential felony suspect, Donald J. Trump.” Filmmaker Michael Moore on Wednesday urged the Democratic Party to declare a national emergency after the FBI said it was investigating whether members of Donald Trump’s campaign team had worked with the Russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. Of course, Moore made his point in a most engaging way on Instagram, using a red light — specifically, that of sentient computer HAL 9000 from “2001: A Space Odyssey” — to call on Democratic leaders to respond with...

PHILADELPHIA — The Democratic Party has a God problem. And over the last couple of decades, as its base became more educated, less religious and more urban, this problem has only grown. Some of this has to do with lower church attendance in cities versus rural areas, and the Democratic Party’s increasing reliance on urban voters. Some of it is the divisiveness of social or cultural issues like abortion and gay marriage. And the divide has seemingly sapped Democrats’ ability to communicate to religious Americans. Especially if those people of faith are white, according to Brad Chism, a longtime and...

President Donald Trump agreed to add fresh Medicaid curbs to the House Republican health care bill Friday, bolstering the measure with support from some conservative lawmakers but leaving its prospects wobbly. House leaders discussed other amendments calibrated to round up votes and scheduled a showdown vote Thursday. “I just want to let the world know I am 100 percent in favor” of the measure, Trump said at the White House after meeting around a dozen House lawmakers and shaking hands on revisions. “We’re going to have a health care plan that’s going to be second to none.” While the rapid-fire...

A pregnant answer at 7:40 below in response to an excellent question by Tucker Carlson: How can a populist president support an ObamaCare bill that would mostly benefit the well-off at the expense of older, blue-collar, rural Americans — the very people who put him over the top against Hillary? Is he even aware that the bill does that? “Oh, I know,” says Trump, before emphasizing that everything’s negotiable. Well … yes, but all of the negotiating that’s been done so far has been designed to please conservatives, in particular accelerating the rollback of ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion by starting it...

Iowa Rep. Steve King said Monday that blacks and Hispanics "will be fighting each other" before overtaking whites in the US population. King, a Republican, was on the radio responding to a question about Univision anchor Jorge Ramos' comment to Tucker Carlson on Fox News that whites would become a majority-minority demographic in America by 2044, a point Ramos used to make the argument that it is a multiracial country. "Jorge Ramos' stock in trade is identifying and trying to drive wedges between race," King told Iowa radio host Jan Mickelson on 1040 WHO. "Race and ethnicity, I should say...

From MSNBC politics shows to town hall meetings across the country, the overarching issue for the Democratic Party’s base since Trump’s victory has been Russia, often suffocating attention for other issues. This fixation has persisted even though it has no chance to sink the Trump presidency unless it is proven that high levels of the Trump campaign actively colluded with the Kremlin to manipulate the outcome of the U.S. election — a claim for which absolutely no evidence has thus far been presented. The principal problem for Democrats is that so many media figures and online charlatans are personally benefiting...

Nashville, Tenn. — President Donald Trump railed against a judge's order blocking his immigration restrictions on Wednesday, saying the ruling made America "look weak" — and drew chants from supporters of "lock her up!" when he attacked his former rival. The second version of Trump's travel ban, which would temporarily halts immigration from six primarily Muslim nations, was set to go into effect Thursday until it was stopped by a federal judge in Hawaii. The first executive order shortly after Trump took office was replaced by what the president, during his campaign-style rally in Nashville, called a "watered down" version....

Who would have thought that Sen Ted Cruz, R-Texas, would find the Gordian knot that will change the #Obamacare impasse from a grinding campaign to try to pass a repeal and replace bill that no one is entirely satisfied with? The senator seems to have found a way to avoid a filibuster entirely in the effort to reform health care reform and pass a new, free-market law. Thus far the problem has been what and what not can be included in a reconciliation bill that only needs 51 votes to pass the Senate. The bill being presented does not contain...

Sen. Ted Cruz’s unyielding opposition to the Affordable Care Act and his willingness to publicly take the fight to fellow Republicans helped cause a brief government shutdown four years ago. But now, with a Republican in the White House and repeal legislation working its way through Congress, the Texas Republican is keeping a low profile, putting his head down and working back rooms to influence the legislation. Cruz has expressed serious concerns about the bill, the American Health Care Act, released by House Republicans this week and approved by two committees Thursday. His fellow Senate conservatives Rand Paul and Mike...

Chaos and uncertainty have defined the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency, and it appears there is nothing more American these days than having a baked-in opinion about our brash, unpredictable tweeter-in-chief. So, halfway through Trump’s first 100 days in office, we thought it was a good time to ask: Can you ever see yourself changing your mind about President Trump? Never, said Claudia Corona, a 25-year-old hydrogeologist from Oakland. “I will continue to oppose him until he steps down or gets impeached,” she said. “I want nothing to do with this man. I am frankly ashamed to speak the same...

Trump’s outrageous tweets have drawn silence from the sometimes over-dignified former president. But Mr. Ex-President, your half of the country needs you. President Barack Obama doesn’t have any official engagements on the horizon and hasn’t said much since returning from vacation, but we should still probably brace ourselves for another 6 a.m. tweetstorm this weekend from President Donald Trump accusing the former president of undermining his presidency. In less than a week, Trump has accused Obama of wiretapping his phone and releasing 122 Gitmo detainees, and he has given oxygen to the conspiracy theory of an Obama-empowered “deep state” or...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) dismissed President Trump's wiretapping charges against President Obama Friday as a smokescreen designed to cloud potential ties between Trump and Russia. “It couldn’t possibly be true, because that is not how our system works,” Pelosi said during a Christian Science Monitor breakfast in Washington. “We do not investigate, through a FISA court, Americans — here or abroad.” Pelosi noted that she was among the architects of revisions to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA Court, enacted after 9/11. The clandestine court overseas surveillance requests from the nation’s intelligence agencies. “There’s much more accountability...

Presented without comment: Dear Speaker Ryan, This week, the Committees on Energy & Commerce and Ways & Means will be marking up Republicans’ long-feared bill to dismantle affordable health care. The GOP legislation will have life or death consequences for tens of millions of families across America, and extraordinary impacts on state and federal budgets long into the future. The American people and Members have a right to know the full impact of this legislation before any vote in Committee or by the whole House.