Free Republic

The governor of New York suddenly looks like the kind of take-no-prisoners pol his party needs. With one catch. NEW YORK — The scene is unfolding in the shabby headquarters of the Hotel Trades Council just off Times Square in the late spring of 2017, but it’s not hard to imagine the speech somewhere in the Rust Belt in 2020, with a Democratic nominee trying to reclaim the Upper Midwest for his party. “The truth is the middle class is under attack. The working families are under attack,” Andrew Cuomo bellows, his tough-guy accent coming in a little thick. “Middle-class...

In October 2016, concerned about progressive complacency toward the election just ahead, I tried to draw attention to the dire immediate consequences of a Donald Trump win combined with GOP success in hanging onto control of Congress. I pointed to Paul Ryan’s confident predictions that his own “Better Way” agenda could be smoothly enacted via the un-filibusterable budget-reconciliation process, which he called the “bazooka in my pocket.” On Election Night I warned that big scary changes for the country might be swiftly on the way thanks to the GOP trifecta victory and the Republicans’ power to impose their will no...

No, silly. Leftists don’t want $32 trillion in new taxes. They want around $15 trillion in new taxes over the next decade plus a cool $32 trillion or so in new debt to pay for single-payer, at least if Bernie Sanders’s platform last year is the template. CNN asks upstart Ryan opponent Randy Bryce about that here. You’re a single-payer proponent, they say. What do you think of $32 trillion to socialize medicine? Bryce: Well, ah, a lot of people aren’t paying their fair share of taxes, you know. That’s a sentiment a lot of Americans, including Steve Bannon, share....

Leftists are such drama queens. The fakeness in which they cry over, CNN, Mika Brzezinski, Mika Scarborough, or whatever her latest iteration may be, is laughable. The left, like CNN and Mika, spends their lives trying to destroy people, especially conservatives. They use the media, primarily through the track of political correctness in order to shame decent people into silence. And the left is trying to destroy this Republican president, as they have tried all Republican presidents since Nixon. Like Nixon, Trump is not as conservative as many think but the left wants to destroy him anyway because they are...

ON ONE WALL of Stephen Bannon’s office in the West Wing of the White House is a large whiteboard with a list of promises the president made on the campaign trail. Most of them fit the nationalist, nativist, populist programme that Mr Bannon has done more than anyone apart from the president himself to shape, but perhaps not all: one commitment is to build a safe zone for Syrian refugees. The president’s chief strategist is a revolutionary in a Ferragamo tie, an alumnus of Georgetown, Harvard and Goldman Sachs who rails against the establishment. He talks about building an alliance...

Democratic Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut appeared on CNN's 'New Day' Monday morning and weighed in on President Trump's anti-media message. "Pretty much every president before this one has understood that the media is absolutely essential to our liberty...Dictators attack the media," Himes said. His comments come one day after Trump shared a wrestling video in which he battles an opponent whose head has been digitally replaced with a CNN logo. After forcing the CNN wrestler to the mat, Trump throws a couple of punches at his head.....

Emily Ekins pushes back against the idea of one type of Trump voter. Her research for the Voter Study Group reveals the coalition that delivered President Trump the White House. LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST: There are lingering questions about what motivated voters on both sides of the ideological divide in the 2016 election. A new trove of polling data from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group has some answers which might challenge conventional wisdom. What's key about the study is that it goes all the way back to 2011. A group of 20 analysts from across the ideological spectrum have drawn...

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST: Republican divisions have been front and center in the debate over the party's health care legislation. But the Democrats are not without their own problems. The party has lost a string of special elections many Democrats had hoped that the party could win. And since the 2016 election, there have been bitter debates about what the party should prioritize as it opposes a Republican agenda and looks ahead to the midterms. We reached out to a group of Democratic voters to get their thoughts. Akhurapa Ambak is a law student and joins us from New York City....

Those of you familiar with my columns know that for some time I have argued that Trump’s tweets are anything but “childish reactions” or “temper tantrums” or any other nonsense. They have been 100% strategic, deliberate, and focused, designed to provide the fake news media with a topic of conversation for a news cycle—or often two or three—while the administration methodically dismantles Barack Obama’s regulative state and erases his very existence from the historical record. Further, I have argued that the nature of the tweets, or the topic, is completely irrelevant and in some cases non-existent (“covfefe”). The point is...

Wisconsin's Republican Gov. Scott Walker encouraged President Trump to “tweet more” on Friday, in stark contrast to recent Republican backlash over some of Trump’s more incendiary tweets. “Unlike others, I’d tell him to tweet more, to be on Facebook more, to get the message out more, but to be focused,” Walker told FOX’s Julie Banderas. He praised the president’s direct connection on social media with “all these great Americans.” “Tweet more, I’m fine with but don’t get off in the weeds on other issues,” the 2016 presidential candidate said. If the president focuses on the issues he was elected by...

An amendment is under consideration that maybe, just maybe, could unlock the whole Senate Republican health bill. It might knock over the dominoes necessary for a deal, starting with regulations, moving to tax subsidies, and ending up with more cash for Medicaid and fewer tax cuts for the rich. It comes with big long-term risks for Americans who have high medical costs — and it could ultimately shift the burden of covering the uninsured further way from middle-class Americans who already have insurance, and more onto predominantly wealthy taxpayers. Its author? Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Senate conservatives have been...

Besides the fact that Republicans historically have been more reliable midterm voters, Democrats may have another problem in 2018: Trump isn't the disaster for his party that so many had assumed. An L.A. Times front-pager by Cathleen Decker points to Dems' string of special-election losses this year: "Trump is so distinctive a politician that it's hard to persuade voters that other Republican candidates are carbon copies of the president. Trump's outsized persona makes even those Republicans who share his views seem more moderate, an important attribute to swing voters." Why it matters: "[V]oters' complicated views of Trump may give Republicans...

Democrats lost a special election for a congressional seat they have not held in decades, so some are calling for the head of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. Huh? Dumping Pelosi, who has devoted her professional life to Democratic values, would be like throwing the captain of your ship overboard when the sharks are circling. It only draws more sharks, but leaves you leaderless. The "Dump Pelosi" movement shines a light on some of the unloveliest instincts of some Democrats: self-loathing, scapegoating and a desire for quick fixes, rather than hard work. Sure, Pelosi is unpopular, but compared to what?...

Democrats continued their 2017 run of being unable to win special elections in strongly Republican districts on Tuesday. These results have led people to ask what the Democratic Party must change if it is to take back Congress (and eventually the White House). I have what may be the most cynical answer, but one that is unavoidable: What the Democrats need is better marketing. That's really about it. Just to be clear, I'm not saying that as a general principle Democrats should stop worrying about policy. I care a lot about policy, which is why I write a lot about...

Having lost a series of tantalizingly close congressional elections, the Democratic Party has now placed the fate of its collective psyche in the hands of an unassuming, soft-spoken pediatric neurologist. Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam says he feels no enhanced pressure to win his gubernatorial race this fall, even though his will be most high-profile contest since Democrats lost the much-watched special election in Georgia’s 6th District. “You always feel pressure,” he told HuffPost in an interview. “If you’re not feeling pressure then you’re not out there to win. And we plan to win in November.” But while Northam may...

You don’t have to be a seasoned political operative to question the logic behind Democrats investing so much money into a congressional district that has gone Republican for nearly 40 years, yet that is exactly what the Democratic Party did. They believed they could switch moderate Republican voters to vote for a Democratic candidate and mobilize Independents by spouting a progressive message, which is philosophically antithetical to the values held by most voters — such as limited government due to a fear of government encroachment and excessive regulation — as well as utopian ideas about society, which many frankly believe...

Alex Green: Why your kids hate capitalism THE CRUX - stansberryresearch.com From Alexander Green, Chief Investment Strategist, The Oxford Club: Equity investors rarely stop to think about it, but the stock market is the essence of capitalism: the private ownership of the means of production. With very little money and a quick phone call – or a click of the mouse – you can own a fractional interest in any of thousands of the nation’s most profitable businesses. The system is fair too. You will pay (and receive) no more or less for your shares than the wealthy do. And thanks...

Lack of jobs is the deepest concern facing communities in rural America, according to a poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation. President Trump carried rural areas in 2016, and the foundation wanted to understand the experiences and political views of individuals in these areas. For this study, researchers polled voters in Ashtabula County in Ohio. Fifty-four percent said they approve of Trump’s handling of his job compared with 40 percent who said they disapproved. Fifty-one percent of rural voters were confident that Trump's policies would create jobs, 57 percent said they believed his policies would keep the country safe from...

As the Reverend William Barber appeared as a guest on Saturday's AM Joy on MSNBC to give his religion-based views on current events, host Joy Reid at one point seemed to worry about not being able to talk more about Republican Rep. Steve Scalise's conservative views and his history on "race," as she recalled the discredited story that the congressman spoke to a white nationalist event 15 years ago. The Reverend Barber declared that he hopes that Scalise stops being "homophobic," and that Republicans -- presumably including Scalise -- stop "preying" on "the poor and on minorities and the sick,"...

THEY GOT NOTHIN’ The recent testimonies of James Comey and Jeff Sessions would appear to have put to rest much of the suspicions of “collusion” and “obstruction of justice” that have been passionately pursued by the leftards in the Congress, the Lame Stream Media, Facebook, etc. In the nine months they have been investigating these issues, I have no doubt that, in their desperate anti-Trump zeal, they have frantically looked under every rock on this planet and have found absolutely nothing!! Considering the daily postings of fake, fictitious and bald-faced mendacious “news” items based on leaked information from anonymous (or...