Free Republic

In a Republican-backed effort to single out where Democrats lie on a contentious policy debate, an amendment to create a single-payer health care system failed with no affirmative votes in the Senate Thursday, The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mon.), failed with zero yes votes. Four Democrats and one Independent voted against it, and the remainder of Democrats voted as “present,” to avoid taking a stance on the legislation. Independent Maine Senator Angus King, who voted against the bill, said he did not want to participate in what he thought was a “set up.” “The bill had way too...

Journalists and politicians venerating John McCain's civility and decency have a short memory. Nothing rehabilitates a politician’s tarnished image quite like death. It happened to Nixon. It happened to Reagan. It will probably happen to Bush. And right now, it’s happening to John McCain. McCain is still alive, but a week ago he was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of brain cancer, requiring surgery to have a tumor removed. The news prompted an outpouring of grief and well-wishing from Democrats, Republicans, liberals, and conservatives aike, as well as a deluge of hagiographical pieces valorizing McCain as an American hero...

After Donald Trump was swept into the White House on the shoulders of his far-right base, moderate Republicans and centrist Democrats clung to a hope first kindled after Election Day that his daughter would act as a tempering force on issues, a calming presence even on her father’s sometimes erratic personality. It didn’t happen. And by the end of this week, they know it likely never will. “I had hope she would make some difference,” lamented Connie Morella, a moderate Republican who represented Maryland in Congress for 15 years. “I know she makes an impression on him but she doesn’t...

That will just make it easier for Trump to win re-election. The other day, Bill Kristol, sounding like a spokesman for the ACLU, decried the theism of Donald Trump. “In America the president doesn’t tell us who or what or whether to worship,” he harrumphed on Twitter after Trump merely said that Americans worship God above government. To these Americans, the Dems lift up their middle finger and declare them “intolerant.” This gives Trump an enormous political advantage. With very little effort, he can pick off uneasy religious voters in the center while pulling down almost all of them on...

As a conservative Republican, I harbored concerns when I voted last November for Donald Trump to be my president. I knew that I had to vote for him, given the unacceptable alternative of an incompetent liar who had placed me in a basket of “Deplorables”; had destroyed 33,000 emails that she covertly maintained on her bathroom server while telling me that the emails all concerned yoga classes and wedding dresses; had lied to me and the families of those who fell in Benghazi about what had really happened there on another 9/11; and really had nothing to show for decades...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — U.S. Rep. David Cicilline and U.S. Sen. Jack Reed are among the Rhode Island politicians criticizing President Donald Trump's announcement that he would bar transgender people from serving in the military. Cicilline, who is gay, tweeted out shortly after Wednesday's announcement that transgender service members are heroes. The Republican president should "stop using them as political props," he wrote. Fellow Democrat Reed, the ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, pointed out that Wednesday was the anniversary of President Harry Truman's order desegregating the United States Armed Forces.....

Democrats have had a full eight months to digest their humiliating 2016 electoral defeat. Eight months to write a post mortem. Eight months to develop a new platform. Eight months to show the American people they deserve a chance to govern. But instead of self-critique, introspection and innovative solutions, Democrats have offered excuses, complaining and Russian collusion conspiracy theories. In an effort to engender enthusiasm for 2018, Democrats unleashed a “new” agenda on Monday, which amounted to little more than a stale attempt at mimicking President Donald Trump . The name alone suggests the new Democratic plan is the work...

There’s a strong argument among many Democrats that the party’s shocking 2016 electoral loss to Donald Trump and the Republican Party as a whole was at least in part due to a lazy messaging strategy that took the votes of the working class for granted. Now, 16 months from the next general election, the two top Democrats in Washington are promising that the party won’t make that mistake again. On Monday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer penned op-eds in The Washington Post and The New York Times, respectively, laying the foundation for a more...

Jeb Bush, former Florida governor, former presidential hopeful and former loud critic of President Donald Trump, has stepped back into the political arena to call out his fellow Republicans as hypocrites — for not publicly condemning Trump. Sigh. Why, why, why do these entrenched Republicans insist on picking public fights with their fellow GOPers? It doesn’t endear them to anyone but their own dwindling bases. And we know their bases are dwindling because try as they might, their candidates — their Marco Rubios, their Mitt Romneys, their Jeb Bushes — just couldn’t win against Trump. Yet six-plus months into Trump’s...

Donald Trump is scheduled to appear in Youngstown Tuesday. That's Youngstown, seat of Mahoning County, which, albeit by a tiny margin, voted for Hillary Clinton last November. That's also the Mahoning County that, since 1932, has only voted twice for a Republican for president: Richard M. Nixon (by about 1,700 votes) in 1972, and Dwight D. Eisenhower (by about 4,900 votes, in 1956). And only twice since 1950 has Mahoning County supported Republicans for the U.S. Senate - George V. Voinovich, for re-election, in 2004, and Rob Portman, also for re-election, last November. (Election data are from Mike Dawson's peerless...

With a seriously unpopular Republican president and congressional Republicans desperately attempting to pass an even more unpopular health-care bill only to fall flat on their faces, Democrats are anticipating big pickups in the 2018 midterms. And to increase their odds, they're trying to revive a group once left for dead: The conservative Blue Dog Democrats. Nearly wiped out in the 2010 and 2014 Republican victories, the few remaining members of this caucus are working closely with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to recruit and fundraise for 2018 candidates. These people are the absolute last ones the Democrats need. Not only...

A new report by a prominent Democratic think tank argues that the party needs to look beyond the suburbs to win back power. The centrist Democratic think tank Third Way reliably supports socially liberal, fiscally sensible policies that are catnip to the cosmopolitan wing of the party—and as a result, the group often aggravates the party’s base of populist progressives. But a new study of last year’s election results, provided exclusively to National Journal, underscores the idea that Democrats need to win back working-class Donald Trump voters before they chase moderate Republicans who defected to Hillary Clinton. The analysis comes...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer ripped his former colleague, Hillary Clinton, over her election loss to President Donald Trump and her subsequent efforts to explain why she lost. “When you lose to somebody who has 40 percent popularity, you don’t blame other things—Comey, Russia—you blame yourself,” Schumer told The Washington Post. “So what did we do wrong? People didn’t know what we stood for, just that we were against Trump. And still believe that.” Schumer’s comments—referring to Clinton blaming Russian meddling and the former FBI director for her loss to Trump—come as Democrats are trying to re-brand ahead of the...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush criticised his former 2016 presidential primary foe President Donald Trump on Saturday over his first six months in office. Speaking at OZY Fest in New York, Bush slammed Trump’s chaotic style of governance and failure to focus on his policy goals. He singled out reports that Trump recently suggested that he may attempt to pre-pardon himself to preempt a federal investigation by independent counsel Robert Mueller. “You get disciplined when your team says, ‘No, Mr. President, let’s stay focused on these policy objectives,'” Bush said. “Don’t disparage people, don’t go after Mueller, don’t say you’re...

White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci reaffirmed President Donald Trump’s commitment to stand for “the people that need the most help in the United States,” during an interview on SiriusXM’s “Breitbart News Saturday.” The new communications director told Breitbart’s Matt Boyle that the shake-up within the White House in the aftermath of Scaramucci’s hiring and White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s unexpected resignation will serve to “refine” the message the president wishes to deliver to the American people. He said Trump is focused on fulfilling his campaign promises and corralling Congress into passing his legislative agenda. “We’ve got to get...

One of the Senate's strongest voices will be quieter this week following Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) diagnosis with brain cancer. The six-term Arizona Republican was in his home state recently having surgery to remove a blood clot from above his eye when doctors found a brain tumor. McCain, 80, received an outpouring of support and well wishes from his colleagues in Washington on Thursday following news of his condition, with many saying they expected to see him back on Capitol Hill as soon as possible. (TWEETS-AT-LINK) McCain's absence could spell more trouble for the fate of the GOP's health care...

WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi today wrote to White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn, calling on him to publicly disclose all pardons issued by President Trump. Rep. Krishnamoorthi's letter comes in response to the Washington Post’s report that President Trump and his legal team have explored his power to pardon as a means of disrupting Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The signed letter is available here and the text follows: July 21, 2017 The Honorable Donald F. McGahn, II Counsel to the President The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20006...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/how-the-democrats-fell-for-trumps-trap

House Democratic leaders on Wednesday offered a stern warning to Republicans hoping to put hundreds of millions of dollars toward President Trump’s border wall next year: You’re on your own. “They know that the majority of the Democrats don’t support funding for that wall,” Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.), vice chairman of the Democratic Caucus, told reporters in the Capitol. “If they choose to include it, then they are basically saying, ‘We have the votes among the Republican Party to pass this without a single Democratic vote.’ And if they’re not successful, the blame lies squarely at their feet, because they...

A group of liberal House Democrats stepped up criticism of President Trump on Wednesday, introducing a “no confidence” resolution that officially questions Trump’s fitness to serve as commander in chief. It logs a laundry list of controversies swirling around the president — including his campaign’s many contacts with Russian officials, his refusal to release his taxes, his verbal attacks on women and the press, and his firing of FBI Director James Comey. Sponsored by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), the resolution has been endorsed by 23 more Democrats, including Reps. John Lewis (Ga.), a civil rights icon; John Yarmuth (Ky.), ranking...