Free Republic

The election of 2008 proved catastrophic for opponents of comprehensive immigration reform. Republicans lost seven Senate seats -- eight if the courts sustain Al Franken's lead in Minnesota. On June 28, 2007, each of the eight previous office-holders (Republicans, all) voted to block the Bush administration's immigration bill. Replacing these eight immigration hardliners are five new senators clearly favorable to a comprehensive approach -- six, counting Franken -- and two whose positions are unclear. All, of course, are Democrats. In the House, comprehensive immigration reformers picked up at least 14 votes, and "enforcement-only" advocates lost 14. Ten incumbent members of...

Senator says despite hard times now, nation will recover. KINGMAN - "I think it's a time of testing, a time of difficulty. We have had other crises in the history of this country and we have recovered, and we will recover," Sen. John McCain told a large crowd of Mohave County residents and the Board of Supervisors Thursday morning. After meeting with officials in Bullhead City and Lake Havasu City, the senator stopped at the County Administration Building to meet with the county supervisors and take questions from residents during a tour of Mohave County Thursday. "It does require government...

With all of the past, present, and future "damage" that leftists, both within the U.S. and all over the entire world, have and will successfully create upon everybody, how can conservatives, from all over the entire world, successfully "fix" all of the short-term damage and all of the long-term damage on all of the issues and for always? This is the definitive question that seriously needs to be brainstormed to the best of abilities! It will definitely be much more difficult to even communicate with each other soon enough, after leftists successfully suppress all non-leftist activities for as long as...

Republican National Committee Chairman Robert M. (Mike) Duncan 310 First Street, SE Washington DC 20003 Dear Mr. Chairman, The Election as well as the Inauguration is over. The “Other” Party won. President Obama is now our President for better or worse.

Republicans are making a huge mistake by turning away from the principle of small government. Is it time for conservatives to give up our fight against Big Government? Some people think so. Mike Huckabee, the Baptist preacher and former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate, complained in May to the Huffington Post that the greatest threat to the GOP is "this new brand of libertarianism" that says "look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government." That, Huckabee said, is "not an American message. It doesn't fly. People aren't going to buy that, because that's not the way we are as...

In the wake of the November election's repudiation of Republicans, there is a controversy among pundits about what Republicans need to do to stage a legislative comeback, much less, avoid extinction from the political landscape. First off, let's be perfectly clear. Whenever an opponent suggests something so drastic, such as, that the conservative movement is dead in America, you can bet the hubris of those prognostications will be the stumbling block that ultimately makes the current liberal wave, a short-lived cultural tsunami. But the general controversy is in deciding whether the Republican Party needs to moderate its current social platform,...

John McCain's top pollster, Bill McInturff, said this evening that attacking Barack Obama over his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright would not have helped McCain's campaign and could have destroyed his presidency, had he been elected. Some Republicans were angry during the campaign that McCain had -- reportedly for reasons of principle, and out of concern that he'd be viewed as racist -- refused to air ads with Wright's inflammatory sermons, and believed they were fair game and a silver bullet against Obama. An outside group did air one such ad in the closing days of the race. "I said...

GOP nominee John McCain's campaign knew it was losing and was happy when it was over. President-elect Barack Obama's campaign wasn't prepared for Reverend Jeremiah Wright. McCain would likely want a "redo" on how he handled the economic crisis. And GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin may be the candidate of the future for the GOP.

The Republican party must stop "shouting at the world" and start listening to minority groups if it is to win elections in the 21st century, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday. In an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria for Sunday's "GPS" program, President Bush's former secretary of state said his party's attempt "to use polarization for political advantage" backfired last month. "I think the party has to take a hard look at itself," Powell said in the interview, which was taped Wednesday. "There is nothing wrong with being conservative. There is nothing wrong with having socially conservative views...

AN iron law of recent American politics dictates that any Republican setback at the polls will be quickly pinned on the pro-life movement. You might think that the Republican Party’s 2008 debacle would be an exception to this rule. John McCain probably mentioned earmarks about a thousand times more often than he let the word “abortion” slip his lips. The Republican ticket’s weak attempts to play the culture-war card — a Bill Ayers here, a Joe the Plumber there — had nothing whatsoever to do with Roe v. Wade. And why should abortion opponents, of all conservative factions, take the...

See the ad here. It's almost as if McCain didn't want to win. Well, at least he's gone.

AN iron law of recent American politics dictates that any Republican setback at the polls will be quickly pinned on the pro-life movement. You might think that the Republican Party’s 2008 debacle would be an exception to this rule. John McCain probably mentioned earmarks about a thousand times more often than he let the word “abortion” slip his lips. The Republican ticket’s weak attempts to play the culture-war card — a Bill Ayers here, a Joe the Plumber there — had nothing whatsoever to do with Roe v. Wade. And why should abortion opponents, of all conservative factions, take the...

Members of the cultural right have called Juan Hernandez a "border obliteration activist," an "American traitor," and an "agent of the Mexican government." John McCain's presidential campaign called him something different: director of Hispanic outreach. For 14 months leading up to the election, the Fort Worth, Texas, native was a high-level volunteer at McCain '08 headquarters, where he attended daily senior staff meetings and advised the Arizona senator and his top lieutenants about how to appeal to Hispanic voters. Part of that strategy was highlighting McCain's record of championing comprehensive immigration reform. Meanwhile, down the hall, another portion of the...

Dennis Sanders’ recent post proclaimed clearly that the recent republican losses can be attributed to the religious conservative. Did John McCain lose sole[l]y because of the Religious Right? No. Dreher is correct that there are a lot of reasons that McCain lost. But the fact is, the Religious Right did play a role in loss nevertheless. Americans still have the whole Terry Schiavo fiasco in their minds, and young people don't understand why people who claim to be religious are so interested in banning same sex marriage or not allowing women to get an abortion if they are raped, or...

If money talks, we'll likely soon hear the real reason why Barack Obama beat John McCain. Both men and the national parties will report to the Federal Election Commission today how much money they raised in October and November. And what the numbers will probably show is that Mr. Obama outspent Mr. McCain by the biggest margin in history, perhaps a quarter of a billion dollars. It's been reported that the Obama campaign accepted donations from untraceable, pre-paid debit cards used by Daffy Duck, Bart Simpson, Family Guy, King Kong and other questionable characters. If the FEC follows up with...

Borrowing a line from the Republican-revolution playbook of the 1990s, President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday told the nation's governors that he wants them to reassert states as the laboratories for solutions to the nation's big problems. "That's the spirit that I want to reclaim for the country as a whole," Mr. Obama told the National Governors Association, gathered in Philadelphia. "One where states are testing ideas, where Washington is investing in what works, and where you and I are working together in partnership on behalf of the great citizens of this nation."

President George Bush said he doesn't view the 2008 election as a repudiation of his presidency, but of his party. "I think it was a repudiation of Republicans," Bush said during an interview with ABC News that aired Monday. "And I'm sure some people voted for Barack Obama because of me." But he said he thought most people voted for the president-elect because they "decided they wanted him to be in their living room for the next four years explaining policy." "In other words, they made a conscious choice to put him in as president," he said. Bush said his...

Calling the 2008 elections a “repudiation of Republicans,” President Bush shouldered at least some of the blame for his party’s poor results in November. “I’m sure some people voted for [President-elect] Barack Obama because of me,” the outgoing president said.

What if the McCain campaign had run ads using footage of Barack Obama dancing with Ellen DeGeneres to show his coziness with celebrity? Or followed up on its Paris Hilton ad with others featuring Donald Trump and Jessica Simpson? All of that was on the drawing board of Fred Davis III, the advertising whiz that John McCain has used for almost all of his campaign media and one of the most talented conservative political operatives in America. Oh yes, he also had an Internet ad up his sleeve that would attack Obama's celebrity by associating him with Oprah. But in...

One of the lessons from this election is the destruction of the myth that Republicans who support amnesty for illegal aliens would do well among Hispanic voters. No presidential candidate worked harder on illegal immigration amnesty than John McCain. In 2005, he sponsored an amnesty bill that became known as the McCain-Kennedy bill (co-sponsored by Sen. Kennedy). When that bill failed, he tried again the following year, with a variant of the McCain-Kennedy bill. That bill also failed. Unfazed, he tried yet again in 2007. If any one of those bills had passed, at least 10 million illegal aliens would...