Free Republic

When President Trump announced he was slapping a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent toll on foreign aluminum, a friend asked me how the president could possibly possess such unilateral authority under our governmental system of checks and balances. That was my first thought, too, before surmising that our über-experienced Congress had again simply handed away its constitutional power, as is its habit, thoughtlessly — like motel matches. Writing in National Review, Jay Cost confirmed my suspicion: “Over the past 80 years, authority over tariffs, as well as over all manner of properly legislative functions,...

You can get agreement from almost all points on the political spectrum that the worst aspect of our political system is the presidential nomination process. It is perhaps no coincidence that it is the one part of the system not treated in the Constitution. That’s because the Founding Fathers abhorred political parties and hoped that presidents would be selected by something like an elite consensus. But we have political parties, the oldest and third oldest in the world, and they are not going away.Surely a better system is possible. The current system of primaries, caucuses and national conventions is the...

In the wake of the 2012 election, one point on which practically all Republicans seemed to agree was that their party's presidential-nomination process was broken. Supporters of the GOP's eventual nominee, Mitt Romney, believed that the nature of the process weakened him for the general election. The party's base of conservative activists, meanwhile, believed that the process favored the candidates with the most money, and therefore the views of (often less conservative) wealthy donors. More moderate Republicans thought the process elevated a parade of unserious firebrands who were never real contenders, thereby damaging the party's image with swing voters. And...

A tradition after each national election, presidential or midterm, is for the pundit class to pontificate on whether and how the results point to a realignment. This exercise dates back at least to the publication of The Emerging Republican Majority by Kevin Phillips in 1969, and it continues to this day. Now, of course, the hot topic is the so-called emerging Democratic majority, dominated by young people, nonwhites, and upscale social liberals. Pundits across the political spectrum are offering free advice to the Republican party on how to change its ways lest it face extinction at the hands of this...

Many conservatives are feeling betrayed by the chief justice's vote to uphold Obamacare. But there's a counterintuitive case to be made that John Roberts's decision is largely a victory for conservatives.Every time I visit Washington, D.C., I am struck by a single, terrible thought: It is not just that conservatives are losing the various battles over big government, but they have been losing the war for generations. The most conservatives are ever able to do is tinker at the margins – and celebrating small victories like lowering marginal tax rates is a sign of just how low our sights are...

Alternate headline: “Pessimistic eeyoreblogger thisclose to a nervous breakdown.” In the House, the projection is for the GOP to gain 70 seats: The GOP will win 76 House districts currently held by Democrats, and the Democrats will win 6 House seats currently held by Republicans, including a few surprises. Republican takeovers are in red; Democratic takeovers are in dark blue.I can hear it now: “Jim’s been gargling with Maker’s Mark again.” But I actually played it fairly safe on this list. I predicted no GOP takeovers in states where the early voting looks pretty “meh,” such as West Virginia or...

On Monday I sounded off about the relationship between Ron Paul and the Republican Party. My argument was that the fact that such a "bad" Republican like Ron Paul could maintain his position in the party is a sign that the party itself lacks mechanisms to manage its brand identity.I received a lot of email from Paul supporters. Most of them argued some variant of the proposition that Paul is the only true Republican - and George Bush and the "neocons" are the cheaters. This is all well and good - but this is not what I was on about....

Adam Nagourney of the New York Times makes a good effort this morning to attack the idea that a summer frontrunner is invincible. His major concern, of course, is Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. Thompson, Giuliani, and Romney are so scrunched together according to one metric or another that it is hard to identify any one of the three as the GOP frontrunner. While I applaud Nagourney's attempt to do some pushback on all this Hillary-Is-Invincible stuff, I think his argument is not as strong as it could be. He writes: Typically, a candidate is adjudged a front-runner because he...

This essay is a response to a fascinating article by John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira entitled "Back to the Future: The Re-emergence of the Emerging Democratic Majority." Judis and Teixeira argue that the 2006 election signals a realignment that favors the Democratic Party. I think their theory is underdetermined, and in this essay I shall offer my justification for that position. First, let me make clear that what follows is a non-partisan critique. I am not going to try to convince you that the facts point toward the opposite of what Judis and Teixeira argue. I'm not going to...

The political world has been atwitter of late with talk of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg entering the 2008 presidential race. Could he win? I do not think so. Actually, I am pretty sure that he could not win. It is extremely unlikely that, in a three way race, Mr. Bloomberg could take a majority of the Electoral College vote. So, the most likely scenario that is also the best case for Mr. Bloomberg is a split in the Electoral College. That is, Mr. Bloomberg gets enough electoral votes so that no candidate obtains an outright majority of 270 electors....

From 1997 to 2005, Barack Obama was the state senator for one of the most liberal places in the United States - the Southside Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park. Home to the University of Chicago, Hyde Park, like many Chicago neighborhoods, has enjoyed a renaissance in the last 15 years. While it is by no means "hip" - the U of C is, after all, where "fun comes to die" - this beautiful neighborhood has become a destination for those looking for what magazine writers these days call "urban living." It is also one of the most racially diverse neighborhoods...

Election Day 2006 was a bad day for the Republican Party. But it could have been much, much worse. My estimate of the House vote (calculated by summing up all current totals reported by the media and projecting the vote totals of the Democrats and Republicans who were uncontested) indicates that the two-party vote was approximately 54% D to 46% R. This would mark a 5.4% decrease in the GOP's share of the two-party vote from 2004. The final two-party vote result was almost a perfect inverse of the 1994 result. This estimate is very similar to the one that...

Stuart Rothenberg updated his House rankings a few days ago. And yowsa!! He sees 34 to 40 seats flipping. That is quite a large number.But take a look at the assignment of races to each category. I don't think those numbers add up. PURE TOSS-UP (20 R, 0 D)CA 11 (Pombo, R) CT 2 (Simmons, R) CT 4 (Shays, R) FL 16 (Open; Foley, R) FL 22 (Shaw, R) IL 6 (Open; Hyde, R) KS 2 (Ryun, R) MN 1 (Gutknecht, R) MN 6 (Open; Kennedy, R) NM 1 (Wilson, R) NY 20 (Sweeney, R) NY 26 (Reynolds, R)...

That gives us the following number of party seats where the other side is offering a viable challenge... Model 1 – Average 2004, Corrected for CPI Inflation: 23 Republican seats, 6 Democratic seats. Model 2 – Average 2004, Not Corrected for CPI Inflation: 27 Republican seats, 6 Democratic seats. Model 3 – Minimum 2004, Not Corrected for CPI Inflation: 39 Republican seats, 7 Democratic seats. Model 4 – Median 1996, Corrected for CPI Inflation: 48 Republican seats, 6 Democratic seats...

 Just yesterday, Charlie Cook updated his race rankings. I have to say, I think he might have jumped the shark.Reading Cook has felt to me like watching one of my favorite sitcoms. Maybe a bit like Seinfeld: his trajectory this electoral season has seemed like that show. I was with him in the Spring. Good points, well argued. I liked it. Read him every week. Disagreed often (very often!), but the disagreements always got me a-thinkin', which is something I truly enjoy. I checked his site every day. But, slowly but surely, I started to move away from him. He...

This week I critiqued the idea that, in the House races, the Republican Party is suffering from a meltdown in which the bottom is dropping out in the second-, third- and even fourth-tier races.I argued that this hypothesis is underdetermined because there are other, equally reasonable but theoretically distinct, theories to account for the data. One of them is that the lower-tier races might be swinging because of relatively little candidate activity.I argued: The second- and third-tiers feature races where there is relatively little campaign activity. On the top-tier, candidates are unloading huge war chests to crowd out any...

Last week I argued that the media consensus that the GOP base is "dispirited" suffers from two analytical problems. First, it is underdetermined -- that is, there are other, equally reasonable but theoretically distinct, explanations that can account for the data. Second, using national data on dispiritedness to estimate the final balance of power in the House is impossible because of the ecological fallacy. All we have are polls that provide national data -- and the distribution of "dispirited" voters is what will make all the difference.I'd now like to take an opportunity to amplify what I mean by both...

That's the story this morning from The New York Times' Adam Nagourney, who leads off an otherwise newsless and self-evident article (Basic thesis: the parties are strategic utility maximizers. My reaction: Wow...what a scoop! We haven't known that for 20+ years!) with this explosive lead: Senior Republican leaders have concluded that Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, a pivotal state in this year's fierce midterm election battles, is likely to be heading for defeat and are moving to reduce financial support for his race and divert party money to other embattled Republican senators, party officials said. The decision to effectively write...

Bruce Reed had a great post on his Slate blog yesterday that discussed the implications of partisan redistricting. I highly recommend it. Here, I would like to offer first a critique and then, building on that critique, an amplification.First off, I do think he lays too much blame on the GOP for the current district maps -- it is true that the redistricting of 1992 and 2002 benefited Republicans more than Democrats. But Democrats (a) benefited as well and (b) would be just as eager to engage in it if they could. As Michael Barone is wont to note...

Over the weekend, a few articles were published that argued that the GOP stands a chance in FL 16. Do they? This is an interesting question, one worth taking a second to investigate.First off, most proponents only argue for the possibility that Republican state representative Joe Negron, the man the state party selected to "accept" Foley votes, has a chance. Their objections seem to be against the argument that a Mahoney win is a foregone conclusion. So -- it is not as though they are giving Negron better than even odds. They are just asserting that the odds are...