Free Republic

Democrats are contemplating secession and potential civil war as they game out possible scenarios for a closely contested election, according to a report by Ben Smith in a New York Times column Sunday. The bulk of Smith’s column is devoted to the question of how the media will handle Election Night coverage, given that the result may not be known for weeks. Vote-by-mail, which many states have only recently adopted — ostensibly, to prevent the spread of coronavirus in polling places — could lead to an uncertain result. [...] In one scenario, John Podesta — the former chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential...

In an interview with MSNBC, Breitbart senior editor Joel Pollak has made clear that Donald Trump can't take his website's support for granted. "If he pulls an Arnold Schwarzenegger and tries to reinvent himself as a liberal, he will see that support erode very, very quickly, and he will struggle politically, I think, to make the case for reelection in 2020," Pollak made the comments after it was announced that former (and now current) Breitbart.com chief Steve Bannon was removed from his position as Trump's Chief Strategist. [VIDEO] There can be little doubt that Pollak is right. From old-school conservatives...

President Donald Trump’s decision to part ways with Steve Bannon can be understood as an effort to save his presidency after Charlottesville. It may turn out to be the beginning of the end for the Trump administration, the moment Donald Trump became Arnold Schwarzenegger. ... Bannon was not just Trump’s master strategist, the man who turned a failing campaign around in August 2016 and led one of the most remarkable come-from-behind victories in political history. He was also the conservative spine of the administration. His infamous whiteboard in the West Wing listed the promises Trump had made to the voters,...

Ohio Gov. John Kasich seized second place in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday evening, in a race Donald Trump had dominated since the fall. But others had also spent time in the second place slot behind Trump, including former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina after her strong undercard debate performance in September; and Dr. Ben Carson, who was in second for much of the autumn, but finished in last place on Tuesday evening. What happened? A look at the RealClearPolitics averages allows us to pinpoint the exact moment when Carson began to fade, never to recover: Nov. 13, 2015....

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) may be “closest to Obama in his view on foreign policy,” as Dr. Charles Krauthammer put it on Tuesday, but he is facing stiff competition from Jeb Bush in that category. The former Florida governor praised Obama’s initial negotiating efforts with Iran on Tuesday, telling an audience in Denver that “we need to give him credit” for “bringing other people along and making it tougher.” The puzzling statement suggests the influence of James A. Baker III on the Bush campaign. Baker, a former Secretary of State, was the co-chair of the Iraq Study Group in 2006,...

More alarming for me still were Obama’s attitudes towards America. Vainly, I scoured Dreams from My Father for some expression of reverence, even respect, for the country its author would someday lead. Instead, the book criticizes Americans for their capitalism and consumer culture, for despoiling their environment and maintaining antiquated power structures. Traveling abroad, they exhibited “ignorance and arrogance”–the very shortcomings the president’s critics assigned to him.

(GRAPHIC-AT-LINK)The Los Angeles Times leads Thursday with a story entitled: "Gaza's dilemma: Deadly war or suffocating Israeli embargo." According to the story, Palestinians in Gaza are left with no choice but to wage war, because if they do not fire rockets at Israeli civilians, they must accept an Israeli [sic] "embargo." The article omits the obvious point that if Hamas would stop trying to kill Israelis, neither the embargo nor the war itself would be necessary. The authors, Alexandra Zavis and Batsheva Sobelman, accept that Hamas started the war--and even suggest that most Palestinians in Gaza support it, though there...

Arkansas Rep. Tom Cotton, who announced this week that he will challenge Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor, attacked alcohol vendors, called for mandatory financial disclosures of campaign donations, favored banning cigarettes, and attacked libertarianism while he was a Harvard student. In a twice-weekly column for the Harvard Crimson, Cotton — who has been called a “Republican’s dream” by National Review and an “extraordinary figure” by the Weekly Standard — criticized politicians for not doing enough to oppose tobacco and wrote a laudatory 1996 piece praising Bill and Hillary Clinton. In 1997, Cotton wrote a scolding op-ed on alcohol and underage drinking...