Free Republic

I’ve been taking the under on Nikki Haley for several weeks now and I’ve been wrong every time. So I looked under the hood on the South Carolina results and what I see is a signal that Trump is weaker than he looks. Let’s start with the exit polls. Haley kept it close: independent voters made up 22 percent of the electorate and she won them 62-37. South Carolina is an open primary, so this was a case of independents showing up to vote against Trump in a meaningless contest. That’s bad news for him. Among people who thought the...

The Democrats are pushing for straight-up infanticide, and they're emboldened enough to not even bothering hiding it any longer. When asked about the controversial late term abortion bill presented in Virginia's House of Delegates this week, Governor Ralph Northam said a fully developed child born in the third trimester would be kept alive, but the physician and mother would get to discuss and decide whether to take its life or not. "If a mother is in labor... the infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that's what the mother and the...

In theory, Ted Cruz's best states are behind him. But at the Detroit debate, Cruz was clearly the class of the field and it's clear that no one should count him out as the delegate race moves into its next phase. The delegate math is complicated, but the basic gist goes something like this: Donald Trump has a commanding lead at the moment, but it is not a given that he will reach the 1,237 threshold he needs to clinch a majority. Simply put, Trump has failed to break through the ceiling of support he's held since New Hampshire even...

...For the last eight months, the sophisticated view of Trump and Trumpism has gone something like this: Donald Trump may be a huckster, but he has done a service to the Republican party by bringing new, nontraditional voters into the tent. He has shown his fellow candidates that they can flatly reject the demands of political correctness and need not drop into turtle-guard whenever the New York Times takes a shot at them. And while Trump the man is not presidential material, Trumpism -- that is, the collection of populist and nationalist concerns that have become wrapped up in the...

Among the most hilarious things uttered by Rachel Maddow came when she appeared on "Real Time with Bill Maher" last June. Maddow was a guest along with Reason.com editor Nick Gillespie, publisher Mort Zuckerman and actor Mark Ruffalo. When Gillespie and Maher tried to pin Maddow down on whether she supported the health care law signed by then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2006, the template for Obamacare four years later, Maddow got testy. (video, audio clips after page break)Maddow plays dumb on sex-selective abortion ban in North Dakota "Leave me alone about Romneycare, all of you!" Maddow whined. "Listen, my...

Are childrens’ car seats driving down the fertility rate in America?Jonathan V. Last sees car seats as part of a “huge constellation of factors in modern life” that “nudge” people toward having fewer children, he said during an interview about his book, What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster.Last said car seats effectively create a small “tax on people who want to have more than two kids” by making it harder to fit three kids into a normal sedan, which encourages parents to buy a larger car. This penalty may not dissuade people who already want...

There are reasonable criticisms that can be made of Sarah Palin, both as governor and a vice presidential selection. Yet little of what we have seen in the last six days has been either reasonable or critical (in the traditional sense of the word). Instead, much of the left and many in the media simply lashed out at Palin, particularly at her family. And not only the fringiest parts of the political fringe: A writer at the Washington Post attacked Palin for the fact that her seventeen-year-old daughter was going to have a baby. A writer for The Atlantic openly...

Once More, with FeelingThere's nothing wrong with having been spectacularly wrong on Iraq. It's what the antiwar crowd has done since April 9 that's unforgivable.by Jonathan V. Last 04/24/2003 12:48:00 AM SOMETIMES it's necessary to beat a dead horse. Many recriminations pieces have been written since the end of the war (here, for starters) and while they may seem like simple gloating, they're not. It's crucial to keep score on public commentators because if you bat .115 in the bigs, you get canned. Bob Herbert gets to write for forever. So, a few stray scribbles which may have eluded...