Free Republic

You can guarantee it. When Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee next year, she and her team will frame the election as “historically significant”. In doing so, they will ignite a great social movement to elect the first Madame President. In the last twelve months, Secretary Clinton’s public speeches and commentary have discernibly shifted in focus and content, to female empowerment, pay equity and her “grandmother glow”. Never far away with a ready and helping hand, the media are showing their intent to advance the Clinton 2016 narrative. Just last month, following the conclusion of her prepared remarks at her...

Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard made an extraordinary attack last night on the “violent, ugly sexism” she said she experienced during her three years in charge of the nation. It reached the point when the British-born politician felt “murderous rage” at seeing the sexist cartoons and comments that had been made online about her, she said. … Speaking at a public forum at the iconic Sydney Opera House, Miss Gillard—who has now resigned from politics—said she was surprised at the depth of abuse that had been levelled at her as the country's first female Prime Minister. “I find it...

Australia's PM-elect Tony Abbott has said his top priorities are to abolish a tax on carbon emissions and to stop asylum-seekers arriving by boat. His government would "swiftly implement Operation Soverign Borders" aimed at "intercepting vessels and turning them around", Mr. Abbott told the Herald Sun. Outgoing PM Kevin Rudd has said he will not stand again in for Labor leadership. The Australian Election Commission confirmed on its website that the Liberal-National coalition had won 88 seats in the House of Representatives and Labor 57...

Today is a great day not only in Australian history, but also in world history. It marks the day when people of character and sensibility pushed back against an overwrought and pointless green agenda, and pushed back in a big way. They’ve had enough, and they’ve scraped the Krudd off their shoes and are moving forward. Tony Abbot has won the Australian election in a landslide, and vows to abolish the carbon tax as a first order of business. Abbott has declared Australia is “once more open for business” in claiming victory in Saturday’s election. It is a huge blow...

The ruling Labor Party’s probable collapse in Australia’s next election is largely the consequence of its qualified success in the last one three years ago. To form the coalition she needed to stay in power, then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard reneged on a promise and agreed to place a carbon tax on major polluters. On Saturday, the bill for that bargain comes due. Voters have never stopped hating the tax and its effect on their electric bills. Longtime Labor Party supporters—even people who have helped cut pollution by installing solar panels at home—have flocked to the opposition. … Opposition leader Tony...

LABOR won power in 2007 on a Ruddslide, but looks like losing power in 2013 in a Ruddbath. The popularity of Kevin Rudd, which won Labor a swathe of seats in Queensland, is turning into voter retribution that has the ALP facing a worse result on Saturday than Paul Keating's loss to John Howard in 1996. The "unelectable" Tony Abbott is now preferred prime minister, and the great campaigning "comeback kid" Prime Minister is more unpopular than he ever has been. With a primary vote of just 33 per cent in the last week of the election campaign, the legitimate...

KEVIN Rudd has been sworn in as the nation's 28th Prime Minister, alongside Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and new Treasurer Chris Bowen. Governor-General Quentin Bryce confirmed the Labor caucus' decision last night to reinstall Mr Rudd in the post it removed him from just over three years ago. Mr Rudd’s wife Therese Rein, daughter Jessica and granddaughter Josephine were at Government House for the ceremony. Mr Albanese’s wife, former NSW deputy premier Carmel Tebutt, accompanied her husband. Mr Rudd will make a statement to parliament at noon, asserting his authority as Prime Minister and challenging Tony Abbott to bring...

Kevin Rudd has been elected unopposed, according to reports.

JULIA Gillard has called for a Labor leadership ballot to be held at 7pm tonight. ''Anyone who believes they should be Labor leader should put themselves forward for this ballot,'' the Prime Minister said. She said anyone who entered the ballot should commit, in the interests of the party, to resigning from parliament if they lost. The move forces the Rudd camp to bring forward their preferred timetable for a challenge. They had hoped to engineer a special caucus meeting tomorrow and a challenge on Friday. “I am asking my political party to endorse me as a leader and Prime...

KEVIN Rudd will challenge Julia Gillard for the Labor leadership tomorrow morning. A petition for a ballot circulated among Labor MPs is believed to now have the required numbers for a spill of the PM.

Australia's prime minister did not define "misogyny" wrong in a blistering attack on a male rival — the dictionary did. Prime Minister Julia Gillard's fiery speech last week in which she branded conservative opposition leader Tony Abbott a misogynist for a string of allegedly sexist comments he had made in recent years has been lauded by feminists around the world. But Gillard's critics have accused her of hyperbole, pointing to dictionary definitions of misogyny as hatred of women. Sue Butler, the editor of the Macquarie Dictionary, which is regarded as the definitive authority on Australian meanings of words, said Wednesday...

Two proposals to legalize same-sex marriage in the Australian federal parliament last week were strongly defeated. On Sept. 19 the House of Representatives voted on a proposal by backbencher Stephen Jones, of the Australian Labor Party, the party currently in power at the federal level, to legalize same-sex “marriage.” The Labor Party allowed a free vote on the proposal, while the coalition of opposition parties, led by Tony Abbott, held to their promise of voting against any attempt to introduce same-sex “marriage.” The vote was 42 in favour of legalization and 98 against. Both Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition...

KEVIN Rudd has resigned as foreign minister. Mr Rudd called an extraordinary media conference in Washington DC just after 1am local time, just hours after Cabinet minister Greg Combet declared "enough is enough" today as he and other top supporters of Julia Gillard called for an end to the ongoing leadership speculation. The frustration within the ministry has made it more likely the Prime Minister will act when Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, who is currently in Washington, returns to Australia on Sunday morning.

LABOR is now a rabble in a panic in what seems to be Julia Gillard’s last weeks - maybe even days - as Prime Minister. It has finally woken up to its deadly choice. It can either have a leader loathed by voters, or one loathed by its MPs. It can stick with the incompetent and scandal-ridden Gillard, and suffer humiliating defeat. Or it can surrender to the popular Kevin Rudd, and risk tearing itself apart again under a self-obsessed power freak. Labor can dream of other options - Regional Australia Minister Simon Crean, Workplace Minister Bill Shorten or Defence...

Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition leader Tony Abbott were escorted by police and bodyguards from a Canberra restaurant after Aboriginal Tent Embassy protesters surrounded them. SO THIS is what reconciliation looks like on Australia Day, after so many concessions over so many useless years. Reconciliation means Prime Minister Julia Gillard being trapped by furious Aboriginal protesters inside a Canberra building yesterday for half an hour. It means Gillard and guests at the Australia Day function being heckled and abused as racists. It means Gillard, fear on her face, being monstered and falling in the melee as police rushed her...

Cheek-to-cheek and hand-in-hand as they met on a wind-swept airport runway, they only had eyes for each other. And if Australia's prime minister Julia Gillard was half-hearted when she welcomed the Queen to her country last month, she certainly did not hold back with Barack Obama. The pair exchanged a warm embrace on the tarmac at Canberra airport as the president flew in for a whirlwind visit before heading on to Indonesia. They later held a joint press conference in which they unveiled plans to deepen the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific, with 2,500 U.S. marines operating out of...

The ceremony at Honolulu's picturesque Punchbowl Cemetery was Ms Gillard's first official engagement of her trip for the APEC leaders' summit. Just a few kilometres from the site of the infamous Pearl Harbor attack of World War 2, Ms Gillard was given a 19-gun salute as she arrived at the cemetery. She told the crowd of veterans and their families it was a great privilege to be with them. "In this beautiful and hallowed American place where so many of America's own lie in graves which they found too soon you would be well entitled to say: They died for...

An interesting bit from White House reporter Tangi Quéméner's latest pool report from the G-20 in Cannes, France: [President Obama] entered the room at 1:15 and took to his left, heading to Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. They chatted for a few seconds before British Prime minister David Cameron joined them. Hard to understand what they were saying amid the cameras noise. POTUS then took a stroll to Australian Premier Julia Gillard who got a hug as European president Herman van Rompuy, European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso and Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan were watching. Eventually the Europeans got a...

LABOR may have finally bounced off rock bottom but Australia's oldest political party and its leader are still facing a historic loss of public confidence and electoral failure. A three-point rise in the Newspoll primary vote for the ALP has avoided the unthinkable for the Gillard government of going to 25 per cent or below to have less support than the combined vote for the Greens and various odds and sods, but the broader view of this survey of public opinion about Labor - as well as the personal standing of Julia Gillard - is devastating. The electorate has not...

JULIA Gillard faced searching questions about her honesty last night, as voters in Brisbane pounded her on backflipping on an election commitment not to introduce a carbon tax. It came at the end of another testing day on the carbon hustings for the Prime Minister and Tony Abbott, as their roadshows each hit potholes. Public servant Aaron Bachman set the tone for Ms Gillard's encounter with 100 professedly uncommitted voters at a forum organised by Sky News and The Courier-Mail. He asked her why, if the carbon tax was so important, she did not take it to an election and...