Free Republic

As important as it is for the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to make the nation understand what really happened on that horrific day, the panel has a more crucial mission: making sure that such an effort to overturn the result of a legitimate election does not happen again. The potential is there, because the sedition continues. That should not be lost as the bipartisan House panel lays its case before the American people. Jan. 6 was not just a day; it was the opening salvo of a movement to undermine democracy....

The basic John Kennedy story says his speech on religious tolerance was a great step for Catholics in America. It's a very nice story; too bad it isn't true.“The Catholic Church benefited enormously from the JFK presidency,” pollster Larry Sabato wrote Monday morning. “Prejudice against Catholics declined and millions were exposed to church rituals. Church leaders welcomed the ‘JFK effect.'”“Now at last there is a second Catholic [president],” he continued, “and what do some in the hierarchy do? They ruin it.”“A little more than 60 years [after President John F. Kennedy’s speech on accepting Catholics in American politics], a second...

Has President Trump just eaten Joe Biden's lunch? Sure looks that way based on multiple indicators flashing pro-Trump signals in the wake of the Democratic National Convention. Sure, the leftist press is reporting that Biden's favorability numbers have notched up in the wake of his curiously gaffe-less convention speech, but it's thin gruel. Fact is, that's the only thing they have. But if you look mostly on the right column of the front page of RealClearPolitics, it's pretty clear the trend is President Trump's friend. Apparently the artifice and over-processed convention infomercial, with its many technical sleights of hand (see here and here), didn't fool the voters. And...

Well, that didn’t take long. A non-White American citizen born right here in the United States has gotten a spot on the Democratic presidential ticket, and the birthers have come scurrying out from whatever rock they have been living under since Barack Obama left office. Within hours of former vice president Joe Biden’s announcement Wednesday of his history-making running mate, once-reputable Newsweek posted a story posing “Some Questions for Kamala Harris About Eligibility.” The author, John Eastman, a conservative law professor, wrote that “some” are “questioning” whether Harris might be “constitutionally ineligible” to be vice president because, should she have...

One of the most durable political assets that Republicans have enjoyed throughout the 21st century is their edge among Americans 65 and older, who tend to turn out at the polls more reliably any other group. But with President Trump’s inept and erratic handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic, he is rapidly losing support among the age group most vulnerable to its ravages - which is a big warning sign to Republicans as they look to the fall. Trump has also been showing slippage in support among the next-oldest cohort, those 55 and older. The shift has been showing up...

Did you know that the Russian trolling during the 2016 election was so horrible and transformative that it compares to...the attack upon Pearl Harbor? While you chuckle over that observation, keep in mind that the absurd comparison was made by Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post.   Tumulty's hostility towards the president comes out in the very title of her laughable February 18 premise, We’ve just hit a new presidential low:

It's a new year, but a CNN panel hosted by Nia-Malika Henderson took a few moments this weekend to reflect on Democrats' poor messaging in 2017 - poor messaging which resulted in their pacing far behind the Republicans in fundraising. As of November, the RNC had $39.8 million in cash on hand, to the DNC's $6.3 million. Watch video hereJake Tapper also remarked on the Democrats' dry fundraising on Twitter. It's kind of a big deal, he noted. Jake Tapper @jaketapper The fundraising superiority of @gop over @dnc this year is not to be dismissed and it’s kind of astounding...

The booing was nearly as loud as the cheering when Bill Clinton stepped to the microphone in this remote mountain hamlet deep in the depressed heart of coal country. In the audience at the local elementary school Thursday night was a sizable contingent of coal miners and their families, many wearing helmets and T-shirts declaring their support for Donald Trump. […] The event here was Bill Clinton’s fourth in a long day of campaigning across Kentucky, where his wife faces a similar backlash in next week’s primary. …

With a growing possibility that Trump will not arrive at July's GOP convention having the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination on the first ballot, his campaign will have to put more emphasis on the nuts-and-bolts, ground-level organizing at which his closest rival, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, has excelled. That includes assuring that the delegates, many of whom will be picked in coming weeks at district and state conventions around the country, are people who will be loyal to Trump if the convention goes beyond a first ballot in selecting a nominee. Under GOP party rules, most delegates...

For nearly a quarter-century, Hillary Rodham Clinton has played an outsized role in the nation’s consciousness as an advocate and a political survivor. Her presidential campaign’s favorite way to describe her is as “a fighter.” But something surprising has emerged in public opinion about the former first lady, senator and secretary of state. Asked to name something tangible that Clinton has actually accomplished, many voters come up blank. It happened when Bloomberg News posed the question in May to a focus group of 10 Iowa Democrats. They praised Clinton for strength, experience and competence but could not recall a single...

AND YOUR NEXT PRESIDENTIAL CONTENDER IS…RICK SANTORUM By Emily Zanotti on 12.11.14 Oh goodie. In an interview with the Washington Post published yesterday, the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania made every indication that he would run for president again in 2016. “We’re definitely the underdog in this race,” he told reporter Karen Tumulty. “We’re just obviously in a better place right now. Our message will be a lot more focused this time than it was last time.” Santorum ran a surprisingly strong race in 2012 Republican primaries, acting as a conservative spoiler who briefly topped Mitt Romney in the polls....

The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty is trying to help the Republicans on the front page of Friday’s paper. It's not labeled "Analysis," but "Politics Debrief." The alliance between the “agreeable” GOP and the media is getting more transparent. “What will it take to save the Republicans from the self-destructive impulses of the tea party movement? That the government shutdown was a political disaster for the party that engineered it is widely acknowledged, except by the most ardent tea partyers.” Soaking a handkerchief full of crocodile tears, Tumulty insists “very bellicose” junior conservatives will have to be quashed: And that near-unanimity...

A usual round of media self-criticism turned into a schoolyard brawl last week, as editors, reporters and bloggers traded insults over a front-page article in The Washington Post, all at the very online water cooler where they usually get their news about the industry. The Post article, which ran on Nov. 29, was about rumors of Barack Obama’s ties to the Muslim world. snip Then things got really ugly. On Dec. 10, Chris Daly, a Boston University journalism professor, posted an entry on his blog that turned the debate over the merits of the article’s reporting into a debate over...

When it comes to guns, politicians are figuring out what clay pigeons have known for a long time: it's safer to be a moving target. So it is that President Bush can win points with gun-control groups by sticking to his campaign promise to sign an extension on the assault-weapons ban when it expires next year, while House majority leader Tom DeLay can make the gun lobby happy by suggesting, as he did last week, that no such bill will ever reach Bush's desk. And Democrats can fuss and fume over how Bush and the Republicans are trying to have...