Free Republic

Andrew CUOMO rolled out his campaign with "shock and awe" boldness, promising to be a fiscal hawk and take on the unions and Albany's culture of corruption. He insisted he shared the frustration of Tea Party voters. And on the 13th day of the race, he blinked. My, that was fast. Ever since Carl Paladino pulled an upset in the GOP primary on Sept. 14, Cuomo has been the deer caught in the headlights. Paladino charged at him with guns blazing, and Cuomo couldn't decide whether to keep running as a centrist Democrat or make a left turn into the...

Democrats are already gearing up. They can't wait for the November elections to arrive. One of the Chicago blogs I check into, Marathon Pundit, ran an interesting post this weekend. I don't want to mention the writer's name and risk blowing his cover, but due to a DNC computer glitch, he received an invitation to attend an Organizing for America "training session" in Evanston, Illinois. Well, what have we here? After checking the box marked "Yes! You can count on me!" said blogger returned his RSVP. Then, wearing what he described as a "subtle disguise," he arrived at the session,...

There's a lively debate going on about whether Demo crats would be better off passing or not passing a health-care bill. Some liberals claim that Democrats would be better off passing a bill, any bill, even if it's unpopular with the general electorate. The idea is to energize the Democratic base, which is demoralized by the prospects of failure. Polls show Democrats far less enthusiastic and far less likely to vote -- passing a law might change that. Others, mostly conservatives but also some liberals speaking privately, figure that Democrats would be better off letting the issue drop. Back in...

Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. became the first Republican to win since 1966 by sweeping Baltimore's increasingly conservative suburbs, the Eastern Shore, and Southern and Western Maryland. The question now being examined in both political parties is: Does this represent a permanent realignment? Certainly Parris N. Glendening's election campaigns in 1994 and 1998 demonstrated that the Democratic electoral base has come to rest almost entirely on the Washington suburbs and in Baltimore city. He squeaked to victory in '94, winning just those three subdivisions, and at the height of the economic boom won only three more counties in his re-election...