Free Republic

Actually the Democrats have been race baiting for decades. And it’s not going away. Using fear and race-polarizing agitation to drive minority voters to the polls is going to be the increasingly overt face of the Democratic Party. They can’t win any other way. What’s new is that the mainstream media has suddenly discovered all of this.Through the years, these same news outlets have wasted no time at all in spotting anything that even hints of Republican race baiting. Take the presidential campaign of 1988.Willie Horton was a black murder convict who raped a white woman and stabbed her boyfriend...

BOSTON, Oct. 16 (UPI) -- Former governor of Massacheusetts and 1988 Democratic nominee for president Michael Dukakis took the stand in Boston to testify on behalf of a friend of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Robel Phillipos stands accused of lying to the FBI and local law enforcement about his actions and wherabouts in the three days following the attack that killed three an injured more than 260 people. "[Phillipos] told me he was questioned for five hours by the FBI," Dukakis testified according to the Boston Globe, adding, "he was so confused he didn't know what he said."

In 1988, Republicans slammed Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis over Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who attacked a man and sexually assaulted a woman compliments of Massachusetts’ weekend furlough program. This was used to paint Dukakis as soft on crime. Willie Horton 1988 Attack AdIt was a particularly nasty ad (I mean that in a good way)–and Democrats seem to be trying to do the same thing to Republicans in some of the 2014 elections. Trying to spin legal decisions in a way that portrays them as incompetent, soft on crime, and, at times; engaging in a war on women....

During a call-in to the nationally renowned Least Dangerous Podcast with JC King, Former Presidential Candidate and Governor Michael Dukakis cautioned Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about her prospects of becoming the Democratic Nominee for President, “Believe me, neither she, nor anyone else can take that for granted.” Using his own experience as a barometer he continued, “I was 40 points ahead with 5 weeks to go when I ran for reelection in 1978 and I got beaten.” He did praise her saying her experience in the Obama administration has made her a primary choice for the party, “She...

It's looking increasingly likely that Sen. John Kerry has the nomination for secretary of State pretty well locked up, and in the event that he steps down, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick will have to appoint an interim replacement to steward his Senate seat before the Bay State can hold a special election later this spring or summer. Ed wondered this morning if we mightn't be looking at another failed presidential candidate as Kerry's placeholder in the meantime, but according to Dukakis himself, that won’t be the case. Via CBS News: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO   Former Gov. Michael...

Was the presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich sabotaged by his own subconscious mind?  In the wake of the spectacular blunder on last Sunday’s “Meet The Press” in which Gingrich criticized House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisc.) Medicare proposal as being “too big a jump,” one has to wonder. Gingrich seems to be too intelligent to purposely make such a gaffe.  So why did he do it?  The best answer your humble correspondent can come up with is that even though Gingrich desires to become president on a conscious level, his subconscious mind wants to protect him from public embarrassment...

A federal judge in Houston has thrown out the 20-year-old arms smuggling conviction of a former CIA agent, outlining in scathing terms how federal officials knowingly used a false affidavit at his trial and concealed the act through years of appeals. Edwin Wilson was convicted in Houston in 1983 of smuggling arms to Libya at a time when the threat of Libyan terrorism was major news. Congress was mounting investigations into controversial CIA activities around the globe, and CIA administrators were actively trying to deflect criticism. Wilson, now 75, has been in prison ever since, serving a 52-year sentence. His...

Call it the unkindest Dukakis of all . . . In the pre-SOTU kibitzing, Game Change co-author Mark Halperin, having read released excerpts of the speech, says it reminds him of the man in the tank, Michael Dukakis. Halperin, who prefaced his punch by professing his respect for PBO et. al, was reacting to Andrea Mitchell, who claimed to hear echoes, of all people, of Ronald Reagan in PBO's remarks. View video here.

Health Reform: If Democrats in Washington think their health care reform with a public option is a good thing, why have they exempted themselves from it? Why isn't what's good for their constituents good for them?During ABC's June 24 infomercial for government-run health care broadcast from the White House, President Obama was asked if he and his family would abide by the restrictions and limitations that came with his proposed reforms. In what Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com called "Obama's Michael Dukakis moment," President Obama refused to make such a pledge and confessed that if "it's my family member, if it's...

Tom Brokaw says his most conservative friend has told him he might vote for Hillary Clinton. I for one believe the former NBC News anchor. Hillary supporters might indeed constitute the rightward fringe of his friend set. The revelation occured on today's Morning Joe. View video here.

Michael Dukakis has seen this script before: a Republican administration besieged by scandal and running out the clock on its second term, while wide-eyed Democrats confidently lick their chops, knowing there’s no way in hell voters will reward the G.O.P. with four more years in the White House. It was around this very moment 20 years ago, the summer when Oliver North told Congress he was “authorized to do everything that I did” and Reagan fatigue took hold, that Mr. Dukakis, then the 53-year-old governor of Massachusetts, emerged at the head of a crowded Democratic presidential pack. By the time...

You’ve heard of the “tax-anything-that-moves” crowd? Well they were out in full force at the State House yesterday - under the able direction of their movement’s founding father, former Gov. Michael Dukakis, who is establishing his place as the Jimmy Carter of ex-Bay State governors. Dukakis and a group of Democratic lawmakers were there to lobby for a bill that would finance billions in commuter rail expansion projects by taxing - you guessed it! - just about anything that moves. Literally. For starters there’d be a new tax on all vehicles - a “greenhouse gas reduction fee” - tied to...

Democrats seek to curb attack ads... Dukakis heads watchdog panel... The state Democratic Party has created a four-member panel, headed by former governor Michael S. Dukakis, that will review campaign advertisements and publicly rebuke candidates who use negative attacks. Party chairman Philip W. Johnston created the panel and will serve on it, along with Dukakis and Cameron F. Kerry, brother of US Senator John F. Kerry; and Katherine M. Clark of Melrose, a former state Senate candidate who is chairing a statewide campaign effort for the Democratic Party. Johnston, elected party chairman in 2000, said he believes that a major...

Mike Dukakis hasn't been governor since 1990, and he's still molly-coddling criminals in Massachusetts. Just ask double-murderer Norman Porter, Chicago's ``beloved anti-war poet,'' who's finally - finally - back in Massachusetts. The Duke commuted one of his life sentences, tried unsuccessfully to commute the other, and then finally let him walk away from a prison so ridiculously lax in 1985 that the warden - excuse me, superintendent - ate dinner every Friday night in the special cell bloc for organized-crime thugs. And the Democrats wonder why they still can't elect a governor. Everybody is afraid we'll end up with another...

Last August, Edvard Munch’s famous masterpiece, “The Scream,” was stolen again. Armed gunmen took the painting from the Oslo Munch Museum in Norway. Saturday, the Democratic National Committee will elect former Governor Howard Dean as the Chairman of the DNC. Are these events connected? Sometimes, reality is its own parody. As the satirical website ScrappleFace.com reported this week, “Faced with the fact that former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is the only person still seeking the chairmanship of the Democrat National Committee (DNC), the nine-member panel of elected officers announced today that it had posted the job on CareerBuilder.com, and would...

SEASON PREMIERE Wednesday, October 20, 9:30PM ET/PT CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE stars Emmy Award nominee John Goodman in a comedy about a family man who, by default, is the go-to guy for his eccentric extended clan. John (Goodman) and Kate Barnett (Jean Smart) are still very much in love after 20 years of marriage and are looking forward to the next 20. Only one thing interrupts their bliss: John's family. His sex-obsessed father, Art (Ed Asner), and his loopy mother, Marge (Olympia Dukakis), have a penchant for coming over unannounced, ready to stir the pot. The owner of a security...

At my latest campaign stop, somewhere near Lambert Field or (was it Houlihan's Stadium?), Steve Winwood's seminal anthem of the disgruntled left "Roll With It, Baby" played on the loud speaker. All of sudden I was remembered 1988, which reminded me of the Dukakis campaign. Now I can't get the Dukakis campaign out of my head. There's no rhyme or reason for it either. I am really not sure why I can't stop thinking of the Dukakis campaign. I hadn't thought of it in years but now it's all I can think about. There doesn't seem to be any real...

This is a movie review, a reminder of one of the most reprehensible people in American history, and a well-deserved pranging of James Carville and Lanny Davis. Both of them appeared last week on every TV program in the known universe to decry the criticisms of John Kerry by 254 Swift Boat veterans because “they were not on the same boat.” This is a bald-faced, brass-plated lie in a number of ways. But before we count those up, a review of M. Night Shyamalan’s latest movie, The Village, is in order Yes, this will connect up. And so will a...

I believe that, like entertainment, political campaigns have Jump The Shark moments where you can trace the decline of a candidate's chances. For Gerald Ford in 1976, it was when he said Eastern Europe wasn't under Soviet domination. For Richard Nixon in 1960, it was when he showed up at the first debate with JFK without makeup to hide the thick shadow of his beard. Perhaps the most famous political Jump the Shark moment was in 1988 when Michael Dukakis, in a double digit lead over George Bush, appeared atop a tank wearing a tanker's helmet that made him look...

Most of us old enough to have been reading newspapers and watching television in the mid-1980s remember when the Soviet-backed Marxist-Leninist junta “Sandinistas” were battling the anti-communist guerrilla army of “Contras” in Nicaragua. And who could forget the overblown Iran-Contra affair, the attempt to arm the Contras through a deal to swap arms for hostages with the mullahs in Iran. What might be hazy in the memory after 20 years, however, is the Keystone Kops, I-want-to-play-president role of the freshman senator from Massachusetts, John Forbes Kerry. Still humming his “Give peace a chance” mantra from Vietnam days, Kerry jumped into...