Free Republic

In an obvious effort to get conservatives to warm up to the idea of moderate Mitt Romney as the GOP nominee for president, talk show host Michael Medved does a little jujitsu move against election facts. As I have shown elsewhere, in every presidential election since 1972, GOP candidates do better when they are seen in greater contrast with the Democratic nominee. This was never more true than in 2008, and though Medved admits that John McCain was a moderate, he implies that the GOP would have won if they had nominatedsomeone even more moderate than McCain. This is pure poppycock. Medved confuses...

Not a single candidate came out ahead in last night’s Vegas slugfest—Romney looked petty, Perry looked desperate, and Cain was obviously lying to himself about his 9-9-9 plan. After a seemingly endless series of eight prior candidate encounters, one of the GOP presidential contenders finally came up with an ingenious debate strategy that counts as fearless, distinctive and utterly original: attacking Ronald Reagan over the arms-for-hostages deals during Iran-Contra. Near the conclusion of a deeply damaging slugfest that weakened every candidate on stage, Congressman Ron (“Dr. Demento”) Paul outrageously trashed the Gipper’s memory in response to pre-debate Herman Cain comments...

July 13, 2011 why Palin Gets More Hostile (And Admiring) Coverage Than She Deserves By Michael Medved 7/13/2011   Sarah Palin doesn’t deserve the ridicule she receives from the mainstream media, nor does she merit the adulation she inspires from her legions of fans. The over-reaction on each side feeds the super-heated response on the other: if she didn’t get regularly mocked and mauled by elite commentators, she’d never be taken seriously as a presidential possibility by Tea Party conservatives, and if she weren’t trumpeted as the second coming of Reagan by rightwing true believers she wouldn’t absorb the...

The headline for the big GOP debate should read “ROMNEY SOLIDIFIES HIS STATUS AS FRONTRUNNER” but the appropriate sub-head may prove even more significant in the long run: “Bachmann Makes Energetic and Well-Received Debut.” At this point, no one should doubt that the feisty congresswoman from Minnesota will emerge as a major contender—certainly in Iowa (where she was born and raised, and where her evangelical fervor will rally Mike Huckabee’s currently unfocused cadres) and, if she wins there, then most likely in the rest of the country.

In phone conversation with my teenaged son this morning I mentioned the sad news that Elizabeth Taylor had died and he innocently asked, "Who's that?" Like most members of his generation, he has no recollection or knowledge of her incomparable glamour (her luminous still photo in a one-piece white bathing suit from "Suddenly Last Summer" will always raise pulse-rates among males of the species), her impressive acting achievements ("Butterfield 8," "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and "Taming of the Shrew" still hold up as dazzling performances) or her sensational scandals (the melandcholy details of...

Liberal commentators blame the Bush tax cuts, not runaway spending, for the budget crisis. They insist that slashing rates on income taxes, which means smaller percentages of private income going to government, would guarantee red ink even if Congress finds many billions in spending cuts. The problem with this argument is that it’s clearly contradicted by recent history. Actually, the second round of Bush tax cuts in 2003 brought increased revenues – both in actual dollar terms and as a percentage of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) -- not falling levels of government support. In 2007, six years after Bush...

Some conservative commentators may feel inclined to spend Presidents Day ruminating over Barack Obama's evil intentions, or denouncing the chief executive as an alien interloper and ideologue perversely determined to damage the republic. Instead, they should consider the history of John Adams's White House prayer and develop a more effective focus for their criticism. On Nov. 2, 1800, a day after he became the first president to occupy the newly constructed executive mansion, Adams wrote to his wife Abigail: "I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none...

The debate between left and right on contributing factors in the Tucson shootings has unfolded along utterly predictable and thoroughly unenlightening lines. Liberals accuse conservatives of overheated, gun-related rhetoric that created a hostile, edgy climate that may have encouraged the killer; the right responds that there’s no evidence of Jared Lee Loughner’s conservative orientation and that liberals make equally reprehensible and irresponsible statements. Neither side bothers to examine two highly dubious core assumptions: 1-That the Obama era constitutes a uniquely polarizing and hostile political period. 2-That assassinations take place most frequently when politicians and commentators make vicious comments against one...

As Republicans consider their presidential options for 2012, they ought to discard two dangerously misleading pieces of conventional wisdom: that Sarah Palin and her tea party supporters represent a triumphant, even dominant force in American politics, and that more centrist, veteran GOP officeholders exert little appeal to the electorate. National results in the last two election cycles conclusively disprove both assumptions: Palin's power as king (or queen) maker in 2010 produced spotty, unreliable results. And Sen. John McCain ran a stronger race and drew more votes in 2008 than outspoken conservatives who shared the GOP ballot with him.........

DOWNTOWN — This year's November election kicked off a hard-hitting town hall discussion Sunday night by conservative radio talk show hosts on issues ranging from the "tea party" movement to California's business environment. About 1,300 people attended 870 AM KRLA radio's "Town hall 2010" forum at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, where radio hosts Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Mike Gallagher and Kevin James took on some of the state's and nation's most pressing issues, including the upcoming Nov. 2 election. Republicans could gain 20 to 90 Democratic seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate in this year's election,...

The announcement by former congressman Tom Tancredo that he'll run for governor of Colorado as a fringe party candidate follows a familiar pattern: established politicians turn to protest campaigns only after they've been disgraced, defeated and rejected by the mainstream. Their minor party dalliances represent a desperate, pathetic bid to keep the media spotlight, more than they reflect any practical agenda or commitment to ideological purity. In Tancredo's case, he remains tainted by his embarrassing 2008 presidential race. A full three years before the Iowa caucuses, he became one of the first Republicans to announce his intention to run, and...

Larry Schweikert (Freeper LS) on Michael Medved

With a record number of black candidates seeking Republican nominations in upcoming congressional races, the GOP may finally make progress in facing the most serious menace to its survival: the lack of support from any significant segment of the nonwhite population. Not all of the 33 African-American contenders will win their primary contests, let alone the general election, but at least a half-dozen of them face promising prospects and could provide new energy for a party that desperately needs to shatter its lily-white image. There are no Republicans among the present 41 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, or among...

Will it be easier to persuade people that Barack Obama is wrong on the issues or to try to convince them that he is outright evil? That’s a crucial question facing conservatives as we gear up for fateful election battles in 2010 and 2012. Based on human nature and political history, the answer to that question ought to be obvious: Americans have often felt that our leaders make mistakes or pursue destructive policies but we have rarely (if ever) believed that they did it deliberately to damage the country. In the last 80 years, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter...

Why do huge Wall Street bonuses provoke so much more public indignation than similarly gigantic lottery jackpots? At least financial tycoons can try to argue that their payoffs stem from their own wise decisions or productive hard work. But Powerball winners get rewarded for patently stupid behavior: wasting a few dollars (usually on a regular basis) on addictive games of chance with only the remotest possibility of success. Moreover, when some lucky bozo collects on a swollen jackpot that’s accumulated in a state-sponsored lottery, it means that this particular treasure won’t be available to anyone else; when somebody wins, the...

Medved's Top 10 movies of 2009 1. The Last Station 2- (500) Days of Summer 3- Up in the Air 4- The Hurt Locker 5- Up 6- The Blind Side 7- Julie & Julia 8- An Education 9- The Stoning of Soraya M. 10- Bright Star

Following the Evidence vs. Framing Science: Stephen Meyer and Chris Mooney, Monday on Medved Monday, Nov. 16th, Stephen Meyer and Chris Mooney will be on The Michael Medved Show (second hour, 1pm PT/4pm ET). Mooney is a diehard Darwin defender that various Fellows here at the CSC have debated in the past, and he's someone we've reported about over the years. His view of science is elitist and arrogant, and he has recommended such things as suppressing dissenting views from the media, to spinning science in such a way as to manipulate public opinion. He considers anyone who disagrees with...

Israel has thrived during the global collapse—thanks to an entrepreneurial culture built on compulsory military service. Dan Senor and Saul Singer on why U.S. companies should take notes. For all the press coverage of the Middle East, there is one side of Israel that gets scant attention: the country’s economy has the highest concentration of innovation and entrepreneurialism in the world today. For years, multinational technology companies and global investors have been beating a path to Israel. Even in 2008—a year of global economic turmoil—per capita venture investments in Israel were 2.5 times greater than in the United States, more...

Everyone knows that Americans are bitterly divided over politics but what is the fundamental nature of that division? What is the core disagreement that separates conservatives from liberals, right from left? Norman Podhoretz provided a provocative and persuasive answer to that question in a recent Wall Street Journal column (September 10) based on his new book, Why Are Jews Liberals? Podhoretz wrote: The great issue between the two political communities is how they feel about the nature of American society. With all exceptions duly noted, I think it fair to say that what liberals mostly see when they look at...

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