Free Republic

The world is getting more uptight about lending money to President Donald Trump’s government — causing interest rates to climb in ways that are worsening affordability pressures, hampering economic growth and creating a new risk for Republicans in November’s midterm elections. The energy price spike triggered by the Iran war has seeped into the price of bonds that help fund the U.S. government. Interest rates on a 10-year U.S. Treasury note are topping 4.44%, up from 3.95% before the war started at the end of February. Average mortgage rates have climbed to their highest levels in nine months, while auto...

President Trump downplayed the effect redistricting will have on the midterm elections and said the outcome of the Iran war will be a bigger factor. “It helps. I mean, I don’t know [if it will be the] difference,” Trump said of how new congressional districts in several states will impact Republicans in November. “I think a bigger difference would be if I win quickly [in Iran], as opposed to after [the elections], but again, I’m not going to let the election determine what’s going to happen with respect to Iran, because they cannot have a nuclear weapon,” he told Fox...

In my home state of Montana, former University of Montana President Seth Bodnar is running for the US Senate as an “independent.” In Nebraska, the Democrat who won the party’s primary for US Senate this week plans to drop out of the general-election race and throw her support to “independent” Dan Osborn. This rapidly developing trend in Republican-heavy states is not about independence: It’s about big-government policies being deliberately repackaged for voters who have grown skeptical of the liberal brand. And the left is using party labels to mask what should be a genuine debate about policy direction. In American...

Trump's popular vote win and GOP redistricting gains have reshaped House battlegrounds, challenging Democrats' demographic strategy and midterm advantage.Donald Trump’s popular vote victory has eroded some of the demographic gains Democrats have been working on for years, giving Republicans hope they can break the historic trend of the president’s party losing seats in the first midterm election after winning the White House. Two years from now some 14 Democratic House members will be defending districts Trump won, compared to just three Republicans in districts carried by Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s a significantly better outlook than the GOP faced after...

Multiple senior members of conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol’s administration and the head of his People Power Party (PPP) tendered their resignations on Thursday after vote counts confirmed that the left-wing Democratic Party decisively took over the National Assembly in Wednesday’s midterm election. The Democrats overcame a chaotic campaign season in which leader Lee Jae-myung survived a would-be assassin stabbing him in the neck. The day he was released from the hospital, three members of his party defected, protesting that Lee was running an authoritarian and corrupt “regime” within the party. Lee was in court on Tuesday for a hearing addressing...

President Biden is entering the new year with approval ratings that are close to the lowest levels seen in his presidency, despite the shot-in the-arm the White House received from a relatively successful midterm election that saw Democrats hold the Senate and keep House losses to a minimum. A Reuters-Ipsos poll out on Thursday showed that 40 percent of Americans approved of Biden’s job performance. It was a point higher than last month’s survey, but low enough to stir angst among Democrats reading for a 2024 reelection signal from Biden that is expected to come after the State of the...

​Stacey Abrams’ campaign is $1 million in debt –despite raising more than $100 million in her second straight unsuccessful Georgia gubernatorial bid​, according to a report Monday. The Democratic stalwart’s campaign owes the cash to vendors, Axios reported, citing manager Lauren Groh-Wargo. ​ Though Abrams is known for her fundraising and get-out-the-vote skills, the campaign’s 180 full-time staffers got their last paychecks Nov. 15, just a week after Election Day, the report said. “People have told me they have no idea how they’re going to pay their rent in January,” ​a former staffer told ​the outlet. “It was more than...

The New York Times over the weekend explained that Ohio Republican Sen.-elect J.D. Vance’s win in the midterm election was a “reminder” that the Buckeye State is “no longer a swing state,” which will cause Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown to have a tough reelection in 2024. Brown, who turned 70 this month, is the only Democrat to win a statewide election in the last decade in Ohio. However, Vance’s win posed an even harder reelection battle for his 2024 reelection bid, especially after the Republican governor won by roughly 25 points.

What was supposed to be a red tsunami last week turned out to be a ripple. It didn’t take long for the GOP establishment to place the blame: Donald Trump! It couldn’t be because Mitch McConnell decided to spend $10 million supporting the treacherous Lisa Murkowski against the state’s GOP nominee, rather than in Arizona, Georgia, or Michigan. No, it was Trump. It wasn’t Kevin McCarthy’s embarrassing attempt to recreate Newt Gingrich’s successful “Contract with America” that galvanized America and brought the GOP 54 seats in a year with 2.99% inflation, with his facile “Commitment to America”. No, it was...

President Joe Biden signaled that former President Donald Trump’s policy of America First took a hit in the midterm elections and that the United States would return to its role of global leadership. “The Republicans who survived along with the Democrats, are of the view that we’re going to stay fully engaged in the world and we in fact know what we’re about,” Biden said proudly. The president spoke about the latest results from the midterm elections during a press conference in Bali, Indonesia after meeting with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.

So there's no misunderstanding, I realize that there is a lot of bad with what happened on Tuesday. I could probably add a few thousand words on top of the excellent piece that Dr. John offered, and I was among the many who stayed up late on Tuesday looking forward to a tsunami of MS-13NBC tears. Obviously, I was disappointed like the rest of us Normals, but a piece by Ace, The Other Side Gets the Ball Too, put things in perspective for me. (emphasis mine) We got a little self-deluded about abortion having all but vanished as a factor...

The day after the midterm elections, I was at a small business client, and of course everyone was talking about the results and how the Democrats had done much better than expected. One woman, Linda, said something that really caught my attention. She said she voted for Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) because of his stance on abortion. Another person, David, said the same thing and that he was also concerned about some of the more radical Republicans. I heard similar stories from other employees discussing how they voted, ranging from a distrust of former President Trump to concerns about...

Dear America I am disappointed. Surprised and disappointed. Yesterday was a litmus test for your intelligence and you failed. 72% of voters said they felt the country was going in the wrong direction and still you voted to stay the course. Many of us tried to help you. We tried to help you understand what was at stake and how to set the country on a better path but you chose to ignore us. It's baffling. I never understood why people would vote against their better interests. But you did. What did you vote for? You voted for violent crime....

As the political discussion centers on the 2022 wins and losses from the midterm election, one thing that stands out in similarity to the 2020 general election is the difference between ballots and votes. It appears in some states this is the ‘new normal.’Where votes were the focus, the Biden administration suffered losses. Where ballots were the focus, the Biden administration won.While initially the ballot form of election control was tested in Deep Blue states, through the process of mail-in returns under the guise and justification of “expanding democracy,” a useful tool for those who are vested in the distinction,...

The mood was boisterous Wednesday on the set of ABC’s hit talk show “The View,” as the show’s hosts celebrated a number of political losses handed to former President Trump in the midterm elections. “I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention, the single biggest loser of the night was one Donald J. Trump,” said Alyssa Farah Griffin, Trump’s former communications director and now the lone conservative on the panel. “He dragged down the Republican candidates in a huge way. He insisted on putting up candidates based on their fealty to him, not their qualifications.”

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said that the latest results from Tuesday’s midterm elections show that former President Trump’s political instincts are “about” himself and not for his party. Christie made the remarks during an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America” after co-anchor George Stephanopoulos asked if he agreed with an assessment about Trump being the biggest loser in the election. In response, Christie said that the GOP lost races in key battleground states due to the party’s choices of “inferior candidates.” Trump has come under criticism for backing candidates that some Republicans thought could be weak in a...

I've been watching the witty humor of these guys clowning around tonight and I had to snip a little bit of the fun. I'm naming this segment "Clowning with Crowder". Good times!

Marc Elias, the Democrat lawyer who played a key role in creating the “Russia collusion” hoax, and who pushed for vote-by-mail in the 2020 election, gloated Monday that Republicans were being “destroyed” in court cases over the 2022 midterm election process. Elias is primarily known for challenging election results in close races so that Democrats win, even in cases where Republicans appear to win on Election Day. He pushed for vote-by-mail in 2020 and is active in several lawsuits to liberalize voting rules today.

CNN, ABC and NBC panelists offered up their final midterm predictions during the Sunday news shows and painted a grim picture for the Democratic Party ahead of election day. CNN's David Chailan said Democrats were looking for a "cushion" in Pennsylvania. "They are looking for a place to pad their majority a bit and try to offset potential losses elsewhere. This is why the Senate right now is the thing Democrats are looking at as a potential saving grace on Tuesday night. It is bleak looking for the House because of what you said, this is an economy election and...

The expected indictment of Donald Trump is looming over the midterm elections as both parties are preparing for a major battle after Election Day if Attorney General Merrick Garland moves forward with an unprecedented prosecution of a former president. Republican lawmakers in both the Senate and the House are warning they will put up a staunch defense of Trump if the Department of Justice announces an indictment, which some GOP aides and strategists expect to come in the first 60 to 90 days after Election Day.