Free Republic

On the menu today: The cover piece in the newest issue of National Review has Ron DeSantis fans grumbling that it’s far too early for such a gloomy assessment of his campaign because not a single vote has been cast yet. Fine, but to believe that DeSantis has a shot of winning Iowa, we need to believe that his support is at least 15 percentage points higher than his highest numbers in recent polling and that Donald Trump’s support is at least 15 percentage points lower than his lowest numbers in recent polling. (If you simply take DeSantis’s best number...

John Davidson asks at the Federalist, “Does DeSantis Know What Time It Is? Didn’t Sound Like It In That NBC Interview.” Responding to DeSantis’s assertion that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and was in large part responsible for allowing Covid-driven rules changes that helped Democrats collect a lot of mail-in votes, this is Davidson’s thesis: "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seems to have lost his way, unable to articulate a clear position on the most important issue of the primaries, which is what happened in 2020. . . . No issue is more important for DeSantis (and the entire GOP...

Elections are supposed to be about the future, but Donald Trump is stuck in the past. He is dead set on running for president in 2024 by campaigning on the very worst part of his record. In his much-hyped return to the mainstream media, a CNN town hall on May 11, Trump doubled down on his claims that millions of fraudulent votes were the cause of his defeat in 2020. He said he had no regrets about his behavior before and during the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, and that he does not owe Mike Pence an apology for...

We are only 20 months away from the next Presidential election, and at this stage, the Republican party should be starting to whittle down its field of contenders. Yet here we are with most of the people expected to run still sitting it out, silent. It’s true that Nikki Haley has started her campaign, as have a few outriders like Vivek Ramaswamy, to whom I wish much luck. But the serving or former officials who should have started their campaigns by now are still sitting it out. Leaving the ground open for Trump to do stunts like his Ohio trip...

Once again, Donald Trump has proposed dismantling the United States Constitution. “Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?” Trump asked on TruthSocial Saturday. “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” The answer to Trump’s question is “neither.” The response to his declaration is, “No, it does not.” The conclusion one must draw is that the 45th president of the United States has lost whatever was left of his...

Perhaps Republicans Could Learn Something HereI despise the term RINO — Republican in Name Only. It splits the Republican Party year after year, and its persistence hands the Democrats power in Congress they would not otherwise be able to earn. I never hear the term DINO — Democrat in Name Only — because the Democrats are too smart for that. Within the Democratic Party are avowed socialists (Bernie Sanders) together with senators and representatives who represent Montana, Arizona, and other generally red states — states that have long traditions of independence and free-market values. In other words, the Democratic Party...

The crux of Robinson’s post: “On Primary Day in Georgia, Kemp gets 74% and Perdue gets 22%. Nobody in any election in America gets 74% of the votes. Ever. It doesn’t happen. Obvious fraud.” But the thing that Robinson claims never happens actually happens with regularity. Aaron Blake points to a 2009 study that “found that about 1 in 10 Senate incumbents took less than 75 percent of the vote in their primaries. Many faced token or no opposition, but it does happen — very regularly.” . . . Marjorie Taylor Greene carried 70 percent of her district at the...

This isn’t just illiberal, it’s irrational. What Goldberg said was factually incorrect, yes. But so what? Figures on political TV shows say stupid and historically illiterate things every day — including about the Nazis — and nothing much happens to them as a result. What, exactly, was different about this one? Is warmed-over critical theory prohibited now? And why does anyone care? ABC’s president explained that the suspension was a product of Goldberg’s “hurtful comments.” But who, specifically, was “hurt”? The View is a talk show, and a particularly stupid one to boot. Is there anyone in the world who...

Dear Never Trumpers: The Cruise Is Over How a generation of "conservative" intellectuals finally turned into Democrats A lot has happened since my well known essay "The Collapse of the Never Trumpers" appeared in 2018 — and none of it has been good for that tribe of pundits or their garden gnome leader, Bill Kristol. In fact, most of them have seen their careers collapse so spectacularly that only Michael Avenatti could really understand. George Will has semi-retired to a life of boring students to death as a commencement speaker at small colleges. Jonah Goldberg and Steven Hayes used to...

As cable television broadcast the scenes of Trump supporters breaking past police lines and even smashing their way into the Capitol on January 6, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., texted Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff: “He’s got to condemn this sh** ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough.” A little later, Don Jr. texted again: “We need an Oval office address. He [then-president Trump] has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.” It’s that last statement that reveals the whole truth of January 6 for Trump’s supporters. Donald Trump’s...

there are reasons to believe Trump’s dominance is exaggerated and that it is slowly degrading, such that by the time the 2024 Republican primaries roll around, he’ll be challengeable and beatable if he runs. [cut] Trump’s media footprint is much reduced. Data from SocialFlow shows engagement with Trump stories plummeting in March of this year and it took another jag down in August and September. As for Trump’s polling numbers, Republicans might tell pollsters they want him to run again as a way to stick a finger in the eye of the media or as a general statement of warm...

I took a beating on Twitter Thursday night for making what I thought was a commonsense observation that President Trump should be negotiating favorable terms for resignation "if there are 20 GOP senators who’d vote to impeach." In our current climate, this was taken as a call for Trump’s impeachment. But it wasn’t a value judgment. It was a mathematical calculation. As it happens, I do think the president has committed an impeachable offense, making a reckless speech that incited a throng on the mall, which foreseeably included an insurrectionist mob. These rioters ended up overwhelming security forces and storming...

These are dark days in the history of the United States, and no one is feeling them more intensely than Mike Pence. On Wednesday, the vice president admirably turned aside the president’s high-intensity demands that he shred the Constitution. Trump was pushing Pence to usurp the states’ power over the disposition of their electoral votes — in effect, to claim dictatorial power to reverse President-elect Biden’s victory. Pence’s fidelity to his constitutional oath so enraged Trump that the president publicly rebuked him even as an insurrectionist mob was descending on the Capitol. Press reports indicate that the rioters, upon overwhelming...

Lin Wood has seen and raised his fellow conspiracy-theorist Sidney Powell in a series of tweets that would make Q blush:My information from reliable source is that Roberts arranged an illegal adoption of two young children from Wales through Jeffrey Epstein. I think we can all agree that Epstein knows pedophilia.If only Jeffrey Epstein was still alive . . . Wouldn’t that be something? https://t.co/DwhgKO3gMp— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) December 31, 2020A couple of more questions for Chief Justice John Roberts:(1) You are recorded discussing Justice Scalia’s successor before date of his sudden death. How did you know Scalia was going...

The first thing to notice about Texas’s desperation lawsuit, which seeks to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, is what does not appear on the front page: the name of the state’s solicitor general, Kyle Hawkins. The lawsuit is brought against four other states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin — that have certified Joe Biden as the winner of their electoral votes. Thus, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton invokes the original jurisdiction of the United States Supreme Court to hear disputes between states. Yet the brief is not signed by the lawyer who typically represents Texas before...

If significant numbers of Republican voters choose to not participate in the January 5 runoff elections for both Senate seats, and that leads to victories by Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, that will do nothing for Donald Trump, Trump’s legacy as president, the Republican Party, and the cause of conservatism. It will, however, do a lot for Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, who would instantly become major power brokers in the Republican Party. They could take their “your vote was stolen by rigged machines” conspiracy-theory schtick to any state in the union and hold don’t-get-out-the-vote rallies for any race, telling...

Donald Trump, a Manhattan real-estate mogul who had traveled with his own personal security for years, had never really been a “gun guy.” In his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, he wrote, “I generally oppose gun control, but I support the ban on assault weapons and I also support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun.” Even in his remarks accepting the (NRA) endorsement, Trump made comments that suggested he found owning a lot of guns . . . kind of worrisome. “My sons are members,” Trump declared. “They have so many rifles, so many guns, that...