Free Republic

McCain's plumage A LOT OF LOOSE TALK portrays Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., as a RINO--a Republican In Name Only. But if Mr. McCain is a de facto Democrat, he must be Joe Lieberman. Here is the Vietnam War hero on the subject of Iraq: "If we leave Iraq prematurely," Mr. McCain told the American Enterprise Institute, "the jihadists will interpret the withdrawal as their great victory. Osama bin Laden and his followers believe that America is weak, unwilling to suffer casualties in battle. They drew that lesson from Lebanon in the 1980s and Somalia in the 1990s, and today they...

Dr. Tom Coburn, the plainspoken obstetrician from Muskogee, Okla., was back in Washington briefly last week. Republican senators greeted him with mixed emotions. He is their best hope for keeping an Oklahoma seat Republican in the closely divided Senate. The bad news is, he would be as prickly as he was during his six years in the House (1995-2000). Coburn's problem is that he takes seriously the professed Republican agenda: limited government, entitlement reform and anti-abortion advocacy. He was a rare sincere GOP supporter of term limits, leaving the House after three terms as he promised to do. The result...