Free Republic

Sometimes even when you attend an event, and take part in it, it still takes time to understand it. I had the honor to speak at the Knoxville Tea Party, as Ben Franklin, a printer from Philadelphia. The visible, massive driving force for that and all 750+ Tea Parties with 1+ million people in attendance was taxes. But the real issue was larger and deeper than taxes. When the mainstream media attempt to deal seriously with this phenomenon, they phrase it as “conservative” as opposed to “liberal.” Sometimes it’s no such thing. The Tea Parties are related to the present...

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), the 2008 vice presidential nominee, will join a new Republican policy group aimed at reshaping and promoting the party brand. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.)announced Palin’s decision to join the National Council for a New America on Monday night. The group launched late last week and held its first town hall-style forum on Saturday in Virginia. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 presidential nominee, indicated during a conference call last week that his former running mate had been invited to join the policy panel. The group, which is made up of prominent Republican leaders,...

Coming soon to a battleground state near you: a new effort to revive the image of the Republican Party and to counter President Obama's characterization of Republicans as "the party of 'no.'" CNN has learned that the new initiative, called the National Council for a New America, will be announced Thursday. It will involve an outreach by an interesting mix of GOP officials... [John McCain and Jeb Bush]. In addition to Sen. McCain and Gov. Bush, GOP sources familiar with the plans tell CNN others involved in the new group's "National Panel Of Experts" will include: [Barbour, Jindal and Romney]...

The Log Cabin Republicans are holding a convention in Washington, D.C. this week and weekend to discuss the future of the Republican Party and how gay Republicans can feel at home within it. POLITICO caught up with Terry Hamilton, the group's chairman, and interviewed him about whether it's easier to be a gay Republican or a gay Democrat, if the Republican Party is becoming more accommodating of gay conservatives, and whether Meghan McCain — who speaks Saturday at the convention's closing dinner and who has passionately encouraged the GOP to support gay marriage — has become a hero for Log...

The United States is still the same country it was a year ago, give or take about 6 million jobs. But its international branding campaign, as led by the new President, Barack Obama, is so different that the rest of the world might be forgiven if it has to do a double take. Most of the hallmarks of the foreign policy of George W. Bush are gone. The old conservative idea of "American exceptionalism," which placed the U.S. on a plane above the rest of the world as a unique beacon of democracy and financial might, has been rejected. At...

...The Goldwater myth shuts down all attempts to reform and renew our conservative message for modern times. And it offers a handy justification for nominating a 2012 presidential candidate who might otherwise seem disastrously unelectable...

Republicans need to re-brand their party and convince Hispanics they’re welcome. If they believe their ideas on education, economics, defense, trade, foreign policy, and other issues are superior, let them make that case to Hispanics. That doesn’t mean ditching their core principles, but it might mean changing their tone. It doesn’t mean alienating core voters, but it does means being more inclusive. And it doesn’t mean giving up the party’s opposition to illegal immigration. Polling suggests that Hispanics will go along with enforcement measures that seem reasonable such as increasing the number of border patrol agents and giving them resources....

Looking at the ruby-red splotch showing shrunken Republican strength on county-level national maps of presidential returns, many party leaders are fretting over what went wrong. Debate is raging over how to position the party to begin a comeback, and several would-be saviors - and potential presidential candidates - were trying out their moves last week at a meeting of the Republican Governors Association in Miami. Some say the party has drifted from its fiscally conservative, small-government principles. Others say too much emphasis on issues such as opposition to abortion and gay rights, important to the party's dominant social conservatives, created...

A new conservative movement that takes libertarian ideas seriously could use the inertia created by the nation's new progressivism to slingshot itself into the future on a platform of reduced government, lower taxes, and limited interventionism, while also respecting climate change (adjusting the tax code to encourage green reform without any expense to taxpayers) and reforming the immigration system (opening the borders as the market demands labor without sacrificing security). The Republican Party has a chance to transform itself into something it has never been: a party of small government based on classical liberal principles. It doesn't have to be...

Grand New Party: How the Republicans Can Win the Working Class and save the American Dream By Ross Douthat and Reihan SalamDoubleday, 2008 244 Pages, US$23.95 ISBN 978-0-385-51943-4 Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam have perhaps already reached the stage among people who follow applied political science where they need no introduction, which doesn’t mean they don’t get one: Douhat /Dow-thut/ is now a senior editor at The Atlantic, for which Salam is an associate editor and also a Fellow of the New America Foundation; readers may have encountered them at the blog, The American Scene. For the purposes of this...

TO REBRAND THE GOP THEY'VE PICKED THE RIGHT GUY By JOHN P. AVLON September 4, 2008 ST. PAUL John McCain is leading a party with a deeply unpop ular president in office. Eighty-one percent of the American people believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. But, against the odds, he's still very much in this race. Tonight's acceptance speech will be McCain's best chance to make his case for the presidency - and, in the process, to start rebranding his party for the post-Bush years. It'll be an uphill effort. Many conservative activists still can't believe that their...

WASHINGTON -- Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, viewed as a possible running mate for Sen. John McCain, brought his ideas for reforming the Republican Party to Washington on Wednesday. In two appearances here, he criticized the party leadership for sometimes being out of touch with voters in recent years, offered a few kind words for Sen. McCain's Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, and discussed possible new solutions for problems in health care and education -- areas many Republicans have written off as the Democrats' domain. When it comes to addressing many middle-class voters' concerns, the Republicans' "idea factory has been a...

Gov. Tim Pawlenty rolled out his "Sam's Club Republican" brand to a national audience Wednesday, making two well-covered speeches calling for a more hopeful message to check recent Democratic electoral gains. Pawlenty, billed by the National Press Club as a top contender to run for vice president with GOP candidate John McCain, said Republicans must broaden their appeal to a new generation of "Reagan Democrats" -- the same young and working-class voters being targeted by presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama. Sketching a profile that in many ways describes himself, the 47-year-old governor said a new generation of Republican leadership is...

Republican presidential candidate John McCain's daughter Meghan is just 23-years-old, but she's had her own political evolution. "I almost registered as a Democrat to be rebellious, but I registered as an Independent instead," she tells Glamour in its September issue. "Then my dad bragged about it, so it backfired." Meghan, a self-described "total daddy's girl," registered as a Republican as a Father's Day gift last month. Though she's been crossing the country by bus to help the campaign, she takes issue with parts of the GOP platform. "I don't relate to the hard right," she admits. "I think it's time...

Almost anything can happen in an election year, but among conservatives, almost everyone seems to agree that no matter who captures the White House in November, the movement that has ruled the Republican Party since the 1960s and mostly dominated American politics since 1980 has lost its way. Across the spectrum of the right, writers and thinkers have turned their relentless analysis inward, a kind of political EST seminar aimed at self-transformation.

"It's hard being a member of the mean party," says Bob Borochoff, a lifelong Republican who was on Capitol Hill this week asking legislators to support bills that will benefit disabled people like his son, Bradley, and returning veterans suffering from mental illness. There's no shortage of horror stories when it comes to health insurance, but Borochoff's tale on behalf of his son took him on a political journey, as well, and his disillusionment is emblematic of the uphill climb the Republicans face in November. Borochoff's tidy life as a restauranteur and happily married father of three, including newborn twins,...

<p>The "McCain 2008 Strategy Briefing" is voiced by campaign manager Rick Davis, who admits the political environment is "among the worst for in modern history for Republicans."</p>

...More fundamentally, McCain’s problem is that his party is unfit to govern. As research from the Republican pollster David Winston has shown, any policy becomes less popular when people learn that Republicans are supporting it. If the G.O.P. sponsored the sunrise, voters would prefer gloom. Many Republicans are under the illusion that they are in trouble because they’ve betrayed their core principles. The sad truth is that if they’d been more conservative, they’d be even further behind. I’ve spent the past few years trying to find conservative experts to provide remedies for middle-class economic anxiety. Let me tell you, the...

I am deeply honored to have this opportunity to address the 41st Annual Silver Elephant Dinner here in South Carolina. I am grateful for the leadership of Chairman Katon Dawson and for the gracious introduction by Senator Jim DeMint. Senator Jim DeMint is a hero to his former colleagues in the House and has done more, in less time, to shake up the United States Senate than any other conservative in recent history. While Jim’s introduction was overly generous, there really are some great men here. I am humbled to share the stage so many great conservatives in South Carolina,...

As congressional Republicans contemplate the prospect of an electoral disaster this November, much is being written about the supposed soul-searching in the Republican Party. A more accurate description of our state is paralysis and denial. Many Republicans are waiting for a consultant or party elder to come down from the mountain and, in Moses-like fashion, deliver an agenda and talking points on stone tablets. But the burning bush, so to speak, is delivering a blindingly simple message: Behave like Republicans. Unfortunately, too many in our party are not yet ready to return to the path of limited government. Instead, we...