Free Republic

The Long Detour A review of Richard Nixon and the Quest for a New Majority, by Robert Mason By William A. Rusher Posted July 13, 2005 This article appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Click here to send a comment. In 1964 the American conservative movement made its first bid for national political power, by seizing control of the Republican Party and nominating Senator Barry Goldwater as its candidate for president. The attempt failed disastrously: Goldwater carried only six states and won just 38% of the popular vote. But far from disappearing, the conservative...

I began writing these columns 36 years ago and have come to the conclusion that it's time to bring them to a close. It's certainly not a problem of lacking subject matter. It's simply that I am 85 now, and the energy and creative juices are just not what they used to be. Anyone in that age bracket will know what I mean. Happily, I am not ending the column with a gloomy conviction that America is heading to hell in a handbasket. On the contrary -- barring all the usual problems with which I have had to deal in...

Former Republican congressman Robert Barr of Georgia recently announced he is running for president as a Libertarian. This is a formidable development, and it's by no means out of the question that Barr could attract enough otherwise conservative voters to defeat John McCain and put Barack Obama in the White House. Of course, Obama has his own problems with possible rivals on the left side of the political spectrum. That hardy perennial Ralph Nader has already made it clear that he intends to run, and while he may be old news, even a poor showing by Nader on Election Day...

At the Mackinac Island Conference we began Plan B: Promoting her as a VP. This strategy cut down on our costs significantly, and was more appealing to those who already had a favorite for Pres. Mr. Rusher explained the demographic aspect of the idea: appealing to black voters and female voters. These two blocks are DNC strongholds. This is a good idea strategically, BUT we need to focus on what she has done under the Bush presidencies (both 41 and 43). *As an expert on Russian affairs, she was able to stand up to Yeltsin and build relations with Putin....

With all due respect to my fellow election observers, I don't think nearly enough attention is being paid to the plans and potentialities of former Vice President Al Gore. Gore is a man who, less than seven years ago, won the votes of over half a million more Americans than the ultimate winner of the presidential election, George W. Bush. If Gore's votes had been a little differently distributed in the Electoral College, he would have become president and might currently be rounding out his second term. But it didn't work out that way. Instead, Gore returned to private life,...

Those of us who want real immigration reform had better reconcile ourselves to the fact that it just isn't going to happen. We are at least 20 years too late. The trouble began, as so many of America's troubles have, with a proposal by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D.-Mass.) -- specifically, his 1965 immigration reform bill. That bill, which duly passed, opened the floodgates for Asian and Latin American immigration, and they have never closed since. But at least the newcomers were legal immigrants. Thereafter, the appetite of American employers for cheap labor, combined with the desire of impoverished Mexicans to...

When I retired as publisher of National Review in 1988, I sent all my office files to the Library of Congress. It had requested them, as part of its archive of 20th century political manuscripts. I guess they thought students of conservatism might find them useful someday. Among them were my files on Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP), a group I had helped found in 1972 to protest Princeton's steady drift toward being what a fellow alumnus, my old National Review colleague James Burnham, sadly called "just another liberal joint." Our two chief concerns were its deliberate debasing of its...

I have been informed by a very reliable source that Senate Judiciary Committee staffers have reviewed the entirety of William Rusher's CAP documents at the Library of Congress and have determined that those documents make no mention at all of Alito. This should be no surprise, as New York Times reporter David Kirkpatrick reviewed the same documents in late November 2005 and made the same determination.

At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court this morning, Senator Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.) asked Judge Alito (again) about his involvement with a group called the Concerned Alumni of Princeton. The question hit close to home here at National Review, because Ted Kennedy requested that the committee go into executive session to discuss subpoenaing the private papers, stored at the Library of Congress, of William A. Rusher, former publisher of National Review. Rusher was a founding member of CAP. Bill Rusher answered some questions from NRO Editor Kathryn Lopez this...

Some commentators have compared the current argument over whether "intelligent design" merits mention in high school classes on evolution to the famous Scopes "monkey trial" in Tennessee in 1925. They seem to feel that it's the same old dispute, dolled up in new clothes. They miss the delicious irony that it is, instead, the exact reverse of the Scopes trial. In Scopes, the central issue was whether the theory of evolution could be put forward in the public schools of Tennessee (the school system subscribed to the belief that human beings were created directly by God). Today, the central issue...

In the ordinary course of events, a conservative columnist frequently finds himself defending American business, or this or that aspect of it, against attacks from the left. There is something about liberals, and the left generally, that makes them instinctively hostile to businessmen. It probably goes back to socialism's preference for government management of economic affairs. In any case, liberals are forever attacking companies like Wal-Mart, even though these enterprises are selling their wares to the public at huge discounts. And they make life as miserable as possible for employers in general, without reflecting that, without employers, there would be...

President Bush's speech at Fort Bragg on June 28 was an overdue and thoroughly welcome report to the American people on the progress of the war in Iraq. It was appropriately sober. He didn't make any wild promises of early victory. He simply pointed out the vital importance of winning, and pledged that America will press on until victory is won. Since Bush is going to be president and commander in chief for 3-1/2 more years, he has the wherewithal to make his pledge stick. In strictly military terms, there is no way the United States can be defeated in...

Let no one suppose that the "deal" engineered by the "Gang of 14" (7 Republicans and 7 Democrats) in the Senate last week put to rest either of the related major disputes that have been roiling that distinguished body in recent weeks. The would-be peacemakers labored and brought forth a mouse. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) says "The constitutional option" (or "nuclear option," if you prefer) "is still on the table." Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says the deal "took the nuclear option off the table. The nuclear option is gone for our lifetime." As for filibustering judicial nominees,...

Bill Clinton's desire to succeed Kofi Annan as secretary-general of the United Nations when the latter steps down next year has now graduated from the rumor stage to that of a fact as well-established as such a thing can reasonably be at this point in the game. In a way it's so obvious that one can reproach oneself for not having foreseen it sooner. At 58 and in reasonably good health (despite his recent bypass surgery), the former president can expect a decade, or even two, of potentially productive years ahead of him. And, barred by the Constitution from running...

Sandy Berger was director of the National Security Center in the Clinton administration, and as such President Clinton's top adviser on all national security matters. On Sept. 2, 2003, in a secure reading room at the National Archives building in Washington, Berger was reviewing classified documents from the Clinton era, in his capacity as Clinton's point man in providing relevant materials to the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. One such document was a copy of a White House "after-action" report that he himself had commissioned, while still National Security director, to assess the Clinton administration's performance in responding...

The Democrats are still arguing among themselves about the best course for their party to take in the aftermath of its bone-crunching defeat on Nov. 2. Here and there a voice is raised counseling moderation. But the most popular suggestion is that the Democrats should forget about moderation and go after the Republicans (and President Bush in particular) with no holds barred. In fact, many Democrats are already slugging away as suggested, and it's high time somebody blew the whistle on them. So let me be the first: The Democrats who charge that President Bush "lied us into war" in...

The New Republic, among others, has recently gotten excited over the prospect of a major battle in the Republican Party. It won't break out until after the election (for, after all, until Nov. 2 the party will be exerting its united strength to re-elect President Bush), and what happens afterward will obviously depend in large part on whether Bush wins or loses. If he wins, he will decide the outcome of any intraparty brawls that occur during his term. If he loses, the party will be up for grabs, and the battle to control it is likely to go on...

By now, John Kerry must rue the day that he and his campaign strategists decided to make his four months in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign. It seemed like a good idea at the time. All the polls showed that the voters were deeply concerned over the war against Muslim terrorists, and considered President Bush and the Republican Party far superior to the Democrats in waging it. On the other hand, Bush's contribution to the Vietnam War had been stateside service in the Air National Guard, and the liberal media had managed to raise questions as to whether he...

The real reason for invading Iraq Posted: August 26, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern By William Rusher © 2004 Newspaper Enterprise Assn. From the beginning, there has always been a nagging little hiccup of disconnect between Sept. 11 and its aftermath on one hand, and the invasion of Iraq on the other. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were clearly the work of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, who were based in Afghanistan. President Bush, therefore, had the whole country behind him when he ordered our forces into Afghanistan, ousted the Taliban regime, and sent bin Laden and his supporters...

In a way, you can't blame the liberals. For about 40 years, from 1950 to 1990, just about all of the nation's important media, print and electronic, sang from the same page of the political hymnbook: the liberal page, of course. All were in the effective control of journalists who could be depended on to peddle the liberal line, and to make sure that conservative views, if reported at all, were depicted as crackpot if not downright vicious. The editorial page (though not the news pages) of the Wall Street Journal, under the late Bob Bartley, was an exception that...