Free Republic

Global investors may be underpricing the impact of a conflict between Israel and Iran, market watchers warned on Monday, as stocks rallied despite escalating warfare in the Middle East. The two regional powers continued trading fire on Monday, marking the fourth consecutive day of fighting since Israel launched airstrikes against Iran last week. Despite the continued fighting — with hundreds reported dead — global stock markets sustained a positive momentum on Monday, seemingly shrugging off broader concerns about the conflict. Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, warned on Monday that there was a risk markets were underpricing “the risk...

There is a solid argument to be made that forcing Donald Trump to sign the Republican Pledge was step one in this RNC/GOPe strategy. He’s now locked in the Thunderdome! When you fully understand the scope of how the Republican National Committee organized the entire road map to elect Jeb Bush, you begin to understand why Reince Priebus needed to lock the door behind Trump before unleashing the thugs upon him. Hundreds of millions will be spent on this RNC/GOPe effort to destroy Trump. It will be unlike any scorched earth campaign ever witnessed. The brutality of the intended targeting...

Most of us here already knew this but look where this advice is coming from... (h/t Hot Air) The advice from Democratic consultants and strategists is almost unanimous: Run away from the president, and fast. A prominent Democratic pollster is circulating a survey that shows George W. Bush is 6 points more popular than President Obama in "Frontline" districts -- seats held by Democrats that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sees as most vulnerable to Republican takeover. That Bush is more popular than Obama in Democratic-held seats is cause for outright fear. ~~~ “He is a walking radioactive disaster,” one...

WASHINGTON - A bipartisan group of prominent political strategists on Tuesday announced an Internet information venture designed to interact with America's opinion leaders and serve as an antidote to the right-left clash that typifies political discourse on the Web. The site, called Hotsoup.com, will debut in October and will be edited by Ron Fournier, former chief political writer for The Associated Press. Hotsoup is the brainchild of some of the best-known practitioners of partisan politics in Washington, including Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004, and Joe Lockhart, former White House press secretary under President Clinton and...

WASHINGTON - John Kerry (news - web sites) is adding some of the Democratic Party's most experienced strategists to his team for the stretch drive against President Bush (news - web sites), including hometown allies from Boston and top advisers of former President Clinton (news - web sites). "Everybody wants to help us win," said campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill. Michael Whouley, the Boston operative who helped salvage Kerry's candidacy in Iowa, is returning to the Democratic presidential campaign to help strengthen Kerry's state-by-state political organizations and to provide general strategic advice. Cahill said he had held similar jobs in...

Grand strategy is the blueprint from which policy follows. It envisions a country's mission, defines its interests, and sets its priorities. Part of grand strategy's grandeur lies in its durability: A single grand strategy can shape decades, even centuries, of policy. Who, then, have been the great grand strategists among American statesmen? According to a slim forthcoming volume by John Lewis Gaddis, the Yale historian whom many describe as the dean of Cold War studies and one of the nation's most eminent diplomatic historians, they are John Quincy Adams, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and George W. Bush. Gaddis knows the latter...