Free Republic

My wife Beth and I went to vote yesterday at our usual polling place on the University of Virginia campus. I went with no enthusiasm, more out of a sense of duty, I suppose, and of bearing witness. Outside the polling place were two pavilions for last minute canvassing. The Republican tent was, characteristically, empty, while the Democrat team, with blue and green McAuliffe banners flying, looked cool and smug. For good reason. They had waged a ruthless, vicious, dishonest and brilliant campaign-- not just to elect Terry McAuliffe governor but to discredit and destroy the Virginia Republican Party, and...

Debt Up $1.59T Under GOP House—More in 15 Months Than First 97 Congresses Combined. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives, which took office in January 2011, has enacted federal spending bills under which the national debt has increased more in less than one term of Congress than in the first 97 Congresses combine

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) may have the support of Maine's Tea Party-backed governor in her reelection bid, but she could still be in for a tough primary battle next year. New numbers from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling (PPP) show 58 percent of Maine Republicans prefer a generic "more conservative" alternative to Snowe in 2012. And just 33 percent of Maine Republicans said they will support her. According to the poll, 58 percent of Republicans in the state think Snowe is too liberal, while another 33 percent don't even think she belongs in the GOP, saying she should be a Democrat.

As we near the midterm elections, left-wingers will be reading from the same tired playbook – the attempted marginalization of the Tea Party movement, but just more of it. But more and more, they are discovering the tactics are tougher to defend, as their side has their own fringe, loose-cannon elements. On CNBC’s Sept. 29 “Squawk Box,” hosts Joe Kernen and Michelle Caruso-Cabrera went after Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell for what seems to be hypocrisy – a willingness to attack one side for extremism, while ignoring extreme elements on the left. Rendell was asked by Kernen to elaborate on remarks...

One of the most common threads in the media recently has been how bad the Tea Party movement has been for this United States. It has been derided for lacking racial diversity, promoting policies outside the so-called mainstream and blamed for creating a civil war within the Republican Party. The media often stress those “negatives” at the expense of the positive basic tenets of the Tea Party movement: smaller government, fiscal responsibility and free markets – tenets that, when highlighted, are in fact bullish signals for an ailing economy. This is a phenomenon Larry Kudlow, host of CNBC’s “The Kudlow...