Free Republic

Until the end of April, J.D. Vance's storied career as a self-made Middle-American memoirist, conservative firebrand, and venture capitalist risked sputtering out as a third-place also-ran in Ohio's Republican Senate primary. All of that changed with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a single debate, and the singular resolve of Vance, and also that of former President Donald Trump and his son, to stand against dragging America into yet another war and neocons like Josh Mandel.

Oklahoma state Rep. Forrest Bennett (D), who describes himself as a "pragmatic progressive," walked back a legislative proposal that attempted to corner pro-life advocates. Instead, pro-life advocates and conservatives agreed with the premise of the proposed legislation, while progressives sharply criticized him. What happened? Bennett announced on Twitter that he had introduced HB3129 to codify that "a father’s financial responsibility to his baby & their mom begins at conception." "If Oklahoma is going to restrict a woman’s right to choose, we sure better make sure the man involved can’t just walk away from his responsibility," Bennett declared. The bill would...

Even as a mere Florida man, former President Donald Trump sure looks as if he's trying to knife the Republican Party. On Saturday morning, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the House's resident anti-Semitic QAnon conspiracy theorist, boasted that she had shared a call with the supportive former president. By evening, news emerged that Trump's legal team had resigned barely 48 hours before his first response to the article of impeachment is due and a little more than a week before the Senate trial begins. The reason: Trump wants to present the one defense that would render it political suicide to...

Whereas the Resistance mob tried to paint Trump as a maniacal genius, Hill saw what most non-crazy people suspected: that Trump treats his presidency like a business and diplomacy like dealmaking. "He just wants to go in and shoot the breeze with these guys, because he thinks he's got great chemistry with them," Hill said. BINGO! In short, Hill knows that in Trump's case, it's incorrect to ascribe to malice what mannerism and shortsightedness can easily explain. If the nation's leading expert on Russian interference in our politics (and one with every reason to loathe the Trump administration) doesn't buy...

Over at the Washington Examiner, Tiana Lowe poses an interesting question that I’ll confess hadn’t crossed my mind until now. It deals yet again with the allegations against Joe Biden brought forward by Tara Reade, including the recent, intriguing revelation about a phone call that Reade’s mother placed to Larry King’s television show back in 1993. (The same one I was discussing earlier today.) But Lowe’s query has less to do with Biden himself and any wrongs he may be guilty of and more to do with the response from CNN or lack thereof. After news of the allegations...

I would be remiss if I let the day pass without challenging my colleague Eddie Scarry. Earlier today, he defended right-wing writer Denise McAllister — formerly of the Federalist and the Daily Wire, from both of which she's since been fired — for a Twitter tirade against journalist Yashar Ali. The tweets, which I won't relay here in their entirety, essentially amounted to McAllister attacking Ali's homosexuality in response to this tweet. https://mobile.twitter.com/yashar/status/1112165806274682881/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1112165806274682881&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonexaminer.com%2Fopinion%2Fdenise-mcallisters-public-meltdown-was-indefensible-and-homophobic In since-deleted tweets, McCallister then wrote: “A gay men commenting on a heterosexual relationship is just. Sad. Pathetic really. I think @yashar has a crush on me....

In case you missed it earlier Wednesday, we highlighted an Election Day piece by Tiana Lowe, who predicted that if the big blue wave didn’t happen, white women would be made the scapegoats by the Left by Wednesday. And she was right. We’ve already done a couple of posts on the “vagina shaming” of conservative women who voted Republican, but the hits just keep coming. Here’s the Atlantic’s Jemele Hill making the exact same argument: that white women are voting against their own interests to preserve the patriarchy.

Prior to the 2016 election, critics raised a genuine question that fueled much of the Right's concern about Donald Trump: With zero political experience and a capricious nature, would Trump's whims and most unhampered flaws threaten the civic norms that make our republic function? Between his goading that he would pay the legal fees of his supporters if they "knock the crap" out of political dissidents and his flagrant hatred of the political press, Trump gave legitimate cause for concern that he would abuse his executive power to the worst possible excesses. But for the most part, he didn't. Trump...

The LGBTQ+ Equality March has little to no basis in reality. Another week, another protest against the president. Russian hookers and pathetic attempts at infrastructure week aside, the never-ending cavalcade of self-aggrandizement has to be the most annoying feature of Trump’s America...  But the upcoming LGBTQ+ Equality March has little to no basis in reality. At the beginning of the century, Hillary Clinton was proudly declaring that marriage is between a man and a woman on the Senate floor while Barack Obama was doing so in the pages of The Audacity of Hope. Donald Trump did the same in a...