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David Keene

Editor at Large — David Keene, a trusted adviser to presidents, a longtime champion of personal liberty and one of conservatism’s most respected voices, is the former opinion editor of The Washington Times. An author, columnist and fixture on national television, Mr. Keene has championed conservative causes for more than five decades while offering advice to Republican presidents and countless candidates. He additionally served as chairman of the American Conservative Union and president of the National Rifle Association.
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Columns by David Keene

DAVID KEENE: Returning to an era of gun control error

President Obama is at it again, charging that if we could just extend "background checks" to all firearms sales, the world would be a safer place. Terrorists, armed robbers and paranoid schizophrenics bent on mass murder would be turned away by potential gun vendors and would thus be unarmed and presumably, therefore, unable to do harm to the rest of us.

January 11, 2016

DAVID KEENE: Republican candidate distinctions with a difference

This year's Republican presidential wannabes are finally engaging on real issues and by doing so, they're giving Republican voters a chance to choose among them for serious policy rather than stylistic reasons. The debate cycle began with everyone focusing on Donald Trump's entertaining outrageousness, Ben Carson's laid-back style, Jeb Bush's lethargy and Ted Cruz's off-putting demeanor.

December 31, 2015

DAVID KEENE: The voters must choose, anyway

Anyone who has been deeply enmeshed in politics at the presidential level knows down deep that it's a good thing the people who vote in the primaries and caucuses don't know the candidates as well as those who work with them on a daily basis.

December 27, 2015

DAVID KEENE: Obama misses the mark

As he headed to Hawaii for yet another golf outing, President Obama once again dismissed the "perceived" threat ISIS and radical Islam represents as an overblown reaction to relatively minor incidents hyped by Republicans and their cable television allies.

December 21, 2015

DAVID KEENE: Most Muslims in Israel want peace with Jews

TEL AVIV -- In many ways these are the best and worst of times for Israelis. A decade ago their main fear was an invasion from and through Syria, but with the Syrians fighting among themselves they are no longer seen as a major threat.

December 2, 2015

OUTDOORS: Start of deer hunting season always provides a thrill

It may not be quite the same today as it was in the 1950s and 1960s, when the opening of the deer season might as well have been a state holiday, but it's still a special day for many.

November 26, 2015

DAVID KEENE: Punishing the Obama way

Although the rot has been visible for some time, recent actions by President Obama's Department of Justice and director of national intelligence make it possible to say definitively that the United States we once extolled as a nation of laws and not of men no longer exists.

November 11, 2015

DAVID KEENE: When ‘hang ‘em’ all meets ‘free ‘em all’

Political demands for an end to what activists and the media like to call mass incarceration are all the rage these days, but the bipartisan willingness to look at what works and doesn't work in today's broken criminal justice system that has emerged in recent years is being overtaken or hijacked by ideological hucksters who seem more interested in making political statements than in finding real-world solutions to serious problems.

November 9, 2015

DAVID KEENE: John Boehner’s budget legacy

The House Freedom Caucus and conservative outsiders were ecstatic when House Speaker John Boehner decided to throw in the towel out of frustration and a very real fear that he had become, fairly or not, a symbol to millions of Republican voters of just how bad things are in Washington.

October 22, 2015

DAVID KEENE: House needs articulate leader

The more things change, the more they stay the same. A week or so after Bob Dole resigned his Senate leadership role and Senate seat to run for president in 1996, he joined me and Lyn Nofziger for breakfast. We had all been friends for many years and could be honest with each other.

October 8, 2015

DAVID KEENE: Remembering Peter Hannaford

It was early 1965. Barry Goldwater had lost to Lyndon Johnson the November before in a landslide that prompted the established media to declare the conservative movement dead in its cradle and the Republican establishment turned its attention once again to moderates.

September 9, 2015

DAVID KEENE: Donald Trump needs a lesson in the fundamentals of Constitution

Some years ago, the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, honored former Sens. James L. Buckley of New York and Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota.

September 8, 2015

DAVID KEENE: Controlling the debates

His critics keep expecting Reince Priebus to trip up, but it hasn't happened yet.

September 2, 2015

DAVID KEENE: Idea of Donald Trump may be more appealing than reality

Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders are mining the same vein of popular discontent, drawing big crowds in the process, and drawing early support in spite of rather than because of their positions on issues of interest to most Americans.

August 26, 2015

DAVID KEENE: Remembering Dick Schweiker

Dick Schweiker died over the weekend. The former Pennsylvania senator had been recruited by John Sears, Ronald Reagan's 1976 manager, and Nevada Sen. Paul Laxalt, who chaired Reagan's effort to unseat President Gerald Ford that year as Reagan's running mate. Few of us in the campaign knew the man, but he was, based on his voting record in the Senate, and what everyone said, a "moderate" or even "liberal" senator who didn't seem to many of us a very good fit.

August 4, 2015

DAVID KEENE: ‘The Algerian’

"The Algerian," an Independent production written, directed and produced by Giovanni Zelko is a film with a message, a compelling story and a talented if unknown cast. In that sense it like most Independent productions or, as they're known in the industry, "Indies." Like their grownup, big budget cousins, some of them are good and some aren't worth watching.

August 4, 2015

DAVID KEENE: Big government can never have enough money

Maryland, like Illinois, is famous as an integrity-free zone. Former governors, the heads of various school systems in the state, legislators, county executives and law enforcement officials have ended their careers in federal and state penal institutions for confusing serving the public with serving themselves at the public's expense.

July 22, 2015

DAVID KEENE: American values in the Midwest

While few admit it, the Washington, D.C. area has about as much in common with the real America as John Phillips Sousa's marches have to do with rap music. We live in a very weird bubble. Virtually everyone has a government job or a job that exists in the private sector only because of the government. We're obsessed with politics and many of us spend hours at our televisions watching Fox, MSNBC, or CSPAN and public television.

July 20, 2015

Mike Grebe named to head Scott Walker campaign

Every successful presidential candidate has a political whisperer, the one adviser with the stature to both channel the candidate's message and say "no" when it needs to be said.

July 13, 2015

Scott Walker vows to turn back clock on taxes to Reagan era

NEWSMAKER INTERVIEW: Jumping into a crowded 2016 presidential field, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker vowed Monday to return federal tax rates to their levels under Ronald Reagan, eliminate the sequester cuts restraining Pentagon spending and tackle federal budget deficits by reforming entitlement programs and returning money and power to the states.