Free Republic

Snip There’s no such narrative around Eric Cantor, the former Republican House majority leader from Richmond who was spectacularly ousted in his 2014 primary by a no-name economics professor. Let’s back up a moment. Remember the summer of 2013, when the “Defund Obamacare Tour” drove the news cycle all through Congress’s August recess? The town halls organized by the political arm of the Heritage Foundation enlivened the base and furthered what had been the GOP’s core message since 2010—that Obamacare was bad and, if Americans helped Republicans hold both chambers, it could be repealed. Cantor helped create that perception. Earlier...

Apparently, #NeverTrump candidate Evan McMullin attended the June 15 House leadership meeting. McMullin then announced he would run for president against the Republican primary winner Donald Trump in August. Republican leaders now believe McMullin taped the meetings. Earlier this week McMullin confirmed to the Washington Post that a tape leaked to the liberal rag was accurate. Republicans trusted this clown — Now they are worried he is going leak more audio from their meetings — trashing Trump no doubt — to the liberal media.

Donald Trump hasn’t even been sworn-in yet but the liberal media has obsessed almost over every Trump tweet and controversy. Conversely, Barack Obama’s administration has been full of scandals and gaffes but liberal reporters have insisted that his record is clean as a whistle.  Former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw, after Obama’s January 10 farewell speech gushed: “He’s been scandal free, frankly, in the White House. We haven’t had that what for a while.” Time magazine’s Joe Klein, back in December declared there has been “absolutely no hint of scandal” during his eight years. And in 2013 reporters...

You might think that the Obama administration would be gracious on its way out the door. Fuggedaboutit. Valerie Jarrett—asked by Greta Van Susteren during her inaugural MSNBC show this evening—what was her biggest surprise during her eight years in the White House, gave a nasty, partisan response. Said the senior adviser to President Obama: “what surprised me was the willingness of the Republicans in congress to put their short-term political interests ahead of what’s good for the country . . . I thought they would come to the table and really try to work with us to focus on what...

With Trump headed to the White House, Republicans have the public support and the political power to finally right the drifting ship of our Middle East policy and defund the U.N. and PLO terrorists. Conservative members were hoping to pass legislation doing just that. Instead, House leadership plans to vote on a vacuous resolution objecting to U.N. Resolution 2334 and reaffirming our commitment to “the two-state solution” — a myopic pink unicorn that stands contrary to our national interests, yet has become a religion among the foreign policy establishment. Indeed, aside from the Western Wall and a tiny area in...

The seeds of Demo­crat­ic re­new­al can be found in the af­flu­ent neigh­bor­hoods of At­lanta and its north­ern sub­urbs, where a quiet protest against Don­ald Trump’s Re­pub­lic­an Party took place on Elec­tion Day. The di­verse, mod­er­ate-minded con­stitu­ents of Health and Hu­man Ser­vices Sec­ret­ary de­sign­ee Tom Price took a markedly dif­fer­ent view of Trump than work­ing-class white voters in the Rust Belt. Mitt Rom­ney car­ried this dis­trict with 61 per­cent of the vote in 2012—a seat that The Al­man­ac of Amer­ic­an Polit­ics dubbed a “safe Re­pub­lic­an dis­trict”—but Trump eked out just a 1-point win over Hil­lary Clin­ton in 2016. Clin­ton car­ried sub­urb­an...

Earlier this week, 47 Republican senators published an open letter informing the leaders of Iran that any nuclear deal with the United States that failed to be approved by the Senate would likely expire in 2017, once President Barack Obama’s term ended. The letter enraged progressives, who immediately began accusing the senators of treason for having the audacity to publish basic constitutional facts about how treaties work. If these progressives want to know what actual treason looks like, they should consult liberal lion Ted Kennedy, who not only allegedly sent secret messages to the Soviets in the midst of the...

It was probably never a good idea for House Republicans to use a procedural gimmick to change ethics rules. It was definitely foolish to do it as their first order of business in the new Congress. House Speaker Ryan told them so, but his lieutenants were not interested in optics as they prepared to clamp down on the independent Office of Congressional Ethics. Two tweets from President-elect Trump, however, were enough. In a sharp turn, lawmakers dropped their gambit today. Trump was understandably miffed at the ham-fisted move by the new Congress to make disempowering watchdogs the first order of...

WASHINGTON — House Republicans, overriding their top leaders, voted on Monday to significantly curtail the power of an independent ethics office set up in 2008 in the aftermath of corruption scandals that sent three members of Congress to jail. The move to effectively kill the Office of Congressional Ethics was not made public until late Monday, when Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, announced that the House Republican Conference had approved the change. There was no advance notice or debate on the measure. The surprising vote came on the eve of the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama is under pressure during his final weeks as president to do something — anything — to secure the future of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. as children who could face deportation under the Trump administration. His options appear few. At least 50 congressional Democrats are pushing Obama to take the rare if not unprecedented step of granting pardons to the young immigrants who have stepped forward to identify themselves in exchange for a promise that they'd be safe from deportation. The White House, though, has repeatedly ruled that out. Several Republican...

President Obama will have one last chance to force Judge Merrick Garland onto the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday — but it’s a legal gamble and one that has so many pitfalls that even those who say he could get away with it believe it isn’t worth the fight. Mr. Obama’s moment will come just before noon, in the five minutes that the Senate gavels the 114th Congress out of session and the time the 115th Congress begins. In those few moments the Senate will go into what’s known as an “intersession recess,” creating one golden moment when the president...

Incoming Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) says his party will target eight of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks in an attempt to draw out the confirmation process, according to the Washington Post . Schumer told Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that Democrats will target Trump’s picks to head the State, Justice and Education departments, as well as the Office of Management and Budget. “Any attempt by Republicans to have a series of rushed, truncated hearings before Inauguration Day and before the Congress and public have adequate information on all of them is something Democrats will vehemently resist," Schumer...

"Sen. Tom Cotton on Sunday urged President-elect Donald Trump to take a firmer stance on Russia, saying Moscow needs a new set of “boundaries” in the global order."

December 28, 2016 Daniel GreenfieldThe Left ultimately destroys itself. Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. It was the end of the big year with three zeroes. The first X-Men movie had broken box office records. You couldn’t set foot in a supermarket without listening to Brittney Spears caterwauling, “Oops, I Did It Again.” And Republicans and Democrats had total control of both chambers of legislatures in the same amount of states. That was the way it was back in the distant days of the year 2000. In...

For six years, since they took back the House of Representatives, Republicans have added to a pile of legislation that moldered outside the White House. In their thwarted agenda, financial regulations were to be unspooled. Business taxes were to be slashed. Planned Parenthood would be stripped of federal funds. The ­Affordable Care Act was teed up for repeal — dozens of times. When the 115th Congress begins this week, with Republicans firmly in charge of the House and Senate, much of that legislation will form the basis of the most ambitious conservative policy agenda since the 1920s. And rather than...

The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee warned that if President-elect Donald Trump tries to reverse the Obama administration's latest sanctions against Russia, Congress will have a "vigorous" response. Rep. Adam Schiff of California said he thinks Congress may actually want to strengthen Russian sanctions. "You're going to see Democrats, and Republicans like [John] McCain and [Lindsey] Graham, and others come together with a strong sanctions package because frankly even though what the administration did was more than symbolic -- it was very meaningful -- it is not enough to deter Russia," Schiff told ABC News Chief White House...

A trio of Connecticut Democratic lawmakers is calling President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for finding an alternative to the F-35 a “total nonstarter.” “Any suggestion that there is a substitute for the F-35 is a total nonstarter,” Reps. Joe Courtney, Rosa DeLauro and John Larson said in a statement Friday. “This is a program that has been vetted ad nauseum by the Pentagon, the Congress and independent experts. There is simply no aircraft in production today that can compare with the F-35’s advanced avionics, networked capabilities and integrated stealth.” On Thursday, Trump took aim at the F-35 fighter jet for the...

The number-two Democrat in the House, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, has published several statements which are strongly critical of the Obama administration’s betrayal of Israel at the United Nations. Before the vote was cast at the UN, Hoyer urged the President to exercise America’s veto power against the anti-Israel resolution: The resolution, as proposed, seeks to place responsibility for continued conflict fully on Israel and ignores violence and incitement by Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaderships. Any workable and long-lasting solution to this conflict must come about through direct, bilateral negotiations, and this resolution undermines that...

Just when you think the left has advanced every idiotic claim, made every nonsensical statement and proposed every frightening agenda item to further damage the United States, along comes the incomparable Maxine Waters to again prove that DC is home to more delusional, self-infatuated assholes than any other city on earth. Editor The following article was posted in the Independent Journal Review. By Mike Miller As Democrats continue to wrestle not only with Hillary Clinton's loss, but also the loss of more than 1,000 seats from state legislatures, governors' offices, and the U.S. Congress over the last eight years, Rep....

There are numerous reports where the current events surrounding President Obama’s push to paint Israel into a corner are specifically outlined and addressed with specificity. However, if you really want to understand what’s going on, you must reference the longer game as it has been domestically constructed and ignored by most media. Those who have followed domestic U.S. pro-Palestinian activism over the past several years will be able to more easily understand current events against the larger backdrop.