Free Republic

....Obama negotiated with terrorists. He broke the laws that govern transfers at Guantánamo Bay. He has strengthened the enemies of the Afghan government that the United States has fought to establish with blood and treasure for a decade.... ... in the administration’s answers to all these criticisms, it becomes apparent that this weekend’s prisoner swap is about more than Sergeant Bergdahl. It is a statement of Obama’s deeply held views about American foreign policy,

“Twenty-four times” is Thom Tillis’s answer, delivered with a faint flicker of a Cheshire Cat smile. The question was: How many times, that his campaign knows of, has Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) said on camera that under Obamacare, if you like your health insurance, you can keep it? Tillis will be sharing some of her video promises with voters as he seeks to become part of a Republican Senate majority in January.

BILOXI, Mississippi — When Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) goes on the record with reporters, it always seems to bring a surprise or two. This time, in an interview with veteran Washington Post reporter Dan Balz at a campaign stop, Cochran accidentally called Obamacare “an example of an important effort by the federal government to help make health care available, accessible and affordable.” “I’m glad to be involved in that effort,” Cochran added. According to Balz, Cochran was asked how he evaluated the state of play over the health care law. But afterward, a Cochran adviser phoned Balz to claim it...

Republican candidates have begun to retreat in recent weeks from their all-out assault on the Affordable Care Act in favor of a more piecemeal approach, suggesting they would preserve some aspects of the law while jettisoning others.

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, former presidential candidate Rick Santorum and other conservative heavyweights will be at Smokies Stadium next month for an event titled “America’s Last Stand.” The former Alaskan governor and presidential candidate will be joined by former New York judge Jeanine Pirro and one-time congressman Col. Allen West, who both now contribute to the Fox News Channel. Country crooner John Michael Montgomery and Cuban singer Jon Secada will provide entertainment. The event is sponsored in part by the Sevier County Tea Party. Tickets for the June 26 event range from $49 general admission seats to $1,000...

Former reality television star Sarah Palin made her 17th endorsement of the primary season on Tuesday, when the former Alaska governor threw her support and credibility behind Steve Lonegan, a staunchly anti-immigration Tea Partier, who is running in the June 3 primary for the Republican nomination in New Jersey’s competitive 3rd Congressional District. “Steve is the type of conservative leader we need. He believes in the free market principles this country was founded on because he has seen first hand how they can lead to success,” Palin said in a Facebook post. It is unclear how much a Palin endorsement...

A faction of Republicans including Sen. Lindsey Graham is agitating for party leaders to unveil a policy manifesto in the midterm elections, detailing for voters what the GOP would attempt with a Senate majority its members are increasingly confident they’ll achieve. Advocates of the strategy, which has triggered a closed-door debate in recent weeks among the party’s current 45 senators, say it would serve as a firm rejoinder to Democrats casting the GOP as the “party of no.” They say voters should know what they’d be getting by pulling the lever for Republicans in November. With many election handicappers pegging...

For months pundits have speculated about the potential for a six-year backlash against the incumbent president in this fall’s midterms, similar to 2006 and 1986. Or will it be a wash like 1998 and flatten into a mere ripple? In 1994, we saw the Republican majority coming in a confidential survey that we did in September of that year for RNC chairman Haley Barbour and House Republican leadership member Bill McCollum. We were able to predict that, if the Republicans didn’t compromise on Hillarycare, it would be what we called a “tsunami.” Never before had we seen a Republican lead...

I don’t quite feel it yet. The much-anticipated 2014 Republican landslide, that is. I can see its possibility on the horizon; I can read the poll numbers; I can watch even the liberal media start to take President Obama to task for the fiasco at the Department of Veterans Affairs. But what I hear from people isn’t yet a determination to “throw the bums out” or an excitement about the possibility of doing so, but instead more of a fear that the bums might find a way to hang on and a wistful hope that those fears are wrong. It’s...

The resounding victory that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell scored over "tea party" businessman Matt Bevin this past week has thrown the media into a tizzy. Is the "tea party" dead? Did the GOP establishment kill it? Or did the GOP subsume the tea party, taking its candidates, its issues, and its ideology for the GOP? Nate Silver writes that recent "tea party vs. establishment GOP" stories are inadequate: The term “tea party” is applied very loosely by the political media. Was Missouri Rep. Todd Akin a member of the tea party, for instance? Weigel says no: Most groups associated...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid revealed on Friday that the Democratic Party is in "deep trouble" in the upcoming midterm elections. In a breathless fundraising email pitch with a subject line "deep trouble" obtained by Newsmax, Reid says: "The polls say it better than I ever could: We need you to make a contribution BEFORE MIDNIGHT TONIGHT.'' He backs up his worry with new polls that show Republican candidates are neck and neck with their Democratic challengers in four key Senate races. In North Carolina, Thom Tillis (R) and Kay Hagan (D) each have 41 percent of the vote; in...

A strong showing in this year's US mid-term elections should not seduce Republicans into thinking they have cracked the code for taking back the White House. After four years of Tea Party insurgency, the Republican Party last week finally appeared to have caught hold of itself and embraced a more commonsense kind of politics. That, at least, was the pundits' big take-away from the poor showing of Tea Party candidates in last Tuesday's primary races for November's mid-term elections. From Idaho to Georgia, the "wacko birds", as John McCain so memorably dubbed his Tea Party colleagues, took a beating from...

In another hilariously feeble attempt to move their agenda forward, the DNC has introduced a new meme based on their favorite President, Barack Obama. The meme is simply a blue picture of the President with large words next to his face reading, in all caps, "LIKE A BOSS:" No context is given as to how Obama is exactly acting "like a boss." Unsurprisingly, the meme has been mocked by most people who have come in contact with it. ...The DNC eventually, feebly responded to the derision with this almost humorously terrible retort and the hashtag "deal with it:"

Embattled Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki is becoming a lightning rod in the battle for the Senate. Democrats
 are trying to distance themselves from the VA chief and scandal, while Republicans are trying to tie Democratic candidates to the controversy. Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is challenging Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in what is expected to be the most expensive race in the country this year, called Thursday for Shinseki's head. Rick Weiland, the underdog Democrat running to try to keep retiring Sen. Tim Johnson’s (D-S.D.) seat, also called for Shinseki to step down, declaring "a single scalp...

The right wing of the Republican Party is going to get whipped in Tuesday night’s primaries, but its grip is strengthening around the real prize: 2016. Tonight, the Tea Party is going to lose some elections. Its Senate candidates in Kentucky and Georgia are going to lose—and lose really, really badly in at least in Kentucky. The theme of the night on cable (and for the balance of the week really) will be the death of the Tea Party. Everybody’s waiting with a safety net, as Elvis Costello (nearly) sang, but I say don’t bury them ’cuz they’re not dead...

Extremes are called that for a reason. They are ideas that are on the far edges of reasonableness, and they are – rightly – destined to be tempered and reined in by more moderate ideas. That's what has just happened to the political party that holds sway in my home state. Elections across the nation Tuesday showed that voters have rejected Tea Party extremism, with all of its concentration on hating President Obama and its suggestion that anyone who disagrees is less than patriotic. These voters -- Republicans in states like Kentucky, Georgia and Idaho -- are definitely not tree-hugging,...

Two major conservative groups are dropping more than half a million dollars into ad buys in Mississippi, two weeks ahead of the June 3 election, to give state Sen. Chris McDaniel an extra boost over six-term incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) in the primary. Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund is spending $400,000 on a new ad buy over television and radio and Citizens United Political Victory Fund is dropping $175,000 on a new television buy in the state, they both announced Wednesday. “What happened to Thad Cochran?” the TPPCF television ad’s narrator asks viewers. “He’s voted to increase the national...

Republican Senate hopeful Joni Ernst got a boost Sunday with the endorsement of The Des Moines Register in Iowa. Ahead of the state's GOP primary on June 3, the newspaper's editorial board argued Ernst, a state senator, is a "smart, well-prepared candidate who can wrestle with the details of public policy from a conservative perspective without seeming inflexible." Ernst is facing four opponents in the GOP primary. She has recently emerged as a top contender and made national headlines with unusual TV ads - one of which highlighted her hog-castrating skills while another showed her riding up to a gun...

Full listing of Georgia 2014 Primary Election results.

Some businesses in states with pitched Republican primary fights are turning to a relatively new tool to help ensure the outcome they want: telling employees how they want them to vote. Thanks in part to Citizens United, it's perfectly legal — but it probably doesn't do much good. Bloomberg Businessweek describes the concerted effort by business groups to get their member corporations ready to weigh in on the election — an election, we'll remind you, that has largely been framed as business-versus-Tea Party. The National Association of Manufacturers spent a week in Kentucky, briefing "as many as 10 businesses a...