Free Republic

The full-page advertisement in Mississippi Link, a weekly newspaper aimed at black residents of Jackson, the state’s capital, urged readers to vote for Senator Thad Cochran in the June 3 Republican primary. That might be unremarkable except for one thing: The political action committee that paid for the ad shares an address and leadership with a local church. “All Citizens for Mississippi” did not appear to exist at the time of the ad’s publication. Its registration as a super PAC with the Federal Election Commission was posted online last week and contains one important clue about its origins. All Citizens...

...To some degree, an improving economy may be holding up his job approval rating and offsetting any potential negative effect from the VA and Bergdahl situations. Still, his average 44% job approval rating since April is not particularly good. Given the strong influence that presidential approval has on midterm election outcomes, Democratic candidates face a strong headwind as they campaign in this year's elections.

With just seven little words, the freakout began: “The government holds a monopoly on violence.” These were written by David Brat, a professor of economics at Virginia’s Randolph-Macon College and, now, the Republican party’s nominee for the state’s seventh congressional district. “Unusual” and “eye-opening” was the New York Daily News’s petty verdict. In the Wall Street Journal, Reid Epstein insinuated darkly that the claim cast Brat as a modern-day fascist. And, for his part, Politico’s Ben White suggested that the candidate’s remarks “on Neitzsche and the government monopoly on violence don’t make a whole lot of sense.” As is its...

DES MOINES — It’s not often that a Democratic Party top national strategist travels to Iowa to lament an election loss of a prominent conservative Republican leader. But that happened Friday when Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz warned that the defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican who is the second most-powerful U.S. House leader, could be a harbinger of deeper political extremism, gridlock and obstructionism....

Charlie Crist has been endorsed by Florida’s largest gay rights group in his run for Governor.... Equality Florida officials made the announcement at a visitors center for gays and lesbians in Miami Beach, citing Crist’s current support for same-sex marriage and ongoing legal efforts to overturn the state’s ban on the unions.

Democratic operatives were just as surprised as everyone else by Eric Cantor’s defeat — but now they’re trying to figure out how to make the most of it. The early thinking: Stay out of the GOP’s way. Virginia’s 7th Congressional District probably isn’t going their way, regardless of the Republican candidate switch. But operatives planning for the midterms believe they can turn Tuesday’s surprising tea party resurgence into something much bigger. They see the attention to the defeat as another cut at the House Republicans as extremists, a new way to highlight congressional dysfunction, a chance to pump more GOP...

Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, spent his career denouncing liberals, sucking up to the Tea Party, and doing everything possible to derail President Obama’s agenda. Despite this, Cantor was ousted Tuesday by a Republican challenger in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District. Cantor’s loss follows last week’s Mississippi Republican primary, in which Sen. Thad Cochran, another conservative, was edged out by a Tea Party opponent who’s expected to dispatch Cochran in a runoff. How do right-wingers like Cantor and Cochran lose to challengers even further on the right? The answer lies in the extremism of Republican primary voters. On June 2,...

Tuesday’s defeat of the sitting House majority leader, Eric Cantor, apparently sent a series of “messages,” which we in the pundit world who missed all of the signs that The Shock Heard ’Round the Campaign World was coming, are beginning to interpret. Among the strongest messages: Incumbents beware. To hear some tell it, this message is bipartisan. Because Democrats apparently are unfamiliar with the phenomenon of low turnout midterm elections in districts drawn to be more partisan than they were, which would be an interesting observation if it were actually true. The reality is that in most states, the rates...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his Republican primary today in a completely befuddling upset that no one saw coming. When people saw that Cantor was behind David Brat, an unknown and underfunded economics professor, in the returns, jaws dropped, and dropped, and dropped until they hit the floor and left everyone so speechless they had no worries of needing to express their shock in more than 140 characters. As was very evident from how Twitter responded.

Republican Tea Party forces are rejoicing and the party establishment is somber or altogether silent in the wake of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s primary defeat at the hands of political neophyte David Brat, an unflinching foe of loosening immigration laws.

How did the No. 2 man in the House lose a primary? Chalk it up to immigration and the Tea Party. It’s one of the most shocking losses in U.S. electoral history—and it’s bad for America. Here’s the thing: Eric Cantor did not fall asleep in this race. He spent around $5 million. He ran lots of TV ads. He knew this was going to be a close one. He campaigned. And he still got creamed. And here’s the other thing: Cantor was not an enemy of the Tea Party. He was in fact the Tea Party’s guy in the...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) conceded Tuesday night that “obviously, we came up short” in fending off the Tea Party challenge from economics professor Dave Brat. With 98 percent of precincts reporting, Brat had 55.6 percent to Cantor’s 44.4 percent. “I know there’s a lot of long faces here tonight and it’s disappointing, sure,” Cantor said. “But I believe in this country, I believe there’s opportunity around the next corner for all of us.” “So I look forward to continue to fight with all of you for the things that we believe in for the conservative cause because those...

**SNIP** And while Democrats haven't done much to promote the environment with their majority, they have beaten back efforts they say would harm the climate. That included a Landrieu-led effort to get a vote approving Keystone, a failure she blamed on Republicans. But opponents are pointing out that those failures weaken her message of political clout and it's led her to lose a potentially powerful ally at home. Don Briggs, the head of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, is backing Cassidy in what is essentially a proxy vote against Majority Leader Harry Reid. "I know Mary very well and...

The campaign of state Sen. Chris McDaniel issued the following statement about McDaniel's latest high-profile endorsement for U.S. Senate: Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Mississippi today announced he received the endorsement of former U.S. House Representative and presidential candidate Dr. Ron Paul. "Ron Paul has been an inspiration to so many to become involved in politics and to engage the system, which is exactly what our nation needs at this crucial juncture," McDaniel said. "Dr. Paul is a true champion for civil liberties and opponent of government overreach and out-of-control spending, and I'm very excited to have his endorsement...

Now that primary season is almost over, some establishment Republicans are looking for retribution Ted Cruz has not made himself a popular man in Washington, D.C. The Texas Republican would argue that’s the point. But even for a Senator—an elected office with the backing of an entire state—ticking off powerful people can have consequences. In his first two years in Washington, Cruz has managed to help force a government shutdown, undermine the GOP’s chances of taking over the Senate and force uncomfortable votes for his fellow Republicans. Not to mention the verbal bombs he lobs on a regular basis, many...

Americans can still be outraged by lies, but will you tell them the truth?Dear Republican convention delegates, Welcome to Fort Wayne. I hope you have a lot of fun, spend a lot of money and thoroughly debunk real estate company Movoto's new poll listing my hometown among the five most boring cities in the United States. How could the prospect of listening to 2,000 people discuss everything from bureaucratic minutia to gay marriage for two days be anything but scintillating? But before you do anything you or the rest of us may regret, please spend some time thinking about President...

Republican nominee Joni Ernst has to prove she's a strong candidate, but she faces a run-of-the-mill Democrat in a state prone to swing toward the GOP. Iowa once looked like one of the great GOP disappointments of 2014. Top-tier recruits such as Rep. Tom Latham and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds passed on the open-seat race and left Republicans with a handful of unknowns fighting a messy primary. Democrats, meanwhile, gave four-term Rep. Bruce Braley a free year to prepare for the general election. But then Braley insulted the state's most important constituency, the Republican Party discovered Joni Ernst, and suddenly...

The antitax Club for Growth on Wednesday called on Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) to end his campaign a day after a too-close-to-call primary against tea party-backed Chris McDaniel that could be headed to a runoff. “Yesterday’s historic vote makes it clear that Mississippians are ready to turn the page to a new generation of bold, conservative leadership. Senator Cochran has served honorably, but the rationale for his candidacy ended yesterday. He said he didn’t want to run again, but everyone asked him to. Well, a plurality of Mississippi Republican voters just proved that they don’t want him to,” said Club...

Joni Ernst parlayed her unusual support from establishment Republicans and conservatives to win Iowa's GOP Senate nomination outright on Tuesday, surpassing the 35% threshold needed to avoid a June 14 nominating convention, where nothing would have been guaranteed. The Associated Press called the race after Ernst had 53.7% of the vote with just under 20% of the precincts reporting. She will face Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA), who won the Democratic nomination uncontested, to replace retiring Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA). Ernst will try to become the first female to be elected to federal office in Iowa. Perhaps giving 2016 GOP presidential...

Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is dismissing Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum as “outside celebrities” who have gotten involved in the highly-charged Mississippi GOP Senate primary to “help themselves nationally.” Voters in Mississippi head to the polls on Tuesday, when incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran will face a challenge on the ballot from state Sen. Chris McDaniel. Ahead of the primary, Barbour, the influential Republican in the state, is arguing that McDaniel is relying on out-of-state conservative stars, while Cochran is boasting support from Mississippi Republicans. “The McDaniel campaign emphasizes the outside celebrities (Palin and Santorum) who are involved in MS...