Free Republic

CINCINNATI (AP) — Potential Republican presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Rand Paul said Friday in a visit to swing state Ohio that the GOP needs to broaden its appeal.The Kentucky senator was the featured speaker Friday evening for the Hamilton County Republican Party's annual Lincoln-Reagan dinner. Paul took part in school choice discussion earlier Friday at a Cincinnati public charter school, and later said that the GOP needs to try harder with every ethnic group."The Republican Party needs to be bigger, bolder and better," Paul told reporters. "I think we can be all of those things. We have to reach out...

Republican Rep. David Valadao says he’s not worried that Congress’ failure to pass immigration legislation will hurt his prospects for re-election to a district in California’s agricultural heartland. Same goes for GOP Rep. Jeff Denham, who represents a neighboring district in the state’s San Joaquin Valley. Still, the California congressmen are making sure voters know they support an immigration overhaul. They’re aware that Democrats will try to turn the congressional gridlock into an advantage during this year’s midterm elections. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $300,000 on television ads in Valadao’s district, noting that he is the son of immigrants....

Proof that the GOP’s terrified of an immigration backlash from the right in November? Or proof that Eric Cantor in particular is terrified of losing his primary? I’ll accept “both” as an answer. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor will block attempts next week to include a measure on a must-pass defense policy bill that would legalize young undocumented immigrants who serve in the military. A spokesman confirmed Friday that the legislation, known as the Enlist Act, will not be among those debated with the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual bill that sets policy for the Pentagon. Rep. Jeff Denham...

Bush addressed a Manhattan Institute crowd along with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who has also embraced amnesty legislation, and doubled down on his support for an immigration reform bill that the Congressional Budget Office determined would lower the wages of American workers while not securing the border. "For the life of me I have a hard time understanding why people are fearful of our own heritage, our own history," Bush reportedly said. "The rules are you come to this country, you pursue your dreams, you create value for yourself and your families and others and great things happens to you...

Just a few miles from his family home, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) felt the wrath of the tea party Saturday, when activists in his congressional district booed and heckled the second-most powerful House Republican. They also elected one of their own to lead Virginia’s 7th Congressional District Republican Committee, turning their back on Cantor’s choice for a post viewed as crucial by both tea party and establishment wings in determining control of the fractured state GOP.

Jahan Wilcox is the rapid response director at the RNC. He’s charged with responding quickly to attack Democrats and rebut Democrat attacks on the GOP. Last night, Jahan Wilcox responded quickly to Thom Tillis’s victory in North Carolina by declaring that next would be to defeat Matt Bevin, the Republican candidate in Kentucky, who Wilcox called a “fraud.”

The Republican Party has a big financial advantage heading into the 2014 election, thanks in large part to the growing presence of conservative outside groups. But just looking at raw dollars spent by these groups misses a key point: A huge chunk of that money is being used to tear down fellow Republicans. According to a great new study from the Center for Public Integrity's Dave Levinthal, conservative super PACs and other outside groups this year have spent nearly three times as much money directly attacking fellow Republicans ($9.7 million) as directly attacking Democrats ($3.7 million).

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Republican National Committee wants to take more control over how the party picks a White House nominee. The RNC was to meet Wednesday in Memphis, Tennessee, to choose members who will effectively set the calendar for 2016's long list of potential presidential contenders. If the party's chairman, Reince Priebus gets his way, the GOP will pick its nominee more quickly than during past contests and have fewer debates in which candidates could criticize each other. The RNC also was expected to put penalties in place for candidates who don't follow the committee's plans. RNC officials described...

While speaking in his home district, House Speaker John Boehner made fun of his GOP colleagues for their unwillingness to deal with immigration policy.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is "hellbent" on passing amnesty legislation, and other GOP leaders are signaling to donors and lobbyists that they also want to pass legislation this Congress, even though attempting to do so would depress the GOP base and create divisions within the party ahead of 2014's midterm elections that could give Republicans control of Congress.

Bill O’Reilly weighed in on immigration reform in tonight’s Talking Points Memo, arguing that a hard-line stance by the GOP will help Democrats. […] “The Republican Party must compromise on the immigration issue or it will lose the presidency again in 2016,” O’Reilly said. He noted that Mitt Romney only got 27 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2012. “If that happens again, you can say hello to President Hillary Clinton,” he said. …

Vance McAllister, the Louisiana Republican who got elected to Congress on Saturday after being endorsed by Duck Dynasty's Willie Robertson, supports amnesty for all of the country's illegal immigrants. “We have to secure the borders, but (citizenship) has to be attainable for those people already here,” he told Thetowntalk.com before the election. “It has to be a tough path, but it has to be attainable.”

Jeb Bush and Bobby Jindal appear in a commercial that will air Sunday to promote NewRepublican.org, a project focused on outlining a positive GOP agenda for the future. The former Florida governor and the current Louisiana governor, both potential 2016 presidential candidates, support a super PAC that is the brainchild of Republican strategist Alex Castellanos. “If you believe that every parent ought to be able to choose their child’s school, and that the economy should be driven from the bottom up, not the top down from Washington, then you’re thinking like a New Republican,” Bush says to the camera at...

WASHINGTON – Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said the future of the Republican Party depends on what the Republicans do to expand its appeal among Hispanic voters and show them that the GOP is not “just the party of deportation.” “I’ve been saying over and over that the Republican Party cannot win until it’s more diverse, until it looks like the rest of America,” he said. During a Tuesday symposium hosted by the Media Research Center (MRC) and the American Principles Project (APP), the Kentucky Republican and potential 2016 presidential candidate said that if the GOP wants to appeal to minority...

In June 2013, a bipartisan group of senators (including presidential hopeful Marco Rubio) passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill that President Obama promised to sign. Since then, Republicans have worked hard to distance themselves from that bill — Rubio stopped talking about it altogether, and Speaker of the House John Boehner says he won't bring it to the House floor. Now many Latinos are so disillusioned that they don't want to vote at all, making Boehner and the gang's gamble all too worth it. The New York Times noted Sunday that "immigrant-rights advocates report mounting disillusionment with both parties among...

Two things happened over the weekend in the race for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. 1. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul led the field in a national poll conducted by CNN/ORC International. 2. Paul won the straw poll at the Northeast Republican Leadership Conference. 3. Those two events come just a week after Paul cruised to another 2016 straw poll victory at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Add those things up and it's quite clear that Paul is the candidate of the moment on the Republican side. There's no one -- not even Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush -- who has...

A group of Catholic bishops, evangelical leaders and advocates pressured top House Republicans to vote this year on overhauling immigration in a series of private meetings on Wednesday. With legislation stalled in the House and prospects dimming, proponents argued that action is a moral imperative and offered the unique, united front of Catholics and evangelicals imploring the House to move ahead. Bishop Eusebio Elizondo of Seattle called it an "historic moment" and said they "reaffirmed that every day of delay, the consequences are separated families." The participants, who spoke to The Associated Press, said they received neither assurances of a...

SEAN HANNITY: You're really taking on a lot of issues. One of them is outreach, the second one is the NSA, the third going after the president. Do you agree with Ted Cruz when he said Rand and I are good friends. Do you agree with that statement? SEN. RAND PAUL: We always have been good friends. I'm not real excited about him mischaracterizing my views and, you know, I won't let that pass. I think that, you know, sometimes people want to stand up and say, 'Hey, look at me, I'm the next Ronald Reagan.' Well, almost all of...

WASHINGTON — For more than a year House Republican leaders have insisted the chamber would act on new immigration laws. And for more than a year, Republicans have done virtually nothing on the issue — despite intense pressure from activists, business groups, and the nation’s changing demographics. And although there are a variety of reasons for inaction, one Republican lawmaker recently offered a frank acknowledgement that for many House Republicans, there’s one issue at play that’s not often discussed: race. “Part of it, I think — and I hate to say this, because these are my people — but I...

The House Republican leadership’s broad framework for overhauling the nation’s immigration laws will call this week for a path to legal status — but not citizenship — for many of the 11 million adult immigrants who are in the country illegally, according to aides who have seen the party’s statement of principles. For immigrants brought to the United States illegally as young children, the Republicans would offer a path to citizenship. -snip- House Republican leaders will circulate it at a three-day retreat for their members that begins Wednesday on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Several pro-immigration organizations that have been...