Free Republic

Representative Raul Grijalva (D., Ariz.) thinks that President Obama should pursue his immigration goals unilaterally, even if it hurts vulnerable Democrats in the 2014 midterms. “That’ll always be the case,” the Congressional Hispanic Caucus co-chair told National Review Online when asked if Democrats were still nervous that the border crisis had turned Obama’s expected orders into a political liability. “You’ll always have members whose political vulnerability they tie entirely to immigration,” Grijalva said. “We didn’t make progress when we were in the majority because we were being protective of those — on immigration reform — we were protecting those members....

While the country has become more liberal in some ways, the Republican Party has moved to the extreme right, and the Democratic Party has filled in the vacuum in the middle by also moving to the right on many issues. As a consequence, many people who previously considered themselves in the middle are finding that the current views of the left are closer to their views. Thomas Ricks, who wrote Fiasco, and excellent look at the Iraq War, described why he moved to the left at Politico: Disappointment in the American government over the last 10 years. Our wars in...

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) believes the House of Representatives will immediately begin impeachment proceedings if President Barack Obama unilaterally grants work permits and amnesty to millions more illegal immigrants by the "end of summer." Appearing on Breitbart News Saturday with co-hosts Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon and Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow from the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas, King said that if Obama "completely destroys the rule of law with the stroke of a pen" and "Congress fails to act," there will be "enough Republicans who didn't have a desire to do this" that will be "immediately activated" to consider...

Last weekend, Governor Palin gave a measured and thoughtful speech at the Western Conservative Summit, speaking primarily in the tone of the “forgotten man”–”the hard working middle class man who can’t catch a break”. She also used a masterful analogy of the “calloused hand that built America”. What a stark contrast between an open hand calloused from hard work and the clenched fist of socialism. What a stark contrast, too, between Governor Palin’s speech that hit a tone that resonates with middle class America and the tonedeafness and lack of self-awareness of Washington. Take, for example, the Left’s newest pivot...

Paul Farhi of The Washington Post writes today about a trend at the White House—and throughout journalism—that threatens the quality and credibility of news-gathering: Public-relations "minders" are injecting themselves into our interviews with politicians, CEOs, and other policymakers. Minder madness joins the surge of "background briefings" and the decline of access to decision-makers as evidence that the White House—and other big instititutions—are manipulating the press. It's that, but it's also something worse: It's evidence that journalists are ceding control when they should be seizing it, accepting canned news rather than breaking it. Farhi writes, "Almost every officially sanctioned exchange between...

Call it doomsday prepper economics. For more than five years, many Republicans and conservatives have warned that catastrophe is nigh. Washington's deficit spending and the Federal Reserve's excessive money printing will lead to a financial crisis worse than the Great Recession, they prophesied. Inflation will skyrocket, the dollar will collapse, and the Chinese will dump treasuries, they swore. As Ron Paul, the libertarian former GOP congressman and presidential candidate, said back in 2009: "More inflation is absolutely the wrong way to go. We're taking a recession and trying to turn it into a depression. We're going to see a real...

Just a simple SHOUT OUT to Barry Loudermilk who won the primary in Georgia tonight. He posted this comment on his timeline just moments ago: A sincere thank you to our wonderful team for your hard work and dedication to the cause. To those who came out to the polls today; thank you for exercising your freedom and fulfilling your duty to vote. US4Palin (Facebook page) reported: Things were not peachy keen for Dr. Bob Johnson. He lost GA-1 getting 46% of the vote as 221 (95%) of the 232 precincts came in Ibatom tonight reported. The winner, Buddy Carter...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)During a town hall with young people, President Obama explained how he deals with people who criticize him. “I just don’t watch TV,” Obama joked, after he was asked about his critics during a town hall promoting the White House "My Brother's Keeper" initiative. Obama advised young people to listen to critics who actually had their interests at heart. “Who gives you constructive criticism because they’re invested in the same things you are but maybe can see the things you can’t, versus folks who are just -- what’d someone say -- hatin’? Somebody just hatin’, just haters?” Obama said. Obama...

Barring any groundbreaking new developments, Congressional Republicans have no intention of trying to impeach President Barack Obama, despite calls for the commander-in-chief’s ouster by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin. “The Constitution is very clear as to what constitutes grounds for impeachment of the President of the United States,” House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., told ABC's George Stephanopoulos last week. “He has not committed the kind of criminal acts that call for that.” Other establishment Republicans have similarly dismissed impeachment talk as little more than blowhards seeking headlines. “No responsible Republican elected official has called for impeachment,”...

Ronald Reagan won two presidential elections by fighting for the "Forgotten Man," and Sarah Palin said Republicans will only win presidential elections in the future if the party sticks up for the "little guy" and the "Forgotten Man" of all races and backgrounds. Building upon the themes she has always fought for and distilled in a landmark speech in Indianola, Iowa in 2011 in which she denounced the bipartisan permanent political class and their brand of crony capitalism that extracts wealth from American workers, Palin told attendees at the Western Conservative Summit in Colorado on Saturday to think about what...

From reducing student loan debt to expanding voter rights to dealing with the scourge of violent crime, liberals have laid out an ambitious agenda for the waning years of the Obama presidency. At a day-long summit Wednesday organized by Generation Progress, the youth division of the influential Washington-based think tank Center for American Progress, speakers such as Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi articulated their goals to a Washington audience of more than 1,000. Here are five issues that came up again and again at the Make Progress National Summit, and the...

As I’ve noted here before, the current crisis of unaccompanied minors crossing the border has had one upside. It has forced the actual GOP stance on immigration out into the open, increasingly boxing Republicans into a position where their main solution to the broader immigration crisis is effectively advocating for maximum deportations from the interior, including of the DREAMers. Now, as the battle over the crisis continues to roil the political landscape, the point is being underscored by none other than Ted Cruz: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz plans to take a hard-line stand that could rile up conservatives just as...

Iran! Oil prices! Rick Perry! Even if you think you know who’ll control Congress next year, the road to the November midterms will be full of big surprises.From a deal with Iran to an uptick in the employment rolls, a lot can happen to shift the political conversation between now and November. Immigration reform, for example, was supposed to help Democrats in the midterm elections. Clashes on the border between angry Texans and buses carrying immigrant children fleeing gang violence and sex trafficking highlighted the GOP’s opposition, and Democrats thought maybe this was the game changer they needed. But the...

We have an immigration problem along our southern border, mostly with the Texas portion. The border is leaking like a sieve, with hundreds of children fleeing Central America and the drug induced bloodshed that has moved recently from Mexico down to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. A child has a higher chance of being killed in Central America than they do in Chicago’s South Side. Who are buying the drugs that are causing all the violence in Central America? Americans are. So if we want to stop the influx of children from Central America we need to do something about...

Sarah Palin visits South Fulton in April to campaign for Karen Handel. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin weighed in via Facebook this morning with a couple of Georgia GOP U.S. House runoff endorsements: former state Sen. Barry Loudermilk of Cassville in the 11th and surgeon Bob Johnson of Savannah in the 1st. It’s another tea party stamp of approval for Loudermilk and Johnson, who have the backing of national groups as well. When Palin backed Karen Handel in the U.S. Senate primary, the Handel campaign reported a surge of donations. Here’s Palin’s full post: Just back from a beautiful weekend...

Politically speaking, Sarah Palin is crazy — but in an entertaining way. Speaker of the House John Boehner may look reasonable by comparison, but his supposed rationality is pretty dubious.. Before I proceed to pick on these GOP icons, I want to acknowledge that I spend a lot of time blasting Republicans in my columns and cartoons. Many readers assume it’s because I’m a commie-pinko, America-hating liberal Democrat. Actually, my constant critique of today’s GOP has more to do with the fact that I grew up in a time and place where Republicans were often the smart, sane ones and...

Business group has been major force in 2014 races.On the day after New Jersey and Virginia’s gubernatorial elections last fall, Mitch McConnell showed up at a board meeting of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with another race on his mind. He announced that the day’s most consequential contest had been neither Chris Christie’s victory nor Ken Cuccinelli’s defeat. Instead, the Senate minority leader explained, it had been a GOP primary in South Alabama. The Chamber had shelled out about $200,000 in the sleepy district on the Mississippi border to rescue a mainstream candidate who was struggling to fend off a...

On Monday, Morning Joe played a game of “Fact or Fiction” and Joe Scarborough had a lot to say when they arrived at this prediction: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) will win the 2016 GOP nomination. “Fiction, fiction, fiction,” Scarborough declared. Scarborough admitted that if Paul runs he will probably do well in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, but beyond that, “he will be his father’s son.” MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said he “would have agreed” with Scarborough assessment, but does not know who on the Republican side has what it takes to beat Paul. “I have to continue to look...

The economy might play a role in presidential politics, but its impact is near nil in the midterms. This month's surprisingly strong jobs report elicited fresh optimism that at long last, the economy was poised to recover its full strength. And in Washington, naturally, the question quickly became: Would Democratic candidates receive an unexpected boost from a late-in-the-election-cycle economic surge? The short answer? Don't count on it. Even if job gains do spike—and there's plenty of reluctance to predict an accelerating recovery after years of stop-and-start growth—it's unlikely voters will feel demonstrably better about the economy in time for November....

Obama is the Antichrist, Republicans are heretics, and compromise is unholy. Politics can’t explain how the right acts.America has long been the incubator of many spiritual creeds going back to the Great Awakening and even earlier. Only one of them, Mormonism, has taken root and flourished as a true religion sprung from our own native ground. Today, however, we have a new faith growing from this nation’s soil: the Tea Party. Despite its secular trappings and “taxed enough already” motto, it is a religious movement, one grounded in the traditions of American spiritual revival. This religiosity explains the Tea Party’s...