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Outgoing Speaker of the House John Boehner lashed out at the House’s “most conservative members” during a Sunday interview on ABC’s “Face the Nation.”CBS host John Dickerson began the interview by asking Boehner about the threatened government shutdown: “Four days, the government runs out of money. Is there going to be a shutdown?” Boehner responded, “no,” that he expected the Senate to pass a continuing resolution and that with the help of Democrats in the House, he expected the House to vote to keep the government open. Moving to the issue of Boehner’s upcoming retirement, Dickerson asked Boehner about conversations...

The abrupt resignation of House Speaker John Boehner shows that “the crazies have taken over the party,” Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said Friday. “I think it signals the crazies have taken over the party, taken over to the party that you can remove a speaker of the House who’s second in line to be president, a constitutional officer in the middle of his term with no allegations of impropriety, a person who’s honest and doing his job. This has never happened before in our country,” King said in an interview on CNN. “He could have stayed on.” King praised Boehner,...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz scored a runaway victory in the presidential straw poll at the Values Voter Summit on Saturday, grabbing 35 percent of the vote among attendees at one of the country's highest-profile conservative gatherings, where no fewer than eight GOP presidential hopefuls came to court the crowd. Cruz had nearly double the support of the second-place finisher, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and seven times the votes for Donald Trump, who was audibly booed during his Values Voter speech but still leads the Republican field among likely primary voters who are outside of the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington...

The real religion of Washington conservatives is that having a government at all is offensive to the market. No wonder leading a branch of it is thankless work.House Speaker John Boehner’s last official moment in the media spotlight found him crying: sitting behind Pope Francis during the pontiff’s address to Congress, Boehner – a notorious public cryer – teared up at the homiletic spectacle, and was forced to dry his eyes with a handkerchief. It was fitting because, over the past five years, Boehner himself has presided over a far less decorous and infinitely more fractious show of ardent faith,...

Non-House members have received votes for speaker, and that’s a trend that seems to be growing.Who can replace Speaker of the House John Boehner, who announced Friday he’s quitting? Almost anyone. Maybe even you. This isn’t a comment on the job Representative Boehner has or has not done in his role as leader of his legislative chamber. It’s meant to illustrate a little-known fact: Under the Constitution, the speaker does not have to be a member of the House. He or she doesn’t have to be an elected lawmaker or government official. The speaker can be an ordinary, private citizen....

WASHINGTON — Hours after House Speaker John Boehner announced that he would be resigning from Congress, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz added fuel to the fire by saying he’d heard “early reports” that Boehner cut a deal with Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to continue funding some of President Barack Obama’s most controversial measures. “I will say, the early reports are discouraging. If it is correct that the speaker, before he resigns, has cut a deal with Nancy Pelosi to fund the Obama administration for the rest of its tenure, to fund Obamacare, to fund executive amnesty, to fund Planned Parenthood, to...

Donald Trump may be a hit with the public, but Republicans appear to have little confidence.Seemingly immune to controversies and gaffes that would have ruined less ridiculous men, Donald Trump has topped every single poll taken on the Republican Primary race since late July. But while his controversial views on everything from immigration to trade with China have appealed to a wide swathe of Americans, it has earned him few friends within the party. Statistics site FiveThirtyEight has analysed the endorsements given to each candidate by their fellow party members, weighting the approval of governors, senators and representatives in descending...

Republican legislators have gotten their messaging instructions from their top leaders: Tout unpopular free-trade measures during the August recess, ignore popular curbs on the migration that saps Americans’ wages. Breitbart News has exclusively obtained an internal August recess messaging instruction set for Republican legislators produced by Sen. John Thune (R-SD), who orchestrates the GOP Senators’ PR pitch. This 20-page messaging instruction manual seems to confirm prior reports by Breitbart News that Republican Congressional leadership has no plans to enact popular immigration reforms to curb large-scale migration. Each August, Senators and Congressmen return home to listen to constituents’ concerns and to...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker came to the aid of Sen. Ted Cruz Friday after reports that Speaker of the House John Boehner called him a "jackass" during a fundraiser. Appearing on "The Hugh Hewitt Show," the Republican presidential hopeful called Boehner's reported Wednesday night statement "just wrong." Boehner made the comments at a Steamboat Springs event for GOP Rep. Scott Tipton, according to the Daily Caller. "I think it's just wrong," Walker said. "Even though I don't know Sen. Cruz as well as I know some of the governors, I've grown to know him and like him and admire him...

Juicy, but I don’t know how scandalized we should be at learning that Boehner holds a view we all assumed he held in the first place. Next we’ll find out that Mitch McConnell thinks Cruz is a jackass too. This isn’t the first time he’s been accused of saying something privately to fundraisers that he wouldn’t dare dream of saying publicly. Remember when he allegedly told a bunch of donor-class amnesty fans that he was “hellbent” on passing comprehensive immigration reform in 2014? Two months later Dave Brat upset Eric Cantor in their House primary by running hard against illegal...

Attending Congressman Jeff Duncan's 5th. annual Faith and Values BBQ/fund raiser this evening.Scheduled speakers include: Dr. Ben Carson, Scott Walker, and my personal favourite; Sen. Ted Cruz. I more than likely will not receive any one-on-one time with these gentlemen but if given the chance to ask any or all of these a question, I respectfully ask my much more learned FReeper colleges what best and poignant question(s) to ask?

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)As U.S. census data projects that immigration will soon exceed all documented historical records, not one Republican leader in Congress supports the popular step of reducing immigration. Each year the United States admits one million people with green cards, their dependents and refugees, as well as half a million foreign youths sought by college administrators. Census data projects that, if visas are not slashed or halted, another 14 million immigrant settlers will arrive in the U.S. over the next decade. Polls from Fox News and Gallup show that Americans — by a 2-to-1 ratio — want to see visa issuances...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I've been thinking about this. We are all inundated by each other, every day, with e-mails, phone calls, texts, what have you, of utter incredulity over what's happened to the Republican Party. It's just too weird, folks. There just isn't any serious opposition to anything that the Democrat Party wants. Remember Angelo Codevilla? He's back. He had that great place on the ruling class that I read in its entirety to you when he published it, and he then turned it into a book. He's back with his thoughts on Trump, and I found it at the...

Capitalism vs Socialism - Economics 101 - Reagan vs Obama

The Iranian nuclear deal is a big step toward world peace, and Republicans would be praising it if one of their own had negotiated it, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul told Newsmax TV's "The Hard Line."Paul told host Ed Berliner that the deal echoed Ronald Reagan's deal with the Soviets in the 1980s. Paul's biggest problem with the deal was that the United States had to work under the confines of the United Nations and NATO. "There's something to be said about moving in the direction of at least talking to people instead of saying, 'All right, you're scoundrels, we'll...

The White House lashed out at congressional Republicans as a party of racists Thursday, calling the GOP defenders of the Confederate flag and silent partners to Donald Trump’s Mexican-bashing rhetoric. White House press secretary Josh Earnest opened his daily press briefing with an unsolicited broadside on Republicans, saying they are “out of step” with Americans’ values on race relations and immigration. He blasted GOP lawmakers as “eager to protect the status of the Confederate flag on National Park Service grounds” and reminded the public that the third-ranking House Republican, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, was once described as “David Duke...

Tallahassee attorney Mary Thomas announced on Wednesday she was forming an exploratory committee as she looks at running for the Republican nomination to challenge freshman U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham, D-Fla., in 2016. Currently working in Gov. Rick Scott’s administration as the general counsel at the Department of Elder Affairs, Thomas is active with the Federalist Society, a conservative group of attorneys. In the announcement to the media on Wednesday afternoon, Thomas’ team played up the fact that if she won she would be the first Indian-American woman in Congress and her experience in Tallahassee. “During her time in the Scott...

Sen. Ted Cruz now has five fellow Texan members of Congress publicly backing his 2016 presidential run. Cruz’s campaign announced Thursday morning the endorsement of Rep. Brian Babin, R-Woodville. “Ted has shown the conservative leadership and fortitude we so desperately need in our nation’s highest office,” said Babin in a statement released by the Cruz campaign. ”Now is a time for truth,” echoing the title of the senator’s new book, “and he will speak honestly to the American people.” Like Cruz, Babin has been critical of Republican leadership and President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration. Babin voted “present” in...

July 1, 2015 Mike Flynn has published about a million and a half words on politics and policy. Now, he's trying to put them into practice. Last month, Flynn, an editor for the conservative Breitbart News, announced his bid for the special election to replace former Rep. Aaron Schock in Illinois. The former columnist and founding editor of the Big Government blog decided to make his first run for political office after the scandal-tarred Schock's resignation, arguing that his role in the media prepared him for office. "My position is long-known, established, and out there, and I think that's something...

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people won two victories in the Supreme Court today. We expected the big one: the fourth in a series of opinions by Justice Anthony Kennedy—one of the last sitting Reagan appointees—vindicating our right to legal equality. The unexpected one was smaller in public impact but also significant: Justice Antonin Scalia’s disclaimer that he is not personally troubled by the fact that we can marry each other. After a series of opinions, speeches and public comments expressing his strong disapproval of us, vigorously defending society’s right to express this attitude in discriminatory public policies, Scalia begins...