Free Republic

House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday displayed emotional candor rare for a national leader, acknowledging to reporters that it stings when critics call him "spineless" or a "squish." (snip) Boehner said: “During my years here when I voted, I had the eight most conservative voting record in the Congress. And, it does pain me to be described as spineless, or a squish. And, I tell you what pains me the most is when they describe me as the establishment. Now, I’m the most anti-establishment speaker we’ve ever had. Who was the guy who got rid of earmarks? Me. Whose the...

Mr. Speaker: As the new Congress begins its work on behalf of the American people, I rise to address my colleagues about an issue of national importance, namely Puerto Rico’s quest to discard its status as a U.S. territory and to become a U.S. state. Puerto Rico has been a territory since 1898. If Puerto Rico does not desire to remain a territory, it can follow one of two paths. The territory can become a state or it can become a sovereign nation, either fully independent from the U.S. or with a compact of free association with the U.S. that...

The shocking act of murder by terrorists in Paris this week provides chilling new evidence that Republican majorities in Congress must act. The tepid response from the White House -- a hallmark of Obama, except on issues like race and law enforcement -- must come to an end. It will take action by Republicans on Capitol Hill to force a change. On Monday, the political press was abuzz over a challenge to House Speaker John Boehner from several of his fellow representatives. But Boehner won another term as speaker. Now it's time for Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — A battle is shaping up between Sens. Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell. McConnell, the Senate majority leader, and Cruz, the conservative firebrand, are competing for influence among the Senate’s 12 Republican freshmen. The outcome, writes the Hill, will potentially shape the agenda for 2015 and beyond. Cruz has reached out to freshman Republicans in hopes they will join his effort to pressure GOP leaders to pursue what he calls a “bold agenda.” McConnell, meanwhile, has consistently told colleagues the only way they can have an impact is by getting legislation to President Barack Obama’s desk. That means...

As members of the 114th Congress were sworn into office on Tuesday, their party affiliations described what happened last November: 246 of the 435 representatives and 54 of the 100 senators are Republican. That might be enough for some fellow GOP'ers to claim victory and a "mandate," but they would be wise to recall a lesson from history. The last time the House had so many Republicans was in 1947, when the 80th Congress was sworn in. At that time, Republicans also held 51 of the 96 Senate seats. Democrat Harry S. Truman, who had become president on April 12,...

ank-and-file Republicans are fuming at what they see as the heavy-handed tactics of Republican leaders, one day after a divisive vote that narrowly handed Speaker John Boehner the gavel for another term. Members who opposed Boehner on the floor are frustrated that two rebels have already been stripped of committee assignments, while the speaker's allies, angered by an embarrassingly close vote that played out on national television, warn darkly of more punishment to come. And some conservatives who backed Boehner complain that they are now facing a different kind of retribution—from the Right. (snip) Retribution is not being enacted simply...

"................McConnell took the Senate on the low road. He stood still at his desk, lips pursed, clearing his throat often, and reading a grim message. “Moment of great anxiety . . . lost faith in their government . . . no longer trust Washington . . . losing health plans after being told otherwise . . . rising medical costs . . . difficult just to get by . . . world filled with chaos . . . autocrats scoffing at a superpower that doesn’t seem to have a real plan.” “Confidence in the American dream has plunged,” McConnell said, pointing an index finger downward. “Anxiety about the type of country we leave to...

It took them long enough. Recall that when Mary Landrieu pushed her own version of an authorization for the Keystone XL pipeline, Barack Obama and the White House played coy, hoping to help her win the runoff election that she ended up losing in a landslide on December 6th. Even as late as this weekend, the Obama administration didn’t tip their hand on Keystone. Yesterday Josh Earnest told the gaggle that Obama wouldn’t sign the bill as it currently stands, but stopped short of an explicit veto threat against the idea entirely.Today, the White House made it explicit: The...

In the wake of the vote reelecting John Boehner as House speaker, it is worth noting a statement put out by rock-rib conservative Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.): Some people wrote me encouraging me to vote for Louie Gohmert. I like Louie, but let’s be clear: Louie Gohmert was – is – never ever going to be Speaker of the House. I respect his passion, but he isn’t a credible candidate. That was proved today by the fact that he got three votes, despite all the national media attention he managed to grab. My colleague who got the most anti-Boehner votes...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Representative Mick Mulvaney released the following statement: “There was an attempt to oust John Boehner as Speaker of the House today. I didn’t participate in it. That may make some people back home angry. I understand that, but I’ve got some experience with coup attempts against the Speaker, and what I learned two years ago factored heavily in my decision today not to join the mutiny. First, I learned two years ago that people lie about how they are going to vote. And you cannot go into this kind of fight with people you do not trust....

Around 10 a.m. this morning, Representative John Fleming (R., Md.) received a phone call from a colleague asking him to vote against Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) on the House floor today. Fleming has a longstanding alliance with Representative Steve King (R., Iowa), Representative Jim Bridenstine (R., Okla.), and other ringleaders of the unsuccessful effort to oust Boehner from the speaker’s chair, which makes it surprising that this was the first time anyone had contacted him about the issue. “To ask me to vote against the speaker on the last day like this, without having an alternative to vote for,...

"................This is why we have elections — to choose representatives. The 2014 congressional elections were quite good for conservatives, who are restive and impatient for reform. Many of them fault congressional leaders, especially John Boehner and Senate leader Mitch McConnell, for being too eager to compromise and too generous in their terms. There might have been a mutiny against McConnell if all the likely candidates for Senate majority leader — Senators Rubio, Paul, Cruz, etc. — weren’t running for president. Will Rogers famously joked: “I don’t belong to any organized political party — I’m a Democrat,” and there has long...

Iron-fisted U.S. House Speaker John Boehner is moving quickly to punish conservative Republicans who tried to oust him Tuesday during the biennial leadership election. Hours after the contentious vote, Florida Rep. Daniel Webster – who actively campaigned against Boehner and persuaded 12 GOP members to support him – found himself left off the membership list of the powerful House Rules Committee, where he served for the last two years. Rep. Rich Nugent, a fellow Floridian who voted for him, suffered the same fate. 'My philosophy,' Webster told reporters after he heard the news that he had been bumped from the...

Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said that “people that were right there ready to go ended up deciding not to vote with us” in his campaign to unseat John Boehner (R-OH) as House Speaker on Tuesday’s “Sean Hannity Show.” “We had enough votes but people that were right there ready to go ended up deciding not to vote with us,” he stated. Although, he told Hannity that some representatives were “blown away” by the number of constituents lobbying their representatives to vote against Boehner and that some of Boehner’s allies “really scared they didn’t have the votes” and that some representatives...

Yesterday, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released some statistics on the religious composition of the new 114th Congress, which includes more Catholics (with 164) than any Congress in history. That’s about 31% of Congress that identifies as Catholics, compared with about 22% of American adults. Sadly, while the number of Catholics in Congress reaches an all-time high, pro-life Democrats in Congress are on the verge of extinction.But first, some good news for Catholic Democrats.Given the large margin by which Republicans control the new Congress (301-234, counting both houses) and the fact that the incoming class in a...

Pro-life members of Congress today introduced legislation in the House of Representatives that bans abortions from after 20-weeks of pregnancy up to the day of birth. With Republicans controlling both the House and Senate, there is a guarantee that the important pro-life legislation will finally receive a vote in both chambers of Congress. In 2013, the House approved the bill on a 228-196 vote with 6 Democrats voting for the bill and 6 Republicans voting against it. President Barack Obama has issued a veto threat against that bill and Senate Democrats refused to bring it up for a vote. Congressman...

The bottom has fallen out of the abortion-centered “war on women” strategy. Why is that? Women just don’t agree with the shrinking ranks of the feminist Left like EMILY’s List and NARAL that unlimited abortion is the great liberator for women. And they are tired of the politics of division and grievance. In fact, the next Congress will usher in a record-breaking number of pro-life women who share this belief. When I worked with other women to start the SBA List in 1992, the “Year of the Woman,” there were only two consistently pro-life women serving in Congress. The Congress...

Michigan’s 38 senators and 110 representatives missed a combined 1,626 votes in 2014 according to the Missed Votes Report compiled by Jack McHugh, editor of MichiganVotes.org. The 2014 Legislature held 1,747 roll call votes, 936 in the Senate and 811 in the House, not counting purely procedural votes. This is up from the combined total of 1,256 roll call votes held in 2013, when individual legislators missed 1,093 votes altogether. In contrast, there were 21,162 missed votes in the 2001-2002 legislative session, the year MichiganVotes.org began. “The days of some legislators no longer showing up for work are long past,”...

Politicians do politics because they can't help it. It's what they do: their whole reason for existence. A public man -- or woman -- can no more help legislating and campaigning and back-scratching and log-rolling and fundraising than -- than what? Than a writer on politics can stop bloviating and prophesying. I state the comparison with a degree of shame. We're all in this together -- politicos and pundits. We love the game, and that's too bad, for everybody. These reflections come to mind on account of the Great Political Repositioning now underway in Washington due to Republican takeover of...

Obama is not just the enemy of the Democrats and Republicans in Congress. He is the enemy of the people The good news as 2015 debuts is that President Obama has managed to very nearly decimate the Democratic Party, leaving it weaker in Congress and throughout the nation than it has been in memory. The bad news is that he has weakened the nation in the eyes of the world. He is not trusted by world leaders and his next two years in office will only encourage our enemies. “Checking Obama’s misuse of his foreign-affairs powers should be a top...