Free Republic

"We told you you would lose!" wail the Beltway bundlers of the Republican establishment. "We told you you would lose!" moan neoconservative columnists from their privileged perches on the op-ed pages of the Beltway press. "Look at what Ted Cruz and this Tea Party people did to us," wails the GOP establishment. "Look what has happened to our brand." And 2014 was looking wonderful. What a basket of wimps. While the political and communications strategy of the fight to defund Obama seems not to have been thought through, can someone explain what else a moral and principled Republican party could...

My fellow Americans, the President, the Democrats and the News Media have won a great political victory today, but the American people have lost an important battle. Republicans were elected to control the House of Representatives to stop the hemorrhaging of taxpayer monies. We have tried valiantly to rein in the spending, to stop this headlong sprint to bankruptcy that will happen to our beloved country. Those of us trying to do the responsible thing for the USA have been ridiculed, demeaned and degraded by those who pretend they wish for a 'more civilized' dialogue. We have been called terrorists,...

----"Plan B" and fiscal cliff vote, redux. Having hammered out a deal to shoot back to the Senate tonight -- with most Republicans reportedly on board -- House GOP leadership has been forced to delay or cancel those votes after support among conservatives collapsed in the early evening hours. The rules committee meeting, which would have formally drawn up the bill and advanced it to the full house, has been postponed indefinitely. The reason is simple. They don't have the votes: What happened? The counter-offer's broad outline, which I've been following all day, seemed to be on track. Then the...

[with AUDIO] House Republicans wouldn’t accept a bad deal on the government shutdown and the pending federal debt ceiling negotiations from President Barack Obama, House Rules Committee chairman Texas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions announced. “I will tell you we will not back down, but there is much, much that we must understand about what is out there and how to accomplish it,” Sessions said on an interview set to air on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on Friday night. Hewitt asked Sessions about the possibility of a deal made by the first of the month to ensure the government fulfills certain...

Rep. Peter King (N.Y.) would support a discharge petition on a "clean" spending bill if GOP leaders don't bring it to the floor soon, the centrist Republican vowed this week. King has long-pushed Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to take up the Senate-passed continuing resolution (CR) to reopen the government. But he has refused to buck leadership further by endorsing the Democrats' discharge petition, which would force a floor vote on the bill. Until Friday. "If we have to do a discharge petition, ultimately, we will, but this is going to come [to the floor]," King said in an interview with...

I stepped out last night, away from politics, to be the celebrity chef at a cooking school. It was refreshing to tune out the political world. But when I checked into my hotel after eleven last night, there was a backlog of weepy, crying emails from people ready to surrender. Why? Because the GOP has gone from being not liked to being not liked? Because this Congress has gone from being the worst ever to the worst ever? Surrender should not be an option. This fight has been and remains about Obamacare. A Republican Party fretting over polling should consider...

It seems the GOP has taken a hint and will continue the fight on Obamacare by punting the debt ceiling discussion six weeks to Thanksgiving. I think this is wise, though I think the GOP should not do a clean increase. They should tie it to a full faith and credit act or something to stop future market jitters over this stuff. The GOP should not establish a precedent of debt ceiling increases without offsets of some kind. Nor should they allow the Democrats to act as if the House of Representatives should just be Barack Obama’s rubber stamp. But...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a shift some Republicans hope will strengthen their hand in the fight over the U.S. debt limit, some of the party's leaders in the House of Representatives are playing down demands to weaken "Obamacare" and focusing instead on calls to rein in deficits. The emphasis on tackling long-term debt and deficits was evident in opinion pieces published on Wednesday by two of the most prominent House Republicans, Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee and a former vice presidential candidate. Ryan's piece in the Wall Street Journal failed to...

Conservatives need to push the debt ceiling fight off the front burner to after Christmas. Republican Leaders are begging us to merge the continuing resolution fight and debt ceiling fight. They covet this with all their mind and heart. They do not want a stand alone fight on Obamacare. They want to conflate it with the debt ceiling so they can do a grand bargain and leave Obamacare alone. Consider Rep. Paul Ryan’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. He wants a grand bargain and not once mentions Obamacare. Not once. Friends, as I noted the other day, we lose...

UPDATED The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is preparing to make campaign donations to Republicans that vote to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, putting it at loggerheads with the Tea Party. That is significant, because The Chamber provides a financial counter balance to House incumbents that could face a primary challenger if they support a “clean” continuing resolution to fund the operation of the U.S. government or to raise the sovereign debt that can be issued by the United States Treasury to avoid a default. The shutdown crisis began last week over an attempt to nullify the...

The Feral Federal Government wastes tons of money. It certainly is grand that we will always have plenty to spare. U.S.S Barack Obama, our newest aircraft carrierHere's a link to an article by Jonathan Turley about recent wastes involving the Pentagon, produced by some pleasing congressional bipartisanship. He notes, [T]he Pentagon continues to spend wildly on items and them toss them out. We recently saw how [it] prefers to deliver bags of money to Karzai, buy Russian aircraft that Afghans can’t fly or maintain, or build huge buildings to be then torn down unused. Of course, no one is ever fired for constructing...

Republicans are winning the shutdown fight, and Democrats know it. People turning on the news this week came away with the knowledge that it was about Obamacare and kept hearing that Democrats wouldn’t negotiate. They also learned that for some reason the President didn’t want Word War II veterans to tour their own memorial, and Harry Reid won’t turn the funding on for cancer clinical trials at the NIH. Oh, and the rollout for Obamacare is one big glitch. Late yesterday came word that the Amber Alert system has been shut down, but Barack Obama’s federally funded golf course remains...

Dear Ms. xxxx: Thank you for contacting me regarding the Continuing Resolution (CR) and defunding of Obamacare. I know how passionately Texans feel about this issue, and I appreciate the benefit of your comments. All Americans should be exempt from the onerous and costly provisions of Obamacare and the best way to do this is to repeal and defund the law in its entirety. Texans continue to share with me real-life examples of how this law is hurting businesses, killing jobs, and burdening individuals with costlier premiums. All Americans should receive relief from this law, so I was pleased when...

There are now reportedly a total of 18 House Republicans ready to throw in the towel in the current battle over Obamacare in order to end the first government shutdown in 17 years. As TheBlaze reported on Tuesday, Democrats needs just 17 GOP lawmakers to defect from the majority of Republicans in the House to pass a “clean” continuing resolution that fully funds both Obamacare and the federal government.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), appearing on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown,” suggested that Democrats aren’t negotiating with Republicans out of principle — and out of worry that any capitulation would only embolden the cast-iron conservative wing of the party.

Cracks are starting to emerge among House Republicans on their government funding strategy. A handful of Republicans in the lower chamber on Tuesday embraced a “clean” continuing resolution (CR): Reps. Pat Meehan (Pa.), Jon Runyan (N.J.), Scott Rigell (Va.), Mike Fitzpatrick (Pa.) and Frank Wolf (Va.). They joined Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) and GOP New York Reps. Pete King and Michael Grimm, who endorsed a clean CR earlier this week. A "clean" bill would not include provisions to delay or defund ObamaCare, and is supported by the White House and Senate Democrats. In a Tweet, Meehan stated, “I came to...

The last version of the continuing resolution that House Speaker John Boehner (R.-Ohio) pushed through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Monday—and that the Democrat-controlled Senate summarily rejected—surrendered a position that House Republicans had taken in the previous CR that protected Americans from being forced by an Obamacare regulation to act against their moral or religious convictions. The Obamacare regulation in question effectively prohibits American Catholics from freely practicing their faith in the way they live their daily lives. Indeed, the Catholic bishops of the United States have unanimously declared this regulation an “unjust and illegal mandate” and “a violation...

Fedzilla is shut down-post your "Buh Bye's" here: Buh Bye NEA!!!! Buh Bye funding of Planned Parent hood Buh Bye talk of raising the debt ceiling, since they only spend whatever amount of Tax we send to DC

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat) has obstructed and prevented the House of Representatives efforts to submit a budget as required by Federal Law. That's right folks, Harry Reid (D) is breaking a Federal Law that the Senate had passed. Does he really lead the Senate or does he just have his own agenda to break the system. President Obama sent a budget to the Congress that received NO VOTES! Not even Harry Reid would vote for Obama's budget. What is our Debt, by the way? The US national debt has remained the same since 5/28/2013 at $16.699396 trillion. Continuing...

According to Special Report, a cadre of Quislings in the House are planning a revolt against not only the conservative majority, but the leadership as well. No doubt led by Peter King who recently insinuated he was not going to continue playing 'Cruz' game', this group will vote with the rats to block our next volley to the senate, the hardest one yet for them to reject. We cannot allow this. If you are a Freeper and think your rep might be involved in this treachery, melt the phone lines and fill the inboxes. No insurrection can be afforded at...