Free Republic

Less than a week after allegations of fraud prompted election officials in Afghanistan to delay the results of that country's presidential runoff election, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called Friday for the two remaining Afghan candidates to allow the results to be audited. "There's ample evidence of fraud," said Graham, according to the Wall Street Journal. "There needs to be an audit that is recognized by the Afghan people as legitimate and by the international community as legitimate." A failure to end the standoff, McCain warned, "could put not only the political environment in Afghanistan into a...

In what may come as a surprise to residents of Colorado Springs and Pueblo, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn’t think those cities have roads. Bloomberg told Rolling Stone that he was “sorry” about the recalls of two state senators last year over the Democratic state legislature’s gun-control laws, but added that their districts were so “rural” that, “I don’t think there’s roads.” “In Colorado, we got a law passed. The NRA went after two or three state senators in a part of Colorado where I don’t think there’s roads,” said Bloomberg in the interview published online Wednesday....

The contemptible tactics of the Mississippi Republican Party establishment in fighting off a challenge to incumbent Sen. Cochran are much in the headlines lately. The story is still unfolding, but what is clear is that in the Mississippi Republican primary, no lie was too grotesque if it helped smear a tea party challenger and protect the party establishment. snip In Colorado as well, the Republican gubernatorial primary picture was not pretty. snip And perhaps the most bizarre twist of all, a massive buy of attack ads was purchased through a Massachusetts campaign group called Red Curve. It turned out the...

COLUMBIA — A right-leaning poll shows nearly half of likely S.C. voters favor re-electing U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham. About 49 percent of 750 likely S.C. voters polled said they would vote for the Seneca Republican, who is seeking a third term in November. Graham’s Democratic challenger, state Sen. Brad Hutto of Orangeburg, was favored by 30 percent of those polled. Ten percent said they would choose another candidate and 11 percent were undecided. The poll was conducted July 9-10 by Rasmussen Reports. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Last night a circuit court judge in Florida voided the state's congressional map, citing a "secret, organized campaign" by Republican operatives that "made a mockery of the Legislature's transparent and open process of redistricting." The ruling concluded that District 5, held by Democrat Corrine Brown, and District 10, held by Republican Dan Webster, will need to be redrawn. From a purely practical standpoint, this means redrawing any surrounding districts as well, and possibly many of the state's 27 districts overall. "If one or more districts do not meet constitutional muster, then the entire act is unconstitutional," Judge Terry Lewis wrote....

Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel (R) on Friday accused Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann (R) of deliberately misleading circuit clerks to make it more difficult for his team to review election records as it moves toward challenging the outcome of a June 24 runoff election he lost to Sen. Thad Cochran. McDaniel said his team has "found over 8,300 questionable ballots cast" and he intends to hold a press conference next Wednesday to discuss his next steps. The Republican called on Hosemann to "clarify" the policy of reviewing election results and claimed he muddled it on purpose. “Under Mississippi state...

WASHINGTON, July 8, 2014 — When Senator Lamar Alexander cast a vote for the “Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act” of 2013, the liberal Tennessee Republican probably had no idea it would come back to bite him. That act is better known as the Senate “Gang of Eight” Amnesty bill. Last year, despite the protests of conservatives, a number of liberal Republicans went along with Senate Democrats and passed Amnesty. Most Amnesty supporters had no idea how this would blow up against them. In Virginia, Eric Cantor, the sitting House Majority Leader and a proponent of Amnesty was...

At a press conference Thursday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said people with religious beliefs who disagree with the Obamacare contraception mandate should be given a choice between living by their faith or being allowed to form a corporation to do business. “You’re born with a religion or you adopt a religion. You have to obey the precepts of that religion and the government gives you a wide penumbra – you don’t have to form a corporation,” Schumer said. In the Hobby Lobby case, decided last month, the Supreme Court ruled that a closely-held family-owned corporation could not be forced by...

The Georgia Republican runoff is less than two weeks away on July 22, 2014. Having successfully swung the Mississippi Senate runoff against the conservative, Democrats in Georgia are coordinating with the GOP establishment to defeat the conservative running in Georgia’s tenth congressional district. Jody Hice, the undisputed conservative in the race to replace Congressman Paul Broun, is . . . well . . . a conservative. His opponent, Mike Collins, is the son of a congressman who goes around the district talking about what friends he is with various House committee chairmen in DC, etc. In an organized effort, an...

GOFFSTOWN, N.H. -- Two months before the New Hampshire Republican Senate primary, Bob Smith was scrutinizing a shopping cart full of watermelons near the checkout line at Sully’s Market. "That's a ripe melon," the former two-term U.S. senator said as he flicked one of the green fruits with his thumb and forefinger. Next, Smith turned his attention to a less desirable specimen in the cart and replicated the ripeness test for the benefit of state Rep. John Hikel, a local supporter who was escorting the candidate on what had been billed as a canvass of downtown Goffstown but turned into...

At least for now, it looks as though Scott Brown’s bid to be the first Senator to be elected to the Senate from two different states isn’t going to work out so well: U.S. Sen Jeanne Shaheen holds a comfortable lead against all of her Republican challengers, a new WMUR Granite State Poll released tonight shows. Her 12-point lead over Scott Brown, the likely Republican nominee, is double what it was in April when Brown made his candidacy official. The margin of error is 4.3 percent. The poll was conducted by the UNH Survey Center, which released polls for all...

AUGUSTA, Kan. — Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts stoked the political brushfire he was hoping to smother during a recent Kansas City-area radio morning show. "Every time I get an opponent — uh, I mean, every time I get a chance — I'm home," Roberts said during the KCMO interview. That's just Milton Wolf's point. The tea party-backed challenger for the GOP nomination has been casting the third-term senator as a Washington politician who has lost touch with his constituents. The charge is a potent one already in the 2014 midterm elections: It was a key factor in the ouster last...

Fending off persistent questions about his residency status, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) noted in a radio interview last week that “my kids went to school” in Dodge City, Kansas, as a means of demonstrating his ties to the state he represents roughly 1,400 miles away in Washington, D.C. But a close inspection of that claim shows his children only attended school there for about three months, and attended and graduated from high school in Alexandria, Virginia, although they later attended college in Kansas. “We have declared Dodge [City] our residency; our kids went to school there. Every time I get...

Sen. Lamar Alexander's (R-Tenn.) primary challenger, Tennessee state Rep. Joe Carr, picked up another national Tea Party endorsement Thursday, the same day he released a new statewide radio ad. ADVERTISEMENT The issue at the center of both the Tea Party Patriots’ endorsement and Carr’s new ad is Alexander’s alleged support for “amnesty” for illegal immigrants, a charge Carr has made central to his campaign against the senator. The Tea Party Patriots endorsement praised Carr as a "genuine leader" in the fight against illegal immigration, criticizing Alexander for being one of the 14 Republicans to vote for the reform bill that...

Joe Carr, the conservative who is challenging Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) in an August primary, blasted Alexander for calling for National Guard troops on the border a year after he voted for the Senate's amnesty bill which many believe contributed to the border crisis. Carr is also running statewide ads on radio reminding voters in Tennessee that Alexander is refusing to debate him on the issues, particularly immigration. “After recklessly voting for an amnesty that paved the way for the current border crisis, Senator Alexander is trying to fool Tennesseans by pretending to be strong on border security," Carr said...

Conservative donors fueling the civil war within the Republican Party are showing no signs of surrender, despite recent losses in primaries and mounting criticism that the groups to which they are giving might damage the GOP’s prospects at winning control of the Senate. The top conservative groups — Club for Growth and Senate Conservatives Fund — have spent more than $10 million on ads and direct contributions to endorsed candidates in 2014 so far, but they’ve won only in races where establishment groups were largely on the sidelines or supported the same candidate. Donors funding these outside groups aren’t demanding...

Ann Coulter is urging tea party challenger Chris McDaniel to concede in the Mississippi Senate Republican primary. In an op-ed in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, the conservative commentator said McDaniel supporters who are fighting to contest the June 24 runoff election results against Sen. Thad Cochran are hurting the GOP — and McDaniel’s own political future.

Unlike many of his Republican colleagues, Karl Rove advocated Thursday for bipartisan compromise on immigration. “Republicans have to look at this as an opportunity that they have to work,” the Republican strategist said on the Fox News program “Happening Now.” “It’s an opportunity to get some things done to help secure the border.” He suggested that in working with President Barack Obama’s $3.7 billion request for additional funds to deal with the current immigration crisis, Republicans could make policy gains like increasing the amount of border patrols. “They ought to sit down in good faith,” he said of Republicans and...

On June 26, a platform committee at the state Republican convention in Billings passed a resolution sponsored by state Sen. Jeff Essman of Billings that would limit future Republican primaries to party members only. This maneuver comes as moderate and conservative Republicans try to gain position within their own party. This resolution clearly shows how disconnected the Republican party is from the American public. Did they forget that there are other parties besides the Republicans and Democrats, such as Independents and Libertarians, which vote on either ticket in the primaries? How isolated and ludicrous the Republican party has become if...

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg scoffed at rural Colorado’s reaction to gun control during an interview with Rolling Stone in this month’s magazine, suggesting that only the parts of the country without even the most basic components of civilization would be opposed to more gun control. Bloomberg was asked about the successful recall races of Democratic State Senators in response to the strict gun control legislation passed in the state. “The NRA went after two or three state Senators in a part of Colorado where I don't think there's roads. It's as far rural as you can get,” he said. ......