Free Republic

Scroll down the RealClearPolitics poll summary for the last few days, and you see a lot more red than blue in the latest surveys [1] released for Senate, House and governor’s races. Many races are very close in all three categories, but over the past two weeks the GOP position — particularly in House and Senate races — has generally improved.Governor’s races are the biggest crapshoot. RealClearPolitics counts 14 races as tossups: Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Wisconsin, Illinois, Colorado, Hawaii, Alaska, Arizona, Kansas, and Michigan. Since eight of the 14 are currently in Republican hands, this...

Former Democrat House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s political wisdom that “All politics is local” has been a staple in political thinking for many years. But the truth of the matter is that, regarding elections for national office, politics is really, today, a national business. And this is what voters in Kansas should be thinking about in the current close Senate race between Republican incumbent Pat Roberts and Independent challenger Greg Orman. Roberts has not been shy making the point that regaining the Senate by Republicans is crucial and this is what Kansas voters should be thinking about in this election. And...

Exclusive: Obama Administration Quietly Prepares 'Surge' Of Millions Of New Immigrant IDs Despite no official action from the president ahead of the election, the Obama administration has quietly begun preparing to issue millions of work authorization permits, suggesting the implementation of a large-scale executive amnesty may have already begun. Unnoticed until now, a draft solicitation for bids issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Oct. 6 says potential vendors must be capable of handling a “surge” scenario of 9 million id cards in one year “to support possible future immigration reform initiative requirements.” The request for proposals says the...

With the midterm elections just weeks away, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz seemed confident during her appearanceon “Fox News Sunday” that Democrats will keep the Senate. “We are going to hold the Senate,” the Florida lawmaker said. “The president is not on the ballot.” “Republicans are desperate to put him on the ballot because they’re trying to turn away from their own terrible record,” she added. She made her prediction amid a majority of polls that give Republicans at least a 60 percent chance of retaking the upper chamber, including a Washington Post forecast that gives the GOP a...

With less than four weeks until Election Day, the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s independent expenditure arm is shifting resources to increase its investment in six states, including South Dakota and Georgia. The NRSC has moved $1 million to South Dakota, plus another $1.45 million to Georgia. In South Dakota, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee made a $1 million television ad buy this week, on the heels of tightening poll numbers that showed its candidate, Rick Weiland, gaining ground. In Georgia, a new poll suggests a runoff is likely. The NRSC also is upping its investment in four other states: Alaska,...

Much has been made of the charisma deficit between Louisiana’s Democratic senator Mary Landrieu and her main Republican challenger, Representative Bill Cassidy. Beltway media have long suggested that her family ties and New Orleans accent could insulate Landrieu from attacks on her record. They’ve noted, too, that Cassidy, a public-health doctor who specializes in the treatment of liver diseases, appears robotic and rigid, unlike the vivacious Louisianans he’d like to represent in the U.S. Senate. Cassidy’s strong debate performance Tuesday evening surprised friends and foes alike who thought meeting Landrieu, a 34-year political veteran and member of a New Orleans...

Campaigning for the Senate in 2012, former Harvard law professor cum left-wing populist Elizabeth Warren touched down in North Carolina and told voters, “The game is rigged.” She was more right than she knew. As it turns out, North Carolina’s Democratic senator was doing some of the rigging. Now, Kay Hagan’s political future may depend on how voters react to the story. Hagan’s vote for the 2009 stimulus, coupled with revelations that the legislation resulted in taxpayer funding for her family’s businesses, has emerged as an October surprise in a race hitherto marked by her unexpected resilience in a difficult...

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) wants to get all must-pass legislation completed in the lame-duck session so Senate Republicans will have a clean slate at the start of 2015 if they control the upper chamber. Senate GOP aides say that’s the message from the leader, who could face opposition from conservative lawmakers who want to block any non-emergency measures in the window between Election Day and the start of the new Congress in January. “We keep hearing from the leadership we’re going to clear the decks in the lame duck,” said a senior GOP aide. Under this scenario, the...

The Supreme Court recently upheld a Texas voter ID law. This outrageous piece of legislation would require voters to present a photo ID prior to voting. This is the same sort of requirement that is in place in nearly every country in the world. India requires a photo ID in order to vote, almost every country in Europe has such a requirement. Yet here in the United States requiring a photo ID to vote is met with howls of racism from the Democrats. Interestingly here in Michigan to vote in the Democrats Presidential primary in 2012 voters had to present...

Free at last! I’m silent no more. Now, the story can be told. Democrats here in my adopted state of Colorado did not want the new political documentary I hosted to see the light of day. They lost. This week, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an emergency injunction declaring that our movie deserved the same free-speech rights as a “traditional” (translation: old-guard liberal) news organization. “Rocky Mountain Heist,” produced by David Bossie’s Citizens United and directed by Jason Killian Meath, tells the story of how a wealthy quartet of liberal millionaires and billionaires in Colorado — known as...

The first outbreak was in Kentucky. Then, through some transmission mechanism which remains unidentified, it spread to Georgia. Now, despite the best Democrat efforts to establish some sort of quarantine or containment, the affliction seems to have made the jump to the Mountain State. West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant can’t seem to choke out the name of the person she voted for in the last two presidential elections. Citing Grimes’s mishaps, the Charleston Daily Mail editorial board asked during a candidates’ forum whether the candidates would be willing to say whom they last supported for president. Republican...

Republicans are bullish that they will win control of the Senate, make small gains in the House and retain many governor’s offices this year. But just over two weeks from Election Day, fears about Ebola and Islamic State militants, along with sudden, surprising scrambles in key states, have added new volatility to the 2014 campaign. The political climate clearly favors Republicans, buoyed by President Obama’s record-low popularity and a voter-enthusiasm advantage. However, the kind of wave that lifted Republicans in 1994 and 2010 has eluded them, in part because the GOP brand also is damaged. Voters are restive and dissatisfied...

Powers to amend seven different articles under the constitution, including freedom of movement, speech, religion, confiscation of private property, and elections Last week on October 7, it was reported that Liberia’s President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, asked for more emergency powers to help contain and prevent the current Ebola crisis. Liberia is already under a state of emergency and curfew, which began in August. But according to VOA News: “In a letter to the Plenary of the House of Representatives and the Senate, Sirleaf asked for powers to amend seven different articles under the constitution, including freedom of movement, speech, religion,...

Mitch McConnell is still an enigma. He’s the most powerful Republican in Washington and in his home state of Kentucky, now on the cusp of realizing his lifelong dream of becoming Senate majority leader. But those wishing to learn more about the man are left with precious few options, other than a friendly authorized biography and a handful of durable magazine profiles. snip The story begins with a focus on McConnell’s election as Jefferson County judge-executive in 1977, a period the author mines for fresh detail about his early political thinking. As a Rockefeller Republican running for office in a...

President Obama is taking time out from his much-trumpeted "year of action" to observe a period more important to his Democratic allies in Congress: the season of campaigning.. One by one, the Obama administration is setting aside key priorities, in the hope that voters won't do the same to his fellow Democrats. Immigration reform, once deemed a pressing back-to-school item, will wait at least until the winter holidays. Enrollment in Obamacare will start six weeks later than last year. The climate will warm at the same rate, with new regulations pending. The latest addition to the not-to-do list came this...

But the latest numbers show Republican fundraising catching up with, and sometimes surpassing, Democratic totals in Iowa, Colorado and other key states.

It was the most memorable scene from the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco: Nelson Rockefeller standing tall on the speakers’ platform, insistent on having his say—“This is still a free country, ladies and gentlemen”—as conservative yahoos below sent up a roar of hatred to this embodiment of the despised Eastern Establishment who dared denounce extremism. Operatives of the party’s impending presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, aware of the damage the nationally televised scene was doing to his image, frantically tried to quiet the delegates, but to no avail. On His Own Terms By Richard Norton Smith Random House, 842...

As with a few other races around the nation once expected to be locks for the GOP, they find themselves struggling where they shouldn't be. South Dakota's Senate race was supposed to be a shoe-in for the Republicans -- one of three guaranteed pick ups in their quest to gain 6 six Senate seats to capture the majority. West Virginia and Montana, the other two, still seem like sure bets for the GOP, but South Dakota is suddenly iffy. There are many reasons that the contest has shifted into a four-way race that includes former Republican Sen. Larry Pressler, now...

Many conservative voters are disillusioned at the Republicans for not standing up for their principles, for compromising with the Democrats, for having no spines etc. etc. They vow not to vote for the Republicans, or outright vote for the Democrats, to send them a message, to teach them a lesson. I think this kind of message/lesson serves no purpose but to cut off your own supply of oxygen. Almost all the Republicans rejected obumbocrap (obamacare) but Harry Reid and his crooked Dems jammed it through deviously. The House Republicans have passed many legislations to repeal obumbocrap but Reid et al...

October 17, 2014 The Macaca Democrats Column: Why the GOP Is Winning Election 2014 By Matthew ContenettiSomething peculiar has happened. As I write, none of the Republican candidates for Senate has become a public embarrassment. On the contrary: For the first time in a decade, it is the Democratic candidates, not the Republican ones, who are fodder for late-night comics. That the Democrats are committing gaffes and causing scandals at a higher rate than Republicans not only may be decisive in the battle for the Senate. It could signal a change in our politics at large.Yes, at any given moment,...