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U.S. Congressmen want a say in Iran election, apply for travel visas to Iran BY LISA DAFTARI (EDIT)THURSDAY FEB 4, 2016 7:08PM Hand-delivered visa application to travel to Iran Three U.S. lawmakers have applied for travel visas to Iran to oversee their upcoming elections and to inspect nuclear sites to ensure that the government has kept its end of the nuclear deal. The trio, Reps. Lee Zeldin (R, NY-1), Mike Pompeo and Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.) also penned a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and the Iran Revolutionary Guardian Council General Mohammad Ali Jafari to support their application, which...

Since the Iowa caucuses ended Monday night, three Republican candidates have ended their presidential campaigns. The problem for establishment GOPers? None of that trio is named Jeb Bush, John Kasich or Chris Christie. The thinning of the Republican field has occurred entirely outside of the "establishment" lane -- with Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Rand Paul all calling it quits. That's a very bad thing for an establishment badly in need of finding a unity candidate soon if they want to have any hope of unseating the two favorites -- Donald Trump and Ted Cruz -- as the race moves...

As we often highlight studies in cowardice and betrayal here at Conservative Review, it's satisfying to finally have the opportunity to spotlight a profile in courage, especially from someone not named Cruz, Lee, Paul, or Sessions. Today I’d like to commend Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) for his work in derailing another Obama judicial nomination. Last month, we noted that the GOP-Senate plans to confirm more Obama judges this year, allowing him to cement his control over the judiciary. Rather than simply saying "no more judges who don't believe in the Constitution," most Republicans are running scared. After all, Mitch McConnell...

Things aren’t looking good for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), as leaked data from two polls shows his 33-year congressional tenure may not survive the 2016 election cycle. "Senator McCain's key fundamentals are all very poor," reads a polling memo leaked from an anonymous pollster in the Grand Canyon State. "His ballot, his image, his job approval and his hard re-elect all suggest that he is an incredibly vulnerable incumbent as we head into 2016." A memo regarding accompanying polling data gathered between January 56 explains McCain's weaknesses in detail, referring to majority negative opinions on both job approval and personal...

Not as important as Tim Scott’s support since Toomey’s not from an early state, but still significant big-picture. This isn’t just a case of Cruz losing out to Rubio on another endorsement among his Senate colleagues, it’s a litmus test of electability — or perceived electability. Why might a Republican from a purple state, whose seat is up this year by the way, prefer Rubio to Cruz or Trump? Hmmm:

DO NOT VOTE ON THIS THREAD. This is the nightly DISCUSSION thread for the ongoing 2016 Free Republic Caucus. Per caucus rules, no comments are allowed on the caucus thread itself - hence this open chat thread. If you'd like to vote in the caucus, please look in the sidebar for the link, or check downthread here. Thanks, and let 'er rip! Windy

On Wednesday, Karl Rove, not a Trump fan by any means, explained how the cheating could have cost Donald Trump the election in Iowa. Wow! This is a stunning indictment of the Cruz Campaign's cheating scandal.

As Donald Trump spent his week attacking Ted Cruz while trying to win favor in New Hampshire, Cruz took a much different approach: He praised his Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders. Cruz knew that the state is notorious for its regionalistic voting when he spoke highly of the Vermont senator to a crowd in Henniker this afternoon. “In diagnosing the problem, I agree in many ways with Bernie Sanders,” he said, according to Politico‘s Katie Glueck. “I enjoy watching the media folks. They’re very puzzled when they say, ‘Gosh, Ted, you sound exactly like Bernie, saying it’s all big money and...

Bernie Sanders has over double the voter support of Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, according to a new poll. Sanders leads the Democratic presidential front-runner by 33 points among registered Democrats in the University of Massachusetts-Lowell/7 News survey released Wednesday. He takes 63 percent in the Granite State, contrasted with 30 percent for Clinton in results unchanged from the pollsters' previous survey. Martin O’Malley, who suspended his campaign last Monday night, earned 1 percent. New Hampshire’s Democratic-leaning voters are also fairly certain about their candidate before next Tuesday’s primary, pollsters found. About 81 percent would “definitely” vote for Sanders, versus...

Donald Trump continues to lead the Republican field in New Hampshire, but a new poll of likely Republican primary voters shows Jeb Bush in second place. Trump maintains a strong lead over his Republican opponents with 31 percent, according to a Harper Polling survey of likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire. Bush comes in second with 14 percent, followed by John Kasich at 12 percent. Marco Rubio is at 10 percent, while Ted Cruz is at 9 percent.

Ted Cruz must long for the day when his three-word memory could suitably summarize his time as a tot in Canada: “It was cold.” He wouldn’t remember, but it was forecast as snowy at -9° C the day he was born, according to the Barometer Betty cartoon on the front of the Calgary Herald for Dec. 22, 1970. ... ... U.S. presidential candidate Ted Cruz spent weeks with a tidy poll lead ahead of this year’s Iowa Republican caucuses on Feb. 1, the first state contest of party nomination season. Then Donald Trump piped up, threatening to derail or distract,...

The interview with Univision was in Spanish- Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) told Univision yesterday that legalization of illegal immigrants will come first and then new border security measures. The Examiner reported: In a Spanish-language interview Sunday with the network Univision, Sen. Marco Rubio, the leading Republican on the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform group, made his strongest statement yet that legalization of the nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants must happen before any new border security or internal enforcement measures are in place, and will in no way be conditional on any security requirements. "Let's be clear," Rubio said....

"To quote William Wallace in Braveheart," Paul Ryan said on Wednesday morning, "we have to unite the clans." This was the money quote of the House speaker's address to a conservative conference in Washington. The one his office dished out to reporters in advance, a canned sound bite designed to pull back, every so briefly, the ears of a Beltway political crowd transfixed by the intensifying presidential campaign. Just about 12 hours earlier, Ryan met for beers with the most troublesome of those "clans"-the House Freedom Caucus, that group of a few dozen conservatives who shoved Ryan's predecessor, John Boehner,...

House Speaker Paul Ryan held a meeting a with members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus Tuesday in an attempt to persuade them to vote for his 2017 budget plan, but judging from one member's response, Ryan's efforts were not very successful. "There's not a snowball's chance in hell that I'll vote for that," caucus member Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) said. At least two other caucus members described the meeting as "intense," the Huffington Post reported. Ryan reportedly met with a group of about 25 members of the conservative caucus in the speaker's office over beer, chips, soda and "all the...

Today, Paul Ryan gave a fascinating speech at Heritage Action, a tea party-allied organization that has fashioned itself as the guardian of conservative purity. The speech called for unity. "To quote William Wallace in Braveheart," he said, "we have to unite the clans." But his speech was actually a repudiation of everything the tea party has done. Not only that, Ryan also took shots at the congressional Republican leadership, and even the current GOP presidential candidates. He didn’t call anyone out by name, but if you understand what’s happening now and the conflict that has roiled the Republican Party for...

The time has come for desperate measures against the Oligarchy. We must continue to remove the heads of the republican establishment until they begin to listen to the American people. Eric Cantor has been removed. John Boehner has been removed. Kevin McCarthy has been prevented. And there are already rumblings of a primary challenge to Speaker Paul Ryan! Primary elections in the State of Wisconsin will be held on August 9, 2016. We have between now and then to find a candidate, fund him or her, and propel them to victory over Ryan. However, we know the Establishment and its...

Q: Why are the voters rebelling? A: The leftist progressives have been treading on our constitution and our liberty for at least the last 100 years and consequently we've suffered a long train of abuses and usurpations: The income tax (16th amendment), ending state sovereignty/concentrating power at the federal level (the 17th amendment), the Fed, heavy-handed/unconstitutional regulations, socialized retirement, socialized health care, restrictions on religious liberty, legalized abortion, federal mandated homosexual marriage with the heavy hand of the federal government enforcing it over the objections of the states and small business operators, the illegal alien invasion, the subversive Muslim invasion,...

Donald Trump bragged about how he was going to bring a record number of voters to the polls.  And he did.  The only problem is, most of the newcomers came out to vote against him. In the last presidential primary, there were 120,000 Republican attendees; in this one, there were 180,000, a 50% increase.  Whom did all these new people vote for?  About a third voted for Donald Trump, but two thirds came out to vote against him, for other candidates.  There's no denying that Trump drove the increase in numbers, but most of the increase was antagonistic, not...

Donald Trump does everything in a big way. Even losing. Not only did he lose to Ted Cruz in Iowa, but he came very close to a humiliating third place behind Marco Rubio. As recently as yesterday Donald Trump was saying he wanted to win in Iowa, and if he didn't, that it would all have been a big waste of time. "Unless I win, I would consider this a big, fat, beautiful-and, by the way, a very expensive-waste of time," Trump said this weekend, speaking to supporters during a whirlwind tour of Iowa. Well, I guess it was a...

One of the extraordinary developments in the current presidential campaign is that the front runners on both the Democrat and the Republican side are emphasizing their opposition to the "special interests"... A central belief of Bernie Sanders... On the Republican side, Donald Trump claims his political rivals are indebted to special interest groups, whereas he, a billionaire, doesn't need to take money from anyone. Hillary Clinton will not be outdone... The problem with these candidates who promise to fight the special interests is that they are creating more special interests... To Trump it's simple. He believes it is in the...