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Cokie and Steven Roberts: Jeb, Hillary mirror each other Posted on December 21, 2014 COKIE and STEVEN ROBERTS Syndicated columnists Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton badly need each other. They cancel out each others’ greatest weaknesses and deprive their foes of some of their strongest arguments. Both have similar flaws and are vulnerable to the same charges: that they are too old (Jeb would be 63 on election day 2016; Hillary, 69), too out of practice (Jeb was last elected governor of Florida in 2002; Hillary was last elected senator from New York in 2006), too tied to previous presidents...

New York Rep. Michael Grimm pleaded guilty to a single count of tax fraud Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court. The guilty plea comes one month after the congressman, a Republican who represents Staten Island, was elected to a third term. In April, Grimm was named in a 20-count indictment that accused him of under-reporting the payroll and earnings of his Upper East Side restaurant, Healthalicious, which he ran from 2007 to 2010. He pleaded not guilty in federal court and was released on bond. Prosecutors alleged Grimm employed a number of immigrant workers who did not have legal status to...

Trent Lott wasn’t always this way. He was once a conservative champion, who came to Washington to change the ruling-class narrative. But now he’s a profile in what Washington does to you if you stay too long — unless you have Winston Churchill-like courage of conviction, and few mere mortals do. Mr. Lott was originally part of a group that included former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Vin Webber, who were dubbed the “Young Turks.” They were among the chief lieutenants of the Reagan Revolution back in the day. Best known for fighting the Fraternal Order of Establishment Republicans....

Former Massachusetts Governor and failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney is not yet ready to relinquish his title as the head of the pale-pastels establishment wing of the Republican Party to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. "A senior Republican who has met with Mitt Romney" tells Politico that Romney is telling donors on Wall Street "not to commit to a candidate that is not their first choice and that they aren’t excited about. He does not think much of the current field and does not think it is jelling. He still views himself as the leader of the establishment wing of...

Good question, but the question Jeb should be considering is how do you survive two tons of ROMNEYMANIA dropping square on your head. ‘Cause it’s comin’, son. No, seriously, with each passing day this sounds more like Huntsman II. But with lots, lots, lots more money involved. “I just said to him, ‘I think if you look back, despite the far right’s complaints, it is the centrist that wins the nomination,’” Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, said he told Mr. Bush. In the past few weeks, Mr. Bush has moved toward a run for the White House. His family’s resistance...

I used to think Rubio embracing amnesty was terrible for Jeb. If Bush ran in 2016, I assumed, he’d run as a loud and proud fan of immigration reform, vowing to give the GOP’s wealthy business class all the cheap, legal labor it could handle. Rubio joining the Gang of Eight suddenly meant that there would be two candidates in the race who could fill that niche — and Rubio was younger, less likely to alienate conservatives, more likely to appeal to Latino voters, and unencumbered by “Bush” baggage. He out-Jebbed Jeb! In hindsight, though, Rubio going all in for...

Well. What a coincidence. As Americans depart for the Christmas holiday, the horrifying news of what the New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton correctly calls the “assassination” of two New York police officers, the Scrooges in the GOP Establishment have busied themselves attacking Ted Cruz and Mike Lee. Not once. Not twice. But three times in three different places. Up there in the Boston Globe, former New Hampshire Republican Senator John Sununu (not to be confused with his ex-governor father) has launched an attack on Texas Senator Cruz. Out in Utah, former Utah Republican Senator Robert Bennett is in print...

Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions is out as chair of the Senate Budget Committee. **"Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) is giving up his bid to become the next Budget Committee chairman — deferring to Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) and eliminating the only competitive chairmanship battle in the incoming GOP Senate majority. "Sessions has been the panel’s top Republican for the past four years but Enzi technically retains seniority over the Alabaman on the committee and said several weeks ago that he would challenge Sessions for the chairmanship."** This is going to portrayed as a simple matter of seniority. It isn’t. That story...

The Republican establishment has become infected with a new epidemic of “Ted Cruz derangement syndrome” apparently brought on by being forced to actually work at the job of being a United States Senator. “Patient Zero” in this epidemic may be New Hampshire Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte who complained bitterly before last weekend’s rare Saturday session to debate the constitutional point of order on the “CRomnibus” that it interfered with her plans to go home and watch a performance of the holiday classic the Nutcracker. Ayotte, by the way, has an F score of 44% on Conservative Review’s Liberty Score, compared...

Over the last several months, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has been giving speeches, campaigning for candidates, appearing at public forums, and meeting with wealthy donors, which has led many people to believe that he may soon enter the race to become the next Republican presidential nominee. On Dec. 1, Bush told a gathering of business leaders at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington that he would make a decision about his political future “in short order.” But Bush’s recent business ventures reveal that he shares a number of liabilities with the last nominee, Mitt Romney, whose career in private equity...

Dozens of the Republican Party’s leading presidential donors and fund-raisers have begun privately discussing how to clear the field for a single establishment candidate to carry the party’s banner in 2016, fearing that a prolonged primary would bolster Hillary Rodham Clinton, the likely Democratic candidate. The conversations, described in interviews with a variety of the Republican Party’s most sought-after donors, are centered on the three potential candidates who have the largest existing base of major contributors and overlapping ties to the top tier of those who are uncommitted: Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida...

As our friend Daniel Horowitz of Conservative Review said, "It’s as if the November 4 elections never occurred." Today, the new House membership met in a private conclave and reelected every one of their top leaders by voice vote. This includes John Boehner (R-OH) as Speaker, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as Majority Leader, Steve Scalise (R-LA) as Majority Whip, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) as Conference Chair. And as Horowitz observed, "At a time of one of the worst constitutional crises in our nation’s history, when the president is threatening to imminently remake our society with immigration amnesty – a policy...

WASHINGTON — As most Republicans were taking a victory lap the morning after the elections, a group of conservatives huddled anxiously in a conference room not far from Capitol Hill and agreed that now is the time for confrontation, not compromise and conciliation. Despite Republicans’ ascension to Senate control and an expanded House majority, many conservatives from the party’s activist wing fear that congressional leaders are already being too timid with President Obama. They do not want to hear that government shutdowns are off the table or that repealing the Affordable Care Act is impossible — two things Republican leaders...

The day after First Tuesday in November is Spin Wednesday when all of the journalists in the mainstream media try to spin the results of the recent elections. That’s what all of the liberals are doing right now in the wake of their crushing defeat at the polls. Crushing defeat is the only way to describe it. They are spinning until their heart is content. The fact is that Republicans took control of the Senate and they now enjoy a bigger majority in the U.S. House of Representatives than they have ever had in the last seventy years. It was...

For the Republican Party’s leadership, taking control of the U.S. Senate might not even be the sweetest part of a victory in 2014. With growing confidence as Election Day approaches, Republican leaders are preparing to argue that broad GOP gains in the House and Senate would represent a top-to-bottom validation of their party’s mainline wing. Having taken a newly heavy-handed approach to the primary season this year, the top strategists of the Republican coalition say capturing the majority would set a powerful precedent for similar actions in the future — not just in Senate and congressional races, but in the...

The Republican pundits think all is looking good for a Republican majority in the Senate. But looking good, feeling positive, without addressing the major issue that has defined the clash between the Republican approach to governing and the modern Democrat approach to governing is dangerous. At the same time, it’s dangerous to address it half-heartedly. Half-hearted promises are worth nothing, and people need real courage of conviction after six years of uncertainty involving every aspect of our lives. The head of the RNC got into the act, and carefully said that the Republican legislators may or may not stop Obama’s...

First, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: It is the stated position of Erick and the mods that Red State advocates voting for the most conservative candidate in the primaries, and the Republican in the general election. I agree with that, and it is not my intent here to troll or disrupt. Anyone who has read my earlier diaries knows that. However, if those in charge feel this diary strays over the line, they should take it down. People, this is MISSISSIPPI. This is totally different. What has happened here is an abomination. Everyone here knows what was...

"It's obvious that we're seeing a concerted and coordinated effort to smear Rob Maness," said Michael Byrne, Maness' campaign manager. "Roger Villere and the LAGOP are doing the bidding of the D.C. Republican-establishment and using Chicago-style tactics to coerce young, enthusiastic, conservatives to say things that they have privately admitted they don't really believe." The Maness campaign said Ward was pressured into switching from Maness to Cassidy so the Republican Party would support his candidacy for school board. Ward sent a Facebook message to Maness supporter Shawn Cronan on Oct. 10 that read: "Shawn, as you know I am running...

Republican 'leadership' has never delivered ANYthing since the Tea Party right put them in power four years ago, and Boehner himself has been so ineffective as an 'opposition' figure, many have wondered aloud whether the White House is blackmailing him... The Speaker has spoken a good game -pretending to be angry with Obama, even orchestrated a charade of suing the president- but no matter what kind of act he's tried to put on for conservatives, he and other RINOs like him have openly attempted to 'destroy' the Tea Party right while refusing to utilize congressional power-of-the-purse to confront the reckless 'progressive'...

David Catron took to these pages Monday to excoriate conservatives and tea partiers for GOP losses in November, you know, the November that is still over a month away. Why would he do this? Well, after using every dirty trick in the book to make sure the establishment candidates won their primaries this year, those much-vaunted incumbents aren’t faring as well against their Democrat opponents as we were all promised. So naturally, establishment hacks and their BFF’s are dabbling in a little battlefield preparation... (snip) ...When Mitch McConnell says that he wants to “punch” tea partiers “in the nose,” he...