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GOP Insider: “Guarantee You The Establishment” Will Ambush, Try To Replace Newt Cos “They Can’t Control Him” http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-U7DhuWhJAw

Why did the Iowa Republican Party decide to announce a Santorum victory, only a day before the South Carolina Primary? http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-21/santorum-declared-iowa-caucuses-winner-by-state-party-leaders.html# It requires no more than 4 days after the announcement of the initial results, to conduct a fully certified recount, because relatively few people vote in the Iowa Caucuses. The reason why they announced Santorum as the winner of Iowa at this time, is to get some supporters of Gingrich to vote for Santorum, in order to split the conservative vote and assure a victory for Romney. American elections have become as corrupt as the elections in Mexico, Colombia,...

Two prominent conservative columnists, Charles Krauthammer and Peggy Noonan, warn this morning that Republican infighting may do the party grievous damage for the 2012 election, with Krauthammer declaring that President Obama "could not have chosen more self-destructive adversaries." Here's Krauthammer on GOP candidates playing into Obama's message reboot: For the first few weeks, the class-envy gambit had some effect, bumping ObamaÂ’s numbers slightly. But the story was still lagging, suffering in part from its association with an Occupy rabble that had widely worn out its welcome. Then came the twist. Then came the most remarkable political surprise since the 2010...

Republicans running for the White House are racking up endorsements from GOP members on Capitol Hill. In 2008, Mitt Romney secured the most congressional endorsements in the GOP primary, but Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) subsequently won the nomination. The list below reflects publicly committed backers of 2012 presidential hopefuls. (Updates are already on the article page ~D) *More information at the link!

The Iowa Republican Party will certify this month's presidential caucuses as a split decision between former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, citing missing data from eight precincts, the Des Moines Register reported on Thursday. The party had previously awarded the contest to Romney, with an eight vote margin. The official certified caucus results are due out Thursday at 8:15 a.m. local time (1415 GMT). The Register said the new count put Santorum ahead by 34 votes. However, results from any one of the eight precincts with "missing data" could hold an advantage for Romney, the...

Mark Levin: Mark blasts the Republican Establishment and Explains Corporatism vs Capitalism

[SNIP leading up to the "advice" from a former GW Bush adviser] ....A win in SouthCarolina will be overwhelming proof that Romney is just “right” enough to win the nomination. If that were to occur, Romney would have won in the conservative Midwest, the more liberal/independent Northeast and the conservative South. Perry, Santorum and Gingrich need a win, place or show in SouthCarolina to continue to Florida. ...The real question will be one for Gingrich to answer. If Gingrich doesn’t come in a close 2nd or 3rd in South Carolina, will he engage in a “scorched earth policy” that if...

SOPA is only one reason I ask this. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like I see Lamar Smith coming up more and more, and not in a good way. For those who may have forgotten, here is what Trent Lott said: "We don't need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples," Lott said in an interview. "As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them." How successful do you think they've been?

Democrats have taken the lead in a generic congressional ballot for the first time since being washed out of office by Republicans in the 2010 election, according to a Democracy Corps survey released Friday. ... Fifty-three percent said they were increasingly displeased with Republicans in Congress, and the same amount said they were turned off by the increasingly contentious GOP presidential primary.

Have you ever thought about that? How many times have you seen establishment types posit about how beautiful it would be to have a Romney/Rubio ticket? Even after Rubio has made it clear he isn't interested, I keep hearing it. It can be summed up in one word: Hispanic. The republicans have absolutely nothing in common with a conservative like Rubio, yet every time they mention his name, they always go off on a tangent about how he can win the hispanic vote. Because of his skin color?!?! Yep. The republicans are that superficial. It's that simple. They're in full...

In 1980, George H.W. Bush was making much the same argument against Ronald Reagan that Mitt Romney is making this year. Bush argued that he was the most electable against hapless Jimmy Carter. The big money Republican establishment was behind Bush because they feared that Reagan was too radical to win, and would carry the entire party down to historic defeat, like Goldwater did. Reagan even lost Iowa to Bush on that argument. But Reagan carried forward the pro-growth economic message that ultimately swept him to the nomination, and then to landslide victory in the fall, his coattails handing the...

I was thinking about writing a novel about what might happen if a man who hates America and wants to bring it down is somehow elected president. What would he do? I sketched out a few plot elements, and you can decide whether this will fly. First, the Trojan Horse president would initiate unprecedented spending, driving the debt up by more than $4 trillion just in the first three years. Much of the money would go into the pockets of political supporters and people who donate heavily to his campaigns. He would ram through an unreadable law allowing the federal...

I’ve made a disturbing discovery: I am a member of the conservative “establishment.” I feel like Michael Douglas at the end of Falling Down: “I’m the bad guy?” Largely in response to the real and perceived excesses of the Bush years and the overreach of the Obama administration, the base has become more populist. In particular, the rank and file of the GOP and the conservative movement have become deeply disenchanted with what they see as the rubber-spined, foot-dragging quislings drinking from a trough of Chablis at some Georgetown party. The term “RINO” (Republican In Name Only) has become an...

<p>Sen. Dick Lugar said challenges by Tea Party candidates are partly to blame for the Republicans not having a majority in the Senate.</p> <p>“Republicans lost the seats before in Nevada and New Jersey for example and Colorado where there were people who claimed that they wanted somebody who was more of their Tea Party aspect, but in doing so they killed off the Republican chances for majority,” he said. “This is one of the reasons why we have a minority in the Senate right now.”</p>

Sen. Dick Lugar (Ind.) facing a primary contest from the right in his reelection bid said past Tea Party-backed challenges had “killed off” Republican efforts to take the Senate in the past and could undermine a GOP majority again in 2012. “A Republican majority in the Senate is very important, and Republicans who are running for reelection ought to be supported by people who want to see that majority,” Lugar said in an interview which aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “I think the majority of Tea Party people understand that too,” he added. Lugar who is facing...

"But because the Republican Party insists on insider moderates or at least gives the impression that's who they support, then it opens the door for all kinds of people to make headway because the Republican primary base is not interested in who the establishment is interested in. It's just that simple. I'll tell you something I've been saying here for the last couple, three weeks, maybe even longer than that, that Mitt Romney can't get higher than 30% anywhere. Other than New Hampshire, he gets 35. But in truth no other Republican does, either. When you get right down to...

With a little more than two weeks to go before Republicans begin voting in presidential caucuses and primaries, the GOP faces the possibility of a muddled result in Iowa; a primary race that may take months of bitter campaigning to resolve; and a large number of Republican voters who remain unhappy with the current presidential field.  Some of those voters are still hoping another candidate might enter the race. That is why a new article from former Florida governor Jeb Bush is likely to attract attention from voters and political analysts alike.  In the Wall Street Journal, Bush has written...

There's a good pull quote from this website that far too many revisionist republicans hope would be forgotten: When the administration proposed to abolish the Department of Education in 1981, Howard Baker, the first Republican Senate majority leader since 1954, actively opposed abolition.[x] Baker wanted to remain majority leader and was worried that getting rid of the department would alienate too many voters. I was reminded of this the other night when I was listening to Mark Levin's show and he mentioned this. It was on the (Direct MP3 Download)december 14th show, between 18-20 minutes in. Does anybody have further...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The long knives are out for Newt. I mean, everybody knows this. Everybody's looking at this. We saw it to one degree or another yesterday, last night in the debate. We've seen it in various publications. Most people, most average citizens -- people who pay attention to politics around election time and shortly after the election to see what's gonna happen. Most people's reaction of Newt Gingrich is not that he had anything to do with Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae. They don't know that. I mean, they're hearing about it now. They don't know what he did.

So it seems like Glenn has stirred up a little bit of a controversy among the GOP-leaning blogosphere because he is making conservatives question their excitement for Newt Gingrich. But rather than go on the air and apologize for asking tough questions, Glenn decided to do a monologue that he couldn’t do on cable news that takes the GOP establishment head on. What’d he have to say? First, watch Glenn lay out his confusion. He doesn’t understand why such a large percentage of the Tea Party sees Newt Gingrich as an acceptable candidate, and he doesn’t believe that “he’s not...