Free Republic

New York (CNN)Former President Barack Obama said Wednesday there are no practical benefits to a bill Republicans are considering to replace the Affordable Care Act. Speaking in New York, Obama said the bill would increase costs and strip coverage from vulnerable Americans. "When I see people trying to undo that hard-won progress, for the 50th or 60th time, with bills that will raise costs, reduce coverage and roll back protections for older Americans and people with pre-existing conditions ... it is aggravating," Obama said during an event sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.Obama said it was essential to...

President Donald Trump on Saturday endorsed Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette in the state's upcoming governor's race. Schuette is running to succeed the term-limited Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who has been in office since 2014. "Attorney General Bill Shuette [sic] will be a fantastic Governor for the great State of Michigan I am bringing back your jobs and Bill will help!," the president wrote on Twitter, misspelling Schuette's name. Last November, Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Michigan in the general election since 1988. Snyder first won the post by 18-points in 2010, replacing then-Democratic Gov. Jennifer...

It’s hard to know whether Maryland’s Intercounty Connector, also known as the ICC and Route 200, will ever become informally known as Ehrlich Highway or the Ehrlich Connector, but it now has a shot. On Thursday, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) dedicated the 18.8-mile toll road to his Republican predecessor and onetime boss, former governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., whom he credited with reviving and championing a road mired for decades in political controversy. “It wasn’t until Governor Bob Ehrlich made it a top priority of his administration that the Intercounty Connector project finally moved forward and became a reality,”...

On September 13, four Republican senators unveiled a new Obamacare replacement bill that defunds Planned Parenthood, could allow states to opt out of the HHS contraceptive mandate, and stops Obamacare’s funding of abortion. Senate rules give them just over two weeks to pass it with a simple majority. The four senators who introduced the bill were Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nevada, and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin. Pro-life former Sen. Rick Santorum accompanied the senators as they announced the bill. In April 2017, Heller told constituents he’d “protect Planned Parenthood” but then backtracked...

Is the GOP getting serious about tax reform at last? Republicans in Congress say they'll unveil the outlines of a consensus plan in two weeks, as President Trump hits the hustings to stump for tax reform. We hope this isn't another false start. "Reform" is one of those words that sounds easy, but really isn't. Every political interest group has a dog in the fight, and no one wants to give up a cherished deduction. And few politicians want to be seen as cutting taxes on Americans in the top income brackets or corporations, a sure way to be accused...

Stick a fork in the Democrats and Republicans. Wednesday night's latest round of deal making between President Donald Trump and Democratic congressional leaders is the latest evidence that the major political parties have lost all semblance of real power. Never before have we seen the leadership of both major political parties so humbled. That power vacuum is currently enabling the president to act without any loyalty to his own party, while working with whomever he pleases on whatever issues he wants. It's why we have a Republican congressional leadership, headlined by a Senate Majority Leader with an 18 percent approval...

Democrats tried attacking Donald Trump as unfit for the presidency. They’ve made the case that he’s ineffective, pointing to his failure to sign a single major piece of legislation into law after eight months in the job. They’ve argued that Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself and that his campaign was in cahoots with Russia. None of it is working. Data from a range of focus groups and internal polls in swing states paint a difficult picture for the Democratic Party heading into the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election. It suggests that Democrats are naive if they...

Right now, the fate of the country lies in the hands of "classic" or "throwback" Republicans. The Grand Old Party currently controls all three branches of government, but its "big tent" happens to include a lunatic fringe of "low information voters" and bigots that delivered the presidency to Donald Trump. It's now up to the sane Republicans to try and wrestle power away from this subset, before the drive the entire country, and perhaps the world over the cliff. You already know how low Trump's approval numbers are, and you have heard him ripped to shreds already by the left,...

The Republican Party likes to think of itself as a big tent — not always a harmonious one, but full of all types. In the minds of many, however, it’s grown too full, and badly needs an excision. Now more than at any point in its modern history, the party has reached such a breaking point that historians, political analysts and Republicans themselves say it faces the possibility of splintering and spawning a third party. “We haven’t lanced the boil,” Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, said in an interview, evoking the swelling tensions between the anti-establishment agitators...

Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon warned this week that there will be a “civil war” in the Republican Party if GOP lawmakers cave on the repeal of an Obama-era program that gave amnesty to illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Tuesday that DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — would be repealed with a six-month window for Congress to act. The move served to fulfill one of Trump’s signature campaign promises, but both Trump and Republican leadership have indicated a desire to “legalize DACA” as part of a broader immigration...

Since Trump’s taken over the White House, Republicans have fought tooth and nail to keep the Democratic agenda alive. Witness: Obamacare. Where’s the repeal? Oh yes, that’s right. There is no repeal. So goes the fight with the border wall — nothing, nada, except headlines like this one, from Politico in July: “House Republicans seek to dodge border wall vote.”

You dance with the one who brung you to the dance.”The wisdom of that old political adage might seem outdated in this age of expensive consultants, focus groups with instantaneous tracking of reactions, and micro-targeting of voters.  But the McLaughlin & Associates poll released this week reinforces the wisdom of that adage for any Republican who wants to avoid defeat in the 2018 primary season and in the general election that follows.  The message of that McLaughlin poll could not be clearer or simpler for Republicans as they choose in the coming weeks between the agenda of President Trump and...

On August 22, the Washington Times ran "Senate health panel announces hearings on Obamacare markets" by Tom Howell, Jr., who quoted health committee chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander: "While there are a number of issues with the American health care system, if your house is on fire, you want to put out the fire, and the fire in this case is in the individual health insurance market." Alexander is "pushing for legislation that props up Obamacare's markets, which failed to attract young and healthy people in the early rounds, in part by funding critical 'cost-sharing' reimbursements."  In this effort to...

Several influential House conservatives are privately plotting ways to use the legislative calendar this fall to push their hard-line agenda — including quiet discussions about possibly mounting a leadership challenge to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan. The group has gone so far as to float the idea of recruiting former House speaker Newt Gingrich or former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum as potential replacements for Ryan (R-Wis.) should there be a rebellion. The Constitution does not require that an elected member of the House serve as speaker. While the chances that a non-House member could mount a credible threat to Ryan...

Democrats claim that they have always supported equal rights for black Americans and that Republicans are racists who always oppose them. Both claims are flat out lies. From its founding in 1854, the Republican Party led the fight to end slavery and then eradicate the racist Jim Crow system that held blacks down right up to securing the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Democrats opposed the Republicans at every turn.

On Tuesday morning, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which shielded around 800,000 young undocumented immigrants from deportation. Defending the move as a legal decision, Sessions noted that the rollback would be delayed six-months — during which members of Congress could pass a more permanent fix. While the White House has left the fate of hundreds of thousands of young people up to Congress, lawmakers seem unprepared to act.  Just nine Republicans in Congress currently support a clean legislative fix of DACA. Most Republicans are willing to supported continued protections for...

A former Republican strategist has hit out at party leaders who have “enabled” Donald Trump’s behavior, stating they “deserve the reckoning that will eventually come for the GOP.” Sally Bradshaw, strategist and one of the authors of the Republican National Committee’s Growth and Opportunity Project, slammed Trump’s leadership as divisive and spoke about her disappointment with the party as rumors circulated that the president was preparing to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. “Donald Trump is anti-woman, anti-Hispanic, anti-black, anti-anything that would bring the country together,” Bradshaw told Buzzfeed in an interview....

Former Anti-Trump Man from from American Samoa Speaks on his Experience being angry at Trump and Trump Supporters to finding the Truth and Unity only Patriotism can bring.

“If I pack up my toys and go home, there are people in red MAGA hats who would be saying, ‘Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.’” Kristen Soltis Anderson is losing faith in her party. And that should trigger alarms for Republican leaders concerned about the GOP’s long-term health. Anderson is a smart and telegenic young Republican pollster. She has specialized in studying how the party can improve its anemic performance among the Millennial generation, which will pass the right-leaning baby boomers to become the largest generation of eligible voters in 2018. Now she is wondering...

"We must respect his authority and constitutional responsibilities. We must, where we can, cooperate with him. But we are not his subordinates. We don't answer to him. We answer to the American people." And with that, mark Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., down as the second Republican senator to call on his colleagues to be a bulwark against President Donald Trump. On Friday, McCain published an op-ed in The Washington Post contrasting Trump's tepid response to white supremacists in Charlottesville with his own ("There is nothing in their hate-driven racism that can match the strength of a nation conceived in liberty"),...