Free Republic

Unlike many of his Republican colleagues, Karl Rove advocated Thursday for bipartisan compromise on immigration. “Republicans have to look at this as an opportunity that they have to work,” the Republican strategist said on the Fox News program “Happening Now.” “It’s an opportunity to get some things done to help secure the border.” He suggested that in working with President Barack Obama’s $3.7 billion request for additional funds to deal with the current immigration crisis, Republicans could make policy gains like increasing the amount of border patrols. “They ought to sit down in good faith,” he said of Republicans and...

Friend, Remember how President Obama and the Democrats mocked Governor Romney’s predictions during the 2012 elections? It turns out, Mitt Romney was right. Mitt saw it coming. He warned the country about Russia, our “biggest geopolitical foe,” well before Russia began their belligerence in Ukraine. Mitt Romney also noted that the Department of Veterans Affairs desperately needed reform. His calls to action were mocked by liberals. Americans only recently learned that veterans in urgent need of medical attention were left on a waiting list; with some never receiving the treatment they were promised. That’s appalling and un-American. And there was...

NRSC Chairman set off a bit of a firestorm after he used a tactic of the left to attack Chris McDaniel who is challenging Thad Cochran in the Mississippi Republican Senate primary. Cochran has been in the Senate since 1978 and started in Congress when I was in diapers, which is long enough if you ask me. But as William Jacobson pointed out, the NRSC’s only job isn’t just to elect more Republicans to the Senate, it’s also to protect incumbents. So I’m thinking it will be a real hoot if we can get candidates like McDaniel and Matt Bevin,...

Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., is ruling out campaigning for longshot GOP Illinois U.S. Senate nominee Jim Oberweis, saying Monday he would rather “protect” his relationship with Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and not launch a “partisan jihad.” Kirk and Durbin are a very rare couple in Washington. They get along, even when they disagree. They grew closer after Kirk suffered a severe stroke, keeping him away from the Capitol for almost a year. As a result, the two have forged for now an informal, unspoken, non-aggression pact. Kirk’s more-than-kind words for Durbin will be very useful to Durbin in his race...

Earlier today we wrote about how Cruz, Lee, Paul, Enzi, and Robertson were all standing together to strip the IMF legislation out of the aid package bill for Ukraine. As I said earlier, the IMF legislation would basically double the contribution of the US to the IMF fund while lessening America’s influence over how that money is spent. So what does McConnell do? Does he stand with the filibuster effort? No, pushes Republicans to vote for the bill, thus making sure to get Harry Reid his 60 votes to pass the bill to prevent the filibuster led by Cruz and...

The first opponent is the left. They still call us the “Tea Party,” though we rarely use that term anymore. It’s fun to hear the liberals say it – it’s like listening to grandparents trying to sound cool. Yeah, those hepcats are sure hip with their cool jive, daddy-o. Every day, the lefty punditry opines about the Tea Party’s death spiral. And every day, the Tea Party refuses to crash and burn. We conservative insurgents have another opponent, but this opponent recognizes us for exactly what we are – a dangerous, existential threat. This opponent is the GOP Establishment, and...

I am blessed to have the opportunity to teach young people every day, and I often think of the world that they, and my own children, will inherit. Unfortunately, many have relied on Republican leadership that has failed time and again to bring our nation back from the road to decline. These “leaders”have perfected a system that rewards Republican electoral and policy failure, and embraces betraying those who elected them in return for wealth and status — perpetuating a status quo which sacrifices principle but never their personal power. The only accomplishment of my opponent Eric Cantor, and other members...

Speaker of the House John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor were elevated to their positions through the hard work and votes of millions of limited government constitutional activists who made the 2010 Tea Party wave election possible. Yet from the moment he took the Speaker’s gavel Boehner has been intent on diluting the influence of the limited government constitutional conservatives in his own House Republican Conference and undermining – indeed often actively opposing – the agenda that the vast majority of House Republicans campaign on and voters expect them to enact. Boehner and Cantor’s latest betrayal of Republican voter...

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has floated a proposal for a couple years now as a last-chance way to avert a crisis and allow the president to raise the debt ceiling without congressional approval, with Congress having the ability to strip that authority with a two-thirds veto – and that’s sort of what the bill to be voted on tonight provides for (see pages 24 ff. of the bill).Assuming it passes tonight, the debt ceiling will be suspended until February 7, meaning the treasury can borrow what it needs to fund obligations until then. Then within the next 14 days, the House and...

One pocket of internal Republican opposition focused on Boehner’s plan to slash government contribution to health insurance for Capitol Hill aides. Boehner and his top lieutenants had already proposed that lawmakers, Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and political appointees at executive-branch agencies should lose the subsidy. But when Boehner expanded that ban to thousands of Hill staffers, a solid bloc of GOP lawmakers told Boehner they would oppose the bill. Boehner still tried to press on. Another rebellious faction believes repealing the medical-device tax was nothing but a giveaway to corporate America, not a part of Obamacare that should be...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), or "the joint speaker of the House" as Harry Reid calls him, argued Friday that Republicans have already offered Democrats a concession in their stand against reopening the government by demanding not a full repeal of Obamacare, but merely the defunding of President Barack Obama signature health law. “The House of Representatives has repeatedly compromised already," said Cruz, who already who spoke against funding the law on the Senate floor for 21 hours earlier this month. "The House began -- it is the view of every Republican in this body, and indeed every Republican in the...

Earlier today, the United States Senate voted to fund Obamacare. There were 25 Republicans who betrayed their principles and voted for cloture, giving Democrats the power to implement this terrible law. This is a disappointing loss, but the bill now goes back to the House where Republicans must hold their ground and refuse to fund Obamacare. Here are the 25 Senate Republicans who voted to allow Harry Reid (D-NV) and the Democrats to fund Obamacare today: Alexander, Lamar (R-TN) Ayotte, Kelly (R-NH) Barrasso, John (R-WY) Blunt, Roy (R-MO) Boozman, John (R-AR) Burr, Richard (R-NC) Chambliss, Saxby (R-GA) Chiesa, Jeff (R-NJ)...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) criticized anonymous Republican Congressional staffers who allegedly provided Fox News host with Chris Wallace with “unsolicited research” to discredit the Texas senator’s doomed attempt at filibustering Obamacare Tuesday on the Senate floor: TED CRUZ: You know it’s quite interesting in the course of this debate there have been more than a few newspaper articles, more than a few attacks, from our friends on the Democratic side of the aisle and from our friends on the Republican side of the aisle. I’ve told my wife I now pick up the newspapers each day to learn what...

A riveting day has dawned. House Speaker John Boehner, long criticized for inconsistent conservative passion, is actually allowing members to vote on a budget bill that ties continued government operations to a defunding of Obamacare. This would be the strategy Ted Cruz and his allies have been offering for weeks, earning them harsh criticism from Democrats and timid Republicans alike. The House, run by Republicans, will pass the measure. The Senate, run by Democrats, will not. No matter what those votes might be, a presidential veto pen stands ready to kill the whole idea of a bill that funds...

As the deadline to fund the federal government nears, Republican leaders are struggling mightily to come up with legislation that can pass the House. Over the weekend, leadership staffers fired off anxious e-mails and uneasy veteran House members exchanged calls. Both camps fear that a shutdown is increasingly likely — and they blame the conservative movement’s cottage industry of pressure groups. But these organizations, ensconced in Northern Virginia office parks and elsewhere, aren’t worried about the establishment’s ire. In fact, they welcome it. Business has boomed since the push to defund Obamacare caught on. Conservative activists are lighting up social...

This report is coming from The Hill and relies pretty much on “Republican lawmakers” and staffers “speaking on condition of anonymity” so factor that in. But given what we’ve heard from some other members over the last couple of months, I wouldn’t find it terribly surprising if this were true. Republican lawmakers are growing increasingly frustrated with what they say is a lack of communication from their leaders. Both centrist and conservative members in the House believe that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his lieutenants could have done more earlier this year to counter the Tea Party’s effort to defund...

The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday introduced a short-term continuing resolution that would maintain funding for government programs and services -- including Obamacare -- at current levels until December 15, 2013. “The Continuing Resolution introduced today is simply a temporary measure to keep the lights on in government until this Congress can fulfill its duty by approving Appropriations bills for the next fiscal year," Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said in a statement. Rogers declared the bill to be "free of controversial riders," an apparent reference to conservative calls to defund the Democrats' health care law. "This bill is free...

While calls for U.S. Attorney General Eric "Stonewall" Holder's resignation grow and the House GOP gears up for a contempt vote next week, it's worth remembering how we got into this mess. In two words: feckless bipartisanship. "I like Barack Obama and want to help him if I can." That was Utah GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch in January 2009, just weeks before the Senate voted on President Obama's attorney general nominee, Eric Holder. Right out of the gate, upon Obama's election in November 2008, Hatch signaled that he would greenlight the administration's top law enforcer. "I start with the premise...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was accused on Wednesday of flip-flopping for comments he made in 2007 indicating he was open to a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Romney's remarks, made on NBC's "Meet the Press" when he was a candidate for president, were circulated by rival Newt Gingrich's campaign the day after the former Speaker of the House of Representatives came under similar fire for suggesting during a debate Tuesday night that he was in favor of such a pathway for immigrants. Opponents of a pathway, a large swath of the early-voting Republican electorate, have...

<p>“I do not believe that the people of the United States are going to take people who’ve been here for a quarter of a century … [and] separate them from their families and expel them,” Gingrich said during a discussion about illegal immigration and border security. “I do believe we should control the border. I do believe we should have very severe penalties.”</p>