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As some Newtown families, props being used by the very gun grabbers who have set up the kinds of gun-free shooting galleries in which their children were slain, held hands and prayed for more than 60 votes (having been flown in at taxpayer expense to lobby our representatives to take away our natural rights), it occurred to me that, with 16 Republicans voting that a debate on amending an unalienable right is perfectly in keeping with the Constitution, the Republican party then and there died. Went t*ts up. Ceased to be. If John McCain and Lindsay Graham and Lamar Alexander...

A group of high-profile social conservatives warned Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus in a letter this week that their supporters could abandon the GOP if the party seeks to change its position on social issues, particularly same-sex marriage. Thirteen social conservatives, representing various influential groups, wrote Priebus ahead of the RNC's quarterly meeting this week in Los Angeles to sternly rebuke the conclusions of a post-election report that advised Republican elected officials to adopt a softer tone toward social issues. "We respectfully warn GOP Leadership that an abandonment of its principles will necessarily result in the abandonment of our...

Recently reporter Thomas Edsall - who has spent most of the last 30 years covering politics for the Washington Post and the New Republic - had some advice for the GOP. He draws upon some recent polling data to argue that "the Republican Party can afford to marginalize . . . Christian right leaders because evangelical social conservatives . . . are not going to vote Democratic." Thus, he reasons that Republicans can, as he puts it, "concede defeat in the culture war" in the hopes of picking up more socially liberal voters. Mr. Edsall might want to check with...

For the first time, I am wondering about the long-term viability of the Republican Party. I say this not as an advocate of its demise or restructuring but as an observer of troubling signs. The Republican Party is thought to be the institutional vehicle for the advancement of conservative policies, but for decades, the conservative movement has been frustrated with the party's deviation from conservative principles -- its refusal to live up to its decidedly conservative platform. I believe that the disappointing results for Republicans in the 2006 elections and probably the 2012 elections, as well, were in no...

Karl Rove sought to turn the tables Sunday on Sarah Palin, jabbing her for stepping down early as Alaska governor, a day after she blistered the GOP consultant in a speech at CPAC. Palin launched a broadside against the GOP establishment on Saturday at the gathering of conservatives, but directed her sharpest aim at Rove, reports Huffington Post. “If these experts who keep losing elections and keep getting rehired and getting millions — if they feel that strong about who gets to run in this party, then they should buck-up or stay in the truck,� Palin told CPAC Saturday, according...

The NYT's, that bastion of unbiased reporting...cough, has a story today entitled "Divisions in G.O.P. Are Laid Bare on First Day of Conservative Conference". The largest annual gathering of Republican activists began here Thursday with appearances by rival presidential hopefuls offering their party starkly different paths back to prominence — and diagnoses of what ails it — after last fall’s demoralizing losses. “We don’t need any new ideas,” Senator Marco Rubio of Florida told a room packed with cheering grass-roots activists, anticipating what he predicted would be liberal critiques of his remarks. “The idea is called America, and it still...

House majority leader Eric Cantor is increasingly frustrated with a group of House Republicans who are working against the leadership, and he’s not afraid of voicing his dismay. In a closed-door conference meeting on Wednesday, Cantor told one GOP member that if they blocked the Senate-passed Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) from coming to the floor, they’d cause “civil war” in the ranks. Cantor’s comment irked some Republican aides, who told National Review Online that such strong language is inappropriate. In recent days, some conservatives have been upset about the Senate’s version of VAWA, saying that parts of the bill...

ANY hopes Republicans might have had that the gnashing of teeth that came with their November election loss might be over were dashed this week, when tensions between the right and far right threatened to explode into civil war. After the President, Barack Obama, delivered a State of the Union address that was the logical extension of his trenchantly liberal inauguration address, Republicans delivered not one but two rebuttals. There have been signs of a realignment in the conservative firmament ever since the election. Blame has been laid and fingers pointed. The former Bush speechwriter David Frum told Fairfax Media...

Inside the cozy enclaves of GOP bonhomie—hunkered at the tables of see-and-be-seen Washington restaurants—Republican leaders are sourly predicting a party-busting independent presidential bid by a tea-party challenger, like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in 2016. To them, the GOP apocalypse looms larger than most realize. Dueling State of the Union rebuttals and Karl Rove’s assault on right-wing candidates are mere symptoms of an existential crisis that is giving the sturdiest Republicans heartburn. And yet, the heart of the matter extends beyond the GOP. My conversations this week with two Republican officials, along with a Democratic strategist's timely memo, reflect a growing...

The United States, from day one, was a project about principles and ideals. The super power that emerged and grew from the handful of colonists that began settling here was not the product of where those colonists happened to land, but the ideals and principles in their head and heart – applied in how they lived their lives. The Republican Party was founded in 1854 to address one great blot on the nation’s founding legacy – the existence of slavery in a nation founded under the ideal of freedom under God. Runaway slave and self-educated abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass said...

<p>JUDY WOODRUFF, PBS NEWSHOUR: Well, bring it back home, and talking about politics, pure politics, inside the Republican Party, David, it looks like there are some -- we have seen some evidence of this, but now it looks like it's more out in the open, that some of the traditional -- folks we thought of as being traditional leaders of the Republican Party are openly challenging the Tea Party.</p>

A bristling group of 25 traditional conservatives are out to protect one of their own in a new push against the “establishment Republicans” of Karl Rove’s American Crossroads. The coalition has sent a letter of protest to Steven Law, president of the super-duper PAC, following an interview with the organization’s spokesman that aired Wednesday on a talk radio station in the nation’s capital: “We cannot and will not abide the unjust, personal broadside your aide Jonathan Collegio leveled against a man whose family has dedicated itself to advancing the cause of liberty for over half a century. This morning Mr....

For anyone who sees Mitt Romney's loss in the November presidential election as a harbinger of GOP decline, conservatives have a message - make that two, tellingly conflicting, messages. One, embodied by the Conservative Victory Project (CVP) - a group backed by Karl Rove's "super PAC" seeking to curb influence from far-right organizations - and spelled out Tuesday by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.: Our olive branch is ripe, Democrats, and with the right legislation, we're willing to compromise. The other, perhaps best summarized in paperwork filed today by ousted Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., to create a "super PAC"...

When a person amasses too much power, they often believe they are indestructible. What Karl Rove and company did last week in the New York Times, claiming that their new “Conservative Victory Project” would cure the ills of a disappointing campaign cycle, is laughable. The so-called “Conservative Victory Project” is nothing more than an attempt by establishment Republicans to cull the conservative movement. Why does Rove think he has a monopoly on wanting to win? At least Karl Rove and company are finally out front with their disdain for the conservative movement, and I am thankful for it. The battle...

Speaker John Boehner's unwillingness to hold the line against President Obama's hypocritical approach to the fiscal cliff negotiations show it might be time for conservatives to take the speaker gavel away. While there has been no real movement towards a fiscal cliff deal, Speaker Boehner did move to evict key conservatives from top budget committees for their dissent to his budget proposal. After Reps. Justin Amash, Tim Huelskamp, David Schweikert, and Walter Jones were removed from their budget committees, conservatives lambasted Boehner and felt as though he was shutting them out of the fiscal cliff negotiations. Those 31 members on...

Despite its own insistence that it is very much alive, the Republican Party has now joined the crowd invisible. The sad pathetic truth of its demise is that those who once believed in it, and cared deeply for it, are no longer around to bury it with dignity. Its corpse has now become the dancing play thing of Washington D.C. consulting firms and lobbyist. The most ironic fact of the Republican Party’s death is that it was not a showdown at high noon on Capitol Hill that killed it. Nor a rare exotic virus that provided the mortal blow. It...

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) may have finally gone too far betraying conservatives. This past week, he removed three conservative Republican Congressmen from their committee positions in retaliation for not voting for his compromises on the budget with Democrats – compromises that led us to the current “fiscal cliff.” Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) was removed from the Financial Services Committee, and Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) and Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) were removed from the Budget Committee. All three were elected with strong Tea Party support. An aide to GOP leadership said they were removed for “not being team...

As hard as it is to believe, it’s been only a little over three weeks since Election Day. But there are already plenty of signs that Republicans are learning many of the wrong lessons from that debacle. For starters, there’s been a lot of excessive emphasis on racial demographics, which actually changed very little from 2008.  According to exit polling, the portion of Hispanic voters went up just 1 percentage point, the portion of Asian voters went up just 1 point, and the portion of black voters stayed the same.  Meanwhile, the portion of white voters fell 2 points — largely because,...

Ousted GOP freshmen demand explanation from Speaker BoehnerBy Justin Sink - 12/07/12 06:20 PM ET Three Republican congressmen who were booted from House committees are demanding an explanation from Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas) and David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) sent a letter to Boehner asking for "a full and complete written explanation of the rationale for removing us from our current committee assignments, including any 'scorecards' presented to the Steering Committee to justify our removals." “Two days ago I asked House GOP Leadership to explain why we were taken off key committees, but my questions...

Republican leaders are punishing some of the party’s most conservative members. And they won’t go down without a yelp. Everybody knew that Tim Huelskamp would make trouble in Washington. That was sort of the point of Tim Huelskamp. In 2009, when a safe Republican seat in western Kansas opened up, State Sen. Huelskamp established himself as the mad-as-hell candidate. He told conservative bloggers of his fight to defund Planned Parenthood, ban gay marriage, and keep Kathleen Sebelius out of the Obama cabinet. In one TV ad, as the mellow-looking Huelskamp climbed into a tractor, voters were told that he “went...

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) warned his conference on Wednesday that leaders are "watching" how the rank-and-file vote to determine committee assignments, according to sources in the closed-door meeting. Boehner addressed the firestorm over the removal of four lawmakers from plum committee assignments at the weekly GOP conference meeting.

House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday warned his House Republican conference against dissent from GOP leadership – and threatened retaliation similar to that against the already-purged conservatives if anyone else breaks from his pack. The Hill reports that, according to Kansas Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp, Boehner used his weekly GOP conference meeting to “note that we [leadership] have punished four members, he claimed that it had nothing to do with their conservative ideology, but had to do with their voting patterns." Huelskamp also said Boehner threatened “there may be more folks that will be targeted” and that Boehner told the...

Grassroots Republican operatives and Movement conservatives are quickly turning against the GOP Establishment in the wake of the party's expensive defeat this election cycle. Republicans we spoke to this week voiced a near-universal disgust with the national Republican Party leaders and Washington political class, who are seen as having put personal financial interest above winning the election. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/karl-rove-gop-money-civil-war-republicans-2012-11#ixzz2ECkUPpGG

House Republican leaders used a secret criteria list to decide which conservatives to purge from powerful House committees, Breitbart News has learned. As this time, it appears they will keep the criteria list hidden from the public, too. Spokespeople for members of House GOP leadership have refused to discuss details about the list on the record with press. Because GOP Leadership won't discuss the list, it’s unclear what specific criteria the list contained and how much of a role it played in the conservative purge. It’s also unclear which member of House Republican leadership initiated this process. In remarks to...

TEA PARTY VS. PROGRESSIVE REPUBLICANS — BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE GOP December 3, 2012 by Meredith Jessup Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of articles examining what went wrong for the Republican Party in the 2012 presidential election and where the GOP goes from here. Please visit our special section GOP: What Next? to follow the series stories and find related content. – Since Nov. 6, there has been no shortage of opinions as to why challenger Mitt Romney and the Republican Party failed to ouster President Barack Obama.  Pre-election divisions in the Republican Party...

Republican Sen. John McCain became so fed up with a Republican colleague’s efforts to block the National Defense Authorization Act on Monday that he suggested in a floor speech that perhaps Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid’s push to change the rules of the filibuster was not a bad idea.

House Speaker John Boehner and GOP leadership have removed several conservative House members from their respective powerful committee positions, Breitbart News has learned. Effective next Congress, leadership pulled Kansas Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp, Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash and Arizona Republican Rep. David Schweikert off committees from which they could exert conservative pressure on fiscal matters. Amash and Huelskamp were pulled from the Budget Committee and Schweikert from the Financial Services Committee. Huelskamp, a freshman elected during the 2010 tea party wave, thinks the leadership move to pull him from the powerful committee is revenge for him standing up for...

Once again, the GOP establishment seems to be telling conservatives to sit down and shut up and just to nominate whoever they choose will be most "electable", whether or not they share our conservative principles.  Check out Jennifer Rubin's piece yesterday attacking the Club for Growth and Jim DeMint (who she refers to as "far right" like extreme leftists do) for not supporting Shelley Moore Capito for the soon to be vacated Senate seat in West Virginia: After years in which prominent Republicans courted her to run for the Senate, the popular Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.) announced today...

I am wondering about the structure of a third "Constitutional" party. Would it be better to form a party exclusively on a fiscal issues basis? What would be the pros and cons of taking social issues completely off the table? I mean, are there really enough "social issues" in the text of the Constitution itself to warrant making them a permanent policy of a new party and subsequently risking vicious debate and division? I guess I am thinking of the inevitability of Conservatives locking antlers with the "socially" left wing of the Libertarians", who are otherwise fiscally right wing. Shouldn't...

In the election’s aftermath, the culture war looks like a rout. Few ever relished this fight; most preferred simply to be left alone. We aren’t community organizers. Sadly, neutrality was not realistic. No, being Switzerland was never an option. By not defending America’s heritage of limited government, free markets and biblical morality, we’re being overrun a la Belgium. Powerful forces array. Christians consider this battle in spiritual terms. Conservatives sense a political donnybrook. Others deplore eroding standards of conduct and lost liberty. The Left vies for our children’s hearts, souls and minds. While no majority, progressives dominate the dissemination of...

Snip: The Ohio Republican has smoothed over differences with Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), expanded his powers on the panel that doles out plum committee assignments, shot down a challenge to his earmark moratorium and worked behind the scenes to ensure that Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) would win her leadership contest.

The biggest enemy of conservatism is the Republican Party itself. Get out the TEApots, let's have a Party!!

Ghandi: 'First they ignore you... Then they mock you... Then they fight you... Then you WIN' ______________________________________________________  Say Anything   Breitbart   Christian Science Monitor   AMERICAblog   Zazzle   Quoteland   Mizteez  PatriotFlags

Carlos Gutierrez, adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, said Sunday he was “shocked” by Romney’s comments this week on minorities.“I think we lost the election because the far right of this party has taken the party to a place that it doesn’t belong.”Ugh.CNN reported: In an interview set to air in full Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Candy Crowley, Gutierrez also sharply criticized Romney’s remarks made on a call Wednesday with donors following his loss in last week’s election. Romney explained his loss in part by pointing to “gifts” President Barack Obama gave to certain groups...

(Full title: Mark Levin to Karl Rove: ‘Get the h*ll off the stage already, will you pal?’) On his Monday radio program, talk show host Mark Levin, author of “Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America,” rejected the notion that the Republican Party should become more moderate to win over voters and blasted several commentators who suggested otherwise.<snip> “And I hear Rove today going on, ‘We got to do this better,’ ‘I got to do this,’ ‘Got to this,’” Levin continued. “Get the hell off the stage already, will you pal? You’re a hanger-on. I don’t say this with any personal contempt. It’s...

Grassroots Republican operatives and Movement conservatives are quickly turning against the GOP Establishment in the wake of the party's expensive defeat this election cycle. Republicans we spoke to this week voiced a near-universal disgust with the national Republican Party leaders and Washington political class, who are seen as having put their personal financial interest above winning the election. As this internecine struggle gathers steam, the first target appears to be Karl Rove, the former Bush campaign mastermind who has dictated much of the GOP's strategy over the past decade. In the wake of the party's 2012 losses, however, Rove and...

Meet the Press Panel Blames Romney Loss on Limbaugh and ‘Loons and Wackos’ of Conservative Base By Brent Baker Created 11/11/2012 - 6:01pm Sunday’s Meet the Press featured a panel of five, none of them conservative (Congressman-elect Joaquín Castro, Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, author Doris Kearns Goodwin, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and NBC’s Chuck Todd), to assess why Mitt Romney lost and “the future of the GOP.” And they agreed conservatives are the problem. Todd, NBC’s political director, decided the GOP has become “a coalition of special interest forces” and fretted “the leaders in Washington can’t control the special...

According to ABC, campaign manager Matt Rhoades told Romney: 'We would rather lose with you than win with anyone else.' Colleagues also stood and clapped for Rhoades and Mitt's 'Body Man,' Garrett Jackson who often tweeted behind-the-scenes pictures during his many hours at Romney's side on the campaign trail. The defeat was a stunning blow to the Republican camp who had been confident they would win even in the last few hours of the campaign.

The key to understanding the 2012 election is simple: A huge slice of the electorate stayed home. The punditocracy — which is more of the ruling class than an eye on the ruling class — has naturally decided that this is because Republicans are not enough like Democrats: They need to play more identity politics (in particular, adopt the Left’s embrace of illegal immigration) in order to be viable. But the story is not about who voted; it is about who didn’t vote. In truth, millions of Americans have decided that Republicans are not a viable alternative because they are...

It is time to throw the social conservatives out of the GOP. Look at what they got us — Barack Obama. It was the social conservatives who did it. They insisted the GOP support real marriage and children. To hell with that. I’m getting this, in various forms, from lots of tea party activists. The GOP establishment in Washington is whispering it to each other. They look at Todd Aiken and Richard Mourdock and conclude that they, not Tommy Thompson, Heather Wilson, George Allen, Scott Brown, etc. are the problem. It is time to get rid of the social conservatives.What’s...

BUCHANAN: IS THE GOP HEADED FOR THE BONEYARD? Patrick J. Buchanan 11/9/2012 After its second defeat at the hands of Barack Obama, under whom unemployment has never been lower than the day George W. Bush left office, the Republican Party has at last awakened to its existential crisis. Eighteen states have voted Democratic in six straight elections. Among the six are four of our most populous: New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and California. And Obama has now won two of the three remaining mega-states, Ohio and Florida, twice. Only Texas remains secure — for now. At the presidential level, the Republican...

On a conference call with House Republicans a day after the party’s electoral battering last week, Speaker John A. Boehner dished out some bitter medicine, and for the first time in the 112th Congress, most members took their dose. Their party lost, badly, Mr. Boehner said, and while Republicans would still control the House and would continue to staunchly oppose tax rate increases as Congress grapples with the impending fiscal battle, they had to avoid the nasty showdowns that marked so much of the last two years. Members on the call, subdued and dark, murmured words of support — even...

Let's not sugarcoat it: we got our teeth kicked in on Tuesday. Sure, we added governorships and held our ground in the House, but we went backwards in the Senate and lost to an out-of-touch, incompetent, petty man who centered his campaign around Mitt Romney's bank account and Big Bird. We didn't get beaten by Bill Clinton in a great economy; we got beaten by another Michael Dukakis in the midst of a terrible economy. On the upside, if people have ever wondered what Jimmy Carter's second term would have looked like, then they're about to find out. Since that's...

It’s been less than 24 hours since the polls closed and already the first shots in an emerging civil war within the conservative movement are being fired. Right-leaning pundits have been taking turns beating up on Mitt Romney and blaming him for the loss last night. Donald Trump just tweeted, “Congrats to @KarlRove on blowing $400 million this cycle. Every race @CrossroadsGPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money.” And GOP leaders are already taking to the barricades on either side of the divide, which basically comes down to this question: Were Romney and the GOP...

<p>Obama the capitalism-hating, liberty-hating, America-hating, godless Marxist/communist must be completely destroyed politically!! To allow him another term in the presidency would be to allow the total destruction of America.</p> <p>As much as I detest what the Republican party has become, there is no other party on this earth that can come anywhere close to accomplishing what must be accomplished to keep America from spiraling a Marxist/communist toilet.</p>

The Battle To Takeover The GOP Begins Today By Richard A. Viguerie | 11/7/12 Despite our efforts and the efforts of millions of other conservatives, who went all-in for the Romney candidacy, Election Day 2012 was a disaster – Barack Obama was re-elected President, Republicans lost seats in the House and failed to gain a majority in the Senate. However, out of that disaster comes some good news: conservatives are saying “Never again” are we going to nominate a big government establishment Republican for President. What’s more, we won’t have to – conservatives now have a deep bench of potential...

"He [Romney] killed us all over the country. Look at [same-sex] marriage. We've never lost the issue before, until it shared a ballot with Romney then we lost it four times on one day. Heck, we even won marriage in California on Election Day 2008 for goodness sake. There will never be another establishment candidate like that. Jeb Bush, Chris Christie...those people will never happen. Heck, I think Christie will be driven out of the GOP and be the next Charlie Crist. Mitt just killed Republicans in my home state. People are angry, especially because Matt Drudge and Karl Rove...

Many of us could not imagine that Romney could lose this election, especially after four years of Obama’s radical Marxism and its social and fiscal consequences that America will NEVER recover from. All the hype and all the Romney rallies; it indeed looked like a sure victory for Romney except for one equation, the Evangelical vote. We here at the IFB have talked back and forth among ourselves since the RNC convention and with others also in the know; that if the Evangelical vote did not show up on Nov. 6th the jig would be up and Romney would lose...

Well, you didn't vote for Romney and we have 4 more years of Obama. Feel good? I feel that I've wasted too many years among a bunch of spoilers. No more.

The Tea Party Patriots declared war on the Republican establishment after moderate establishment Republican Mitt Romney's loss to President Barack Obama on Tuesday. Jenny Beth Martin, National Coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, criticized the Republican Party for hand-picking a Beltway elite candidate who did not campaign forcefully on America's founding principles and said the "presidential loss is unequivocally on them." ~~~~ Instead, Martin lamented, "what we got was a weak moderate candidate, hand-picked by the Beltway elites and country-club establishment wing of the Republican Party." Martin said the Tea Party's "work begins again today" .... Establishment Republicans insisted to the...