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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...

Was the recent attack on Herman Cain’s presidential campaign a professional hit job? Absolutely, says Herman Cain. And he says he knows just where to look for the guy who did it: At 815 Slaters Lane in Alexandria, Virginia, a low-slung former warehouse in the shadow of a coal plant.

A Republican civil war is raging, with righter-than-thou conservatives dominating ever more primaries in a fight for the party's soul. And the Democrats hope to benefit. The latest examples of conservative insurgents' clout came Tuesday at opposite ends of the country. In Florida, political newcomer Rick Scott beat longtime congressman and state Attorney General Bill McCollum for the GOP gubernatorial nomination. And in Alaska, tea party activists and Sarah Palin

November 05, 2009, 4:00 a.m. Republican Civil War?Our experts respond. An NRO Symposium The NY-23 race has political commentators abuzz: Is there a Republican civil war going on? If so, who started it, and can there be a truce? If not, why is everyone saying there is one? National Review Online asked a few close observers of the Right to report in on these rumors of war. KEN BLACKWELLDede Scozzafava’s record in the New York State legislature was pro-tax, pro-abortion, and anti-marriage. She even accepted the endorsement of ACORN. But she got the local party elders’ support, based on...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (CNN) -- Sarah Palin's not a quitter, she wants the public to know. "I am not a quitter. I am a fighter," Palin told CNN on Monday while on a family fishing trip, on the heels of her Friday bombshell announcement that she was resigning as Alaska's governor. Palin did her interview standing on the shores of Dillingham, Alaska, wearing hip waders. She granted 10-minute interviews to CNN and three other news networks Monday. She resigned because of the tremendous pressure, time and financial burden of a litany of ethics complaints in the past several months, she said....