Free Republic

The establishment GOP has accepted progressivism’s central premise.Charles Krauthammer has come to my rescue. You see, I’ve been on the receiving end of some spirited reaction since asserting in last weekend’s column that what we commonly call the Republican establishment — i.e., not all individual Republicans but GOP leadership — “is more sympathetic to Obama’s case for the welfare state than to the Tea Party’s case for limited government and individual liberty.” The statement may have been provocative in the sense of expressing a truth that people on the political Right prefer not to talk about. But it was not...

Richard Viguerie at Conservative HQ examines the idea of starting a third party alternative to the RINO-led Republican Party–an idea that has been growing in popularity since the rise of the Tea Party movement four years ago, and even more popular now that the “Republican” leadership in congress has once again caved to Democrats in the fight against ObamaCare. Since even Sean Hannity expressed support for a third party recently, Viguerie felt it was time to address the issue–and rebut it. Viguerie reminds us of some GOP history and the war between liberals and conservatives in the Republican Party: In...

Movement-conservative icon, author, and direct-market pioneer Richard Viguerie threw down the gauntlet to establishment Republicans and the GOP leadership Tuesday, charging that conservatives "have been betrayed, abandoned by our leaders, and that includes Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, [and] Reince Priebus at the Republican National Committee." Viguerie and other grass-roots conservative leaders are warning that Republicans who voted to end the shutdown on terms favorable to President Barack Obama and the Democrats will face major primary opposition in 2014.

"...........[SNIP]...........But while the factions within the GOP prepare themselves for what is sure to be a “West Side Story” type rumble, it is possible that the “Establishment” may have overplayed its hand and compromised its position without even realizing it. To the Establishment, the Tea Party is political plutonium, explosive and too hot to handle right now. They need to cut ties with it, bring it to heel, or spin it so that it seems like they are all one big happy family, which probably won’t happen. They believe that conservative voters want to see the individuals responsible for partially...

Americans know the Republican Party has lost its way and the effectiveness of party conservatives has been neutralized. But it is not just the Republican Party per se that is the problem. All three branches of the federal government have seized our inheritance to the point where now we citizens are the ones who support and defend the Constitution, and career politicians and judges are destroying what is left of it. It is indisputable that the Republican Party offers no united opposition to the tyrannical Left. Indeed, in the recent government shutdown fiasco, Republican senators repudiated their fellow House Republicans...

Forget defending their House majority—some Republicans who angered the Tea Party during the shutdown must first beat back primary challenges. Even Boehner isn’t immune, reports David Freedlander. inShare. Republicans in the House of Representatives have such low approval ratings, according to recent polls, that a Democratic takeover looks possible. But before Republicans can defend their majority, they first must stave off a slew of primary challengers who are targeting incumbent members of Congress. Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast The new spate of primaries mostly target those Republicans who failed to toe the Tea Party line during the recent budget...

Jon Stewart waded into the civil war currently engulfing the Republican Party that is pitting members of the political establishment against the Tea Party. On Tuesday’s edition of “The Daily Show,” Stewart noted that many enlistees in the GOP’s old guard are responsible for unleashing a right-wing agenda that culminated in the shutdown of the federal government this month and brought the country to the brink of default. “The party wanted to absorb the Tea Party energy, to swallow and digest the Tea Party’s enthusiasm and passion, so long as the Tea Party promised not to burst through their chests...

The Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, has a curious habit of pulling despairing faces when marching his divided troops into battle. As he marched them back again on Wednesday, exhausted and bedraggled by their failed attempt to hold President Obama to ransom over his healthcare reforms, there is much of the same eye-rolling that characterised the start of their reluctant campaign. “We fought the good fight. We just didn’t win,” he told a radio interviewer. But not all Republicans think they can shrug off the past two weeks just as easily. Moderate senators Lindsey Graham and...

Let’s talk about the Republican split. I was going to call it a “Civil War” but that would be an exaggeration. There is a very deep fissure in the Republican ranks. There are any number of ways it can be described, but one of the best descriptions I have read of the "establishment" Republican Party is that it's the “Not-Democrat Party.” By that I mean that the Republicans are the party you vote for when you don’t want the Democrats to win. The Democrats have become firmly ideological. When Michelle Obama spoke about her husband wishing to fundamentally transform America,...

The future of the GOP? With the government shutdown and debt ceiling fight in the rearview mirror, Republicans can move on to more important matters — like determining which of the party's warring factions will control the GOP going forward. The recent fiscal fist-fighting ostensibly pit Republicans against Democrats, but the real power struggle was between Tea Partiers and the GOP establishment. The conflict, bubbling beneath the surface for some time, finally boiled over into a messy public spat that, even as the shutdown came to a close, showed no signs of stopping. The fissure has been growing since 2010,...

In a sign of the internal backlash against the right wing of the House Republican Conference, Louisiana Republican Charles Boustany questioned the political allegiances and motivations of his tea party-aligned colleagues and said they had put the GOP majority at risk in the current shutdown fight. "There are members with a different agenda," Boustany said Wednesday in an interview in his office. "And I'm not sure they're Republicans and I'm not sure they're conservative."

In a few minutes, House Republicans will meet in the Capitol’s basement. The chief topic of conversation: the emerging Senate deal. But before the meeting even begins, House conservatives are bashing it behind the scenes, and they’re pushing the leadership to reject the compromise. A flurry of phone calls and meetings last night and early this morning led the consensus among the approximatley 50 Republicans who form the House GOP’s right flank. They’re furious with Senate Republicans for working with Democrats to craft what one leading Tea Party congressman calls a “mushy piece of s—t.” Another House conservative warns, “If...

You don't go on television during a shutdown and tell the world that your party is shutting down the government. You don't go out and take vicious shots at other Republicans for advocating the strategy your party is engaged in, especially when you don't have the cahones to go after Democrats the same way. If conservative Republicans like Justin Amash and Tim Huelskamp were punished for not being deferential enough to leadership, how is it that establishment Republicans can actively work to undermine the Republican Party during a shutdown fight and get a complete pass? If these mediocrities are so...

"Do the Republican and Democratic parties do an adequate job of representing the American people, or do they do such a poor job that a third major party is required?" A record 60% of Americans now yearn for a third major party, according to Gallup. Independents, unsurprisingly, are most likely to favor a third party, but a majority of self-described Republicans say yes, too. But what do they mean by that "yes"? (snip) But here's a caution about third parties in American history: They are much more likely to arise on the fringes of the political system, not the center....

HANNITY: I don't blame the media. I don't blame Harry Reid. I don't blame Obama. If every Republican would have stood by their promise like Ted Cruz, we wouldn't be in this position today. If they held together, we wouldn't have a problem today. You know, what is different here is, you know, every time the establishment wins, they want the tea party conservative base to go along with them. Now when the tea party stands up and fights for what they promise their voters, somehow they're evil, somehow what they did is wrong. When yet, all I see is...

Texas Senator Ted Cruz took Washington by storm with his filibuster against Obamacare. Utah Senator Mike Lee, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions and Florida Senator Marco Rubio helped out. Unfortunately for both Cruz and America, Ted Cruz’s filibuster was doomed before it started. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell along with Texas Senator John Cornyn, Arizona Senator John McCain and other members of the Republican Establishment had already moved to the position of preemptive Republican surrender. McConnell and Cornyn were whipping votes to vote for cloture or, in other words, stop Cruz’s filibuster. In baseball terms, it is the bottom of the...

"In the aftermath of Senator Ted Cruz’s epic performance on the Senate floor, a few observations: After his disgraceful attacks on Cruz, including his reach-across-the-aisle, dog-in-the-manger response today, this should be the end of Senator John McCain as a voice of influence in the Republican party." "Win or lose, the battle is now joined: First the struggle for the GOP and then the battle for control of Congress and the presidency. Cruz just struck at the kings he could reach — the Republican “leadership” — and has most likely dealt them a fatal blow. Now the Tea Party hordes must...

The Revolutionary War was a rebellion against Britain, but it first required a battle between Tories and Patriots. Ted Cruz is fighting for the honor of leading the conservative movement. The main goal is to give the American people a voice, defeat the Democrat Party, and take over Congress and the White House, so we can shrink our federal government back to constitutional limits. The battleground of the moment is ObamaCare. But the first adversary that must be defeated is the Republican establishment. Is it any wonder that the Republican leadership is working to make sure the defunding effort fails?...

I've never been someone who constantly calls for a third-party in our political system. I have long-held the opinion that a third-party would be able to get very little done, simply because the Democrats and Republicans are so entrenched in the system. I'm still not there yet, but there is something that I need to get off my chest. Why does our party insist on eating its own? Would it be so hard for the Republican establishment to admit that Senator Ted Cruz is doing something good in his attempt to alert and inform Americans about the dangers that are...

(Reuters) - A Republican plan aimed at averting a government shutdown in less than three weeks ran into a wall of opposition on Wednesday from conservatives in the U.S. House of Representatives, and leaders delayed any votes on it until at least next week.The plan, derided as a "trick" by some conservatives, would have let them cast an essentially symbolic vote to defund "Obamacare" healthcare reforms without risking a shutdown, feared by party leaders who remember the political damage they suffered when government offices shut their doors in the mid-1990s.The move in the House is the latest indication a Republican...