Free Republic

House Speaker John Boehner’s right wing is acting up again. First, hard-line conservatives failed in a January coup against the Ohio Republican. Then they tried to force a special meeting on immigration reform — but GOP leaders beat them to the punch. Now, fearful of a capitulation on immigration and fiscal issues, they want to force Boehner to have a majority of Republican support each time it considers a bill to increase spending. Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) is spurring the latest effort, and says he has more than half the 50 Republican backers needed — he won’t say how many...

With the rise to enduring power of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in 1933, a new type of Republican emerged in reaction to FDR's attractive and overawing power: the me-too Republican. Until the election of President Reagan five decades later, these me-too Republicans supported, rather than opposed, Democratic Party policies but claimed they would administer them better. Of course, this led to a half-century of Democratic dominance of American government and politics. FDR himself cruelly mocked this pathetic breed of spineless, protect-your-career-at-any-cost Republican politicians: "Let me warn the nation against the smooth evasion which says: 'Of course we believe all...

Politico’s Playbook has an excerpt from a new Ryan Lizza piece from the New Yorker that is not yet online. It contains a passage on the back-and-forth between labor and the Chamber that has a quote from a Rubio staffer that is going to raise eyebrows, to say the least: “There are American workers who, for lack of a better term, can’t cut it. There shouldn’t be a presumption that every American worker is a star performer. There are people who just can’t get it, can’t do it, don’t want to do it. And so you can’t obviously discuss that...

In an exclusive sit-down interview with The Brody File, Jeb Bush began to sketch out his case for President of the United States if he decides to run next year. “It will be based on my record. And that record was one of solving problems from completely from a conservative perspective. I cut taxes every year, I shrunk the size of government,” Jeb Bush tells The Brody File. And as for his critics who say he’s too mainstream establishment he offers this: “I will be able to, I think, manage my way through all the chirpers out there.” We sat...

Republican House members leading a fight against Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said a “Trojan horse bill” is in the works to trick the GOP into voting for amnesty for illegal immigrants. (snip) “We have the really bad bill in the Senate and what’s going to happen, Glenn, is that a Trojan horse — a bill that’s going to really look good and really sound good and it’s going to talk about border security — a bill that we like will get voted on and passed,” Bachmann said. Both bills will go to a conference committee to be reconciled, where “they’ll...

Seventy House Republicans are planning a politically risky showdown with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to try to force additional debate on an immigration bill they say will mean amnesty for illegal immigrants and have dire consequences for the country. The 70 members are petitioning for a special Republican conference meeting on the bill, a “highly unusual” move to go head-to-head with the speaker, according to Reps. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), Steve King (Iowa) and Louie Gohmert (Texas), who are serving as spokespersons for the group.

Crossroads GPS, an advocacy group backed by Karl Rove, former senior adviser to George W. Bush, is launching a $100,000 ad campaign urging conservatives to support an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws. The full-page print ad is signed by 53 business leaders and Republicans, including former Republican National Committee Chairman Edward Gillespie, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Rove. It's the first ad the group has run on immigration this year.

In a Spanish-language interview Sunday with the network Univision, Sen. Marco Rubio, the leading Republican on the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform group, made his strongest statement yet that legalization of the nation’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants must happen before any new border security or internal enforcement measures are in place, and will in no way be conditional on any security requirements. “Let’s be clear,” Rubio said. “Nobody is talking about preventing the legalization...

Where does the buck stop in the Obama administration? Will anyone take responsibility for the IRS scandal? When will we hear the whole truth? And will the president ever admit to creating a culture of hostility toward conservative groups? Does President Obama think his endless attacks on conservative groups had no effect on the IRS’s thinking? Did the IRS take years of name calling as a sign that these groups deserved to be harassed? After the president and his allies called the groups “terrorists” and “tea-baggers,” did the IRS think targeting them was what the president wanted? Were they egged...

We have a ruling class that despises the free market and does all in its power to restrict its scope. --snip-- In these pages a few years ago, Angelo Codevilla gave us a lengthy analysis of “America’s Ruling Class” (TAS, July/August 2010). The major parties aspired to merge into a governing class, he said: “Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the...” --snip-- The ruling class also supports and is supported by...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is “the smartest guy, the biggest thinker” in the Republican Party as it looks toward winning the White House in 2016, GOP strategist Karl Rove tells Newsmax TV. “Six months ago, I would have said, ‘No, he's not going to run,’” Rove tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview. “But maybe he is. I certainly hope he keeps a very strong voice.”

The Republican National Committee has chosen a Karl Rove-linked voter data project called Liberty Works to help it compete with Democrats in the digital arena. Liberty Works will team up with Data Trust, whose chairman of the board is former RNC Chairman Mike Duncan, committee spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski confirmed to POLITICO. “Basically, RNC is going to provide the data, and then Liberty Works will build the platform, and Data Trust will manage it all,” Kukowski said. “This is kind of in the beginning stages. There are legal issues that we’re going to iron out.”

Former Alaska governor and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who has fiercely fought crony capitalism and the permanent political class, absolutely blistered the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday, tweeting that the dinner was "pathetic" and that "DC assclowns" were throwing "themselves a #nerdprom" while "the rest of America is out there working our assess off." @SarahPalinUSA: That #WHCD was pathetic. The rest of America is out there working our asses off while these DC assclowns throw themselves a #nerdprom In recent years, Washington veterans have expressed similar concerns. Tom Brokaw has compared Washington to "Versailles," Ron Fournier has said...

Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Scott Brown joined John McCain in denouncing the congresswoman's Muslim witch hunt Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, a rising star in the party and a potential vice-presidential pick for Mitt Romney, said this morning that he disagreed with Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann’s baseless call to investigate Muslim Brotherhood infiltration in the U.S. government. Appearing on NPR’s Diane Rehm show, Rubio was asked by a caller if he would join Republican Sen. John McCain’s strong condemnation of the anti-Muslim witch hunt on the Senate floor yesterday. While Rubio said he doesn’t personally know Huma Abedin, a...

Mark Levin was incensed to learn that John Boehner has been negotiating with Democrats, in secret, to pass legislation that would exempt Congress, their families, and their thousands of staffers from Obamacare… “What a bunch of frauds! Absolute frauds!” Click excerpt link for audio ->

LaGrange, IL— This weekend’s epic showdown between movement conservatives and more moderate elements of the Illinois Republican Party ended with a split result. Embattled Party Chairman Pat Brady remains at the helm of the State Central Committee but the committee is beginning the process of lining up a successor in the event Chairman Brady resigns or his detractors can garner enough votes to oust him while simultaneously navigating party rules to make it happen. Brady’s term runs through the 2014 primary season when a new, 18-member central committee, selected under the downsized 2011 congressional map, will organize itself and elect...

..ethically "compromised(sexually(homo/hetero), Money, or Security)"? And is THAT why Obama, The "Media(MSM)" and the Dem "Party" has been getting away with what they have been getting away with. We know now that at least one US GOP-e Senator and one GOP-e US House member has Homosexuals(deviants, perverts)in thier own family. Makes ya wonder how mant ARE Homosexuals(deviants, perverts)(Lindsey Grahmnesty).

...is the ENTIRE US Feral(Federal) Government is getting ready to come "peeled" and the TRUTH will come out.

House Speaker John Boehner is being pressed by the conservative wing of the Republican Party not to allow a vote on major pieces of legislation -- from gun control to immigration -- without majority Republican support, after recent signals that he could be open to building a coalition with Democrats. Tea Party favorite and second-term Rep. Tim Huelskamp is among the most recent to express concern, saying Tuesday that Boehner “assured us” that he'd seek a majority Republican coalition before proceeding on controversial bills.

Mark Levin opened his show tonight saying that a certain Republican Congressman who doesn’t like what he’s saying is trying to get the local affiliate in their district to stop running the Mark Levin Show. And apparently they are trying to do it behind the scenes. But Levin says EVERYTHING gets back to him and he will not tolerate fascism. He gives this unnamed Republican Congressman a warning below noting that if they succeed in getting him silenced, he will expose them: Click excerpt link for audio!

Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said at a Thursday press conference that House Republicans will rise up against GOP leadership if House Speaker John Boehner tries to rush any immigration reform bill through his chamber of Congress. “There would be a revolt among Republicans” if Boehner abandoned regular order on this issue, Rohrabacher said in response to a question from Breitbart News at the presser. According to a recent Politico report, Boehner is seriously considering abandoning regular order to rush through immigration reform. Regular orders is the process by which a bill is supposed to come up through the respective committees...

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — In the GOP’s ongoing establishment vs. grassroots saga, chalk one up for the establishment.Since Mitt Romney’s loss, the Rand Paul wing of the party has been on the ascendency. But libertarians hit a roadblock Friday as the Republican National Committee opted at its spring meeting to keep in place a host of rules rammed through by the Romney campaign at last year’s national convention.The move represents at least a small setback to Rand Paul’s 2016 hopes, potentially making it more difficult for him or another candidate with strong grassroots support to pick up delegates. Had the rules...

Sources inside the Senate tell me that the Republican Conference is scared to death of the tactics of Senators Lee, Cruz and Paul – that it is supposedly putting them in a tough spot. Several of the Republicans are using the Manchin-Toomey compromise plan as an excuse to cave on the gun filibuster. They claim that Senators Lee, Cruz, and Paul are running ahead of the conference in their insistence on a filibuster. What they fail to see is that the cloture vote is the vote to stop the gun legislation from passage. Several Republican Senators intend to vote against...

Video at link if you can stand it. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday praised fellow “Gang of Eight” member Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as a “game changer” in the immigration debate on Capitol Hill. “Marco Rubio has been a game changer in my party,” said Graham on NBC's “Meet the Press,” predicting that the Tea Party favorite would help aid passage of a Senate immigration bill. Graham said the Tea Party favorite had worked to ensure that GOP concerns were addressed in the legislation. “He will be there only if the Democrats will embrace a guest worker program and...

In one of his more well-publicized gaffes, Vice President Biden said of John McCain: "Look, John's last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number-one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs." Actually, of course, it's a four-letter word, and it was his job and the president's to create a climate for job expansion, and they failed. The evidence is now overwhelming: they have created the worst employment climate in decades. Tyler Durden at Zerohedge sums up the week's bad economic news: Things just keep getting worse for...

One of the first political issues negotiators must tackle in crafting an immigration reform bill is among the most important: what to name it. It’s a decision that will bruise egos, create legacies and deeply affect subsequent messaging battles. “Every time the bill is mentioned in the press, you either have a brand that's positive or a brand that doesn't mean anything or even hurts you,” said Frank Sharry, the executive director of the pro-immigration reform group America’s Voice.

At a meeting of the Ripon Society held in Washington, D.C.'s exclusive Capitol Hill Club on Tuesday, new Republican National Committee Chief of Staff Mike Shields effectively declared war on the conservative grassroots. In a strong attack, Shields coined a new derogatory term, "the professional right," to refer to groups that have publicly criticized the recent RNC "Autopsy" report. "It's a term I'll be using often in the coming months," he told the crowd of about 40 Ripon Society members, RNC insiders, and Capitol Hill staffers. But Reagan biographer Craig Shirley, who was not one of those in attendance at...

Prominent among the clueless douchebags who thought Rudy Giuliani could be elected president, John Avlon by 2009 was faced with a problem: How could a pro-Obama liberal Republican hireling find work in a political environment where the Tea Party uprising demonstrated that the Charlie Crist collaborationist Vichy wing of the GOP had no natural grassroots constituency? So in 2010, Avlon co-founded the “No Labels” movement, funded by liberal donors and assigned the mission of helping Democrats destroy the Tea Party. And if Avlon’s constant smearing of conservatives as “winguts” damaged the Republican Party, so what? Nobody involved in “No Labels”...

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, issued some words of advice for fellow GOPers: Get in the 21st century with same-sex-marriage issues. “We do have a platform, and we adhere to that platform,” Mr. Priebus said in a USA Today video. “But it doesn’t mean that we divide and subtract people from our party” who favor gay marriage. “I don’t believe we need to act like Old Testament heretics,” he said in the USA Today video. Rather, Republicans “have to strike a balance between principle and grace and respect.” His statements come as the U.S. Supreme Court is...

42-year-old Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, to an American mother and a Cuban father. By dint of his mother’s citizenship, Cruz was an American citizen at birth. Whether he meets the Constitution’s requirement that the president of the United States be a “natural-born citizen,” a term the Framers didn’t define and for which the nation’s courts have yet to offer an interpretation, has become the subject of considerable speculation. Snip~ Legal scholars are firm about Cruz’s eligibility. “Of course he’s eligible,” Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz tells National Review Online. “He’s a natural-born, not a naturalized, citizen.” Eugene Volokh,...

The hierarchy of the Republican Party has published a 100 page new and improved game plan entitled the "Growth and Opportunity Project" ostensibly to win future elections and re-tool the party. While this effort is an improvement over similar exercises in recent years, it contains a number of major flaws indicative of the fact that the Party is still operating as if the national political landscape was the same as the 1980's and 90's with a recognition that demographics and news dissemination has changed. --snip-- The bulk of the conservative movement, and thus the base of the Republican Party, recognizes...

The GOP is working with Silicon Valley investors to digitally target voters and donors in a broader effort by the Republican National Committee to revive the party. The venture, whose mission is still being refined, will create an interactive platform available to any GOP campaign to access the party's vast amount of data on voters. This platform will likely work in conjunction with the RNC's efforts to improve its own database of voter information. The venture is being backed by Karl Rove and fomer Bain & Co. executive and private equity investor Richard Boyce. Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy will...

GOP strategist Karl Rove says he can imagine a Republican candidate in the next presidential campaign supporting gay marriage. The statement from the former adviser to President George W. Bush appears to acknowledge that opposition to gay marriage has waned in some conservative circles. …

STEPHANOPOULOS: That was Bill Clinton after Dukakis's loss in '88. BRAZILE: That was Bill Clinton after Walter Mondale lost, after Jimmy Carter lost. We had a dynamic governor who was reform minded, who took those reform issues and brought them into the national forefront. He really helped recharge the Democratic Party. But, you know, the Republican Party is out to lunch. I watched CPAC Charl -- I mean Karl. (LAUGHTER) BRAZILE: Charles was a former friend. ROVE: I thought I was a current friend. BRAZILE: But you're always a friend, but you owe me some chili. ROVE: But you owe...

Economist and conservative author Thomas Sowell tells Newsmax TV that “Republicans have a decades-long record” of reaching out to the black vote in the “most unpromising way possible.” And based on the party’s strategy moving forward, he says, not much has changed. “I’m baffled by so many things that the Republican Party does nationally,” Sowell tells Newsmax on Friday in an exclusive interview. Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, tells Newsmax the GOP’s current plan to woo minorities is the same misguided strategy employed decades ago by former President Ronald Reagan. “When [Reagan] set out...

Joshua Green shares an amazing story about the secret negotiations between Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich for a “unity ticket” during the Republican Presidential primary. In the end, Green reports, neither of the two Republican leaders could agree which of the two would be president. (T)he two candidates spoke face-to-face at an energy forum just before the primary. Gingrich made an elaborate historical argument that when the party hasn’t been able to agree on a nominee, it always settles on the senior figure. Santorum wasn’t persuaded, and urged Gingrich to do what was best for the conservative movement.

In describing his most recent segment, Mr. L wrote, “I wanna talk about this dig at Sarah Palin by Karl Rove which was in retaliation for Palin’s dig at him at CPAC. And I did have this transcribed by the way. You can find it along with this commentary at mrltavern.com. I only did this once where I cut the audio and then gave it to a friend who’s a fast keyboardist to transcribe it because I think this topic is important to be in both the spoken and the written word. I wanna talk about the concept of resignation...

The one question I invariably encounter in a conservative movement that tends toward the gray side is how to engage the youth. And the answer is usually nothing that the questioners want to hear. Now the Republican Party has laid the corpse of the last election on the slab and come up with the expected answers. Some of them are correct, albeit belated. Many others are the sorts of things that the squishy side of the party has been recommending for a while. The Republican Party has gone from denying that there is a culture war to conceding defeat in...

Conservative legend Phyllis Schlafly told the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday that the Republican establishment had given America a series of losers as presidential candidates over the last two decades—and the last time they picked a winner, George W. Bush, he was a bigger spender than the Democrats. “Why is it that the establishment has given us this bunch of losers?” Schlafly said. “The establishment has given us a whole series of losers: Bob Dole and John McCain and Mitt Romney.” … Schlafly said the establishment wants candidates that “will only talk about economic issues” and not social or...

For the past four years or so, I’ve written numerous posts condemning the inbred society of Republican “insiders� and “consultants� who tell their candidates that they need to become Democrat light to win elections. These Washington denizens, I’ve argued are more interested in a candidates willingness to spend huge amounts of money for their services than their ideology or electability. That’s why they’ve consistently tried to marginalize real conservatives who see them for what they are: parasitic mercenaries who’ve become rich dispensing bad advice since about the time Reagan left office. They are scared to death by conservatives with core convictions who, thus, don’t need them such as Governor Palin. In a...

For as long as he’s been president, Barack Obama, has been the top target for attack at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. D.C. But this year, there may have been a close second: the Republican political-consultant class, which many CPAC attendees blame for the party’s poor 2012 showing. -snip- Without directly taking on Romney, Republican National Committee member Morton Blackwell, from Virginia, joined Caddell in criticizing the practice of many campaigns of allowing consultants to take a commission when they score media placements, which skews the campaign’s efforts away from grassroots efforts and direct contacts with voters...

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...

A much-anticipated Republican National Committee Chairman report due out Monday on how to reverse the GOP’s fortunes is expected to call for fewer Republican debates, a condensed primary calendar and an earlier party convention. In an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus outlined those three main recommendations for the 2016 presidential election. The RNC’s so-called “autopsy” — a detailed review of the GOP’s 2012 failures and roadmap going forward — will also include suggestions to improve the party’s digital capabilities and bolster its voter database, among other proposals. Priebus is set to unveil the plan...

Republican strategist Karl Rove responded to the harsh comments former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin had for him at CPAC on Fox News Sunday this morning. Before taking a shot at Palin for not completing her term as governor, he said that Palin was actually in agreement with him on former Senate candidate Todd Akin and that he actually works pro bono for American Crossroads. [....] Rove continued that Palin endorsed in primaries and got involved in other races around so he didn’t understand what the problem was with other people doing the same thing. He defended his work for American...

Here's something of a surprise given Chris Christie's last-second Sandy-fueled embrace of President Obama during the final days of the 2012 presidential election, via Politico: Romney, whose supporters and aides were furious that Christie complimented the president’s response to Hurricane Sandy, has given the maximum contribution possible, $3,800, to the New Jersey governor’s reelection bid, a source familiar with the donation said. We probably shouldn't make too much of a $3,800 check—Romney didn't exactly have to sit down with his family and rework his budget to carve out the cash, and he's cut plenty of such checks in the past—but...

Former Governor Jeb Bush (R-FL) spoke at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

"Pat Caddell, the Fox News Contributor and Democrat pollster who engineered Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Presidential victory, blew the lid off CPAC on Thursday with a blistering attack on "racketeering" Republican consultants who play wealthy donors like "marks.""

Pat Caddell, the Fox News Contributor and Democrat pollster who engineered Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Presidential victory, blew the lid off CPAC on Wednesday with a blistering attack on "racketeering" Republican consultants who play wealthy donors like "marks." "I blame the donors who allow themselves to be played for marks. I blame the people in the grassroots for allowing themselves to be played for suckers....It's time to stop being marks. It's time to stop being suckers. It’s time for you people to get real," he told the audience that included two top Republican consultants. . . . Caddell left no doubt...

Over at Atlas Shrugs I discuss why the common categorization of me as "right-wing" is all wrong: Many years ago, when I interviewed the great avant-garde saxophonist Charles Gayle, I asked him about bitter criticism he had received for his tendency to preach a pro-life message in the middle of his concerts. “Yeah,” he said with some amusement, “they always call me ‘right-wing.’ Man, I ain’t got no wings!” Neither do I. And as the events of the past week have shown, I am not “right-wing,” either; nor am I a conservative. Throughout my public career, of course, the mainstream...

Since arriving in the Senate in 2011, Rand Paul has been probing here and there for issues of populist resonance. Audit the secretive, sinister Federal Reserve. Rein in those TSA screeners patting down little girls. In each instance, Paul (R-Ky.) has evoked the fear of oppressive government without tipping over into the paranoia of his father’s most dedicated supporters. It has been a diluted, domesticated, decaffeinated version of the ideology that motivated Ron Paul’s presidential races.