Free Republic

The Republican Party doesn’t have a leader who is looked upon favorably by a majority of Americans, according to a Politico/George Washington University poll. Defeated presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, each garnered only 47 percent approval, according to the poll. …

The Republican Party and stupid statements by some candidates are to blame for GOP losses in last month’s congressional elections, the former leader of a tea party group said Monday. Dick Armey, who until recently led the conservative group FreedomWorks, said some GOP candidates said “stupid things” that party leaders should have taught them to avoid saying. He said Republicans had a lot of candidates who did “dumb things” during their campaigns. Armey, a former Republican House majority leader from Texas, did not specifically mention controversial comments about rape by GOP Senate candidates in Indiana and Missouri that contributed to...

High-level negotiations between the White House and Capitol Hill in times of divided government tend to follow a script. This year’s talks about how to avert the fiscal cliff, for the most part, appear to track a familiar line: The outside message from the top players is often different from what's happening on a parallel track inside the room where the final deal is being crafted. Publicly, both President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner continue to argue their positions on taxes and entitlement reforms, hoping they can win the public relations battle that frames their respective party as...

Taxes on the wealthy are going up, House Speaker John Boehner conceded on Wednesday in challenging President Barack Obama to sit down with him to hammer out a deal for avoiding the fiscal cliff. The statement to reporters reflected how negotiations on reducing the nation's chronic federal deficits and debt have evolved since Obama's re-election last month. Republicans once opposed to any new revenue in their quest to shrink government now realize Obama's victory and public support for the president's campaign theme of higher taxes on the wealthy leave them with little negotiating leverage. Less than four weeks from the...

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint’s surprise announcement that he will leave the U.S. Senate in January to take over leadership of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank has ignited speculation among grass-roots conservatives that DeMint may use the new post as a launching pad for a presidential bid in 2016. “Jim DeMint will have a bigger microphone than before,” conservative direct-marketing pioneer Richard Viguerie tells Newsmax. “If he wants to, this opens up a lot more opportunities for him. I think there’s a decent chance that he’ll be a serious presidential candidate in four years.” Viguerie called the move to...

Andrew Napolitano: Why are GOP leaders helping Obama spend us into oblivion? Do you know anyone who voted Republican this past election in order to further President Obama’s big-government agenda? Or is it more likely that Republican voters sought to advance a smaller version of the federal government? And if they did, why are Republican congressional leaders offering to help the president spend us into oblivion? I suspected that those questions might have been asked when Mitt Romney was nominated to oppose Obama. My view of his campaign then and now has been that he presented a choice to the...

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...

WASHINGTON – Just one day after tax activist Grover Norquist warned Democrats are coming after the middle class for $3 trillion in tax hikes, another conservative leader says it appears the big GOP strategy is to figure out how to surrender. Bozell, founder of the Media Research Center, told WND today that the Republican leadership is lacking vision, resents its own conservative base and needs to refocus. “If the Republicans continue a campaign of presenting themselves as Democrat-lite, they are going to see the losses increase. It will not be long before the Democrats are in complete control,” he told...

Exclusive: William Murray blasts establishment for still ignoring so-called social issues A politician who robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the vote of Paul. This statement was obviously proven in the election of Barack Obama who spent four years expanding the ranks of dependency using every avenue of government possible, from food stamps to mortgage reductions. At the founding of our nation, Benjamin Franklin said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.” California has lead the way to hell in numerous ways for decades, and in...

(CNSNews.com) - Conservative leaders don't like what they're hearing from House Speaker John Boehner, the man in the middle of fiscal cliff negotiations. One day after Boehner mentioned an $800-billion tax hike -- half the amount President Obama is seeking -- conservative activist L. Brent Bozell III said the Republican Party is no longer the party of limited government, limited spending and limited taxes: "It is now officially exactly right behind the Democrats -- on everything," Bozell said. "It is time for conservatives to start looking for a new home. There's precious little left for us here." Bozell said it's...

The controversial budget proposal submitted by House Republican leadership, and summarily rejected by the White House, was never presented to the GOP caucus in the house, according to Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX). "The caucus was not consulted on the proposal, I wish we had been," Gohmert told Breitbart News on Capitol Hill this morning. "The Republican members were not consulted on the offer made. We are having the legislation being formulated among the Speaker, Senate Majority Leader Reid, and the President. Republicans in Congress have some great ideas and principles, but those are not being utilized in the proposals." Speaker...

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...

It may take election experts years to unravel the mystery of why Mitt Romney was convinced he had won the 2012 presidential election, as a new report shows some skewed internal poll numbers, and explains Romney’s two trips to Pennsylvania. But at the same time, the article from The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber shows inconsistencies with reports from November 5 and November 6 about the numbers that might have convinced Romney and his team that he had a good chance of beating President Obama in Ohio. Obama’s resounding win is starting to take on more of a resemblance to Harry...

Obama’s top election strategist tells a Chicago audience he was surprised Mitt Romney’s team did not attack Obama more, stuck so narrowly with their base—and chose Paul Ryan for VP. President Obama’s top reelection strategist conceded surprise Monday that Republican super PACS didn’t attack Obama far earlier, Mitt Romney didn’t invest much more in ground operations, and that the Republican nominee played narrowly to the party base in picking Rep. Paul Ryan as a running mate. Offering a lengthy dissection of the campaign, David Axelrod told a Chicago audience that he was “a bit surprised that super PACS, which spent...

The GOP establishment and some conservative pundits, such as Ann Coulter, are in full defense mode, claiming that Romney is not responsible for losing to an incumbent responsible for perhaps the most damaging fiscal crises in our nation’s history. Don’t believe it. Romney IS responsible for wasting a billion dollars to carry out an issue-free campaign full of simple-minded platitudes. Indeed, Coulter is leading the charge with her recent column titled, Don’t Blame Romney. It’s sweet to watch Coulter defend her darling Romney, but let’s get real. The reality is that Romney was one of the worst GOP presidential candidates...

The United States will not reverse its descent into the abyss of financial and societal bankruptcy until the current political and governing establishment is replaced. That will not happen until the American people, who have been deliberately ill-educated and deceived, experience first-hand the early stages of the turmoil and suffering extant in Europe and elsewhere. While professing to care for the interests of the average person the underlying motivation for the vast majority of the governing class or Establishment is first and foremost self-aggrandizement and the acquisition of wealth.

Snip: So, contrary to what many Republicans believe, Barack Obama is not the problem. He is but a symptom of the problem. Over the past hundred years or so, the United States government has been infiltrated by lots of communists. That’s nothing new. But in the days of yore, Republicans and Democrats worked to track down the commies, root them out and, in the case of the Rosenbergs, even execute them. Let’s face it, on a level playing field, a communist is no match for a true patriot who is passionate about liberty. But therein lies the problem. Today, not...

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush met Monday with a group of his former staffers at the J. W. Marriott hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, just steps from the White House. Bush, a potential 2016 presidential contender, spent an hour in the hotel’s Cannon room, reminiscing and entertaining questions about his political future. In an interview with NRO, Bush did not rule out a presidential run. “I am here to catch up with folks and promote education reform,” he said, smiling. When asked again whether he will issue a Sherman-type statement about his future, Bush remained coy. “We have an alumni group...

The Hill is reporting that supporters of Jeb Bush are claiming he’s already considering a presidential run. Jeb Bush, brother and son of former Bush presidents, is said to be mulling a presidential run in 2016, according to the New York Times. The Times cites Bush supporters and friends in its report that the former Florida governor is “weighing financial and family considerations” for a future run. Though Bush remains popular in Florida and has garnered national attention with his support for immigration and education reform, there is lingering concern that the persistent unpopularity of the last Bush to hold...

The talk has already started about a possible 2016 presidential bid by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, but before that happens friends say he’ll be busy rebuilding his personal wealth and restoring his family’s relationship with the Republican Party. If he decides to seek the GOP nomination, it could put a damper on any plans by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to run in four years, according to The New York Times. … After this year’s loss to President Barack Obama, Republicans are looking for a candidate who can appeal to a different voter demographic that’s no longer dominated by white...