Free Republic

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday refused to offer a lifeline to the Export-Import Bank, sending another signal that Congress could allow the lending agency’s charter to expire at the end of September. Boehner has supported the bank in the past, but in response to questions from reporters, he distanced himself from that position and deferred instead to the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), an outspoken opponent of reauthorization. “Listen, I have a different job than I had then,” Boehner said following a private House GOP meeting. “My job is to work with our...

BILOXI, Mississippi — Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), a 2012 presidential candidate and one of state Sen. Chris McDaniel’s big name endorsers over Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS), told Breitbart News in a phone interview that he thinks the Washington, D.C., political establishment is “panicking” now that McDaniel may win his runoff on Tuesday.

"..........The survey also showed that Republican divisions are not the invention of right-wing talk-show hosts or bloggers. Republicans who support the tea party are well to the right of others in their party. As NBC’s First Read reported, 68 percent of tea party Republicans said that immigration hurts the United States, compared with only 47 percent of non-tea party Republicans and 42 percent of all Americans. And a PRRI/Brookings survey (with which I was involved) found that while 41 percent of tea party members favored identifying and deporting illegal immigrants, only 26 percent of non-tea party Republicans preferred this option....

As part of his bid to become majority leader, McCarthy told his Republican colleagues in a closed-door meeting that he wouldn't overstep Hensarling on Ex-Im -- a major blow to the bank's future. The bank expires if the House doesn't produce a bill to reauthorize it, and Hensarling's committee has jurisdiction on the issue.Business groups fear the shake-up in House leadership will set back their efforts to renew authorization for the Export-Import bank. With Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) -- an Ex-Im critic during the 2012 battle -- jumping into the majority whip post, supporters of the bank say a divided...

Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., announced Monday that 16 former Virginia Republican elected officials have endorsed his re-election bid, including 14 former state legislators as well as former U.S. Sen. John W. Warner and former Gov. Linwood Holton. (snip) The list of Republican Warner supporters includes former Delegates Vincent F. Callahan Jr. of McLean, a former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee; Katherine Waddell of Richmond; L. Preston Bryant Jr. of Richmond, who served as secretary of Natural Resources in Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's Cabinet; Robert S. Bloxom Sr. of Mappsville, who served as secretary of Agriculture and Forestry under...

Radio show hosts and political pundits are suggesting that the primary election defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is the final nail in the coffin for passing immigration reform in this session of Congress. They surmise that other Republicans will be especially reluctant to tackle the issue for fear of losing political support. If we are led to believe that the results of a local election with 12 percent voter turnout in a single congressional district (one out of 435) with a mere 65,000 votes cast is all that it takes to disrupt a necessary and important national policy...

Like many conservatives and American workers, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said that the Republican establishment's embrace of amnesty for llegal immigrants is the one issue that is making her think about renouncing her ties to the GOP. Palin has always spoken for American workers who are pro-free markets and against the permanent political class. And amnesty, as Dave Brat said after he ousted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) last week, is the biggest issue that divides the bipartisan Wall Street elites from Main Street. Palin, echoing the voice of blue-collar workers who sit at home when establishment "Wall...

Top environmental officials for four Republican presidents are telling Congress what many Republican lawmakers won’t: Action is needed on global warming. EPA administrators for Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan said Wednesday they hoped to inject reason into a debate that is increasingly colored by politics. …

Yesterday at the New York Meeting, a gathering of conservatives in New York, Haley Barbour said the GOP’s goal should not be purity. He also praised Eric Cantor.There is a great disconnect in the political press and among politicians like Haley Barbour over the endgame of conservatives in America. It is not actually about purity for the sake of purity. It never has been. What it has been about is getting people into office who mean what they say and say what they mean. It has, in other words, been about putting men and women in office who put principle...

rotesters gathered Monday in Cincinnati, where Mr. Bush was headlining a fundraiser for the Republican National Committee. Some placards wielded the hashtag #StopJebNow. “Gov. Bush led on higher standards long before Common Core was in the picture, and he won’t back away from higher standards just because some pundits question their political impact,” said Sally Bradshaw, Mr. Bush’s former chief-of-staff and a current political adviser. “That’s just not how he rolls.”Nearly every one of his possible GOP rivals in 2016 have assailed Common Core (Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Gov. Rick Perry...

Another excellent Facebook post by the Governor: The more things change the more they stay the same? Seems so! If the national GOP machine spent as much time fighting President Obama’s disastrous and dangerous agenda as they’ve spent fighting that great conservative candidate Chris McDaniel, well, maybe they’d have been successful at stopping Obama’s "fundamental transformation" of our country. Negative results from Obama fulfilling that one promise of his to transform America are just beginning to be felt at home and abroad.Let’s cut through the GOP Establishment’s rhetoric and the predictable media bias in Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race and look directly at...

Far from being excommunicated by Republicans after his loss to President Obama, 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is enjoying a brand resurgence of late, drawing several potential 2016 candidates to his "ideas summit" this weekend in Utah and even earning some 2016 speculation himself.Meanwhile, some other potential candidates are in Iowa for the state Republican Party's convention there Saturday. And not to be left out, Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., was in California Friday to raise money for the Republican gubernatorial candidate there and participate in a Facebook chat.It all adds up to a busy weekend for the early 2016...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) plans to step down from his leadership post by the end of July, setting off a weeks-long scramble for the chamber’s number two job, according to three Republicans familiar with his plans. Cantor will formally announce his plans later Wednesday in a meeting with his House Republican colleagues in the basement of the U.S. Capitol.

How did the No. 2 man in the House lose a primary? Chalk it up to immigration and the Tea Party. It’s one of the most shocking losses in U.S. electoral history—and it’s bad for America. Here’s the thing: Eric Cantor did not fall asleep in this race. He spent around $5 million. He ran lots of TV ads. He knew this was going to be a close one. He campaigned. And he still got creamed. And here’s the other thing: Cantor was not an enemy of the Tea Party. He was in fact the Tea Party’s guy in the...

This is Primary Election Day for Virginia politicians. Encourage all Conservatives in Virginia to VOTE today! "Rubberstamp for Obama," Eric Cantor is "hellbent" on ramming through the US House Obama's Amnesty for Illegal Alien Invaders from Mexico. The GOP-E Leadership in the US House, (Boehner, Cantor, and Ryan), is always gullible to Obama's tricks. Consequently, Boehner, Cantor and Ryan, have all pledged to ram through this unpopular Obama Amnesty Bill due to Obama's illegal decision to flood the USA with children from Mexico and Central America. It is time to kick the GOP-E out of Congressional Leadership!

ERICA YOON | The Roanoke Times Delegates cheer candidate Ed Gillespie during his introduction at the state Republican convention Saturday in Roanoke. Less than 90 minutes after voting began at the convention, Gillespie’s nearest rival, Shak Hill, conceded the nomination to Gillespie. The low attendance — 4,200 delegates had registered but about 2,700 came to Roanoke — may have expedited the balloting. Ed Gillespie, a fixture in national Republican politics, easily won his party’s nomination Saturday to take on Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., setting up a marquee fight with control of the Senate at stake. At 2:50 p.m., less than...

Saturday, June 07, 2014 The Long March Through the Republican Party Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog The Tea Party's epitaph has been written. A confident Republican establishment is now prepared to possibly take the Senate in 2014 and then lose it again in 2016 to another wave of historical change. In its defense the establishment, a motley collection of men paid by special interest groups whose future involves lucrative lobbying and even more lucrative consulting for the midterm election of 2018 where they will run on opposition to HillaryCare, can point to all the stupid and...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is taking sides in the Mississippi Senate primary run-off, stepping out to help raise money for Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., against his Tea Party challenger, Chris McDaniel. McConnell will host a "run-off reception" benefiting Cochran, a six-term incumbent, on the evening of June 10 at the National Republican Senatorial Committee in Washington. In an email to party donors Friday, obtained by the Washington Examiner, McConnell warned that the outcome of the contest "will have a very real impact on our fight for the Majority," even though Mississippi is considered a Republican stronghold. "Our friend Thad...

Yesterday I noted that the tea party in big states and national elections faces a challenge both in money and support when facing competent, mainstream Republicans. To put it bluntly, there aren’t enough Republicans who think that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is a sellout or that the shutdown was a good idea to sustain the tea party in its current form. I’ve suggested that it, in essence, disappears as a distinct subset of the right and, like most insurgent movements, will be soaked up by the larger political entity, in this case the GOP. But are there other things the...

The NRSC spent a chunk of the weekend pounding Chris McDaniel’s campaign because some people there knew three weeks ago about Cochran’s wife being secretly videotaped in a nursing home but said nothing until the story finally broke on Saturday. Read Ed’s post this morning for the details on that. There’s no evidence that McDaniel’s campaign was involved in the harassment — on the contrary, his campaign manager denounced it in a staff e-mail as soon as she heard of it — but after the news about it broke on Saturday, they claimed incorrectly that they’d never heard of the...