Free Republic

The chairman of the Republican Governors Association (RGA) is refusing to campaign for the GOP's nominee for New York governor. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is heading the GOP's gubernatorial efforts across the nation, was campaigning in Connecticut when reporters asked him whether he would campaign on behalf of Rob Astorino in his race against sitting New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. According to Christie, the answer is a nearly-unqualified no.

President Obama has said most of the undocumented children in the U.S. from Central America will not be allowed to stay. The process of deciding which ones will stay and which ones will go is often decided in court, but Tuesday, 18 of 20 undocumented children failed to show up to their first immigration hearing in Dallas federal court. That’s an unusually high number that raises concerns that it could be a trend.

The Republican National Committee should censure the committeeman from Mississippi, Henry Barbour, and perhaps request (although not demand) his resignation from the RNC. Barbour’s apparent involvement with nakedly race-baiting ads and robocalls during the GOP senatorial primary runoff in his state, and his prevarications afterwards both in public and in e-mails to other committee members, merit an official public shaming. To be clear about exactly what in Barbour’s conduct does and doesn’t deserve a rebuke, and to take care of some housekeeping with regard to journalistic ethics, please forgive a bit of personal backstory.

Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan) continued his refusal to debate challenger Dr. Milton Wolf prior to the upcoming August 5 primary election date on the grounds that “Wolf is not qualified to hold such a high office.” “I’ve been in this political racket for nearly 50 years,” the 78 year-old Roberts pointed out. “I didn’t just leap into the national arena as my first venture into joining the governing elite. I served on the staff of Senator Frank Carlson and Representative Keith Sebelius for over 12 years before I ran for Congress in 1980. Then I put in 16 years in...

A flurry of legislative activity to address the border crisis is emerging as a major showdown between Tea Partiers and establishment politicians. Conservatives want to take the fight directly to President Barack Obama, whose executive amnesty policies they say is the primary cause of the problem. Leading the charge on the right are Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, and Ted Cruz (R-TX), the wily Tea Party freshman. The political establishment, on the other hand, prefers a legislated fix to a 2008 anti-human trafficking law, which they cite as a key cause of the...

The central weakness of the Republican's political position in Washington has been on vivid display as the situation at the southern border has devolved into a complete crisis. As tens of thousands of foreign nationals overwhelm the border and render our sovereign boundary meaningless, Republicans in DC are tinkering with legislative fixes they say will address the situation. As if the crisis at the border is the result of some drafting error or a failure to enact some specific law relevant to this precise set of circumstances. It is a fool's errand. [...] Republicans in DC have chosen to...

After the skin-crawling exploitation of black voters in Mississippi, the GOP’s current leadership wing gives a second demonstration, this time in Virginia, of just how committed they are to “a big tent,” or to the GOP’s vitality in general. The Senate majority matters, the House majority matters. But this party’s leadership is infested with the same disregard for Washington’s intended purpose as any Clintonian. Third parties fail. But what cost does remaining aligned with this generation of GOP leadership take from the cause of liberty and transparency? Recall, last week Eric Cantor said: “Of course I’ll vote for David Brat...

Why Mississippi matters to the GOP’s future By Sal Russo - 07/14/14 08:08 PM EDT If the recent Mississippi Senate primary was a GOP establishment bellwether, the Republican Party is in deep trouble. By resorting to a disingenuous and morally bankrupt campaign to win at all costs, the establishment exposed itself to be into politics only for the power. In order to grow the GOP and consistently win at the ballot box in November, Republicans need to start earning votes with conservative ideas, not government handouts. Since the Republicans’ dismal showing in the 2012 elections, party leaders have been working to...

Immediately after he ousted the York County Republican Committee's incumbent chairman Saturday, Alex Shorb vowed to ensure that Tea Party supporters are heard in the party's political deliberations. Yet Shorb, a financial services firm owner from York, said he did not regard his election as chairman as some sort of conservative coup. "I don't see it as a tea party takeover at all," he said. "I'm not a tea party member." Shorb's election and the tandem victory of his running mate, Lower Windsor Township Committeewoman Allison Blew, who is the party's new vice chairwoman, followed a push by conservative opponents...

A Mississippi man who accused the Thad Cochran campaign of paying African-Americans to vote for the senator in his primary runoff last month is walking back his story. Stevie Fielder told California-based blogger Charles C. Johnson he was asked to buy votes for $15 a pop in the June 24 runoff between Cochran and state Sen. Chris McDaniel. Now, he's saying he never paid anyone to vote, saying the conversations he claimed he had with Cochran campaign staffers Kirk Sims and Amanda Shook were "hypothetical" and the interview with Johnson was edited.

Among the political cynics out there warning conservatives to run from the word “impeachment” where President Obama’s lawlessness is concerned, we find Howard Kurtz.Before delving into that though, let’s point out a few facts.  First, it is a FACT that President Obama and the administration has refused to enforce the laws on the books many times on illegal immigration.  It is a FACT that when states try to create their own legislation to take matters into their own hands, the administration spends more energy fighting them than they do securing our borders.  Immigration aside, it’s a FACT that Obama and the...

How an obscure Mississippi state senator became the poster boy for all that’s wrong with the right. There was a conservative NRA- and Right To Life-endorsed candidate in the Mississippi race, one who opposed Ronald Reagan’s 1986 amnesty for illegal immigrants, as well as any similar efforts by President Bush and Obama. Unlike his opponent, he was a veteran who fought the Obama administration’s cuts to the military, including plans to reduce the Navy to a dangerously low level of ships. He had a history of reducing spending when he was chairman of the Appropriations Committee. He had co-sponsored anti-Obamacare...

JACKSON, Miss. — The question seemed to tug at Senator Thad Cochran throughout his bumpy re-election campaign in Mississippi: Why, after a long, distinguished career — 42 years in Congress, including six terms in the Senate — was he seeking a seventh term? By all accounts, Mr. Cochran had needed to be talked into running. He told one national publication that he had planned to retire, and another that the first thing he wanted to do after Election Day was take a nap. And while the snowy-haired, 76-year-old Republican tried to hush whispers that he was not quite as sharp...

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has asked a pro-Thad Cochran Super PAC, called Mississippi Conservatives, to provide additional information about what the newspaper Roll Call said “appears to be campaign finance violations.” At issue are last-minute expenditures made by the PAC in the days before the initial June 3 primary. The FEC “Request for Additional Information” says the PAC does not appear to have disclosed some of its spending in a timely manner. The FEC notes in the letter sent to treasurer Brian Perry that failure to “adequately respond” by Aug. 1 “could result in an audit or enforcement action.”...

A conservative outside group whose efforts Sen. Ted Cruz backed has called for defunding the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Cruz, an NRSC vice chairman and Texas Republican, has not rebuked the effort. This weekend, Senate Conservatives Fund launched a campaign calling on conservatives to pledge not to give any money to the NRSC in the aftermath of last week’s runoff in the Mississippi Senate race. As is typical, the NRSC backed Republican Sen. Thad Cochran, while the SCF and other outside groups backed his failed challenger, state Sen. Chris McDaniel. “The Senate Republican establishment betrayed the grassroots and recruited Democrats...

According to the work of Charles C. Johnson and Joel S. Gilbert, what we thought was just a racist campaign to get people out to vote in the Cochran vs McDaniel Mississippi Senate race was the tip of the iceberg. It now appears to be a vote buying scandal right out of the office of Thad Cochran himself: Reverend Stevie Fielder, associate pastor at historic First Union Missionary Baptist Church and former official at Meridian’s redevelopment agency, says he delivered “hundreds or even thousands,” of blacks to the polls after being offered money and being assured by a Cochran campaign...

Because “friends and foes” view President Barak Obama’s America as weak, people should donate to the Republican National Committee, says U.S. Sen. John McCain. McCain On Monday, the RNC sent out a mass email to supporters containing a letter from the Republican senator from Arizona, in which he blasted the president. “President Obama’s policies continue to cost millions of Americans jobs and access to health care,” McCain says in the email. “When the world needs American leadership, our President fails to lead. As a result, friends and foes alike are coming to see America as weak, unreliable and lacking credibility....

One week after traveling to Mississippi to do his utmost to help Senator Thad Cochran (R) beat Tea Party rival Chris McDaniel, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) talked about the strengths he saw in Cochran's approach to campaigning. According to AZ Central, McCain dismissed criticism over the tactics the Republican Establishment used to get black Democrats to cross over and vote for Cochran. Said McCain, "There are some people complaining that African-American voters voted. [But] I thought one of the major priorities of the Republican Party was to get all minority and ethnic voters out to vote for Republicans." He described...

The Tea Party, the popular political movement that grew from widespread public concern over the growth of government, died on Tuesday, June 24, in Mississippi. During its short life, the Tea Party grew from a passionate patchwork quilt of grass-roots efforts to become an important and effective political force capable of altering elections and influencing national, state and local policies. It died a fractured, ineffective confederacy of discordant coteries that bore little resemblance to its original incarnation. (snip) For a time, it appeared possible that the Tea Party would redefine, or perhaps even replace, the Republican Party. Until, that is,...