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Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) needled fellow Republican Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) in an op-ed in The Washington Post on Friday, arguing that the GOP doesn't need "more distractions." "The mainstream media and Democrats want to further divide Republicans, and now Romney has played right into their hands," Perdue wrote. "Jeff Flake (Ariz.) filled that role before his retirement; the last thing we need now in the Senate is a Jeff Flake on steroids. We certainly don’t need more distractions. We need constructive leaders who want to get things done." Perdue invoked Flake, a vocal critic of President Trump who retired...

Why couldn’t you have kept your powder dry rather than virtue-signal to leftists who’ll never love you any more than they did Sen. John McCain? Are you so consumed with distaste for Trump that you are blind to the Democrats’ far worse partisanship and divisiveness? Are you really unaware of the Democrats’ stated intentions to wage political war against Trump for the next two years or until they run him out of office? Do you not see that enabling the Democrats in this way could help to advance their nightmarish agenda? Which will you oppose more, Trump’s bad manners or...

Arriving in Washington for his new gig as Utah's junior senator, Mitt Romney jumped right in to revert to form, putting out a Washington Post attack op-ed decrying President Trump's lack of "character" and calling on Republicans to reach across the aisle. Gad, his act is old. Here Trump has given us the best economy in decades, and Mitt has almost nothing to say about it other than that he agrees with it. Trump also never wavered on the appointment of Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh and has fought like a lion to get more constitutionally minded judges appointed. Trump...

Outgoing Ohio Gov. John Kasich gave Senator-elect Mitt Romney (R-UT) a virtual pat on the back Tuesday, endorsing Romney’s Washington Post op-ed bashing President Donald Trump’s character. “Welcome to the fray,” wrote Kasich, linking to the op-ed published Tuesday.

President Donald Trump’s most prominent GOP critics on Capitol Hill are days away from completing their Senate careers, raising the question of who — if anyone — will take their place as willing to publicly criticize a president who remains popular with nearly 9 in 10 Republican voters. Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee engaged in a war of words with the president on myriad issues over the past 18 months, generating headlines and fiery tweets from a president who generally insists on getting the last word. Those battles put them on the outs with many...

As reported in Table IV of the Daily Treasury Statement, the U.S. Treasury collected approximately $21.672 billion in taxes on Christmas Eve, the first business day of the partial federal “shutdown” that began at midnight last Friday. Those Christmas Eve tax collections brought total federal tax revenues for fiscal 2019, which began on Oct. 1, to approximately $666.482 billion. On Friday, Dec. 21, the last day before the partial government shutdown, the Treasury collected approximately $10.876 billion in tax revenues, according to the Treasury statement for that day. That brought total tax collections for fiscal 2019 to approximately $644.811 billion—at...

During a combative White House meeting with Democratic leaders on Dec. 11, President Trump declared that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was constrained in her ability to negotiate for a border wall because of a leadership fight in the House. Pelosi, who won that fight, was in no mood for mansplaining. Advertisement > “Mr. President, please don't characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats, who just won a big victory," Pelosi shot back. Later, aides put out word that she had mocked Trump’s border wall as “a manhood thing” for him....

A bill broadening gun-owner rights has become law in Ohio, after the Republican-led state Legislature overrode GOP Gov. John Kasich’s veto. The Senate voted 21-11 on Thursday to reject Kasich’s decision to strike down the bill. That followed a House override earlier in the day. The legislation expands gun access for off-duty police officers and allows pre-emption of local gun restrictions, among other things. Senators had hoped to address Kasich’s objections by stripping its so-called stand-your-ground language, but he vetoed the legislation anyway. Kasich opposed language shifting the burden of proof in self-defense cases from defendants to prosecutors. He also...

A looming, partial government shutdown would be “stupid” but might be unavoidable if Democrats refuse to support President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico, the second-ranking House Republican said on Thursday. Even if Republicans assemble enough votes to approve the wall in the House, the plan probably will fail in the Senate, said Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California. The House majority leader noted that Senate Democrats have pledged to block the bill from receiving the necessary 60 votes. McCarthy said on the House floor that he thinks “going into a shutdown is stupid,” but he offered no immediate plan...

Sen. Marco Rubio warned President Trump on Sunday that it would be a bad idea to pardon Paul Manafort. During an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” Rubio, R-Fla., said it would be a mistake for Trump to issue a pardon for his former campaign chairman after Special Counsel Robert Mueller accused Manafort of lying about his contacts with administration officials in 2018 and at least four other details related to the investigation into Russian election meddling during the 2016 campaign. “I haven’t heard that the White House is thinking about doing it,” Rubio said. “I advise strongly against it. It...

The Post reports: Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III on Tuesday recommended that former national security adviser Michael Flynn serve no prison time, citing his “substantial assistance” with several ongoing investigations, according to a new court filing. Tuesday’s filing is heavily redacted, continuing to shroud in secrecy the details of what Flynn told Mueller’s team about his interactions with [President] Trump and other top officials. But the document noted that Flynn has assisted the special counsel with its “investigation concerning links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.” You don’t have to be a...

House Speaker Paul Ryan questioned California’s ballot-counting process after Democrats were able to flip several GOP-held seats.The state’s election system “defies logic to me,” he said during an interview with the Washington Post’s Paul Kane. “We had a lot of wins that night, and three weeks later we lost basically every contested California race. This election system they have, I can’t begin to understand what ballot harvesting is.”“We were only down 26 seats the night of the election and three weeks later, we lost basically every California race,” he continued. “This election system they have — I can’t begin to...

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said Sunday she would rather not see the U.S.-Mexico border close despite threats by President Trump to prevent certain groups of migrants from crossing into the U.S. "We would prefer that we keep it open, so let's work really hard to make sure that we're addressing the asylum seekers before they actually come over the border," Ernst said on CNN's "State of the Union."The Iowa Republican was responding to Trump's suggestion that he may close the southern border if Mexico does not agree to hold migrants while the U.S. processes their asylum claims. "I think the...

What if the government's true goal is to perpetuate itself? What if the real levers of governmental power are pulled by agents and diplomats and by bureaucrats and central bankers behind the scenes? What if they stay in power no matter who is elected president or which political party controls either house of Congress? What if the frequent public displays of adversity between the Republicans and the Democrats are just a facade and a charade? What if both major political parties agree on the transcendental issues of our day? What if the leadership of both major political parties believes that...

Had John C. Fremont not run as a Republican in 1856, there would probably would have been no Lincoln in 1860. The Republican Party formed in the 1850s with the collapse of the Whig Party. The central unifying issue Republicans shared was abolition of slavery. It unified people across political parties, bringing them together into something new. In the early 1990s, fueled by a single billionaire's calls for reform, the Reform Party sprang up under H. Ross Perot. He won 18.9 percent of the popular vote. The Reform Party, unlike the Republicans in the 1800s, was one man's party,...

There’s a language fight brewing with the LGBT lobby over the new trilateral agreement, and — what a surprise — it looks like far-left Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is behind it. The Hill reports that a group of 38 GOP lawmakers has sent a letter to President Trump over proposed trade deal language meant to prevent sex discrimination. The problem is that the language equates “sexual orientation and gender identity” (SOGI) with sex. “A trade agreement is no place for the adoption of social policy,” congressmen explained in a the letter dated November 16. “It is especially inappropriate and...

The election is over. Let the infighting begin.  For me it began Wednesday morning just after I awoke. I had spent the prior evening covering Republican senatorial candidate Bob Hugin's loss to Democratic incumbent Bob Menendez and didn't get to sleep until 2 a.m.After fortifying myself with some strong coffee, I checked my phone. There was a voicemail from the most prominent conservative Republican in the state Senate, Mike Doherty of Warren County.  Doherty was upset at the comments in my election-night column from the most prominent moderate Republican in the Assembly, minority leader Jon Bramnick.Bramnick had pinned the blame...

Utah Sen.-elect Mitt Romney signaled he may focus on climate change when he's sworn in in January. In a brief interview with E&E News yesterday, the former Republican presidential nominee said he sees climate change as a "critical area." ....snip Last year, Romney told college students in St. Louis that he was "concerned about the anti-scientific attitude" expressed by some of his Republican colleagues and that he was convinced humanity has played a part in global warming (Climatewire, Oct. 3). "I happen to believe that there is climate change, and I think humans contribute to it in a substantial way,...

Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican fixture in California who represented Orange County for 15 terms, has lost his bid for re-election. His defeat underlines the party’s setbacks in a part of the state that was long a symbol of its political dominance. The Associated Press called the race on Saturday, with Harley Rouda receiving 52 percent of the vote to Mr. Rohrabacher’s 48 percent. Mr. Rouda, 56, is a former Republican turned Democrat who became a symbol of the Democratic efforts to win back Congress this year. Mr. Rohrabacher, 71, was viewed as particularly vulnerable because he defended Russia in...

Failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney wrote in a blog post this week that President Donald Trump’s vilification of the media is unprecedented, stating he vehemently disagrees with labeling the press “the enemy of the people.”