Free Republic

With the Chamber of Commerce and Grover Norquist openly declaring war on conservative, it’s time to fight back! Like we did in 2010; we will return and we are taking scalps! Four years ago, mainstream Americans rose up from out of nowhere and declared that they had had enough. At the time, their targets were mostly Democrats. These were some of the meanest Democrats in the county. People like Ike Skelton, a 17 term Congressman from Missouri who was widely regarded as unbeatable. In Wisconsin, political n00b took down powerful 3 term Senator Russ Feingold. We hammered them good, and...

Movement-conservative icon, author, and direct-market pioneer Richard Viguerie threw down the gauntlet to establishment Republicans and the GOP leadership Tuesday, charging that conservatives "have been betrayed, abandoned by our leaders, and that includes Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, [and] Reince Priebus at the Republican National Committee." Viguerie and other grass-roots conservative leaders are warning that Republicans who voted to end the shutdown on terms favorable to President Barack Obama and the Democrats will face major primary opposition in 2014.

Hard-line conservatives are rising out of the ashes of a weekslong government shutdown, emboldened by the possibility of adding to their ranks in the Senate next year — whether by picking up Democrat-held seats or taking out Republican incumbents.Just two Republican senators have lost in primaries in the last two election cycles, but that’s not stopping a growing number of intraparty challengers this cycle. Conservative third-party groups and candidates hope to give more backup to folks like Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, who led an effort to defund the health care law.The GOP brand overall...

An open letter to John Boehner Speaker Boehner, Why did you divide the party? Where would we be right now had you not divided the party with your purge of conservatives from key committee positions in 2012? Your rejection of the fiscal conservatives was particularly obtuse as it was a slap in the face to those who had helped the Republicans win the house in the first place. When the conservatives pushed to defund the Affordable Care Act why did our party leadership reject them? Obamacare was from the start every bit as much economic policy as it was health...

The Wyoming Senate race may just be the most unique contest of the 2014 cycle. It means nothing for control of the Senate. It means everything to the complex web of colliding Republican interests that have quickly turned it into one of the most spirited campaigns in the country. Liz Cheney, shown in 2010. (Cliff Owen/AP) On the surface, the GOP primary contest between Sen. Mike Enzi and challenger Liz Cheney looks like a familiar tale: A Republican incumbent draws a primary opponent and a heated race ensues. We’ve seen this story unfold in Utah, Indiana and Alaska the past...

Citizens United is endorsing Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) in the crowded Georgia Senate primary. The nod from the conservative group will give the Tea Party favorite a boost — and establishment Republicans new reason to be concerned about the race. Establishment Republicans have publicly fretted about Broun winning the primary, fearing he might not be the party's best candidate in a general election. The congressman regularly refers to President Obama as a socialist and communist, and has said evolution and the big bang theories are lies "from the pit of hell."

Wolf, an admirer of conservative Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, had sharp words for the GOP and its contribution to the federal debt. “The Republican Party has this mindset that you should get in line and that you should bow to whoever is in charge and you should ask their permission and you should go along to get along,” he said. ”But where has that got us? I can give you 17 trillion reasons why that has been a failure, and it’s our party that did that.” Wolf has steadily been building his public profile with appearances on...

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s campaign is said to be in “meltdown mode” based on internal polling done in the wake of his conflicted votes on Obamacare last week. Already vulnerable among GOP voters due to a host of ideological betrayals (including his support for energy tax hikes, internet tax hikes, amnesty for illegal aliens and domestic spying), Graham’s tortured “opposition” to Obamacare has reportedly caused his perilous position to erode even further. How much further? FITS was not provided with specific details on the poll – but one source close to Graham’s camp tells us the organization has been “temporarily...

Allen West could attempt to return to Capitol Hill in 2016 if Marco Rubio runs for president. But West could find running for the U.S. Senate to be a difficult assignment. West talked to the Tampa Bay Times this week and shot down rumors that he would primary Rubio in 2016. Some conservatives and tea parties have called for West to challenge Rubio after the senator’s support of immigration reform. West continues to show no interest in taking Rubio on. But, when asked what he would do if Rubio ran for the Republican presidential nomination and not for the Senate,...

As Speaker John A. Boehner (R.-Ohio) struggles with the budget crisis, a Troy, Ohio schoolteacher and Tea Party activist announced Sept. 30 he will challenge Boehner in the 2014 GOP primary. Joseph D. “J.D.” Winteregg, who is a founder of the Ohio Accountability Project, a grassroots organization in Ohio-8, a congressional district bordering Indiana, said he is motivated by the gulf between the interests and values of the district and Boehner.

Texas Senator John Cornyn is in trouble with the tea party. At the Texas Tribune policy conference last weekend six tea party leaders were asked if want a strong candidate to challenge Cornyn in the Republican primary. Five of them said yes. Listen 0:003:09Story airing on KERA 90.1 Included in that group were former gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina, who now heads We Texans a limited government group; Northeast Tarrant County Tea Party President Julie McCarty; and Republican state representatives Matt Krause from Fort Worth and Jonathan Stickland from Bedford. The fifth and most vocal critic was JoAnn Fleming. Her email...

South Dakota state Rep. Stace Nelson (R) met with a handful of national conservative groups last week in Washington — an indication they continue to search for a challenger to former Gov. Mike Rounds (R) in the state’s open Senate race. The Republican primary field is already wide, and a bruising contest could jeopardize a pickup that is crucial to GOP efforts to take back the Senate in 2014. Nelson met with Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) office, Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist and the Club for Growth. “To say things went well is an understatement,” Nelson told The Hill....

In what was described as a murderous attack – and the most serious violence since the extremist group was elected to the country's parliament last year – about 50 men wielding crowbars and bats set upon leftists as they distributed posters in a working-class district of the capital late on Thursday. In a statement KKE, the Communist party of Greece, said: "The way in which they acted and the weapons employed … are evidence of the murderous nature of the attack. Among the Golden Dawners, some of whom had covered their faces or wore helmets or [party] shirts, were their...

A distant cousin of President Obama is mulling a primary challenge to Kansas Republican senator Pat Roberts for 2014. Milton Wolf, a radiologist in the Sunflower State, is the president’s second cousin once removed. Wolf is a prominent tea-party activist in the state and nationally who has made several media appearances, such as on Fox News as well as penning columns in the Washington Times. Last month, he sent an e-mail to Republican activists in the state asking if they wanted more senators in the mold of Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, according to Politico. He also criticized Roberts’s record...

Ten months out from his primary election against three different Tea Party candidates, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has dropped to below 50 percent in the polls, meaning he is particularly vulnerable to a runoff strategy conservatives have employed against him. Graham received just 42 percent of support from likely South Carolina GOP voters in an Aug. 25 poll of 500 likely GOP voters conducted by Landmark Communications and Rosetta Stone Communications, UnitedLiberty.org reports. “These numbers should be of concern to the Graham campaign. The senator fails to reach 50% of the vote against any of his opponents,” Rosetta Stone Communications...

Wyoming senatorial candidate Liz Cheney definitively stated her opposition to gay marriage on Friday, despite the pro-marriage stance of her father Dick Cheney, and her sister Mary Cheney, who married her partner last year. “I am strongly pro-life and I am not pro-gay marriage,” declared Cheney in a campaign statement. “I believe the issue of marriage must be decided by the states, and by the people in the states, not by judges and not even by legislators, but by the people themselves.” Cheney issued the statement because she felt opponent (and friend of her father’s) Mike Enzi was “distorting her...

LAKE WYLIE, S.C. — Some of the early shots in the Republican primary battle against Senator Lindsey Graham have been fired from this tiny community on the northern border of the state where the Civil War began. Mr. Graham's challengers so far in the Republican primary campaign include Nancy Mace, the first woman to graduate from the Citadel. A small group called Carolina Conservatives United, one of dozens organized loosely under the flag of limited government, low taxes and strict adherence to the Constitution, sent out images last week of a milk carton bearing Mr. Graham’s face and asked Gov....

State Representative Joe Carr announced on Ralph Bristol's Nashville talk radio program on Tuesday that he is a candidate for the Republican nomination for the United States Senate. Carr will compete against incumbent Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) in the party's August 2014 primary. Bristol had promised his listeners on Monday that someone would make a "major announcement" that will "alter the Tennessee political landscape," and at 7:10 in the morning Joe Carr delivered on that promise. "I am announcing as a candidate for the United State Senate," Carr told Bristol. Carr left no doubt with whom he will stand in...

Georgia Republicans are becoming increasingly worried that a divisive primary coupled with a strong Democratic candidate might lead to a loss of the Senate seat of retiring Saxbe Chambliss. The Hill: Recent polling shows the two candidates Republicans are most anxious about - Reps. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) and Paul Broun (R-Ga.) - leading the pack. Whoever emerges from the clown-car primary, with seven candidates and counting, will face a candidate Democrats are high on in a state where shifting demographics benefit their party. "Gingrey has a history of making some gaffes, and Broun it seems like it's a gaffe every...

Tea party groups have publicized their desire to find primary challengers for Republicans they don't like as well as vulnerable Democrats who are already in office. Here are a few tell-tale signs that a tea party challenger might jump into a race near you.