Free Republic

Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, the former campaign adviser to 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, has repeatedly argued that the Republican Party should be more inclusive — of almost everyone, it seems, except Sarah Palin. On Friday night’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” during its online “Overtime” segment, Schmidt tersely responded to a viewer question about McCain’s selection of Palin to be his running mate: MAHER: Steve Schmidt, ‘Is it possible you picked Sarah Palin the wrong year?’ Oh, my. ‘Could she have swung the women vote in 2012 enough to have put Romney in the White...

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said he would strive to be like Lyndon Johnson, the Democrat famous for expanding the U.S. welfare state through the "Great Society," if he were elected president. According to the Miami Herald, Bush made those comments Wednesday night in San Antonio, Florida at Saint Leo University, while speaking about education, immigration, and energy policy. Bush did not address Johnson's Great Society and War on Poverty programs, about which Ronald Reagan once famously quipped, "We had a war on poverty, and poverty won." Instead, he was referencing Johnson's mastery of the so-called sausage-making process in Congress....

Neither former Gov. Jeb Bush, R-Fla., nor Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. have announced their plans to run for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, but both are already speaking and acting like contenders, going head to head on issues such as immigration and education reform. Bush said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week that efforts to tackle immigration reform on a piecemeal basis are “short-sighted and self-defeating.” …

Leading Democratic and Republican senators said on Sunday there were encouraging signs in the push to overhaul U.S. immigration laws - a top priority for President Obama's second term - and they would introduce their plan this week. -snip- McCain said the political aspect of immigration reform should sway any Republicans who object to a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. "We are losing dramatically the Hispanic vote, which we think should be ours, for a variety of reasons, and we've got to understand that," he said. McCain said change also was needed because "we can't go on forever with...

-snip- The Ohio Republican made the remarks when an unidentified woman asked during a question-and-answer session: “Can you make me love Mitt Romney?” “No,” Boehner said. “Listen, we’re just politicians. I wasn’t elected to play God. The American people probably aren’t going to fall in love with Mitt Romney. I’ll tell you this: 95 percent of the people that show up to vote in November are going to show up in that voting booth, and they are going to vote for or against Barack Obama. “Mitt Romney has some friends, relatives and fellow Mormons ... some people that are going...