Free Republic

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) defended his condemnation of the Senate Conservatives Fund on Tuesday and stressed that despite his disputes with the organization he remains a fan of the tea party movement at large. “Let me make it clear: I’m a big fan of the tea party movement. It’s been extremely important in helping us regain the House and do well in the Senate in 2010,” McConnell told Fox News’s Neil Cavuto.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s new push to get involved in Republican primaries by defending incumbents against tea party challengers could actually make it easier to unseat them, according to the head of the influential Club for Growth. Chris Chocola, the club’s president, said the battle between the chamber, which he said advocates big business, and the rank-and-file free-market conservatives whom his group represents is well underway as Republicans try to field their candidates for the 2014 congressional elections. The latest fight is shaping up in Idaho, where the chamber announced this week that it will run ads defending incumbent...

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is launching ad buys for more establishment-aligned Republicans, including one former Democrat who recently switched parties. The Chamber will run ads for Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R) in the open West Virginia Senate race. It will also run ads for Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who faces a tea party-backed primary challenger, and West Virginia state Sen. Evan Jenkins, who , chrecently switched parties to challenge longtime Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.). Earlier this week, the chamber launched ads for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who also faces a tea party primary opponent.

Karl Rove is slamming Martin Bashir for his “disgusting and vile” comments against Sarah Palin that ultimately led to the MSNBC host’s resignation. “This was beyond the pale. Sure, we are going to have harsh comments about political figures from people who don’t share their views, but this was a disgusting and vile and highly personal and offensive comment,” Rove said Wednesday on Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor.” Bashir resigned Wednesday for comments he made on his Nov. 15 broadcast during which he called Sarah Palin “a world class idiot” and referenced a diary of a former plantation manager who...

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus says the RNC has begun “focusing in” on Hillary Clinton as a candidate for 2016 and will continue to do so. Priebus was asked by radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday whether the RNC would work to attack Clinton as the presumed Democratic nominee for president in 2016, according to a show transcript. “We have. So our research shop, along with America Rising, has been focusing in on Hillary Clinton.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is launching ads backing eight-term Republican Rep. Mike Simpson, who faces a primary challenge in Idaho, and two GOP candidates in West Virginia as the business organization ramps up its political activity for next year's congressional elections. The Chamber's involvement in Idaho marks the second time in recent months that the group has taken sides in the internal Republican fight pitting the GOP establishment against conservative activists. The group backed Bradley Byrne over tea party favorite Dean Young in a special congressional runoff primary in Alabama, pumping at least $200,000 into the race. Byrne won...

An aggressive timeline for passing comprehensive immigration reform may become a reality based on two significant developments on Capitol Hill. One of them is that House Speaker John Boehner has hired an Immigration Policy Director who has deep experience in overhaul efforts. The other is that in recent weeks, various Texas business interests have told Quorum Report that Boehner has been telling them that he will start holding immigration votes not long after the filing deadline has passed. This, of course, runs counter to conventional wisdom that says immigration votes in the House will have to wait until 2014.

In response to the news that Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS is funding Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) to the tune of $26 million in 2012, Tea Party Patriots National Coordinator Jenny Beth Martin told Breitbart News that Rove cannot buy his way into the conservative movement. “The old adage 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer' is more relevant in today’s political arena than ever before,” Martin said. “It is not surprising that there are groups we thought were in this fight with us have been shown to have ulterior motives."

In my years working in the computer industry I have encountered many workers on H-1B visas. The most highly skilled among them were of average skill. On H-1B labor condition applications, employers using skills-based prevailing wage claims classified 56 percent of the H-1B workers at the lowest skill level (of four). For those not familiar with the industry, this creates an apparent contradiction. Why do employers crave below-average workers?

Tax documents from Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS show that Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) is largely funded by Rove, ProPublica’s Kim Barker reports. -snip- On its 2012 tax return, Barker reported, the biggest grant Rove’s Crossroads GPS gave to anybody was a $26.4 million grant it gave to Norquist’s ATR for “social welfare.” -snip- ATR spokesman John Kartch and Rove spokesman Jonathan Collegio both declined to answer specific questions from ProPublica about the grant.

-snip- Ball quotes two different pro-amnesty activists as part of the plan pushing for revenge: Frank Sharry of America’s Voice and Joshua Culling of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), Grover Norquist’s outfit. -snip- Ball described Culling as a “conservative,” even though it was just discovered the outfit he works for, ATR, is funded largely by Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS. According to tax documents released by Crossroads, Rove’s group gave ATR $26 million in 2012. Rove is actively working against conservatives nationwide in an effort to stop the Tea Party movement. His funding of Norquist’s organization--which has supported amnesty and publicly...

President of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist heaped praise upon Chris Christie on Wednesday, calling him a “strong voice for conservative governance” who has “moved mountains” in his state. In an interview with Katherine Timpf of Campus Reform, Norquist called Christie “one of the six or seven who could run as a successful governor for the Republican nomination.” -snip- Norquist called Christie a “fine voice for the Northeast Republicans,” and said we must “grade on a curve” for Republican governors who have had to manage divided governments as Christie has.

Americans for Tax Reform, the politically active nonprofit headed by longtime antitax activitst Grover Norquist, raised and spent nearly $31 million in 2012, according to its tax filing for the year -- a new record for the group. -snip- In addition, the vast majority of ATR's funds -- $26.4 million, or 85 percent -- came from Crossroads GPS, the 800-pound-gorilla among conservative dark money nonprofits that are highly politically active and don't disclose their donors. That means that ATR used at least a sizable portion of the Crossroads grant to fund its political ads, even given the fact that it...

The damage done to the Republican ad firm Jamestown Associates as punishment for working for the controversial outside group Senate Conservatives Fund could be even more substantial than first thought. It was originally reported that the National Republican Senatorial Committee would blacklist the company. But that might be just the beginning. Aside from the NRSC, Jamestown has, in the past, been awarded contracts to create independent expenditure ads for groups like the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the Chamber of Commerce. In the campaign world, these I.E. accounts are considered especially lucrative business. But according to...

On its 2012 tax return, GOP strategist Karl Rove’s dark money behemoth Crossroads GPS justified its status as a tax-exempt social welfare group in part by citing its grants of $35 million to other similarly aligned nonprofits. (Here’s the tax return itself, which we detailed last week.) The return, signed under penalty of perjury, specified that the grants would be used for social welfare purposes, “and not for political expenditures, consistent with the organization’s tax-exempt mission.” But that’s not what happened. New tax documents, made public last Tuesday, indicate that at least $11.2 million of the grant money given to...

Students of the GOP establishment take note: new documents revealed by ProPublica, the George Soros-funded "investigative journalism" outfit that supplies free content to media outlets, reveal that Rove's fundraising behemoth Crossroads GPS supplied $26.4 million of the approximately $31 million Norquist's outfit, Americans for Tax Reform, spent in 2012.  That's about 85%. In the corporate world, if one company owns 85% of another, that company is properly called a subsidiary. Grover Norquist, a veteran conservative since his college days, is best known for his group's Taxpayer Protection Pledge, offered to candidates for office, in which they promise to "oppose any and...

Trumpeting the ever-increasing weight of outside political organizations, Karl Rove's campaign groups out-fundraised the Democratic National Committee during the 2012 election cycle, according to a draft tax return obtained Friday by the Wall Street Journal. American Crossroads and its nonprofit arm, Crossroads GPS, together raked in more than $325 million during the 2012 campaign. The DNC, by contrast, raised $316 million, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. -snip- Expenditures for Crossroads GPS included donations to other conservative groups like Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, and a $538,000 salary for its president, Steven Law.

When Mitch McConnell wants to destroy you, you'll know it. The Senate minority leader has declared war against the Senate Conservatives Fund, an outside group supporting his Republican primary opponent, Matt Bevin. But rather than moving on and focusing on his Democratic opponent, McConnell and his allies have trained their attacks on SCF and its allies—with no apparent endgame in sight. The latest salvo came Monday, when National Review published a story that detailed the Kentucky senator's deep displeasure with Nebraska GOP candidate Ben Sasse for being endorsed by the conservative group. McConnell let him know about it during a...

On Tuesday, November 12, Nebraska Senate candidate Ben Sasse walked into Mitch McConnell’s office to clear the air. Contrary to the rumors, Sasse wanted to say, he hadn’t secretly vowed to oppose McConnell’s leadership if elected. In fact, he hadn’t been asked to make such a pledge and would never have even considered it. That was the plan, anyway. As soon as Sasse sat down, McConnell lit into him, criticizing him for working with the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF) as well as for posting a viral YouTube video in which he demanded “every Republican in Washington, starting with Minority Leader...

President Obama on Monday will call on Congress to pass “commonsense immigration reform,” according to a White House official. Obama will speak Monday morning in San Francisco, urging House Republicans to take up the issue as soon as possible. Obama will highlight key principles that must be a part of any bipartisan comprehensive effort, the official said, including continuing to strengthen border security, creating an earned path to citizenship, holding employers accountable and bringing our immigration system into the 21st century. The White House says immigration reform has strong, bipartisan support across the country. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Sunday...