Free Republic

Karl Rove denied Tuesday that he said Hillary Clinton had brain damage. "I didn't say she had brain damage, she had a serious health episode," he told FOX News, suggesting that her hospitalization in January 2013 for a blood clot could thwart her presidential ambitions.

In the wake of the 2012 presidential election, Fox News moved quickly to purge itself of its most troubled assets: Dick Morris, unquestionably the worst pundit of the cycle, was pushed out. Sarah Palin, a star fast fading, "parted ways" with the network. Karl Rove, who famously refused to concede Ohio to Obama even after Fox News called it for him, was temporarily sidelined. Rove came back, of course. A top Republican strategist with major political influence, he was too valuable to give up. But now, as the next presidential election cycle gets under way, Rove has once again found...

Over the weekend, Karl Rove repeatedly suggested that Hillary Clinton has had a brain injury, dredging up an early conspiracy theory questioning Clinton's ability to run for president.“Thirty days in the hospital?" Rove told a conference audience, according to Page Six, "And when she reappears, she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what’s up with that.” A spokesperson for Clinton's team responded that her heath was "100 per cent. Period," adding, "Karl Rove has deceived the country for years, but there are no words for this level of lying."

Karl Rove stunned a conference when he suggested Hillary Clinton may have brain damage.*SNIP* The official diagnosis was a blood clot. Rove told the conference near LA Thursday, “Thirty days in the hospital? And when she reappears, she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what’s up with that.” Rove repeated the claim a number of times to the audience. Clinton’s rep said, “Please assure Dr. Rove she’s 100 percent.”

<p>Karl Rove stunned a conference when he suggested Hillary Clinton might have brain damage.</p> <p>Onstage with Robert Gibbs and CBS correspondent and “Spies Against Armageddon” co-author Dan Raviv, Rove said Republicans should keep the Benghazi issue alive.</p> <p>He said if Clinton runs for president, voters must be told what happened when she suffered a fall in December 2012.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Republican National Committee wants to take more control over how the party picks a White House nominee. The RNC was to meet Wednesday in Memphis, Tennessee, to choose members who will effectively set the calendar for 2016's long list of potential presidential contenders. If the party's chairman, Reince Priebus gets his way, the GOP will pick its nominee more quickly than during past contests and have fewer debates in which candidates could criticize each other. The RNC also was expected to put penalties in place for candidates who don't follow the committee's plans. RNC officials described...

It was pretty much a rout for Tea Party/insurgents in yesterday’s primaries, as establishment-backed candidate for the North Carolina Senate nomination Thom Tillis easily exceeded the 40% threshold necessary to avoid a run-off, while incumbent House members John Boehner (OH), Renee Elmers (NC), Walter Jones (NC), David Joyce (OH), and Susan Brooks (IN) defeated challengers from the right. But before concluding that all is hopeless, consider a few aspects of the situation.

The Republican establishment gloated after three underfunded Tea Party challengers failed to knock off incumbent Republicans in primaries on Tuesday while another establishment-backed candidate secured the GOP nomination for Senate in North Carolina. "Next up is that fraud @MattBevin! #GOP,” tweeted Jahan Wilcox, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) who is now the RNC's director of rapid response. (He later deleted it and said his thoughts were his “personal opinions.”) Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) defeated her primary challenger Frank Roche despite a series of high-profile outbursts in support of amnesty. Ellmers was heavily backed by Facebook...

North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis won the Republican Senate nomination in the Tar Heel State on Tuesday evening, comfortably surpassing the 40 percent threshold to win the nomination. His victory ratifies the aggressive strategy adopted by establishment-oriented outside groups, led by American Crossroads, to spend millions on behalf of favored candidates and attack their rivals when necessary. North Carolina was the opening battleground in the fight between the Republican Party's two main factions, and it's a sign the establishment's no-holds-barred strategy is paying off. American Crossroads spent $1.6 million on behalf of Tillis, significantly more than the resources of...

North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis (R-NC), the frontrunner in the North Carolina GOP Senate primary, told a crowd two and half years ago that we must "divide and conquer" people on government assistance. Tillis proposed pitting those who are legitimately in need against those who made bad choices. Tillis made the comments in October 2011 in Asheville, North Carolina. They were reported by local press at the time and are being circulated now by the campaign of Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) whom Tillis is vying to unseat. They were highlighted on MSNBC"s Hardball Monday. "What we have to do...

A new television ad in the lieutenant governors race has a charity demanding an apology. The ad from the David Dewhurst campaign show a series of pictures of Dan Patrick with a tie but no shirt looking as if he’s at a wild party, but a written statement from the Be an Angel Fund reveals that Patrick was literally selling the shirt off his back at a fundraiser to help special needs children.

And yet just when the news is getting good, Rove is calling Silver's whole methodology into doubt. On Wednesday, he tweeted a link to a National Journal column titled "Why I Don't Agree With Nate Silver: Number-crunching Senate prediction models are fun to follow but are not very useful." "Smart piece: may disagree w/ some specifics, but major point is correct," Rove wrote. The major point is that the methodology behind Silver's projections is flawed: "Unlike baseball, where the sample size runs in the thousands of at-bats or innings pitched, these models overemphasize a handful of early polls at the...

SANFORD For months, Republican Thom Tillis’ Senate campaign touted his accomplishments and focused his attacks on Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan, acting like a frontrunner with his eye on November. Now, in the final days before the May 6 primary, Tillis is changing his strategy. Last week, he mailed a flier to voters that attacked his top GOP rival for not paying his property taxes on time. He also debuted a TV ad that trumpets his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. Tillis hit the social conservative issues Saturday in his speech at the 2nd Congressional District GOP convention in Sanford....

Oh, good grief! Karl Rove believes Jeb Bush is “the biggest thinker” in the Republican party today. Rove was asked today if Jeb Bush was going to run for president. “If I were betting I’d say yes. But, here’s the thing. He’s a very deliberate thoughtful guy. He’s the biggest thinker on our side. I’m glad he’s thinking about doing it.” Via FOX News Sunday: (VIDEO-AT-LINK) Here are a few examples of Jeb Bush’s big thinking ideas: ** Illegal immigrants come to US in an “act of love” ** Illegal immigrants are “risk takers” ** Ted Cruz needs to have...

The House could come up with a bill to overhaul the country’s immigration system by August, according to the House’s No. 4 Republican. “I believe there is a path that we get a bill on the floor by August,” Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-Wash.) the Republican conference chairwoman, told The Spokesman-Review last week. An August deadline would resolve the troubled issue months before November’s midterm elections, where the GOP is looking to grow its advantage in the House and pick up enough seats to take over the Senate. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has pushed for a bill and even mocked members...

The GOP needs to adopt one powerful reform: Stop taking “advice” from people who want Republicans to lose. Almost every problem, dynamic, and force within the Republican Party is currently driven (sometimes in obscure ways) by the naïve assumption that the “advice” freely offered by the GOP’s enemies is sound wisdom the GOP should depend upon. Republican insiders fight any nominee or action which the GOP’s enemies criticize. Insiders think that their enemies’ “advice” shows which candidate will have broad appeal. So if liberal organizations, the liberal news media, or Democrats say a candidate is a bad choice or a...

Listening to what Karl Rove has to say about elective politics–or most everything else–is about as inviting as swallowing a few raw eggs. He is so consistently wrong that only the consistently wrong GOPe can stand to listen to him. Half-truths and ignoring reality comprise his inexcusable M.O. Almost before the last bit of confetti fluttered to the floor at David Jolly’s victory party last Tuesday night, Rove was leading the GOP establishment’s charge to “caution against thinking he won because of Obamacare.” Despite Democrat Alex Sink’s support of the mess Barack Obama made of our once great healthcare delivery...

Recently Sen. Charles Schumer made a groundbreaking speech outlining a Democratic Party strategy aimed at the Tea Parties. For the first time, a major figure in the liberal political universe sought to both explain the Tea Parties’ appeal to tens of millions of adult Americas and to project a strategy to break the Tea Party base away from its leaders—at least in the context of election campaigns. Mr. Schumer’s was wrong in his description of the Tea Party movement, however, and his proposed strategy was little more than a campaign statement that would do little damage to the Tea Parties....

In 2 minutes, this video message (linked) explains why Karl Rove, "elite" GOP, the RNC and the RGA, are nervous as chickens in a poultry factory. Common Core outrage is uniting Teachers and Tea Partiers, Progressives and Patriots, Atheists and Believers. ALL parents 1) love their kids 2) hate high stress, robotic testing 3) are revolting over data collection and privacy invasions and 4) once awakened, see that corporate profiteering off students and teachers has taken priority over learning. We are "taking it to the streets", sharing this truth with every non-GOP, non-Conservative, non-traditional primary voter in Georgia. Our outreach...

GOP strategist Karl Rove says he can imagine a Republican candidate in the next presidential campaign supporting gay marriage. The statement from the former adviser to President George W. Bush appears to acknowledge that opposition to gay marriage has waned in some conservative circles. …