Free Republic

'You’re a nice guy. That's a problem.  Nice guys are only popular in prison and in the Senate- and for similar reasons.' Today's Republican Party suffers from a paucity of those who can effectively communicate the conservative message. So what a shame I might not be able to vote for one of the few who DID possess that gift... WHAT on God's green Earth are you thinking, dude? Has it yet occurred that you're a DREAM prop for the Democrats here- the hispanic Republican who's marching lockstep with them on a bill that MANY of us see little good in? That...

When I heard the news that the Senate had failed to pass a Universal Background Check, I was at a police seminar on the topic of active shooters. The panelists had agreed that “active shooter” was a poor descriptor, one noting that some attackers use other weapons, such as the blade-wielder in the recent Texas case.

The Senate’s effective rejection of President Barack Obama’s post-Newtown gun control bill robs the Democratic Party of an important tool for trying to regain a majority in the House in November 2014. “Are they serious?” a visibly angry Obama demanded of opponents of the Toomey/Manchin Senate bill. In a late-afternoon announcement outside the White House, the president added that if Congress continues not to pass a gun control bill, “the answer will have to come from the voters.” But without a Senate bill, there’s little chance that vulnerable GOP House members in suburban swing-districts will face the unpleasant choice of...

National Republicans are pulling the plug on Mark Sanford’s suddenly besieged congressional campaign, POLITICO has learned — a potentially fatal blow to the former South Carolina governor’s dramatic comeback bid. Blindsided by news that Sanford’s ex-wife has accused him of trespassing and concluding he has no plausible path to victory, the National Republican Congressional Committee has decided not to spend more money on Sanford’s behalf ahead of the May 7 special election.

March 20, 2013 New York Governor Favors Easing Newly Passed Gun Law By THOMAS KAPLAN and DANNY HAKIM Excerpt... The gun-control law, approved in January, banned the sale of magazines that hold more than seven rounds of ammunition. But, Mr. Cuomo said Wednesday, seven-round magazines are not widely manufactured. And, although the new gun law provided an exemption for the use of 10-round magazines at firing ranges and competitions, it did not provide a legal way for gun owners to purchase such magazines. As a result, he said, he and legislative leaders were negotiating language that would continue to allow...

Not since 1984 and the landslide victory of Ronald Reagan have the Republicans had a more winnable election than the 2012 presidential election. Yet the Republican Establishment managed to lose to the worst and most vulnerable President in modern history, with historically poor approval ratings, unemployment averaging over 8.7% during his entire first term, a stagnant economy and someone who ran the smallest and most absurd of all possible re-election campaigns. Why and how did this happen? In his new book WTF? How Karl Rove and the Establishment Lost...Again, C. Edmund Wright, a frequent contributor to the American Thinker website...

Former vice presidential candidate and current House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., gave a little more oxygen to the idea that he’ll run for president in 2016. “I’m going to make my mind up later,” Ryan said on CNN today, as NBC’s Kasie Hunt noted. “I will give it serious consideration.” That remark goes beyond his comments earlier this month on Fox News. “We look back at it as a very positive experience,” Ryan told Fox News’ Chris Wallace. “We actually enjoyed it. We got to meet hundreds of thousands of people who care so much about their country....

In the immediate aftermath of the 2012 election disaster, the Republican Party grew extremely introspective, with many of its key figures postulating that the party needed to shift leftward if it was to have any hope of future successes. This effort was encouraged in part by the liberal media along with Democrats, who readily understood the long term political hegemony they could enjoy if their opposition wallowed in uncertainty, self doubt, and ambiguity. Mitt Romney, we were told, had ultimately been a bad choice to run against Barack Obama specifically because his support of traditional values and personal responsibility in...

Bill Bolling swears he hasn't decided whether he'll run for Governor of Virginia, but in a mostly one-sided conversation with WMAL's Mornings On The Mall Thursday, the incumbent Lt. Governor sounded an awful lot like a candidate aiming for middle-of-the-road votes. "There are a lot of what I'll call more 'mainstream' Republicans like me that are just not real happy with the current leadership and direction of our party," said Bolling. "I think in this particular race in Virginia this year, there's a lot of uneasiness out there with the candidates of both of the major political parties, so that...

From staff and wire reports Senate Democrats effectively delayed a Republican voter identification bill for another year after Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, a Republican, sided with them on Monday to break a party-line 20-20 tie. Bolling voted for a Democratic amendment that delayed the voter ID changes to July 2014. It was the first tie-breaking vote of the 2013 session since he withdrew his GOP gubernatorial bid last fall, pledging a new independence from his party. Advertisement The bill, sponsored by Sen. Richard H. Black, R-Loudoun, would have eliminated documents such as residential utility bills, current paycheck stubs or even...

All the mainstream country club “Bow Tie” Republicans are shaking their heads and wondering. “What went wrong?” The answer is really as simple as it is overlooked. In 2010, Republicans were swept into control of the House of Representatives and were within a stone’s throw of Senate control. Were it not for a few candidates who did themselves in as well as being done in by the establishment republican types, there may well have been a tied senate. Just two years later, Obama is re-elected and the Republicans lose ground in the House and Senate. What on earth happened? Click...

Mayor Emanuel has released a fiery statement denouncing the National Rifle Association for advocating armed police in about every school. Rahm Emanuel prepared an unusually strong statement, even by his standards. “It’s outrageous and unsettling that the NRA would choose to address gun violence not by taking assault weapons off our streets, but by adding more guns to our schools, " the mayor said in a statement. The statement went on to say "that is not the right answer for our society, our schools and most importantly our children. People across this country, from small towns to big cities, are...

House Speaker John A. Boehner has offered to push any fight over the federal debt limit off for a year, a major concession that would deprive Republicans of leverage in the budget battle but is breathing new life into stalled talks over the year-end “fiscal cliff.” The offer came Friday, according to people in both parties familiar with the talks, as part of the latest effort by Boehner (R-Ohio) to strike a deal with President Obama to replace more than $500 billion in painful deficit-reduction measures set to take effect in January. With the national debt already bumping up against...

Trying to get more stringent gun control legislation through the Virginia General Assembly is something of a losing battle, according to at least two state lawmakers representing Northern Virginia. Sen. Dick Saslaw (D-35th) lamented that he’s tried multiple times to tighten up Virginia’s gun rights, but to little avail. He told audience members of a state legislative forum held at Alexandria’s City Hall that three years ago he introduced a bill after a man shot and killed two police officers before shooting and killing himself. Saslaw said in response, he introduced a bill making it illegal in Virginia to bring...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLaVo66OVF0&feature=youtu.be

Forget Lance Armstrong: Bill Bolling's Ego must have stolen Lance's Dope Stash by Paul Goldman Did you read Richmond Times Dispatch Reporter Jim Nolan's interview with LG Bill Bolling in today's edition of the paper? If Jim doesn't get either a raise or a promotion, then there is no justice in journalism. Did he slip Bolling some Lance Armstrong juice? Do LG's have to pass random drug tests? Bolling better hope not. I have read some stuff in my time, had to deal with a lot of big egos in my time: but I can tell you, without fear of...

John Kerry (search) believes he lost to President Bush because of the video from Usama bin Laden (search) that surfaced just days before the Nov. 2 presidential election. The Massachusetts senator told FOX News' senior correspondent Geraldo Rivera that he believes he lost because the tape may have scared the American electorate. -snip- Kerry went on saying the Bush administration is planning "a right wing assault on values and ideals we hold most deeply" and that diverse opinions are being "eliminated" from the State Department and CIA with the personnel reshuffling, and the Bush Cabinet is being remade to "rubber...

Oddly enough, perhaps the biggest loser in last week’s Republican debacle wasn’t even on the ballot. He didn’t shake a single hand, nuzzle the napes of any newborn babes or promise eager voters pie in the sky or peace on Earth. His name was Karl Rove. And all he actually did was squander a staggering $300 million by backing candidates who turned winnable races into laughable routs, producing tepid ads transforming would-be zealots into couch potatoes and firmly establishing himself as the political world’s pre-eminent empty-suit analyst. Perhaps even worse, he set himself up as the clearinghouse for wealthy conservative...

In an article published in 2001, Jude Wanniski, the author of The Way the World Works, noted that since 1896, only Republican presidential candidates running on “pro-growth” platforms have won. Republicans advocating “austerity” have invariably lost. With the defeat of Mitt Romney, the election of 2012 continued this pattern, with one addition. Republican presidential candidates offering clueless confusion also lose. Democracies tend to evolve two political parties, a party of economic growth and a party of income redistribution. If a credible plan for economic growth is offered, the people will vote for it, provided that it does not involve crushing...

Former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, Mitt Romney's top Hispanic surrogate, is calling for the Republican Party to "modernize" and embrace comprehensive immigration reform in order to survive as a national party. "We need to modernize. Modernization includes diversity. Obviously, immigration reform is part of that process of diversity," he told The Hill on Tuesday. "We are the party of growth, of business, of entrepreneurship, of innovation. We cannot continue to be that without an effective immigration policy." Gutierrez, who chaired Romney's Hispanic Steering Committee during the GOP nominee's presidential campaign, blames Romney's rightward primary shift on immigration for his loss....

Operation Demoralize, the attempt to convince you that conservatism is dead, that you live in a media cocoon, that you are incapable of learning, and that your pundits lied to you, is dominating the media. But are the quick and easy answers — just say Yes to illegal immigration, higher taxes, creeping socialism — based on the reality of why the election was lost? Someone clearly outside the supposed “conservative media complex” suggests that the reasons being peddled for the loss are not accurate, or at least not the full story. Andrew Kohut, head of the Pew Research Center, writes...

Mitt Romney told his top donors Wednesday that his loss to President Obama was a disappointing result that neither he nor his top aides had expected, but said he believed his team ran a “superb” campaign with “no drama,” and attributed his rival’s victory to “the gifts” the administration had given to blacks, Hispanics and young voters during Obama’s first term. Obama, Romney argued, had been “very generous” to blacks, Hispanics and young voters. He cited as motivating factors to young voters the administration’s plan for partial forgiveness of college loan interest and the extension of health coverage for students...

It is a different world, and a different America. Obama is part of that different America, knows it, and knows how to tap into it. That is why he won. the most charitable way of explaining the election results of 2012 is that Americans voted for the status quo – for the incumbent President and for a divided Congress. They must enjoy gridlock, partisanship, incompetence, economic stagnation and avoidance of responsibility. And fewer people voted. But as we awake from the nightmare, it is important to eschew the facile explanations for the Romney defeat that will prevail among the chattering...

The GOP is undergoing the type of re-examination that occurs whenever a party loses. That useful exercise should be guided by facts. Here is some of what we know. The media's postelection narrative is that Democrats won because of a demographic shift. There is some truth to that, but a more accurate description is that Democrats won in a smaller turnout by getting out more of their vote. Tactically, Republicans must rigorously re-examine their "72-hour" ground game and reverse-engineer the Democratic get-out-the-vote effort in order to copy what works. Strategically, Republicans will need to frame economic issues to better resonate...

Nice Losers By Thomas Sowell November 13, 2012 12:00 A.M. Mitt Romney now joins the long list of the kinds of presidential candidates favored by the Republican establishment: nice, moderate losers — people with no coherently articulated vision, despite how many ad hoc talking points they may have. The list of Republican presidential candidates like this goes back at least as far as 1948, when Thomas E. Dewey ran against President Harry Truman. Dewey spoke in lofty generalities while Truman spoke in hard-hitting specifics. Since then, there have been many reruns of this same scenario, featuring losing Republican presidential candidates...

"Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who is battling legal troubles and mental illness, is likely to resign from Congress and face jail time under the terms of a plea deal his lawyer is negotiating with the federal government."

U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill beat embattled Republican Congressman Todd Akin by a overwhelming margin in Missouri's Senate race Tuesday night. With 99% of precincts reporting, the Democratic Senator lead Akin by a whopping 54.7% to 39.2%, according to the Missouri Secretary of State. Akin conceded the shortly before 10 p.m. CST., the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. "Things don't always turn out the way you wanted," Akin said in his concession speech. He ran on a platform that criticized incumbent McCaskill for supporting Obamacare, the stimulus act, and her family's close ties to federal money, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first Black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward Blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not.</p>

This weekend is your last chance to get this yard sign, this customized shirt, these buttons, this magnet, and this mug before election night. All that and more is 30% off right now at the Obama 2012 store—get ’em before they’re gone!

General Motors filed for bankruptcy protection early Monday...

Video at link. In this day and age masculinity has fallen out of fashion though not to the benefit of society. At one time the watch word of a man was encapsulated in Benjamin Disraeli’s famous “Never complain, never explain.” This philosophy would not be recognizable in the current White House where not only the buck does not stop, it can’t even get a security pass. Jimmy Carter exhibited raging testosterone drenched machismo by comparison. Now our whiner-in-chief has produced an ad telling everyone just how freakin hard it is to be president. Savor the self pity: Every president inherits...

Friend -- If you want to wake up on November 7th to four more years of President Obama, and not the alternative, then chip in $5 or more today -- that's just $1.25 for each week we have left. The bottom line is that we're running out of time to get our organization where it needs to be for the final push -- and make-or-break budget decisions are coming up at the end of this week. And, according to our records associated with this email address, you haven't donated to this campaign yet, so, if you've been waiting for the...

Simple, to the point, true.

DENVER—President Barack Obama, stung by bad reviews in his first debate of the 2012 White House race, joked that the "very spirited fellow" onstage with him was "not the real Mitt Romney." Obama also mocked the former Massachusetts governor's pledge to cut government subsidies for PBS as "finally getting tough on Big Bird." "When I got onto the stage, I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney," he told cheering supporters here. "But it couldn't have been Mitt Romney, because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country for the last year promising $5...

Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) reminds Republicans why they were hoping he would drop out of the U.S. Senate race against incumbent Claire McCaskill (D). “I think we have a very clear path to victory, and, apparently, Claire McCaskill thinks we do, too, because she was very aggressive at the debate, which was quite different than it was when she ran against Jim Talent,” Akin told the Kansas City Star on Thursday. “She had a confidence and was much more ladylike [in 2006], but in the debate on Friday she came out swinging, and I think that’s because she feels threatened.”

Mitt Romney is losing the most important election of our lifetime. Don’t be deceived by the polls that show him “within the margin of error.” Don’t put your faith in last minute media-buys from the campaign’s gargantuan war chest. Don’t expect the debates to turn things around. The president may not be an electrifying speaker, but he knows how to demagogue. His message will be: I love the middle class; Mitt Romney wants tax cuts for millionaires and eats children. And, don’t count on the fact that public opinion is against Obama on almost every significant issue. (At no time...

Today, on Fox News Sunday: Video at Site

Al Gore 'Mostly at Peace These Days with Losing the Presidency in 2000' Some weeks Mr. Gore heads to San Francisco, where he has a luxury apartment at the St. Regis tower, to work on venture capital projects or visit his new girlfriend. And some nights he checks into the Regency in New York,

<p>COMMERCE, Mich. — Did Mitt Romney make a birther joke?</p> <p>It sure seemed like it Friday morning as he made remarks before a crowd of more than 1,000 here in Michigan, the state where he was born and raised.</p> <p>“I love being home, in this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born,” Romney said as his wife, Ann, and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) stood next to him on the podium.</p>

Embattled Senate candidate Todd Akin just told reporters in Chesterfield that he is staying in the Senate race against Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill. Akin repeated the kinds of statements he'd made previously to national media, asserting that he's never had the support of the Republican party establishment anyway. [...]

I am supporting THE Missouri pro-life candidate with something when my S S comes in this month; Americans who desire anti abortion candidates should do the same. Remember we ALL will stand before GOD and give an account for our votes. Todd Akin for Senate The deadline came and went on Tuesday for Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin to drop out over an incorrect comment he made about rape. The Republican establishment put unprecedented and intense pressure on Todd to quit, including five current and past Missouri Senators. But in an exclusive interview on my radio show, Akin said he’s...

Summary: Pathetic community organizer talks with radio talk show hosts at KOB FM in New Mexico.

Friend -- It's easy to look at the attacks, smears, and lies being told about President Obama and his record and say, "Come on, that's ridiculous. No one could possibly believe that." Trust me: You and I learned the hard way eight years ago this August that in the new world we're living in -- one with 24-hour news cycles, the internet, blogs, the echo chamber, and now the new Citizens United-fueled Republican money machine -- even completely baseless attacks can stick if people don't call them out quickly enough. No matter how self-evidently false the attacks are, or how...

Rumor has it Mittens has 'made his decision'- and it is lame Uh, HELLO! Anybody on Team Romney remember boring Republicans losing elections they should have won like Gerald Ford, Bob Dole, and GHW Bush? Look in the tapes, Mitt... you could use some help... And Tim Pawlenty makes those guys look like Johnny Carson! How bout the TEA PARTY Mitt- couldn't throw us a bone, for chrissake? WHY NOT Sununu... West... Rubio... or Bachmann? Yeah, things look good for us right now, what with Obama blowing $100M on negative attack ads to little or noone effect, but are you...

Twenty years ago, Republican President George Herbert Walker Bush gathered the nations of the world in Rio to confront the challenge of global climate change. Two decades later, the challenge is more real, and the damage of climate change more pervasive, but we are further behind than ever in addressing the issue. With each passing day, the danger and the urgency only grow. Promises of action from both political parties have been replaced by a conspiracy of silence. Conventional wisdom tells us that the chances of Congress acting on this issue is rapidly approaching zero. How dramatic and sad that...

Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill’s three leading Republican challengers all now earn 50% or more of the vote in matchups with her. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Missouri Voters shows former State Treasurer Sarah Steelman with the widest lead. She’s ahead of McCaskill by 12 points, 51% to 39%

President Obama lost more than 40 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s Kentucky Democratic primary to the “uncommitted” option — the latest example of the incumbent president failing to win votes in an uncompetitive primary. With 99 percent of precincts reporting in the Bluegrass State, Obama led “uncommitted” just 58 percent to 42 percent. Obama trailed in more than 60 Kentucky counties. It was just the latest episode of the president taking less than 60 percent of the vote in a primary this year. He ceded 41 percent of the vote in West Virginia to an incarcerated man in Texas...

For the second consecutive year, the Democrat-controlled United States Senate has unanimously rejected President Obama's 2013 budget.  The final vote was 99-0, making the the running two-year tally 196-0.  This move follows the House of Representatives' 414-0 rebuke of the same fiscal blueprint earlier this year.  Astonishingly, not a single Senate Democrat has voted in favor of any budget for three years, even as they refuse to offer a plan of their own.  Democrats have claimed that three fig leaves mitigate this embarrassing spectacle:   (1) "The Senate has already passed a budget!"  False. The Senate has not passed a...

President Obama's budget suffered a second embarrassing defeat Wednesday, when senators voted 99-0 to reject it. Coupled with the House's rejection in March, 414-0, that means Mr. Obama's budget has failed to win a single vote in support this year. Republicans forced the vote by offering the president's plan on the Senate floor. Democrats disputed that it was actually the president's plan, arguing that the slim amendment didn't actually match Mr. Obama's budget document, which ran thousands of pages. But Republicans said they used all of the president's numbers in the proposal, so it faithfully represented his plan. Sen. Jeff...