Free Republic

Sources told FoxNews.com that Obama's dissatisfaction with Hagel, as well as a desire to shake up the cabinet following the devastating midterm elections, played a role in the president seeking Hagel's ouster. “Make no mistake, Secretary Hagel was fired,” a senior U.S. official with close knowledge of the situation told Fox News. This same official discounted Pentagon claims it was a mutual decision claiming President Obama has lost confidence in Hagel and that the White House had been planning to announce his exit for weeks. “The president felt he had to fire someone. He fired the only Republican in his...

Instead of his first reaction to Obama's lawless diktats being immediate/automatic resistance, John McCain -like a cowardly father who never stands-up to anyone, then bullies his own family- couldn't turn his guns on the Tea Party, Cruzite GOP base fast-enough... what an %$#@*&: WaPo- Amid the chatter over strategy, it is the tone of outraged rank-and-file members that most worries GOP elders. Ahead of the 2016 presidential election, they do not want to see Republicans tagged by Democrats as hostile toward Latinos and other minorities. “It only takes a couple” of comments for an unflattering narrative to build about the Republican...

Vietnam veteran John McCain began his career in the US army and survived five brutal years as a prisoner of war, years after his release he moved into the world of politics. Currently serving as senior United States Senator from Arizona, McCain is known for his maverick style and straight-talking attitude. In 2008 he was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate alongside his contentious running mate Sarah Palin, losing out to President Barack Obama. Today McCain is reputed for his long-standing criticism of the Obama administration, in particular his foreign affairs and defence policies. McCain has lashed out at Obama...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher laid out the dystopia he believes would have occurred if President Obama had lost the 2008 and 2012 elections to encourage his audience to vote on Friday. Maher addressed those who refused to vote because Obama didn’t keep his promises by stating, “the choice was never between the perfect Obama in your head and the real one who came to Washington, it’s between the real one and the two guys who desperately wanted to beat him so they could stamp America in their image.” Maher then laid out his alternative scenario where McCain and...

At certain moments during the past year’s long and often tedious march to November, the political class, already bored with discussing a GOP Senate takeover most considered nearly certain, started debating a few post-election hypotheticals. With Republicans in control in both the House and the Senate, would the president try again to strike the elusive grand bargain?(No.) Would Senate Republicans retaliate against Democrats for choosing the so-called nuclear option? (Maybe.) Would Democrats filibuster relentlessly, like Republicans did when they were the minority party in the Senate? (Probably not.) Of all the questions about a Republican Senate that hovered over the...

Sen. John McCain (R-Az.) said Wednesday he’s planning on running for reelection in 2016. “We’ve already talked with finance people in the state, we’ve already talked to different groups and organizations ranging from the Arizona Chamber to the Southern Arizona Defense Alliance to build the coalitions we need to build,” McCain told MSNBC News. The 78-year-old, five-term Republican senator, who has at times clashed with Tea Party conservatives, said he fully expects a challenge from the right. “You have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst,” he said to MSNBC. “I definitely think that I would have...

Senators John McCain and Ted Cruz don’t exactly have the best relationship. Cruz has said Republicans like McCain are why their party doesn’t do better, and McCain has not been shy about publicly dumping on Cruz, especially during last year’s government shutdown. And in a new interview with Salon today, McCain wanted to make it clear that the incoming crop of Republicans that will give their party control of the Senate will not be Cruzes. McCain even claimed that a lot of the GOP Senate candidates who won are in the same mold as himself and Lindsey Graham.

Just days after Salon.com published a tasteless screed in which a relatively unknown author attacked the military and insisted that his freedoms were more threatened than protected by the armed forces (a piece delightfully eviscerated by our own Jazz Shaw), this online magazine has the strange honor of publishing an exclusive interview with incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Beyond McCain’s odd decision to give the race and sex-obsessed Salon an exclusive interview, the senator made the even more perplexing decision to obliquely attack a fellow Republican in that interview. McCain spoke with Salon’s...

“And I would imagine from my first glance at her credentials that she would get approved by the Senate. This is a very outstanding young woman from everything that I can tell.”(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain said Monday that based on his first impression, he assumes U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch will get approved by the Senate to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder. McCain called Obama’s nominee and the chief federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York an “outstanding young woman.” “I think elections have consequences and therefore you give his nominees the benefit of the doubt,...

It’s been a career filled with highs and lows, but when John McCain looks back on the closing months of 2014, the former Republican Party presidential nominee and current senator will probably remember the time as one of long-awaited and welcome returns. There were, of course, the results of last week’s midterms, which gave the GOP majority status in the Senate next year and put an end to eight long years of wandering. Once the new Congress convenes next year, McCain’s chairmanship of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee is all but guaranteed. In addition to the Senate majority, McCain...

Seeing its gold-spangled blue flag flown on the barricades of Kiev thrilled the European Union, reviving its self-image as a beacon of democracy at a time of growing doubt and economic gloom. But nearly a year on from the first "EuroMaidan" protests that would topple the pro-Moscow president who had spurned an EU trade deal, some in Brussels are disillusioned by the experience of helping Ukraine. EU generosity in waiving import duties and funding gas supplies from Russia may be being abused, they say.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, in again throwing previous Republican presidential nominees Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney under the bus of his own White House ambitions, needs to brush up on his political history. The freshman senator took occasion on CNN the other day to dismiss growing talk of a 2016 presidential bid of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush by tossing Bush under the wheels along with that trio of losing party standard-bearers, as a means of advancing his own Oval Office fantasies. After insisting he is “a fan” of the son of the 41st president and brother...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) says he will decide on a potential 2016 presidential run "in the coming weeks." He'll do so without the help of a pro-amnesty adviser and former chief of staff who has left his office. "For me, the decision is made based on the following: I have my agenda that I have talked about for more than 4 years, and the decision that I have to make is where is the best place to advance this agenda—as a presidential candidate or continue at the majority in the Senate—that is a decision I will make in the coming...

Sen. Chuck Hagel, who accompanied Sen. Barack Obama on his trip to South Asia and Iraq last week, criticized the McCain campaign for its latest television ad attacking the Democratic candidate. The ad blasts Obama for not visiting wounded troops during his visit to Germany. Obama has said he chose not to cancel a visit to a military hospital there after consultations with the Pentagon, due to concerns that such a visit might be seen as using wounded troops for political purposes. The McCain ad, which contains footage of Obama bouncing a basketball before U.S. military personnel in Kuwait, implied...

Supposedly ol’ Mav himself told the AP yesterday that it’s “very likely” he’ll run but I can’t find that quote in the actual video. Fun fact, though: When the clip was first posted last night, some outfits like Yahoo News titled it, “McCain: ‘Very Likely’ Will Run for President in 2016.” I knew it was a mistake, of course, but for one soaring moment I thought I might have something even better than another Mitt Romney candidacy with which to troll the Hot Air faithful. Ah well. The headline’s corrected now. For now, for the record, he’s merely “leaning towards”...

*SNIP* Come January, McCain will have new found clout to push for that support and promote his muscular foreign policy agenda when he is expected to take over as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. It is a remarkable return to semi-power for the often irascible 78-year-old former Republican presidential nominee — and one the senator is already planning to use robustly, vowing to hold hearings, conduct investigations and "demand answers" from administration officials in order to expose what he calls the "abysmal" failures of Obama's national security policies.

Republican Sen. John McCain discusses Tuesday's elections, his disapproval of President Obama's policies and talk of using executive order to push through immigration reform.

President Barack Obama said Wednesday he would work with Congress on new war powers to fight Islamic State militants and expressed cautious optimism about whether the international face-off over Iran's nuclear program will be resolved — two issues that could prove harder for the White House to maneuver with Republicans in charge on Capitol Hill. Obama spoke at a news conference the day after his party was thrashed by Republicans in midterm elections, leaving the GOP soon to be in charge of both the House and the Senate. When he approved U.S. airstrikes in late September against extremists who have...

Less than a week before Election Day 2014, Democrats in South Carolina finally got what they’ve long been waiting for: proof that dirt on Senator Lindsey Graham does, indeed, exist. No one expected it to affect his re-election, but the glimpse into Graham’s unscripted life was noteworthy nonetheless. The big secret? That the venerable senator from South Carolina apparently has his eye on bigger and better things. The public may or may not be inclined to take Graham at his word when he says that he was just being “earthy” when he told a group of white males in Charleston...

One of the president's chief critics could soon lead the Senate's main military committee. With Republicans gaining the majority in the upper chamber in Tuesday's midterm elections, Sen. John McCain is widely expected to become the next Armed Services Committee chairman in January. McCain, the Republican Party's presidential nominee in 2008, has decades of experience in foreign policy and defense issues in the Senate, where he was first elected in 1986. He also served in the Navy, and he spent more than five years as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down during the Vietnam War.