Free Republic

Frustrated with President Barack Obama’s reaction to Russian action in Ukraine, a group of Republican senators said Wednesday they will introduce legislation outlining a more muscular response. “What we’ve seen from the administration is a lot of rhetoric,” Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning. The White House has been dealing “with the situation after something bad has already occurred,” he said. Earlier this week, violence flared up in another area of Ukraine that hugs the Russian border, as the new government in Kiev criticized local police...

The Chatter: WAVE exposes Bevin at cockfighting rally, McConnell hit on jobs comments, Grimes finally weighs in on pipeline Republican U.S. Senate candidate Matt Bevin is again struggling to explain his appearance at a cockfighting rally last month after a local news reporter aired Bevin’s remarks at the event in which Bevin had been asked specifically about cockfighting. WAVE 3 News reporter John Boel went to the March 29 cockfighting rally undercover and got Bevin on video speaking at the rally. Bevin was asked a direct question by American Gamefowl Defense Director Dave Devereaux. Devereaux asked Bevin “Will you vote...

EDMONTON — U.S. Sen. Rand Paul made a visit to Edmonton on Wednesday afternoon for a community forum during which he spoke mostly about health care and the economy and how he proposes to fix problems with each. The stop was one of several he made across the state during the week. After addressing about 30 people who turned out to hear him, the senator opened the floor for questions. One constituent asked him why he came out in support of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Louisville. Paul declined to answer the question publicly, saying he would speak with her in private...

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes announced that she spoke Wednesday with two of the state House Democratic staffers who raised the allegations of sexual harassment against former state Rep. John Arnold. According to the campaign, Grimes talked with Yolanda Costner and Cassaundra Cooper about issues affecting women in the workplace and asked them what to do with the $250 campaign contribution Arnold gave her campaign last year. And the campaign did confirm that Grimes will keep the contribution from Arnold after the conversation with the two women. The press release reads: Alison Lundergan Grimes also asked their personal...

Matt Bevin, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s primary challenger, told a group of Kentucky voters that American workers are less productive than immigrants. “For those who think that all these fifteen to twenty million [illegal immigrant] people are here just to take advantage of us and ride the system, you’re wrong,” he said at a diner in Jessamine, Kentucky, in March. “Most of them are not… but I’ll tell you what, there are more people like that even proportionally that were born here in this country,” he added.

Anxious Senate Republicans are worried party leaders are focusing too much this election year on ObamaCare and not enough on jobs and the economy. The concern among GOP centrists comes as President Obama and congressional Democrats are crowing about a surge in late enrollments and claiming the political winds are shifting around the Affordable Care Act. A growing rift in the GOP was exposed when a group of Senate Republicans recently struck a bipartisan deal to extend unemployment benefits. Neither Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) nor Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) embraced the agreement. Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who spearheaded...

QUOTE FROM HOST: "Tonight I had the honor of co-hosting a conference call with Matt Bevin, candidate for US Senate in Kentucky running against Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in their May 20th Primary. For more information about Matt Bevin, visit www.BevinBrigade.com, follow @MattBevin on Twitter and SHARE this conference call with your family, friends, neighbors and co-workers. To learn more about the desperate tactics on which Mitch McConnell's campaign have spent millions, visit www.MudSlingingMitch.com."

Here is exhibit A of why we don’t trust current Senate leadership to do the right thing if they were to win back the majority; they refuse to block new spending when in the minority. Last week, House leadership decided to pass the “doc fix” bill (H.R. 4302) by voice vote. This bill reimburses healthcare providers for the scheduled 24 percent cut in payments for services rendered to Medicare patients. The bill extends the payments through next March. It also continues some new programs created under Obamacare. They used a hodgepodge of tenuous offsets spread out mainly over the next...

Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) primary challenger Matt Bevin blasts McConnell for supporting a debt limit increase and launching “false attack ads” in a new ad. ADVERTISEMENT It’s the candidate’s first significant statewide broadcast buy, and will also air statewide on cable, according to his campaign. The ad features Bevin speaking direct-to-camera, declaring “after caving yet again to President Obama on the debt ceiling, all that Mitch McConnell can do is run false attack ads.” A narrator goes on to declare that “thirty years is enough,” and calls McConnell “too liberal” and “too long.” McConnell has attacked Bevin in radio ads,...

As I advised you at the time, Big Guy’s bracket picks jinxed Michigan State’s chances of making it to the big game. So here we are, up to the Final Four and sure enough, MSU isn’t one of them. Although it pains me to do so, I feel compelled to report that this leaves BO just 1-5 in his 6 years of Presidential bracket picking. The only WIN came in 2009 when he correctly picked the Tar Heels (I KNOW!) to take the title – back when he still had all his Mojo.So, enough sports, on to more serious matters:...

March 27, 2014 New Bevin ad clads McConnell in Duke gear By Alexandra Jaffe Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) primary challenger, businessman Matt Bevin, is working to make sure McConnell is forever linked with the wrong team in the state’s bitter basketball rivalry with Duke University. Bevin is debuting a new ad during Friday’s Kentucky versus Louisville basketball game that features a cutout of the Senate minority leader bedecked in a blue Duke jersey. It’s a reference to a McConnell campaign video launched earlier this week that mistakenly featured a shot of Duke’s 2010 championship team celebrating their win — a...

When House Republicans penned their Pledge to America in 2010, they convinced American voters they would advance a conservative agenda if they regained control of the House that year. Four years later, what promises have they actually delivered? ObamaCare is still intact, our national debt has grown by $3 trillion, and Republicans have capitulated to Democrats on every issue from the debt ceiling to the budget. Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate have failed conservatives and have failed to keep their Pledge to America. Let’s examine how the GOP pledge has fallen flat.

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Sen. Mitch McConnell's latest campaign video hit all the necessary Kentucky high points: horse racing, bluegrass — and Duke basketball? The campaign was scrambling this morning to remove an online video that features a split-second clip of Duke basketball players celebrating their 2010 national championship. The mistake comes as the basketball-crazy state of Kentucky prepares for the biggest game of the year. Kentucky and Louisville face off in the Sweet Sixteen on Friday night.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Sen. Mitch McConnell's latest campaign video hit all the necessary Kentucky high points: horse racing, bluegrass — and Duke basketball? The campaign was scrambling Tuesday morning to remove an online video that features a split-second clip of Duke basketball players celebrating their 2010 national championship.

WASHINGTON (TheBlaze/AP) — Conservative radio host Mark Levin exploded on Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other GOP leaders on Monday for refusing to stand against “extraneous” funding for the International Monetary Fund currently included in a Ukraine aid bill. He accused McConnell of undermining House Republicans in the fight to pass a “clean” bill that only includes the $1 billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine and other U.S. sanctions of Russia. “[McConnell] delivered more than half of the Republican conference into the hands of Harry Reid and the Democrats, enabling them to gain leverage over the GOP-controlled House and pass...

WASHINGTON (TheBlaze/AP) — Conservative radio host Mark Levin exploded on Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other GOP leaders on Monday for refusing to stand against “extraneous” funding for the International Monetary Fund currently included in a Ukraine aid bill. He accused McConnell of undermining House Republicans in the fight to pass a “clean” bill that only includes the $1 billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine and other U.S. sanctions of Russia. “[McConnell] delivered more than half of the Republican conference into the hands of Harry Reid and the Democrats, enabling them to gain leverage over the GOP-controlled House and pass...

Under increasing pressure because of his support for the Common Core standards, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said Saturday, “Let’s don’t talk about Common Core.” “Let’s talk about standards,” Alexander continued. “Education is not just a problem in West Tennessee. It’s a problem in Middle Tennessee and East Tennessee.” As the Jackson Sunem> reported, Alexander said, “I’d like to see a discussion about standards with no national school board,” continuing to cite an issue called the “national school board” that has never been put forward on either the federal or state level. Alexander is being challenged by conservative state Rep. Joe...

Earlier today we wrote about how Cruz, Lee, Paul, Enzi, and Robertson were all standing together to strip the IMF legislation out of the aid package bill for Ukraine. As I said earlier, the IMF legislation would basically double the contribution of the US to the IMF fund while lessening America’s influence over how that money is spent. So what does McConnell do? Does he stand with the filibuster effort? No, pushes Republicans to vote for the bill, thus making sure to get Harry Reid his 60 votes to pass the bill to prevent the filibuster led by Cruz and...

A top campaign advisor to Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic challenger to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, scoffed at the notion McConnell is "invincible" in a new memo set to be released Friday.... after The New York Times published a lengthy analysis of the unprecedented nature of a potential McConnell loss. The memo delves into the details of why the Grimes campaign believes McConnell is more vulnerable than ever. First, McConnell is devoting precious time and energy to a challenge from the right in Republican Matt Bevin, with the primary on May 20. Hurst also argues Grimes has...

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has a nearly 40-point lead over his primary challenger, Matt Bevin, in a new Republican survey of the Kentucky Senate GOP primary. The survey, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies for the pro-McConnell group Kentuckians for Strong Leadership, gives McConnell 61 percent support to Bevin’s 23 percent support. That’s an increase in support from an early-February independent survey of the race, which showed McConnell ahead by only 26 points. But it’s actually a decrease from the last GOP survey of the race, conducted by Wenzel Strategies at the start of February, which gave him a 42-point lead....