Free Republic

Consider this karma avoidance by the soon-to-be-ex-Senate Majority Leader, but Harry Reid’s new act won’t fool anyone, least of all Mitch McConnell. Reid has run the US Senate for the past eight years like a dictatorship, steadily eroding minority privileges to the point where Republicans couldn’t offer amendments or put up any significant resistance to Barack Obama’s radical appointments, unless Democrats forced Reid’s hand on either score. After watching his party lay a historic egg in the midterms — the size of which is still not yet fully known — Reid tried spinning the results as a mandate for the...

If you thought House Speaker John Boehner has had a miserable time trying to govern, wait until you see what incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is about to deal with. The Kentucky Republican achieved his lifelong dream on Tuesday night in a massive victory for his party, and is positioned to move into Sen. Harry Reid's ornate suite in the Capitol when the next Congress convenes on Jan. 3. But it is likely to be a short honeymoon. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the influential tea party firebrand, is poised to make life very difficult for the old-school Kentuckian by...

Senator McConnell holds presser in Louisville

President Barack Obama will hold a press conference at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, press secretary Josh Earnest announced on Twitter. The president will speak in the East Room of the White House at 2:50 p.m., according to a White House notice. The regular press briefing, originally scheduled for 1 p.m., has been canceled. The president will most likely address the midterm election results, which provided a major blow to Democrats as Republicans took control of the Senate and made gains in the House. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who won reelection on Tuesday and will become majority leader...

Open Letter to Mitch McConnell Congratulations on your win. It is commendable that you were able to keep another liberal Democrat from gaining a foothold in the US Senate. For that, you deserve thanks and credit.  Now, though, after the huge Republican win, it's time for you to recuse yourself from consideration for the Majority Leader position.  Unfortunately you have been too divisive and polarizing over the past year.  Your extreme comments against fellow Republicans make it such that you've spent too much goodwill among the whole Big Tent.  Your comments in fact amount to a conflict of interest in...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) argued that Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) decisive victory over Alison Grimes was a referendum on Hillary Clinton as well on Tuesday.

After months on the campaign trail and millions of dollars spent on ads, the polls on this Election Day, Sen. Mitch McConnell has defeated challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes.

Veteran Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas lost his seat Tuesday to a freshman House Republican, putting the GOP a step closer to its goal of controlling the Senate for the first time in eight years. Rep. Tom Cotton's win brightened an already happy night for Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who won a sixth term of his own and was poised to become the Senate majority leader if his party could gain six new seats overall. Cotton, an Iraq combat veteran and Harvard Law School graduate, joined virtually every other Republican nationwide in relentlessly linking his opponent to President...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell won a hard-fought sixth term Tuesday, putting him a step closer to his lifelong dream of becoming majority leader and getting the GOP off to a good start in its goal of taking control of the Senate. Helping his chances was Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito's capture of the West Virginia seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller. Her victory, while not a surprise, gave Republicans the first of six new seats they will need to control the Senate for the first time in eight years...

The Hobson's choice ... Dirty Harry vs. Munch McClownCar

A Franklin Circuit Court judge denied a request from Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes to stop the Republican Party of Kentucky and the campaign for U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell from sending mailers that Grimes called a bullying tactic. On Monday morning Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd denied Grimes’ request to halt the mailing of the fliers which say “the information enclosed contains facts related to a possible fraud perpetrated on citizens across Kentucky.” Within the mailer it refers to statements in Grimes’ ads media fact checkers have criticized, such as a claim that U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell didn’t...

In a last-minute gift to Democrats on the eve of the midterm elections, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has announced his plan to push for Senate Republicans to declare a rightist war against Democrats if the GOP wins control of the Senate. Set aside the campaign pitches of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Colorado Senate candidate Rep. Cory Gardner (R), Iowa Senate candidate Joni Ernst (R), Georgia GOP Senate candidate David Perdue and Alaska GOP Senate candidate Dan Sullivan, who promise to end gridlock in Washington and govern for "all of the people." Cruz says they are all wrong. Cruz...

Some prominent Republicans seem to be feeling their oats, assuming what are sometimes infamously referred to as "RINOs" or Republicans in name only by the Conservative GOP base, eat oats, of course. Mitt Romney is merely channeling Jeb Bush here in an increasingly obvious last-minute GOP establishment gesture to reach out to Hispanics, perhaps especially in Colorado, as we move closer to election day. On "Fox News Sunday, former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) said a Republican-led Senate would pass new, stronger legislation on immigration reform. To be clear, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the GOP welcoming more and more Hispanics into a Right-leaning fold....

McConnell 50%, Grimes 42% Full internals at the link.

LEXINGTON — Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton struck a populist tone in her final campaign pitch for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes Saturday, stumping twice for Grimes days after a new poll shows her trailing U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell. Regardless of survey results that have her 5 points behind the five-term incumbent, Clinton, Grimes and a cadre of Democratic politicians urged a crowd of about 1,400 enthusiastic supporters at Transylvania University’s Haggin Auditorium to volunteer and push Grimes toward an Election Day victory in the face of an all-out advertising blitz. Republicans and outside groups supporting...

LOUISVILLE — U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell started his Saturday before Election Day in Louisville rallying his troops in an effort to get out the vote ahead of Tuesday’s election. At the Best Western across the parking lot from McConnell’s campaign headquarters the five-term incumbent thanked campaign staffers and volunteers for giving up the next few days in an effort to turnout voters on Election Day. “At headquarters we’ve run out of things to do. We’ve raised all the money we can raise. We’ve bought all the TV time we can buy, and radio time. We’ve dropped all the mail pieces...

... The Grimes campaign reacted late Friday to a mailer circulating in Eastern Kentucky that looks like an official election notice, with bold text reading: “Election Violation Notice.” Once opened the mailer lists claims Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes made in a TV ad that have since been rated false by the Washington Post. The mailer was sent our by the Republican Party of Kentucky... The Grimes campaign filed an injunction on Friday afternoon requesting that “both state and federal authorities to investigate what, on its face, appears to be a clear violation of both Kentucky and federal...

Away from the din of the campaign, House and Senate appropriations staffers are quietly laying the groundwork for an ambitious wrap-up spending package in the lame duck. The push is coming in part from Republican leaders, who are making the case that they want to clear the decks for the 114th Congress and the prospect of Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell becoming Senate majority leader. “We need to do an omnibus bill funding the entire government for the rest of the year, and get that whole business behind us, so that come January, [McConnell] will have a clean slate rather than...

Edging closer to his lifelong dream of leading a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate, Sen. Mitch McConnell has been largely quiet about what specific agenda his potential new majority would pursue. "This is not the time to lay out an agenda," McConnell told reporters Friday after an event in Lexington. "But I will say this: Divided government in the past has been pretty effective." "It's never a good idea to tell the other side what the first play is going to be, but I think it's safe to say we'll have a very different direction for the country," McConnell...

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has opened up a five-point lead over Democratic opponent Alison Lundergan Grimes and appears well positioned to win a sixth term, according to the final Bluegrass Poll before Tuesday's election. McConnell leads Grimes 48 percent to 43 percent in Kentucky's U.S. Senate race, with Libertarian candidate David Patterson pulling 3 percent. In a Bluegrass Poll released early last week, McConnell was clinging to a one-point lead, with 44 percent backing him and 43 percent choosing Grimes. The latest poll of 597 likely voters in Kentucky was conducted by SurveyUSA between Oct. 25 and Oct....