Free Republic

Hands down, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been one of the most controversial pieces of national legislation ever passed by Congress.The nation was told that health care had become unaffordable. Too many Americans lacked access to affordable health care and, thus, either did without or went bankrupt when faced with significant medical expenses. Many Americans were also considered “uninsurable” due to pre-existing conditions. The solution, we were told, was to overhaul the way health care was paid for and to bring the entire operation under the wing of the all-knowing, all-seeing federal government.Between the Senate and the...

Tuesday, 79-year old Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), now serving his seventh term in the Senate, signaled that he and other members of the Republican establishment are likely to encourage a primary challenge to first term Senator Mike Lee (R-UT). Lee upset former Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) in the 2010 Utah Republican primary convention in the Tea Party's first major primary win over a Republican establishment politician. Hatch told the Deseret News and KSL NewsRadio that "[i]t's time now... for Lee and other tea party Republicans to be 'rehabilitated' for refusing to pass a budget bill needed to keep the government...

Dude, they’re feeling it. The RINOs are ready to charge. Assuming they’re successful and a bunch of tea-party incumbents get bounced from the House, it’s pretty much third-party time for grassroots conservatives, right? From Alabama to Alaska, the center-right, business-oriented wing of the Republican Party is gearing up for a series of skirmishes that it hopes can prevent the 2014 midterm election from turning into another missed opportunity. This will not be a coordinated operation. It will be messy, ugly, and prone to backfiring. And if the comeback succeeds, it will be in fits and starts, most likely culminating in...

Well, folks, how does it feel to be called stupid, crazy, extremist, racist, and terroristic for standing firm for values and principles that most Americans have held and continue to hold dear? Such are the rantings coming from liberal media and Washington elites about the Tea Party. Word on the political street is that GOP polling has tanked because Republicans foolishly listened to the wacko Tea Party, led by toxic idiots Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Sarah Palin. So to win an approving pat on the head from D.C. elites and the liberal media, conservative politicians and the Tea Party...

It took a tea party insurrection that disabled the federal government and wrecked the Republican brand, but after months of handwringing, establishment Republicans are preparing to attack ultra-conservative ideologues across red America. From Alabama to Alaska, the center-right, business-oriented wing of the Republican Party is gearing up for a series of skirmishes that it hopes can prevent the 2014 mid-term election from turning into another missed opportunity. But this will not be a coordinated operation. It will be messy, ugly, and prone to backfiring. And if the comeback succeeds, it will be in fits and starts, most likely culminating in...

Hot Air’s Allahpundit and Erika Johnsen have both documented a growing movement to boot Tea Party members of Congress over the next two election cycles. It seems that the business community is behind this conspiracy; horrified over the fact that a rather significant proportion of Republicans in Washington were willing to roll the dice on default. In the aftermath of the government shutdown, which was highly enjoyable, the Republican establishment is striking back – and one of their targets in the Senate is Mike Lee. [In Utah,] prominent Republicans and local business executives are openly discussing the possibility of mounting...

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, plans to follow up the success he found supporting insurgent candidates like Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in the 2012 election cycle by identifying candidates who share his philosophy in the 2014 cycle -- even as some Republicans attempt to marginalize the Tea Party brand. "I got behind Ted Cruz early in the 2012 election cycle, and there are several others who I got behind in the 2012 election cycle, and I anticipate that I'll get behind some in the 2014 election cycle as well," Lee told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. Lee also responded to...

There are many things that annoy me in this world. I get really annoyed when people point with their middle finger. I easily lose my patience when some lackwit tries to explain to me that legalizing marijuana would pay off the national debt. And of course, it really fries my bacon when some maggot infested liberal commie pig wearing an unwashed Che t-shirt calls himself an American. As highly annoying as the above is, there is something that is slowly but surely becoming even more aggravating. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the phrase: "It's the law of the land", especially...

Stop feeding the LMSM trolls! Keep things PRIVATE. Thou shalt not speak ill of thy fellow Republicans! (Reagan). Once again, out in public, but this time not McCain or Ayotte or Graham or Peter King, or... you name it.. we have someone giving their PUBLIC two-cents worth on Republicans primarying Republicans, some having so-called Pharisaical attitudes and so forth. When will they (and now Jeb Bush talking about Ted Cruz) get it through their heads, that they aren't helping the Republican Party by going out in public and feeding the LMSM trolls. If they have a beef with Tea Partiers,...

You Americans are so gullible. No, you won't accept communism outright, but we'll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you'll finally wake up and find you already have communism."~Soviet Premier of Russia Nikita Khrushchev, 1959. The seeds of the war on America's principles and founding values were planted 54 years ago by Russia's leader Nikita Khrushchev, and have found a cherished home in the presidency of Barrack Obama. It was this notion that communism would have a welcome home in the very seat of American power that The Tea Party members across the nation rose in defiance of....

It is hard not to be cynical about the right-wingers’ racket. They promote confrontation in which there is no hope of victory, assail other Republicans when it fails and, along the way, raise a great deal of money and get a whole lot of media attention. There are two things going on here. First, the short-term incentives for Lee to engage in this stunt are obvious. He’s not ever going to be president of the United States and will forever be in the shadow of people like Jim DeMint, president of the Heritage Foundation, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). (Lee...

Sen. John Cornyn has taken a lot of heat from the right for not supporting Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee when they filibustered a House-passed bill that would fund the federal government but defund Obamacare. It was a complicated mess, but anyone who has followed Cornyn’s career knows he has fought against Obamacare from day one. The difference here was a difference in strategy. Cornyn has been in the Senate for 11 years. Cruz has been in the Senate for less than a year. I think Cornyn knew that strategically this wouldn’t work, and he ended up being...

This public bashing needs to stop. Yesterday, I saw on television Ayotte still going at it talking about how this shutdown doesn't need to happen again. Maybe so, but enough of McCain, Graham, Ayotte, Corker, Peter King, etc, airing things out in public. Cruz, last night talked in part abvout McCain dive-bombing House Republicans, how this disunified Republicans, and how non-unity in the House/Senate torpedoed any chance of delaying or altering parts of ObamaCare - and Hannity brought up other individuals. But enough is enough. If they have a problem with someone or something take it to them in private...

Senate Republicans huddled Tuesday to discuss the latest on the fiscal crisis engulfing the Capitol, but two key members of their conference were missing from the lunch: Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah. Multiple senators confirmed the absence of the two senators, who have led the crusade in the Senate to shred the president’s health care law. “I don’t account for their schedules,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) quipped when asked about Cruz and Lee’s absence. Cruz and Lee could become an obstacle to moving quickly on a fiscal deal in the Senate, where consent from all 100...

Sens. Cruz, Lee say they won't block deal By Mike Lillis - 10/16/13 12:38 PM ET Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee said Wednesday that they won't try to block the bipartisan deal to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. "The timing of the vote will make no difference to the outcome," Cruz (R-Texas) said. "I have no intention of delaying the vote." Cruz and Lee (R-Utah) had spearheaded the campaign to attach ObamaCare language to any new budget bills, and had pushed their colleagues to take a hard-line stance. But the pair emerged from a meeting of...

Former Alaska governor and 2008 vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin returns to Iowa in November, TheIowaRepublican.com has learned. She will seek t the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition’s 13th Annual Friends of the Family Banquet on November 9. Utah Senator Mike Lee is also speaking at the fundraiser.Sarah Palin has a new book in the works that she is promoting, and will incorporate that into her Iowa visit. IFFC has not officially announced Palin’s appearance yet, but that announcement is expected later today.The event will be held at the Paul Knapp Learning Center on the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines....

After Republicans drifted for years without a pilot, Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have taken the helm of the GOP, steering their party and its grassroots into a much-needed, head-on battle with the Democrats. On the campaign trail on the way to his win in November 2012, President Barack Obama promised to finish the work he’d gone to Washington to do: “fundamentally transforming the United States.” Things look tough for the right in Washington today, but the reality is these three conservative Republicans, aided by friends in the Senate and the House, have dragged the president’s ambitious agenda to...

ObamaCare is at the center of a rapidly escalating fight that threatens to shut the government down this fall. [WATCH VIDEO]Senate Republicans, including two members of the leadership, are coalescing around a proposal to block any government funding resolution that includes money for the implementation of the 2010 Affordable Care Act.But such a move is a nonstarter for President Obama and congressional Democrats. Republicans have tried this maneuver in Obama’s first term, only to back off later to the chagrin of Tea Party leaders.This time, GOP lawmakers are emboldened by problems plaguing the administration’s ObamaCare implementation. But that zeal...

Veterans from every branch of the military have a message for our government. The message will be delivered in person at 9 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 13, in Washington, D.C. and at war memorials all across the nation. The Million Vet March on the Memorials is a grassroots movement started by five military brats, a term used to describe children of military members, to honor the nation's veterans.

Via RCP. Wait, wait, wait — before you start shaking your first at him, isn’t his point here oddly simpatico with what tea partiers say every day about Beltway squishes like King himself? It all depends on what benchmark you use to define “Republican.” The Republican establishment of the past 10 years has been fiercely interventionist, willing to bend on civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism, and happy to back new entitlement programs like Medicare Part D so long as their guy’s in the White House. Rand Paul, by contrast, tilts towards isolationism, wants to sue the NSA...