Free Republic

I didn't know what a libertarian was when I started reporting. I was just another liberal. I knew the Republicans were icky, and Democrats were more like me -- except they didn't care about debt. I had no idea there was an actual movement of thinking people who want to honor the principles of the Founders -- liberty and limited government. It took me a long time to wake up. Now more Americans have woken up, say Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie, editors of Reason magazine. "Poll after poll show you that Americans are much more fiscally conservative than...

Arguably, one of the biggest accomplishments of supply-side economist Art Laffer in the late 1970s and early 1980s was to get mainstream economists to take marginal tax rates seriously. We all knew that the deadweight loss from a tax is proportional to the square of the tax rate so that, say, doubling the tax rate quadruples the deadweight loss. But, for some reason, economists talked very little about this. And this was during an era when the top federal marginal tax rate on income in the United States was a whopping 70 percent and the top federal marginal tax rate...

There’s a new public enemy No. 1 in Senate GOP circles, and it’s not Ted Cruz. It’s the Senate Conservatives Fund, an organization that used to prop up underdog conservative candidates but now is training its fire mainly on Republican incumbents — rather than Democrats. The group has ginned up anger on the far-right towards Republican senators for refusing to use a government shutdown threat as leverage to defund Obamacare — a campaign that has been good for its bottom line. Since it started engaging in the defund Obamacare campaign, the group brought in the vast majority of the $3.5...

Mike Lee, the senator from Utah, gave a speech at the Heritage Foundation last week that demands attention. The takeaway: Candidates need policy ideas that address the concerns of ordinary voters—and they have to campaign, and win, on those ideas. Lee noted that conservative scholars have a number of imaginative proposals that try to address the breakdown of the family, the rising cost of health insurance and higher education, the lengthening suburban commute, and out-of-control entitlement spending. Read an issue of National Affairs (or The Weekly Standard!) if you doubt him. But Republican officeholders haven’t picked up the torch. The...

Senate Republicans, led by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, are pushing for a federal ban on abortions after the end of the 20th week of pregnancy. … The planned legislation, though, will face many challenges, not only from the Democratic-controlled Senate, but from some Republicans like Sen. Mike Lee, Utah, who has concerns about Congress’ authority to regulate commerce as the law’s basis. …

It’s time for the GOP to apply conservative principles to solve modern problems, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, told an audience at the Heritage Foundation Tuesday. “Progressives have become the party of Wall Street, K Street and Pennsylvania Avenue,” he said. “We must become the party of Main Street, everywhere.” Via RCP, jump ahead to the 53:30 mark to hear Lee’s vision for the future of the conservative movement: Full transcript after the jump… SEN. MIKE LEE (R-UTAH): Thank you very much. It’s wonderful to be back at the Heritage Foundation. It has been quite a month in Washington. It began...

Iowa Republicans hold their annual dinner Friday commemorating the life and career of Ronald Reagan, with Texas Senator Ted Cruz as the featured speaker. Cruz is widely viewed as a presidential contender in 2016. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: As we just heard, Republican Party approval ratings are lower than ever, but that's not stopping Texas Senator Ted Cruz from taking a post-shutdown victory lap in Iowa tonight. Cruz is headlining the state Republican Party's annual Reagan dinner and he's often talked about as a potential presidential candidate. Iowa, of course, holds the first presidential caucus. NPR's Tamara Keith is in Des...

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...