Free Republic

Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano today, asking her to halt deportations of immigrant students who could earn legal status under legislation they have introduced called the DREAM Act (S.729). The DREAM Act is a narrowly tailored, bipartisan measure which would permit undocumented students to become permanent legal residents if they came here as children, are long-term U.S. residents, have good moral character, and attend college or enlist in the military for at least two years. The DREAM Act would allow a generation of...

I reported the other day that the Young Guns Network, a group led by two former top aides to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, is spending $100,000 in the primary between Sen. Richard Lugar and state treasurer Richard Mourdock in a bid to protect the Indiana incumbent - and here's what some of that mail looks like. A lit piece that the YG Network dropped focuses, as they'd said it would, on energy policy - but it is targeted to non-Republicans, as it reminds voters that Indiana's GOP primary is an open one in which Democrats and independents can vote.

Indiana treasurer Richard Mourdock warned that the possibility of U.S. bankruptcy will push the country the way of Nazi Germany during a speech on Saturday. "The people of Germany in a free election selected the Nazi party because they made great promises that appealed to them because they were desperate and destitute. And why is that? Because Germany was bankrupt," Mourdock said to a crowd gathered at the Indiana Republican Convention on Saturday... The term-limited Mourdock made his remarks as part of a farewell speech...

Vox attempts to explain the media narrative of the day—that "the Tea Party will lose three primaries"—but this is a subject that defies simple Voxplaining. Here was the original lede: After some Twitter-shaming, the article has been edited and the "Tea Party" candidates are now called "right wing." That's a blander term that covers basically everyone who irritates the Republican Party's establishment. Still, the back-of-hand calculation that "the GOP would control the Senate today if not for the Tea Party" has never seemed right to me. Below, I've ranked the candidates mentioned by Vox. No. 5 had the least claim...

Former Sen. Richard Lugar, a Republican, has given the maximum amount of money allowed under federal campaign finance laws to a candidate who hopes to help Democrats retain the Senate in the 2014 election. Michelle Nunn used the $5,000 donation to appeal to conservative Georgia voters. "I am immensely honored and grateful for Senator Lugar's generous support in this race," she said. "Both in the Senate and in the international community, Senator Lugar's collaborative approach made us safer and moved our country forward. We need more leaders like Senator Lugar -- not less, and I will strive to follow this...

Karl Rove's American Crossroads has started a new group to make sure the 2014 Senate races produce zero Todd Akins. But it turns out some conservatives like Rove less than Akin. -snip- The Senate Conservatives Fund's Matt Hoskins told Politico the Crossroads group was the "Conservative Defeat Project." Free Republic posters mocked "Tokyo Rove." On Breitbart.com, Ben Shapiro called Rove and his cohorts, "The Bush insider team that helped lead to the rise of Barack Obama." RedState editor Erick Erickson said the Conservative Victory Project was sure to pick losers. "I dare say any candidate who gets this group’s support...

The National Republican Senatorial Committee had a rotten track record in 2012. But now they’re looking to get more deeply involved in picking candidates at the state level, hoping to foreclose Tea Party primary challengers like Richard Mourdock (R-IN). “There’s always going to be fundamental dislike of the national party coming to a local or a state race and saying, ‘This is who we want to pick,” Keli Carender of Tea Party Patriots told The Hill. The NRSC pulled out of several races this cycle, dooming several candidates to less-than-full financial support...

National Review reporter Robert Costa talks to an unnamed Mitt Romney adviser who indicates there are a lot of hard feeling between Romney’s inner circle and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie over the latter’s embrace of President Obama after Hurricane Sandy: Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, the adviser adds, is persona non grata in Romney’s inner circle. “He went out of his way to embrace the president during the final week of the campaign,” the adviser says. “It wasn’t necessary and it hurt us. Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, and Chris Christie undermined the Republican message.” Christie, of course, had...

I’ll have more in the morning, but my quick thoughts. Of course it was a bad defeat tonight.  Let’s not kid ourselves. We had a chance to stop the decline, and we didn’t. We held the House pretty strongly, so that’s good, and a reflection that candidates and ideology matter.  We nominated candidates at the District level who could make the case; we didn’t make the case at the national level.  It also looks like we did well in state races. Wrong lessons will be drawn from the Senate races.  We nominated a moderate who lost in a Wisconsin which rejected...

INDIANAPOLIS — Representative Joe Donnelly, a three-term Democrat, claimed victory on Tuesday night in the race for an open Senate seat, beating Richard E. Mourdock, the Republican nominee who had been on the defensive since he said in a debate last month that if a woman was raped and became pregnant, that was “something that God intended to happen.”

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) predicted Monday that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney would carry the state of Pennsylvania, pushing back against Obama campaign adviser David Plouffe's suggestion that GOP efforts in the state were a "desperate ploy" to find an alternative path to 270 electoral votes. But Toomey noted that in 2010, Republicans swept statewide offices in Pennsylvania, and he predicted a similar electorate for Tuesday's presidential vote. "If you take a look at what happened the last time Pennsylvanians went to the polls, which is 2010, Republicans swept," Toomey told CNN on "Starting Point." "I won a statewide office....

Richard Mourdock--the Indiana Republican Senate candidate who sparked a controversy during a debate last month when he said he opposes abortion even in the case of rape because "it is something that God intended to happen"--is now trailing Democrat Joe Donnelly by 11 points, a new state poll shows. According to the Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll released on Friday, Donnelly leads Mourdock 47 percent to 36 percent among likely voters.

WARNING: this post is going to be oh-so-very-triggery for victims of rape and sexual assault. I am not kidding. Dear certain conservative politicians:Hi! I’m a rapist. I’m one of those men who likes to force myself on women without their consent or desire and then batter them sexually. The details of how I do this are not particularly important at the moment — although I love when you try to make distinctions about “forcible rape” or “legitimate rape” because that gives me all sorts of wiggle room — but I will tell you one of the details about why I do...

The Democrat party has staked its position on abortion, firmly planting its feed in blood-soaked soil. Common ground is not, nor has ever really been, a genuine goal of the party. It proudly celebrates its embrace of an industry that kills over a million innocent unborn children every year and wounds countless women and men in the violent process. Liberal activists will parade around as gigantic vaginas, publicly recite explicit lines to pro-statutory rape “The Vagina Monologues”, wear t-shirts proclaiming “I Had An Abortion”, support partial-birth abortion, and stand with the abortion chain that refuses to report rape. But they’re...

Honestly, I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. In a Tuesday night debate, Richard Mourdock, the Indiana Republican running for the U.S. Senate made what turned out to be a controversial statement about abortion. “I struggled with it myself for a long time,” he said, “but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” Mourdock made the horrible mistake of telling the truth about what he believes. He actually believes that abortion is...

The controversy over comments made by U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock reveals the undeniable ugliness of American politics. At the same time, the media firestorm underscores the importance of getting the pro-life position right — and expressing it well. Mourdock, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Indiana, was debating his opponent, Rep. Joe Donnelly, this past Tuesday night, when the issue of abortion emerged. Both candidates claimed to affirm that life begins at conception, but Mourdock called for the end of abortion on demand. He then extended his remarks with these words: “This is that issue that every...

Attempting to read the divine will is a notoriously perilous enterprise, all the more so in the middle of a hotly contested Senate race. Richard Mourdock, the Republican nominee from Indiana, has come to appreciate this fact since answering a debate question about his views on abortion in cases of rape. “I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” Mourdock was not saying that God...

EVAN MCMORRIS-SANTORO OCTOBER 24, 2012, 11:01 PM 8102 If Mitt Romney was hoping the Richard Mourdock story he’s deeply entwined in would go away fast, he apparently didn’t get the memo to one of his top surrogates. Just as Democrats and the Obama campaign began amping up their effort to highlight Romney’s ties to Mourdock after the Indiana Senate candidate uttered his claim that pregnancies caused by rape are “something that God intended to happen” — and Romney and the Republicans worked to put the moment behind them — John McCain sat down with CNN to throw a wrench in...

After a USA Today/Gallup poll showed women in swing states thought abortion the top election issue, CNN hyped the news and cast a wary eye toward "controversial" Republican positions as the possible catalysts. Five days later, however, Gallup reported that, nationally, abortion is near the bottom of importance among voters. CNN hosts Erin Burnett and Anderson Cooper led their October 18 shows with the swing state poll, and anchor Carol Costello touted it the next morning. Costello wondered if "controversial" statements by certain Republicans were to blame for women suddenly treating abortion with utmost importance. "And that has more than...

Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock is standing by his statement that when a woman becomes pregnant during a rape "that's something God intended." He says some people have twisted his comment. Mourdock said in a news conference Wednesday that he abhors any sexual violence and regrets it if his comment during a debate Tuesday night left another impression. Mourdock, who's been locked in one of the country's most expensive and closely watched Senate races, was asked during the final minutes of the debate whether abortion should be allowed in cases of rape or incest. "I struggled with it myself...