Free Republic

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Wednesday named Nick Muzin as senior adviser and deputy chief of staff for strategy, effective Monday, July 14. “Nick’s broad range of experience and networks make him the ideal person to help us craft a positive, forward-looking vision for America and take that message to every corner of the country,” Sen. Cruz said in a statement. “I am delighted to have him on our team, and look forward to working together.” Muzin, 38, an Orthodox Jew, is a physician and attorney, and is currently the director of coalitions for the House Republican Conference,...

Thanks to AG Conservative for that headline. First “don’t ask, don’t tell,” then DOMA, now RFRA: Precisely how many statutes signed by Bill Clinton are the Clintons currently horrified by? It’ll be fun during President Hillary’s administration to try to identify the various laws that Senator Chelsea will be forced to repudiate circa 2036. Part of the reason I was so adamant about including women and girls in our foreign policy, not as a luxury but as a central issue is because they’re often the canaries in the mine,” Clinton said. “You watch women and girls being deprived of their...

“There’s something strange about a Republican primary that’s decided by liberal Democrats.” – State Sen. Chris McDaniel. There was something strange about that primary election between six-term incumbent Republican Senator Thad Cochran and state Senator Chris McDaniel, period! From reports of a McDaniel supporter sneaking into the bedroom and taking a photo of Mrs. Cochran at the nursing home where she resides to the discovery of more McDaniel supporters locked inside a courthouse where ballots had been counted on primary election night, to some folks actually believing a Democrat (former Rep. Travis Childers) could win the Senate seat this Fall,...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)The GOPe has never stooped lower. Not only have they denied that any fraud has taken place (Reince Priebus has kept so silent you can hear a pin drop). Not only did Cochran’s camp lie to black voters about McDaniel taking away their food stamps and make racist allegations about him that scared them. Not only did the camp STIFF the pastor of money they had agreed on and then DENY he did all the work requested in the first place, they are NOW going after investigative journalist Charles Johnson of http://gotnews.com/. Johnson was ready for it. He had let...

An audio interview has surfaced in which the interviewee claims that he was to be paid by the Cochran camp to grease voters in the Mississippi GOP Senate runoff election. The audio interview, which coincides with a separate audio recording and batch of evidence produced by the newly launched GotNews.com, a project by Charles C. Johnson, alleges that the Cochran campaign conspired with a Mississippi Reverend to buy the votes of African American voters, who happen to be democrats. Before I get into the weeds of what is in the audio interview and transcript, which are both below, let me...

Hillary Clinton applauded efforts in a Republican Senate runoff election in Mississippi to reach out to voters outside its usual voting bloc. Clinton said Monday the contest between incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran and tea party-backed challenger Chris McDaniel "was of historical importance because the Republican Party of Mississippi expanded its base." Forced into a runoff election after a GOP primary was too close to call, Cochran's campaign utilized anti-McDaniel sentiment in a traditionally Democratic voting group to sway the tight contest in his favor. Clinton, a likely 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, suggested politicians from all ideological backgrounds could learn from...

Do you know why everyone loves the holidays? It’s because we all have that one wacky uncle that does enough stupid stuff during each family get together to give the rest of us funny inside jokes that last all year. If you don’t know who that is in your family, it’s probably you. In the GOP, it is the tea party. This fringe group has always clung to the edges of the Grand Old Party. Thanks to Barack Obama — ostensibly because of his policies and not his pigmentation — the group was able to cohere into a politically relevant...

Last Tuesday’s GOP primary runoff in Mississippi is turning out to be the most revealing incident in the protracted fight between the conservative grassroots and the GOP establishment. The GOP party leadership has been exposed for their true motives in front of all the party faithful. Over the past few years, we have been told by some of the inside-the-beltway “conservatives” that the GOP schism is overblown, that it is merely a disagreement over strategy. We have also been told that the grassroots have been too purist in their expectations of how Republicans can govern when they only control the...

Hillary Clinton on Monday condemned the Supreme Court decision that found some family-owned corporations cannot be forced to pay for the birth control coverage of their employees, required by the healthcare law. "I think that there should be a real outcry against the decision," Clinton said at the Aspen Ideas Festival. "And there will be many more now — look, many more companies will claim religious beliefs and some will be sincere but others maybe not. And we are going to see this one insurable service cut out for many, many women." The 5-4 ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby,...

Update: 2:34 p.m. EST: Texas Sen. Wendy Davis, the Democratic nominee for governor in 2014, issued a statement condemning the court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby case. “Today’s disappointing decision to restrict access to birth control puts employers between women and their doctors. We need to trust women to make their own health care decisions — not corporations, the Supreme Court, or Greg Abbott,” she said. Abbott, the attorney general and her opponent in this fall election, issued a statement praising the ruling, which is below. Update 1:09 p.m. EST: Former U.S. Solicitor General Kenneth Starr, the current president of...

DALLAS – Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis said Saturday it’s “absurd” to suggest it’s too late for her to overtake Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott in the race for governor Davis, pausing to speak to reporters after a breakfast speech at the Texas Democratic Convention, said her campaign will have the resources to compete with Abbott. He has a substantial war chest, years in the making, and his campaign recently confirmed to the Express-News that he has reserved $10 million of airtime in October ahead of the general election. Davis, however, has raised millions since announcing last year, and observers are...

So Cochran loses the Republican vote substantially, but wins with a Democrat turn-out effort. He won't be punished as Childers will lose to him in November. He will resign in mid-office and a younger "party man" like Reeves or Pickering will be selected to take his place. The Barbour clan (except for Jeppie) have permanent stain on their names, but plenty of cash, so who cares? The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) needs to hear from the voter base and see the results in their fund raising. Next time you get a fund raising letter from them, Mark your return...

From Charles C Johnson: BREAKING: McDaniel campaign is filing legal challenge on Monday. #mssen — Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) June 29, 2014 Charles is a definite MUST follow for those interested in the criminality in the Mississippi election. He has been doing an incredible job covering things. McDaniel tells me: "They aren't going to steal this election." #mssen — Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) June 29, 2014 McDaniel says that he's drawing line in the sand, in it "for as long as it takes for justice to be done." #mssen — Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) June 29, 2014 #McDaniel: "Whatever it...

TRENTON — Democratic state Senate President Stephen Sweeney has been traveling all over the state, pitching his "Sandy Bill of Rights" bill — a tour many see as laying the groundwork for a run for governor. Republican lawmakers who never dared challenge Gov. Chris Christie this month openly opposed a series of tax and fee hikes in his budget, including a tax on e-cigarettes first proposed by the governor. Nobody knows if the Republican governor will prepare a White House run in the next year. But already, lawmakers from both parties have been staking claims and thinking of a post-Christie...

The tea partyers made a serious blunder in Mississippi, costing them a runoff win: They carelessly slipped their magic passion potion to the opposition. The hard rightÂ’s strength comes from the nearly religious fervor that propels its small numbers to the polls at times when the larger numbers are snoozing. In Mississippi, the right woke up the larger numbers. Hold that thought, will you? What had been a race between an old Southern pork-master Republican and an insurgent small-government firebrand was turned into something bigger, much bigger. One sensed Chris McDaniel might be in trouble when Sen. Thad Cochran asked...

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that it’s not the tactics themselves that bother them as much as the attention those tactics are receiving from conservative voters. Says Red State’s Leon Wolf, “If any of these bastards want to avoid the fallout they should go on the record.” According to these conversations [with two Republican Senate staffers], some $800,000 was raised for Cochran by his Senate colleagues after the McDaniel victory in the primary’s first round, largely under the rubric of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. This wasn’t seen as a particularly controversial matter at the...

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) has just unleashed his latest endorsement for re-election. It comes from former Gov. Mike Huckabee. Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and 2008 presidential candidate, has a strong following of social conservatives and activists drawn to his populist political message. "He's been your governor, university president, America's secretary of education. He brought the automobile industry to Tennessee," Huckabee explains in the ad. "Lamar Alexander is now a remarkable senator that Tennessee needs to return to office." (VIDEO-AT-LINK)Alexander has released a series of endorsements in recent days, including that of country music star Kix Brooks and former...

The Republican Party continues to enjoy a vibrant battle between its establishment stronghold and small-government insurgents sometimes described as the Tea Party. Republican establishment political strategist Karl Rove responded to older-than-Methuselah, longtime-incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran’s runoff victory in Mississippi this week with a Wall Street Journal column about how Tea Party groups had “taken a beating” this primary season. The column explained that entrenched incumbents with huge war chests and the backing of the party establishment have won more often than challengers, which is undoubtedly true. It is worth noting that Rove did not mention the tremendous victory local and...

Sarah Palin and right-wing Republicans are calling "shenanigans" over the Mississippi U.S. Senate race this week. (Full disclosure: Whenever someone uses that hokey phrase, I chuckle and think of the "South Park" episode when third-graders denounced ripoffs at a local carnival). Anyway, here's what happened in the Magnolia State, which isn't quite as funny. Establishment GOP U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran bucked the odds and history after a narrow primary loss to Tea Party favorite Chris McDaniel. On Tuesday, the six-term incumbent edged McDaniel in a runoff, buoyed by heavy turnout from African-Americans. The Cochran campaign openly courted these traditionally Democratic...

Last week, a top GOP House candidate in Washington state compared gay marriage to polygamy. "Marriage is something more for religion to decide," Republican front-runner Pedro Celis said Thursday when asked about his stance on same-sex marriage at a GOP candidate forum, the Seattle Times reported. "Is this marriage or not? Polygamy—is it fine or not? It's a religion thing." The National Republican Congressional Committee has backed Celis, a former Microsoft engineer, to run against Democratic Rep. Suzan DelBene in Washington's first congressional district. DelBene is expected to hold onto her seat in November, but national Republicans are trying extra...