Free Republic

Blending a muscular foreign policy with a combative domestic agenda, Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday told young conservatives the end of the Obama era will mean a “return of freedom to this country.” Speaking to the Young America’s Foundation in Washington, the Texas Republican reiterated his opposition to Obamacare, the Democrats’ disastrous health care reform law, and tried to channel President Ronald Reagan in urging a tougher American response to Russian machinations in Eastern Europe. “Mr. Putin, give back Crimea,” Cruz said, echoing Reagan’s famous “tear down this wall” to the Soviets in Berlin in 1987, according to Business Insider....

Other countries may turn away desperate children. But the United States should aim higher. If a child showed up at your doorstep, begging for help, what would you do? Most Americans, I suspect, would offer help, even if that meant simply calling the police, who would, hopefully, ascertain whether the child was really in danger. But a lot of Americans who would respond to such a scenario with compassion also believe that America should simply shut its door to desperate refugees. I would suggest that a moral nation has an obligation to come to the aid of children who are...

History tells us the “six-year itch” is a very real thing, and there’s little Obama’s Democrats can do to stave off a big loss this November.Time has been cruel to many once-revered political assertions. No, all politics is not local. No, the road to the White House does not lead through New Hampshire. The “solid South” hasn’t been a solid Democratic redoubt since 1944; “rock ribbed Republican” New England has yielded a grand total of four electoral votes for the GOP in the last six Presidential elections. If you’re looking for a truism that remains true, then reach out and...

Nance Pelosi takes crossing the aisle to the extreme …Rep. Tom Marino (R-PA) certainly did hit a nerve to say the least when he addressed the House regarding the debate on the border funding bill Friday night. Marino called out former Speaker of the House Nanncy Pelosi why when Democrats had control of the House, Senate and White House they did nothing about the border issue, but now with to make it a political issue. Needless to say, San Fran Nan then did something she never does, she came across the aisle. However, it was to confront Marino. After Pelosi...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the weekÂ’s top news, including the struggle on Capitol Hill to find a resolution to the political division on the border crisis before Congress leaves for August recess, as well as how these events will affect the November election, plus the outlook for ending the war between Israel and Hamas. (AUDIO-AT-LINK)TRANSCRIPT JUDY WOODRUFF: In Washington, House Republicans were racing to pass something on the border crisis after a day of confusion and chaos on Capitol Hill Thursday. For a taste of what went on...

House Republicans looked set to pass a bill on Thursday aimed at addressing the crisis on the southern border. After being revised repeatedly in order to appease conservative members who thought the bill did not go far enough, the leadership appeared to have settled on a final version which enjoyed broad support. The package even had the backing of moderate Democrats like Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX). “GOP leaders went to great lengths to secure passage by allowing a separate vote on a measure that would block Obama from any further executive action to stop the deportation of undocumented immigrants brought...

In the short term, the House GOP’s failure to pass an emergency immigration bill on Thursday over tea party opposition was another embarrassing moment for Speaker Boehner in a growing list. But the political damage may be limited: Americans tend to pay little attention to process stories in Congress, and the 2014 elections haven’t been particularly focused on immigration. Something Americans do pay attention to, however, are presidential elections. Here’s where this week’s border skirmish starts to look more significant. The key player in this drama is Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who has been working to corner the market...

First-term senator wielding such influence in House is sign of ongoing tumult in Republican Party.The beginning of the collapse of House Speaker John A. Boehner’s border bill came Wednesday evening, when Texas Sen. Ted Cruz gathered more than a dozen House Republicans at his office in the Dirksen building on Capitol Hill. It was there, as Boehner (R-Ohio) held his own meetings on the other side of Constitution Avenue, that Cruz heard that the speaker didn’t have enough votes — and realized that if his House allies held firm, he could rupture the fragile coalition supporting the measure. Around the...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Polling data compiled by Tea Party Patriots and provided exclusively to Breitbart News shows that a majority of Republican voters think Republicans standing strong on immigration is more important than repealing Obamacare, getting to the bottom of the Benghazi or IRS scandals—or anything else for that matter. When asked by TPP’s pollster which issue they think is the important for Republicans in Congress to deal with, 34.6 percent of GOP voters said stopping the flow of illegal immigrants across our southern border. Stopping Obama’s “illegal overreach” with executive power came in a distant second with 24 percent of GOP voters...

Instead of tossing out a lot of comments about how dumb Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee is, I’ll just link to this. Sheila Jackson-Lee might be the dumbest person in congress. She might even be the dumbest person outside congress. If there were ever a global championship for idiots, the country could send her there. And leave her there; because unlike Lassie, she wouldn’t be able find her way back on her own. In February, Congress was debating federal spending. And Sheila Jackson-Lee got up to make her contribution denouncing a Pepsi commercial as racist. Other things that Jackson-Lee has denounced...

At a Christian Science Monitor breakfast Wednesday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said President Barack Obama's lawless executive actions are not high crimes and misdemeanors worthy of impeachment. "I see this as sort of a ridiculous gambit by the president and his political team to try and change the narrative, raise money, and turn out their base for an upcoming election that they feel is not going to go their way," Ryan said, according to the Wall Street Journal. "[Obama's executive actions do] not rise to the high crime and misdemeanor level." However, as Andrew McCarthy, the former federal prosecutor and...

Cruz control, indeed. Taking 41% of the vote, Ted Cruz is your new primary leader, taking over from Scott Walker who finished in second at 15%. Rick Perry, Rand Paul and Mitt Romney round out the top 5.Cruz also won the second choice vote, although by a much smaller margin, edging Walker and Perry. Bobby Jindal and Ben Carson round things out.Cruz, Walker, Perry, Jindal and Carson are the most “acceptable” among the candidates posed.As to the most important issue, readers believe general election voters will be most interested in the economy, followed by immigration, health care and foreign policy....

You gotta be kiddin' me!!!! ********************************************************* Friend, We’d never doubt you. Throughout the year, you’ve heard from Republican figures – elected officials and other organization heads – asking you to contribute to various campaigns and causes. It’s easy to get frustrated. Your past support is beyond question; through thick and thin, even when Washington has failed you, you’ve stayed true to the cause of building a better future for our country. This is a historic election and we’ll all participate as we can. For some that will mean making phone calls every weekend or walking neighborhoods with friends – for...

The Texas senator convinces all of his enemies to praise his intellect. Here's why they're wrong -- and should stop. Even Ted Cruz’s critics seem to concur on one point: whatever else you might say about him, the man is very smart. Mother Jones magazine has called him the “thinking man’s tea partier.” Josh Marshall, in a mostly withering assessment, made the same obligatory concession to his being an “incredibly bright guy.” Jeffrey Toobin’s recent, ostensibly critical New Yorker profile of Cruz is full of quotes about his being “the smartest guy in the room,” his “sophisticated” constitutional views, and...

Sick of the “media filter”? Have $99.95 to spare? Sarah Palin has the answer with The Sarah Palin Channel, a new Web site full of news, videos, chats and exclusive insights into the life of the mamma grizzly. This new venture is the latest attempt to capitalize on Brand Palin, which has been through several iterations over the years. In fact, Palin has a remarkable ability to reinvent herself, both in politics and the media, when a venture comes to a halt. Here are nine times that Palin has managed to turn her hand at a new venture. 1. Mayor...

Hot Air Presidential Survey After you click Submit the page may appear blank, but there should be a confirmation message at the top of the page. If you scroll up and see it, your votes have been received... ---snip--- ***** Polls to FReep on candidates for 2016 and issues. Please hurry, they usually close these pretty quickly,

Representative Raul Grijalva (D., Ariz.) thinks that President Obama should pursue his immigration goals unilaterally, even if it hurts vulnerable Democrats in the 2014 midterms. “That’ll always be the case,” the Congressional Hispanic Caucus co-chair told National Review Online when asked if Democrats were still nervous that the border crisis had turned Obama’s expected orders into a political liability. “You’ll always have members whose political vulnerability they tie entirely to immigration,” Grijalva said. “We didn’t make progress when we were in the majority because we were being protective of those — on immigration reform — we were protecting those members....

(FAKE COLLAGE PHOTO AT LINK) Our divisions are phony: There's broad agreement on more issues. Here's how we convert the Tea Party. Elizabeth Warren’s rock star reception at Netroots Nation came as a surprise to absolutely no one, but not so her popularity as a draw for red state Democrats running for Senate, like West Virginia’s Natalie Tennant or Kentucky’s Alison Lundergan Grimes. Yet, there shouldn’t be anything surprising about Warren’s broad economic populist appeal. It was, after all, the foundation of Democratic Party power from 1932 through 1968, a period in which Democrats won seven of nine presidential elections...

Forgive South Carolina voters if the looming 2016 presidential contest is giving them a strong sense of deja vu. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is leading the Democratic pack among this state's voters, according to a new Palmetto Politics poll, while former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is receiving the most love here on the GOP side. "I think it's hilarious," College of Charleston political scientist Gibbs Knotts said. "This is not 1992 all over again, but we've still got Bush and Clinton. Of course, we're talking about a different Bush and a different Clinton." About one-third of 1,000 likely...

While the country has become more liberal in some ways, the Republican Party has moved to the extreme right, and the Democratic Party has filled in the vacuum in the middle by also moving to the right on many issues. As a consequence, many people who previously considered themselves in the middle are finding that the current views of the left are closer to their views. Thomas Ricks, who wrote Fiasco, and excellent look at the Iraq War, described why he moved to the left at Politico: Disappointment in the American government over the last 10 years. Our wars in...