Free Republic

Much has been made of the fact that when losing Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) leaves office in January, Louisiana will not have a Democratic statewide elected official in office for the first time since the 1870s. The Republicans who occupy all of the Pelican State’s high offices are in good company; Republicans now control every U.S. Senate seat, legislative chamber, and governor’s mansion across the Deep South – from Texas to the Carolinas. This condition is giving some Democrats, loyal to the party for whom the term “Solid South” was coined, indigestion. The best example of this phenomenon is an...

For Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the issue of sexual assault on college campuses is personal. During his years at Princeton University, Cruz spearheaded efforts to fight date rape at the school. In an exclusive interview with Business Insider, he said his focus on the issue was in part inspired by a dark chapter in his family history. "When I was in student government in college, protecting student safety was a real priority, and no student should ever have to face the threat of sexual assault," Cruz said in an email to Business Insider. "In my own family, my aunt experienced...

In the minority, Republicans did not have responsibility for governance. However, with a few defections, as we saw in the 2013 shutdown, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) could start a rumpus, delay business, get attention and decry his fellow Republicans’ weakness when his own plots blew up. Come January, he will have a new challenge: remaining relevant. Cruz will not be the most hawkish Republican, even among the potential GOP presidential candidates. Recall that he favored changes to the National Security Agency that would have decimated the program and a “reform” in military investigations of sexual assault claims that would have...

Stand With Hillary, a group focused on getting Latino voters and working families excited about the possibility of a Hillary Clinton presidential run, released a music video on YouTube last month. YouTube is basically the debutante ball where all outside groups announce they have arrived, with varied success. The music video has been online since November 16 has been viewed no less than 300,000 times. Hillary boosterism is a crowded field, as there are already Clinton 2016 groups that travel the country in a bus and sell branded Mason jars and sell many, many paintings with Hillary Clinton's face on...

Jeb Bush might or might not run for president in 2016. If he runs, he might or might not emerge as a winner. But his formulation for how to think about waging a successful presidential campaign suggests he already is ahead of some of his potential competitors — in both parties. Bush, the former governor of Florida, spoke last week at a Wall Street Journal conference in Washington. In an interview conducted by Jerry Seib, the Journal’s Washington bureau chief, he said that anyone running for president should be prepared “to lose the primary to win the general [election] without...

With Mary Landrieu exiting the Senate, the usual rounds of finger pointing and recriminations have already begun. In the eyes of her supporters, the reasons are numerous and obvious. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the unpopularity of the President or the issues she espoused. No, the only reason that a Republican will occupy that seat next year is that the South is full of hateful, bigoted, stars and bars waving racists and homophobes. This, they will claim, is the result of an ongoing process which began simmering after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,...

Prominently featured on Representative Steve King’s congressional website are what he calls “illegal immigration stories” that tell of undocumented people, mainly Hispanics, wreaking havoc in America: killing, robbing, kidnapping, trafficking in sex and drugs. As the face of the opposition to comprehensive immigration legislation in Congress, King has long used fiery rhetoric to argue for deporting all 12 million undocumented residents and fortifying U.S. borders. Now, the Iowa congressman’s high-profile role in the debate over President Barack Obama’s executive order on immigration threatens Republican leaders’ efforts to rebrand the party as more friendly to Hispanics, while his effort to block...

Since 1952, nearly every battle for an open Republican presidential nomination when there has been no Republican incumbent running for re-election has followed two dependable storylines. First, a year before the party convention, the GOP voters have settled on a front-runner and then, with the only exception being former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (who, before he self-destructed his campaign in 2008, led in the 2007 polls), 12 months later, nominated that early front-runner. Beginning with Dwight Eisenhower in 1951 — followed by Richard Nixon in 1959 (and again in 1967), Barry Goldwater in 1963, Ronald Reagan in 1979, George...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC: Apparently back then when Romney was thinking of putting [Chris Christie] on the ticket when he was running, when he was running, he discovered there were some problems, alright? Do you think he might use those problems against him next time? DAVID CORN, MOTHER JONES: Well, that opposition book is rather thick. If Romney doesn't use it, somebody else will. MATTHEWS: And therefore -- but I keep thinking Romney is going to be the nominee after all this is over. CORN: No. MATTHEWS: Look, I'm pretty good at this. CORN: No. No... He's not going to run....

For some reason that I should probably determine one day, I've always found internal disputes with the conservative movement/Republican party somewhat more interesting than internal disputes within the liberal movement/Democratic party. Perhaps it's because, as a liberal, I get a little Nelson Muntzian charge out of watching the folks on the other side tear themselves apart. Or perhaps it's because, immersed as I am in the liberal world, the disputes on the left make more sense to me and therefore plumbing their mysteries isn't so compelling. Regardless, it has often been the case that one side is unified as the...

If there's one think you can say about the 2016 Republican presidential field, it is this: It is going to be HUGE. There are currently 23 names on the long, long list of potential candidates. That's twice (!) as many people as have ever run for the GOP nomination in the past. Now, not all of those "candidates" will actually run -- Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker and Rep. Marsha Blackburn don't make much sense as presidential candidates, to name just two -- but that's a huge field of prospective candidates. And while all two dozen names being mentioned won't make...

Former Massachusetts Governor and failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney is not yet ready to relinquish his title as the head of the pale-pastels establishment wing of the Republican Party to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. "A senior Republican who has met with Mitt Romney" tells Politico that Romney is telling donors on Wall Street "not to commit to a candidate that is not their first choice and that they aren’t excited about. He does not think much of the current field and does not think it is jelling. He still views himself as the leader of the establishment wing of...

Republicans have lost the last two presidential elections, but not much else over the past six years. They’ve captured the House and Senate. They now hold 31 governorships and 69 of the 99 state legislative chambers. What this means is pretty simple: There’s an emerging Republican majority. The GOP still has significant emerging to do before reaching majority status. It may never get there. The rise this year may be Republicans’ peak for now. They may have achieved nothing more than what University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato calls “the emerging outline of possible GOP victory in 2016.” At the...

In the days since Election Day, and during the coming weeks and months, the message from the White House has been and will be put forth endlessly as accepted wisdom, the lie repeated often enough until it becomes truth: that Americans voted for Congress and the White House to “work together.” That what they want is government action to solve their problems. This assertion, which is not just wrong but disprovable, serves the White House purpose of quieting conservatives who are willing to muck up business as usual in order to scuttle or at least make a vigorous point about...

First Democrats, now a former Senate GOP leader is attacking Sen. Ted Cruz for standing his ground instead of compromising on key issues. Trent Lott, a former Senate majority leader from Mississippi and now a lobbyist, dubbed Cruz one of the “problems” in the Senate and urged incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to quickly “co-opt” new Republican senators before Cruz and others in the “Far Right” deputize them. “There are problems,” said Lott, pushing bipartisanship at a media roundtable hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “Yes, we’ve got the Ted Cruzes in the Republican Party, and we’ve got Elizabeth...

"We want a fair, impartial, and color-blind criminal justice system. But if we're honest with ourselves, that doesn't exist for all Americans today."Late Monday night, after the House took its final votes, members of the Congressional Black Caucus took the floor to speak for about one hour about race in the wake of a grand jury's decision last week not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the August shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. "Hands up, don't shoot," Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York began. Charles Rangel, the longtime New York Democrat, followed Jeffries and CBC Chairwoman...

Though the Republican presidential primaries are some 14 months away, the groundwork now being set will separate those who are likely to be serious contenders from the also-rans, writes veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove in The Wall Street Journal. Rove calls this crucial stage-setting process the "invisible primaries" in which the candidates compete to distill their messages, raise cash, and put together cohesive campaign staffs. He dismisses current polling numbers — showing Mitt Romney way ahead — as reflecting "little more than name recognition." Rove lauds New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, and Sen. Marco Rubio,...

Alabama Republicans will host Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul at its winter dinner on Feb. 20. If a new AL.com poll is any indication, he will get more than a warm welcome. A recent AL.com poll puts Paul ahead of nine other leading contenders for the GOP presidential nomination. Paul garnered 43 percent of the vote, followed by Ted Cruz at 31 percent and Dr. Ben Carson at 14 percent. Of course, the poll is not scientific. And it's interesting to note the poll was shared widely among Paul supporters, showing up on sites such as dailypaul.com. Paul, a favorite among...

Sen. Ted Cruz is winning on social media. Between Sept. 1 to Dec. 1, the Texas Republican garnered the most mentions on Twitter out of 10 potential 2016 candidates, with 4.55 million mentions to his two handles, @SenTedCruz and @TedCruz, according to data provided to Politico. Cruz also had similar success on Facebook, with 1.8 million people talking about him, adding up to a whopping 5.6 million interactions (posts, comments and likes) between Aug. 22 and Nov. 22. The only other candidate with as much clout as Cruz on social media was former Secretary of State and likely 2016 Democratic...

I’d intended to write about the Democratic and Republican primaries this week, but an article from the New Republic’s very smart Danny Vinik caught my eye. So, the primaries will have to wait. Referencing a piece by Ed Luce in the Financial Times, Vinik writes that Luce “overlooks a fundamental reason why [Hillary Clinton] is the early [2016] favorite: The economy is quickly improving under a Democratic president.” Vinik then cites political science research suggesting that the economy is the crucial factor in predicting elections. This is true. But there are other factors to consider as well; no model of...