Free Republic

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Welcome back. Great to have you. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network. Grab audio sound bite number one. The Drive-By Media is comparing Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz, but they're doing it the following way. Elizabeth Warren is wonderful. Ted Cruz is mean and nasty and a threat to the republic. It's about 25 seconds, and again, just a media montage to give you a flavor here. ED HENERY: Elizabeth Warren saying she may hold all of this up and do a reverse of what Ted Cruz did. TAMARA KEITH: She's sort of pulling a Ted Cruz. JOE...

When Thursday dawned, the conventional wisdom was that House Speaker John Boehner did not have the votes to pass the $1.1 trillion spending bill that would fund the rest of the government for FY2015. But, thanks to lobbying by the White House, the House scrapped up enough votes to pass the measure 219 to 206, according to a Thursday Washington Examiner story. The passage of the bill was a triumph of the establishment wings of both parties. However, Senate passage is by no means certain. Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Elizabeth Warren could still scupper the bill between them. The...

In the dark of the night, two weeks before Christmas, the GOP consummated their betrayal of our trust. We voted them a majority for the next two years, and they thanked us by a backstabbing so heinous, that it moved the seismic needle on the Democratic party

So Lindsey Graham is on the warpath ... again. In the past month, South Carolina's senior senator has been busy - which stands in stark contrast to most members of Congress this time of year. Or any time, for that matter. Not only has the hawkish Graham renewed his call to send troops into Syria, he also criticized the release of a report that detailed the CIA's rather torturous methods of extracting information from suspected terrorists. Graham didn't exactly endorse waterboarding, mind you, but he made it clear that enemy detainees really don't want to be locked in a dark...

The most immediate consequence of the Democrats’ midterm disaster was losing control of the Senate and ceding Congress to the GOP. For the next two years, Democrats will have to deal with conservative legislation, right-wing hijinks, and—in all odds—a vacancy crisis, as Republicans freeze confirmations and refuse to fill spots in the executive branch and on the federal bench. That is bad for the Democratic Party. What’s on the horizon is worse. As Amy Walter notes for the Cook Political Report, Democrats lost big at all levels of government, including the states. “Today,” she writes, “about 55 percent of all...

And here we go: Right off the deep end. It’s as predictable as the sunrise. As those who are genuinely and honestly outraged over the revelations contained within the Senate Intelligence Committee’s “torture” report strain themselves in the effort to adopt a posture of unparalleled indignation, they inevitably overreach. So far, the best example of this kind of indulgence in regrettable hyperbole in the pursuit of moral preening is Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA). In an appearance on MSNBC on Wednesday, Speier reacted to the release of the SSCI’s report on the CIA’s Bush-era enhanced interrogation program by saying America’s clandestine...

The most conservative candidates are, with the exception of 1964, invariably the bridesmaid and never the bride in the GOP presidential primary. (In 1980, there were candidates such as Rep. Phil Crane of Illinois to Ronald Reagan’s right.) Part of the explanation is that the most conservative voters divide their support among candidates, leaving a path for a more moderate figure to coast to victory. And part of the explanation is that they tend to set upon candidates who self-destruct, are not qualified or are simply too extreme — and often all three. In 2016, how can they break this...

Have you heard the story of the first-term senator who is a hero to the party base and the subject of intense 2016 speculation -- the one who's willing to buck leaders on big bills, and has even lobbied House members to stand against a funding measure to keep the government running? It's the story of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). This week, it's also the story of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Warren has emerged as the torchbearer of the liberal resistance on Capitol Hill to a $1.01 trillion bill to fund the government, which is facing the threat of a...

For fifty years the Republican nominating process has been the avenue through which the party chooses the nominee for the next election season. This year’s nominee is never in doubt. Whoever finished second last time simply steps up for his turn. If the second-place finisher from the last campaign decides not to run, as in ’68 and ‘00, the nominee is appointed by the party leadership and presented for ratification in the primary process. This is no historical accident, but rather a product of the institutional structure of the party. That institutional structure has broken down. Priorities and practices that...

African American staffers on Capitol Hill plan to stage a protest Thursday in solidarity with similar demonstrations nationwide.African American Congressional staffers are planning a protest on the U.S. Capitol steps Thursday afternoon, disrupting their workday to speak out against the Eric Garner and Mike Brown grand jury decisions. The protest follows large demonstrations in New York and other major cities last week, which were held to speak out about the deaths of these two African American men. “Black staffers on Capitol Hill wanted to do something in support of ongoing national and global protests against police aggression,” an organizer said,...

In a post ranking the potential Republican candidates for President, Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake put Kentucky Senator at the top of the list: 1. Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.). People used to roll their eyes when we said Paul had a real chance to be the Republican nominee in 2016. Not anymore. Paul has a unique activist and fundraising base, thanks to his father’s two runs for president, and has shown considerable savvy in his outreach to the establishment end of the party over the past few years. Paul still says odd things — his blaming of high cigarette taxes...

One of the Senate’s leading liberals is borrowing a page from the playbook of Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is pushing to strike out language from the “cromnibus” spending bill unveiled Tuesday that would roll back restrictions on “swaps” transactions included in the 2010 financial regulatory overhaul known as Dodd-Frank. Repealing the “push-out” provision would mean that certain derivatives could again be held in bank units with federal deposit insurance. Using a strategy sometimes employed by Cruz for entirely different policy reasons, Warren said that with the $1.013 trillion spending package first being considered by the...

In the wake of the Democratic Party’s second disastrous midterm election in a row, the progressive wing of the party is acknowledging that Democrats need to renew their focus on policy rather than politics. On Wednesday, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee launched the “Big Ideas Project,” an initiative aimed at soliciting proposals from the public. It’s not a bad idea; the president’s party needs all the help they can get. “After being diminished in Congress, wiped out in the South, and marginalized in the states Dems focus on gun control,” wrote National Review’s Charles Cooke on Wednesday. It’s true. “A...

Is former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush too moderate for the Republican Party? That is all the talk. But here’s a surprise: Adam C. Smith, political editor of the liberal Tampa Bay Times, authored this piece last Friday refuting with evidence that Bush as governor was “arch-conservative” and far from a “moderate squish.” — Ed. Respected Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley told the Washington Examiner recently that Jeb Bush is the latest in a line of Bushes who oppose Reaganism. Radio host Mark Levin has dismissed Florida’s former governor as “a very good moderate Democrat,” while pioneering conservative activist Richard Viguerie...

The Republican Party’s largest donors all seem to have the same idea. They’d like the 2016 presidential nomination race settled early on in the cycle. And, if you believe the reporting of the New York Times (and in this instance, it may be accurate), they’d like it to be one of the following three candidates: Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, or, wait for it, Mitt Romney. The conceit of the article is not crazy. If a critical mass of GOP fat cats gets together on a candidate, the odds will shift in favor of that person. But there’s a big problem...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said that Jesse Benton, the former campaign manager for Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), will be part of Paul's campaign team in 2016. Benton, served as McConnell's campaign manager for much of the 2014 cycle until he resigned amid questions about the role he allegedly played in a 2012 Iowa pay-for-votes bribery scandal. Paul, in an interview with WHAS11, said that he thinks "Jesse is honest, he's good at politics and I don't think he's done anything wrong." It wasn't clear from Paul's comments if he was referring to his Senate re-election campaign or the...

Republicans know they can't win the popular vote. You won't believe sick schemes they've launched to get around it. Republicans have only won the popular vote for president once in the last 25 years, a steep decline in their fortunes from the period from 1972 to 1988, when they won the popular vote every time but one–1976, the aftermath of Watergate. Add to that massive policy failures and demographic trends against them, and the motivations to cheat are overwhelming. Voter suppression seemed promising at first—and it’s helpful in many downticket races—but it’s not going to be enough to secure the...

Trent Lott wasn’t always this way. He was once a conservative champion, who came to Washington to change the ruling-class narrative. But now he’s a profile in what Washington does to you if you stay too long — unless you have Winston Churchill-like courage of conviction, and few mere mortals do. Mr. Lott was originally part of a group that included former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Vin Webber, who were dubbed the “Young Turks.” They were among the chief lieutenants of the Reagan Revolution back in the day. Best known for fighting the Fraternal Order of Establishment Republicans....

The likely Democratic presidential nominee needs to duplicate, or at least come close to duplicating, Obama's performance among African-Americans. It's a tall task. Mary Landrieu lost her runoff race Saturday because President Obama isn't well-liked, national Democrats abandoned her, and, statewide, Louisiana pretty much only elects Republicans. But Democrats and their likely presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, might squirm the most over her defeat for a different reason: The longtime senator couldn't get enough support from African-Americans. Like Landrieu, Clinton (or whoever becomes the party's standard-bearer) will try to win over black voters at the same rate Obama did in both...

<p>Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice presidential pick, is headed to Iowa in January 2015 for a conservative gathering that will showcase no fewer than nine potential 2016 presidential contenders.</p> <p>She’s one of the confirmed speakers at the inaugural Iowa Freedom Summit, an event organized by Iowa Rep. Steve King and conservative group Citizens United to “bring grassroots activists from across Iowa to hear directly from national conservative leaders,” per its website. The event is scheduled for Jan. 24.</p>