Free Republic

Capitol Hill insiders widely consider President Obama's rumored plan to unilaterally extend amnesty to as many as five million of illegal aliens to be political suicide, essentially ceding control of the Senate in a single act. But a key question has been whether elite Republicans are willing to deploy the issue in weaponized form. A statement from Brad Dayspring, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, suggests the answer is yes. “Executive amnesty would not only subvert the law, but depress wages, and hurt the poorest Americans most of all – including legal immigrants looking to rise into the middle...

During the interview, Ryan addressed several issues on which conservatives have been critical of the Republican Party, from perpetuating crony capitalism to immigration. Perhaps most interesting was the congressman’s defense of votes he and fellow Republicans took in favor of TARP and the 2009 auto bailout, and his belief in the efficacy of a short-term reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank. When asked how his votes for TARP and the auto bailout comport with the populist, free market philosophy Rep. Ryan espouses in his new book, noting that he "did not enjoy" such votes, Ryan justified them on grounds of "defensive...

As Congress hurtled toward a government shutdown in the fall of 2013, Rep. Paul Ryan looked around at fellow Republicans who were agitating to shutter national parks, federal agencies and Head Start programs. "This can't be the full measure of our party and our movement," Ryan writes of that moment in his new book, released Tuesday. "If it is, we're dead and the country is lost." Such moments of raw frustration pepper Ryan's "The Way Forward: Renewing the American Idea," a book as much about his front-row seat as Republicans' favorite budget wonk as it is about his political future....

Rep. Paul Ryan is seeking to distance himself from last year’s government shutdown and counter his image as an unsympathetic budget negotiator in a new memoir released as the Wisconsin Republican weighs a presidential run in 2016. In "The Way Forward: Renewing the American Idea," the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee writes that he warned his fellow GOP that the shutdown “can't be the full measure of our party and our movement” and called it “a suicide mission.”

Paul Ryan proposed a private health insurance alternative to Medicare for future retirees, liberal critics pounced. It’s another scheme to undermine health care for the elderly by “privatizing” and “voucher-izing” the program, they said.Yet, almost one third of seniors are already in private health insurance plans. They are called Medicare Part C, or Medicare Advantage, plans. And you would be hard pressed to find any Democratic office holder who wants to abolish them. The reason? Seniors choose to be in these plans because they like them better than traditional Medicare.Not only do seniors like them, but they appear to provide...

When Mitt Romney chose Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate in the 2012 presidential election, the tea party was ecstatic. "It's a big step toward what the tea party has been trying to accomplish," Matt Kibbe, the president and CEO of FreedomWorks, said at the time. "It gives people a reason to be more enthusiastic about the Republican ticket." But just two years later, Kibbe and his fellow tea party activists are singing a different tune: Ryan has betrayed the movement. The first significant break between Ryan and the tea party came at the beginning of this year, when...

It is summer time in San Antonio. Mid-July, the 15th to be exact. The temperature approaches 100 degrees. It is a Texas summer day to be sure. Pastor Roman Herrera, instead of sitting inside enjoying lemonade and air conditioning, is instead working his way through alleyways.

U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan said Thursday he would love to see Mitt Romney run again for president and teased the GOP’s former nominee at one point that the “third time’s the charm.” Appearing with Ryan at a public event for the first time since their ticket lost two years ago, Romney offered his own good-humored praise by saying that Ryan “wouldn’t be a bad president” himself. Ryan, R-Wis., has said he will wait until after the midterm elections to decide whether to pursue his own presidential campaign in 2016. Romney has repeatedly denied any plans for another campaign for president....

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) suggested that Republican candidates in this year's midterm elections should run on granting a pathway to citizenship for all of the country's illegal immigrants. Ryan, who had reportedly been working behind the scenes with Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) to get House Republicans to support a broader immigration bill, said that he was "having problems" convincing conservatives to support immigration reform, which he said was "very important." In a Wednesday interview with Bloomberg News, Ryan said he supported a "path to legalization" for all of the country's illegal immigrants. He said illegal immigrants should be able to...

As Congress hurtled toward a government shutdown in the fall of 2013, Rep. Paul Ryan looked around at fellow Republicans who were agitating to shutter national parks, federal agencies and Head Start programs. “This can’t be the full measure of our party and our movement,” Ryan writes of that moment in his new book, released Tuesday. “If it is, we’re dead and the country is lost.” Such moments of raw frustration pepper Ryan’s “The Way Forward: Renewing the American Idea,” a book as much about his front-row seat as Republicans’ favorite budget wonk as it is about his political future....

The party of the next guy has no next guy. For more than two generations, the Republican presidential nominating process has had an immutable internal logic to it: The next guy in line gets the nomination. That’s how every Republican president of the post-Eisenhower era has won his party’s nomination and how just about every GOP presidential nominee since Thomas E. Dewey (1944 and 1948) got to the top of the ticket. It’s certainly how Barack Obama’s two opponents, Sen. John McCain and former Gov. Mitt Romney, were nominated. But just as the Republican Party is going through one of...

Co-written by Robert Sinche Neel Kashkari, the Republican candidate for governor of California, just recounted in The Wall Street Journal his week on the streets of Fresno posing as a homeless man looking for work. At the end of his op-ed, Kashkari lamented that he didn't need a higher minimum wage, paid sick leave or a health care plan. What he needed was a job. And Kashkari made the important point that all those government benefits, especially extended unemployment benefits, are work disincentives that may actually block job creation. To be sure, there are signs that employment in the country...

CAMPBELLSPORT – On Friday, 6th District Congressional candidate Glenn Grothman (R-Campbellsport) slammed Joe Leibham (R-Sheboygan) for accepting a maximum limit contribution from a progressive trade union. More: Stroebel, Leibham Trade Barbs Over Voter ID According to records from the Federal Elections Commission, Leibham accepted $5,000 from the Laborers Union International North America (LIUNA) PAC on July 15, 2014. The LIUNA was very evident during the 2011 protests against Governor Scott Walker over Act 10 which was upheld by the Wisconsin State Supreme Court and the federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The LIUNA has 500,000 members that are represented in...

Earlier this year, congressman and former vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan released a proposed budget for 2015. It contains an impressive list of cuts projecting a $5.1 trillion savings over ten years. It is also the height of political stupidity and an example of everything that cripples Republicans in their battles with the left.If you are going to make budget cuts, you do it. You don’t telegraph it. Paul Ryan can’t even make budget cuts unless Republicans win the White House and he has just made it harder for them to do it.For starters, Ryan’s list of cuts includes the...

Representative Paul Ryan has a bold, ambitious proposal “Expanding Opportunity in America,” to completely remake the American welfare state. Along the way he would also change the federal government’s approach to education, revamp what we are doing in our prison system and much more. Here is a surprise. Although Ryan’s approach is based on well-known conservative ideas, some on the left are actually praising parts of the proposal – including the editorial page of the Washington Post. Ryan’s plan shows something I have believed for a long time. All the innovative thinking on how to solve public policy problems for...

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...

President Obama famously accused Representative Paul Ryan (R., Wisc.) of “thinly veiled Social Darwinism” for one of his budgets. It will take a special kind of cynicism to make that claim about Ryan’s new anti-poverty proposal. Obama’s partisans will no doubt find a way, but fair-minded observers will see a creative, thoughtful approach to a topic that’s often politically neglected. Ryan proposes and endorses a range of ideas to fix the safety net and address the root causes of poverty. He would offer states the option of an “Opportunity Grant” to replace, dollar for dollar, the amount of money they...

Representative Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, is releasing a major document this morning laying out a conservative approach to reforming federal anti-poverty programs (he’s speaking on it this morning at the American Enterprise Institute). Not all of his proposals are specific legislation and some endorse existing legislation. Roughly speaking, here’s what in it: Offer states the option of a big block grant to replace existing federal welfare programs Ryan proposes a pilot program called the “Opportunity Grant,” which offers states the ability to use the funds they currently get for a range of programs to run individually...

Nick Hanauer, internet entrepreneur, has a message for his fellow "zillionaires", the revolution is coming. Mr. Hanauer, an early investor in internet retail giant Amazon..... Now, he writes in Politico magazine, he sees a different kind of future, and the outlook for people like him is not a bright one: "If we don't do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn't eventually come...

WASHINGTON – Incredulous lawmakers tore into IRS Commissioner John Koskinen over the agency's claims that subpoenaed emails of ex-official Lois Lerner and other employees are gone forever because a hard drive was destroyed. “This is unbelievable," Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., angrily told Koskinen. That’s your problem. Nobody believes you.” Koskinen responded, “I have a long career. That’s the first time anyone’s said I don’t believe you.” "I don't believe you," Ryan shot back again. [...]