Free Republic

After a horde of Republican Presidential contenders from Gov. Chris Christie to Sen. Ted Cruz descended on Las Vegas to speak in front of the Republican Jewish Coalition — and kiss the ring of PAC billionaire benefactor Sheldon Adelson — one contender’s absence was noted. Sen. Rand Paul was nowhere to be found. His positions on Israel, foreign aid, drone warfare and intervention make him unpalatable to this particular crowd. GOP donors there were vocal in their opposition to Paul’s candidacy. According to Time magazine’s Zeke Miller, “Five donors huddled with a reporter pledged to reach into their deep pockets...

There is a fierce battle brewing between three sects of a divided Republican Party. The Rand Paul libertarians and the Ted Cruz social conservatives are drumming up support for what could be a bloody competition to rule the roost of 2016. In the safe middle is the establishmentarian moderates and the elites of the Republican Party, like Chris Christie and Marco Rubio. The most watched and most important battle, however, will be the battle between the GOP's two rights – the battle between Paul and Cruz. In an interview with Vocativ, Rand Paul spoke of a Republican Party that requires...

WASHINGTON – Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said the future of the Republican Party depends on what the Republicans do to expand its appeal among Hispanic voters and show them that the GOP is not “just the party of deportation.” “I’ve been saying over and over that the Republican Party cannot win until it’s more diverse, until it looks like the rest of America,” he said. During a Tuesday symposium hosted by the Media Research Center (MRC) and the American Principles Project (APP), the Kentucky Republican and potential 2016 presidential candidate said that if the GOP wants to appeal to minority...

At the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin this weekend highlighted a video of Rand Paul speaking in 2012 about sanctions on Iran. In it, Paul disparages the notion of use of force, and for some reason claims the United States was partly to blame for World War II! “There are times when sanctions have made it worse. I mean, there are times .. leading up to World War II we cut off trade with Japan. That probably caused Japan to react angrily. We also had a blockade on Germany after World War I, which may have encouraged them … some of...

The views in the video aren’t surprising. CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO They’re the views of Ron and Rand Paul and their intellectual milieu which believes that most wars are set up by banks. According to them, the US need not have gotten involved in WW2. “There are times when sanctions have made it worse. I mean, there are times .. leading up to World War II we cut off trade with Japan. That probably caused Japan to react angrily. We also had a blockade on Germany after World War I, which may have encouraged them … some...

Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul told fellow Republicans on Tuesday that the future of their party depends on them connecting with Hispanics in a more empathetic way and on getting in front of immigration reform – a message that further signals his flirtation with a 2016 presidential run. “If we are to change people’s attitudes toward … the Republican Party, we have to show up and we have to have something to say,” Paul told a small group of conservatives gathered at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. “I hope to be part of that dialogue.” This certainly was not the...

WASHINGTON — Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Tuesday that Republicans need to show Hispanic voters that they are not “just the party of deportation.” During a symposium at the Newseum on conservative engagement with Hispanic media outlets, Paul also said Republicans have plenty of ideas that appeal to Latinos, but acknowledged, “We got to get beyond deportation to get to the rest of the issues.” “The bottom line is that the Hispanic community, the Latino community, is not going to hear us until we get beyond that issue. They’re not going to care whether we go to the same church...

Sen. Rand Paul has become the first Republican to assemble a network in all 50 states as a precursor to a 2016 presidential run, the latest sign that he is looking to build a more mainstream coalition than the largely ad hoc one that backed his father’s unsuccessful campaigns. Paul’s move, which comes nearly two years before the 2016 primaries, also signals an effort to win the confidence of skeptical members of the Republican establishment, many of whom doubt that his appeal will translate beyond the libertarian base that was attracted to Ron Paul, the former Texas congressman. Rand Paul’s...

Gun owners beware. Squirt gun owners, that includes you. If a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team SUSPECTS you of crime, you may receive a late-night visit from an armed SWAT team. That’s right, an armed and militant SWAT team could trot right through your front door as you slumber this summer. No-knock warrants are increasingly used by military-style police units, like SWAT teams for drug raids. Unfortunately, SWAT teams can obtain these warrants too easily from judges and consequently do not always perform sufficient due diligence. As a result, tens of thousands of decent, law-abiding American citizens are surprised...

RUSH: Rand Paul went to Berkeley yesterday, last night. Rand Paul got a standing O from the students at the University of California-Berkeley. Do you know the issue that he hit on that they just jumped out of their seats and applauded him on was the government spying on the citizens? He came out firmly against it, highly critical of it, and they couldn't be quiet. They were just cheering him like Republicans don't get cheered on college campi. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Rand Paul "delivered a scathing rebuke to the US intelligence community Wednesday, calling it 'drunk...

The “Ron Paul Revolution,” as it is sometimes called, is a self-described Libertarian movement that preaches individual liberty, limited government, and – above all else – personal freedoms. Such freedoms include, apparently, racial segregation at private institutions (they call this property rights) and recreational narcotics usage. Ron Paul is proud of his friendship with the late Murray Rothbard, an economist of the “Austrian” school (which dates back to Carl Menger, and was developed fully by Ludwig von Mises, both Austrian). Paul and Rothbard shared an affinity for sound money (i.e., gold) and a disdain for the Federal Reserve System, which...

Every Republican likes to think he or she is the next Ronald Reagan. Some who say this do so for lack of their own ideas and agenda. Reagan was a great leader and President. But too often people make him into something he wasn’t in order to serve their own political purposes.

There are things you expect to see at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and there are things you don't. One of the things you probably don't is an audience cheering and applauding arguments for legalizing pot and bemoaning the war on drugs. A panel titled "Rocky Mountain High" held Thursday afternoon started out as a debate between Mary Katherine Ham of Fox and Hot Air and Christopher Beach a staffer for former Drug Czar William Bennett's radio show. But as the debate wore on it became clear the real disagreement was between Beach and the overwhelming majority of the...

BREAKING: Moderate GOP PAC That Promised to Beat Back Tea Party Challengers Bankrolled by Labor Unions liberal Republicans can’t beat conservatives without labor union support?

Yesterday, Derek Hunter declared that libertarianism has entirely lost its meaning, that the party has devolved into a catch-all for people who want to criticize the government without doing anything about it. He also assumed that any Republican candidate would be better than a Democrat for classical liberals. Hunter could not be more wrong. The Libertarian Party is still the face of “individual responsibility, small government, and free markets,” but how the LP arranges those priorities is changing. The Party needs to represent its constituency, appeal to young voters who largely have experience with Ron Paul, and has to emphasize...

The Legislative District 26 Republican Party in Arizona has passed a formal rebuke of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for abdicating GOP principles in helping Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) secure votes to approve several of President Barack Obama’s controversial nominees. “Senator John McCain unilaterally negotiated with the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to secure Republican votes necessary to pass a number of controversial Presidential nominees,” the resolution, which passed the official GOP body in the state by a 24-13 vote with four abstentions on Tuesday evening, reads. The resolution notes that President Obama nominated “Gina McCarthy for head...

War should occur only when America is attacked, when it is threatened or when American interests are attacked or threatened. I don’t think the situation in Syria passes that test. Even the State Department argues that “there’s no military solution here that’s good for the Syrian people, and that the best path forward is a political solution.” The United States should not fight a war to save face. I will not vote to send young men and women to sacrifice life and limb for stalemate. I will not vote to send our nation’s best and brightest to fight for anything...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaHSfy32LPI

UK and US military chiefs are drawing up a list of targets for precision-guided bombs and missiles to strike at the heart of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime. Defence correspondent Ian Drury looks at the options. WHAT TARGETS WOULD THE COALITION HIT? The favoured option among top brass is for limited Western action using ‘stand-off’ weapons from long distance to disrupt Assad’s ability to carry out chemical attacks and damage his military machine. Intelligence on targets would come from pilotless drones patrolling the skies above Syria and special forces on the ground.

LAKE WYLIE, S.C. — Some of the early shots in the Republican primary battle against Senator Lindsey Graham have been fired from this tiny community on the northern border of the state where the Civil War began. Mr. Graham's challengers so far in the Republican primary campaign include Nancy Mace, the first woman to graduate from the Citadel. A small group called Carolina Conservatives United, one of dozens organized loosely under the flag of limited government, low taxes and strict adherence to the Constitution, sent out images last week of a milk carton bearing Mr. Graham’s face and asked Gov....