Free Republic

Next year Republican primary voters will have an unprecedented number of choices for whom to nominate to the United States Senate. There have never been so many primary challenges against such high-level and long-serving members of the Senate. There are now primary challenges in Kentucky, Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina, Kansas, and Wyoming. The challengers vary in degrees of viability, competence, and skill. Not all of them have been endorsed by conservative groups; not all of them necessarily will receive endorsements. But all of these states are represented by entrenched ruling class Republicans of yesteryear. They are also all states...

Dear Freepers, I was just thinking... What if the GOP-e does NOT certify tea party candidates for the 2014 primaries? What if they wait until the last moment and then say that half the names don't match voter rolls or that they have something wrong with them? I pose this question because I would NOT put it past them to do something like this. They are liars and cheats, many of them, and quite as much as the democrat/Marxist party. We really must be prepared to face some of this. I'm certain that some of the "old dogs" are not...

“Tea Party Patriots oppose this budget deal and are calling on Members of the Senate to vote against it,” she said. “However, there is little doubt of the outcome. Senators who are facing a primary challenge (McConnell, Graham, Alexander and Cornyn) will vote against the budget because they know their constituents oppose it." "However, because there is a 60 vote threshold, their votes will be irrelevant and they know they are safe to vote against it so they can tell their voters they did the right thing," Martin explained. “This deal really exposes the true colors of several in the...

"...............Seven of the 12 Republicans running next year face tea party challengers. “People are no longer deferential to existing officeholders,” said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the independent Rothenberg Political Report. “We’ve entered a whole new era. I’ve never seen anything like it before.” Some veterans suggested that the remedy for discouraging primary challenges was aggressive campaigns that throttle opponents, such as in Hatch’s 2012 primary contest against a tea party opponent, as opposed to weak campaigns like that of longtime incumbent Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who lost in 2012. “The only cure for political ambition is embalming fluid,” said...

A reminder that as primary season rolls in, our Priority #1 must be to replace the abominations of pro-amnesty RINOs in Red States with actual conservatives-- having an Obama-bootlicking liberal like Lindsey Graham in a state as solidly conservative as South Carolina, or a spineless wimp like Lamar Alexander in a reliably Red State like Tennessee (both of whom backed that traitorous, Constitution-shredding immigration bill earlier this summer), is even worse than dealing with a Democratic Senator. The Democrats could never win a Senate seat in such solidly Red States after all, so these are essential power bases for us...

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) gave the clearest indication that proponents of comprehensive immigration reform may make their final--and strongest--push to get legislation passed next year after House Republicans make it through their primaries. “I think conventional wisdom is that time is not on our side,” McCain told reporters on Monday after an event in Chicago. “But there are a number of members of Congress who have primaries and when those primaries are done, they may be more inclined to address the issue of comprehensive immigration reform.” President Barack Obama has urged Congress to pass immigration reform legislation this year. House...

“I think conventional wisdom is that time is not on our side,” McCain told reporters on Monday after an event in Chicago. “But there are a number of members of Congress who have primaries and when those primaries are done, they may be more inclined to address the issue of comprehensive immigration reform.”

As primary season rolls in, our Priority #1 must be to replace the abominations of RINOs in Red States with actual conservatives-- having an Obama-bootlicking liberal like Lindsey Graham in a state as solidly conservative as South Carolina, or a spineless wimp like Lamar Alexander in a reliably Red State like Tennessee, is even worse than dealing with a Democratic Senator. The Democrats could never win a Senate seat in such solidly Red States after all, so these are essential power bases for us to elect reliable conservative Republicans to carry the conservative standard through the socialist, Constitution-wrecking mess that...

President Obama faces a dual challenge in the months ahead: Convince uninsured Americans to sign up for Obamacare and keep worried Democrats on board as the administration enacts his health care overhaul. The rollout of the Obamacare health exchanges Oct. 1 touched off a high-stakes messaging battle over the president's signature legislative achievement, a clash with enormous repercussions for the 2014 midterm elections. Playing an expectations game, Obama’s surrogates have openly argued that it could take months, if not years, for Americans to fully appreciate the impact of a law that polls show has been greeted with confusion and skepticism....

<p>Just a reminder. The is a voter rebellion. The tea party rebellion. We are rebelling against business as usual in DC and against both major parties. The democrats have gone full-bore Marxist. The Republican GOP-e has gone full-bore statist. Very little difference liberty-wise, they're both anti-liberty. Neither party defends the constitution or our God-given liberty. They are ignoring the constitution and granting themselves dictatorial powers in the central government. We the people are basically at war against the ruling class. It's the tea party rebellion.</p>

Conservatives have been ill-served by a prevailing conventional wisdom pertaining to flaccid incumbent Republicans. The conventional wisdom dictates that every incumbent should automatically enjoy a rubber stamp for 6 more years in the Senate unless he/she is plagued by some egregious scandal or overtly votes with the Democrats on almost every major issue. If we continue down this path of reauthorizing failure in the primaries, elected Republicans will never have an incentive to represent the ideals of those who elected them. One of the most underappreciated political dynamics of this cycle is that the entire fight for the Senate will...

You can get agreement from almost all points on the political spectrum that the worst aspect of our political system is the presidential nomination process. It is perhaps no coincidence that it is the one part of the system not treated in the Constitution. That’s because the Founding Fathers abhorred political parties and hoped that presidents would be selected by something like an elite consensus. But we have political parties, the oldest and third-oldest in the world, and they are not going away. Surely a better system is possible. The current system of primaries, caucuses, and national conventions is the...

Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law today a measure that would allow 17-year-olds to vote in party primary elections if they turn 18 before or on the date of that year’s general election. The Democratic governor signed the bill at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, where civic faculty and students pushed the legislation. Quinn said Illinois joins at least 20 states that set younger age limit for primary voters, citing a national voting advocacy group. Sponsoring Rep. Carol Sente, D-Vernon Hills, said in a statement that the measure was “only fair” since 18-year-olds “are already voting for candidates...

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has the most influence among conservative voters in Republican primaries, told Breitbart News on Tuesday that Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) should be primaried for their support of the Senate's immigration bill. “Conservatives are getting ready for the 2014 and 2016 primaries. We have long memories, and there will be consequences for those who break campaign promises and vote for this amnesty bill," Palin told Breitbart News. "Competition makes everyone work harder, be better, and be held accountable. This applies to politics, too. No one is ‘entitled’ to anything." She continued,...

In a dark room somewhere, Hillary Clinton continues to self-medicate her depression with as much alcohol as she can afford. Martin O’Malley is looking distressingly at his empty calendar trying to stay relevant. Andrew Cuomo scours the stores to claim as many bottles of slick hair gel he can. And Joe Biden, lol, poor Joe still thinks he’s got a shot despite most of his party voting base not having a clue of who the hell he is other than the guy that came in with Obama. They’ve all been usurped this week by the events that unfolded in Massachusetts...

Right blasts RNC 'autopsy' as power grab By: Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman March 18, 2013 12:21 PM EDT The GOP’s prescription to cure the ills that helped bring on yet another disastrous presidential cycle would revamp its presidential nominating rules in ways to benefit well-funded candidates and hamper insurgents - a move that quickly heated up the already smoldering feud between the Republican establishment and the tea party-inspired base. Tucked in near the end of the 97-page report, formally known as The Growth and Opportunity Project, are less than four pages that amount to a political bombshell: the five-member...

'...the system of Tammany Hall and the Chicago machine' Weighing-in on PAC-man Karl Rove's semi-declared war on constitutional conservatives, former House Speaker Gingrich made clear in a Human Events column what the discredited RINO-pumper is attempting to do with his so-called 'Conservative Victory Project': basically crush the TEA Party wing and centralize Republican Party power in favor of 'Rockefeller Republican', Big Government RINOs- an effort Newt described as 'repungnant' and alien to GOP principles: _______________________________________________________________________________ It is appalling how little some Republican consultants have learned from the 2012 defeat. It is even more disturbing how arrogant their plans for the future...

When Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss announced Friday that he wouldn’t seek a third term in 2014, a race that already was likely to feature a contested Republican primary exploded into a free-for-all. Several Republicans, including several congressmen, are eyeing the seat. The more crowded the field, the more likely the GOP race will pit mainstream conservatives against the hardliners who had grown disenchanted with Chambliss for working with Democrats to find common ground on budget and tax issues. Democrats, meanwhile, hope for exactly that kind of Republican fracas. They view the 69-year-old Chambliss’ decision as an opportunity to reverse the...

Official Washington hailed the deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff as a significant bipartisan accomplishment. However, voters around the country viewed the deal in very partisan terms: Seven out of 10 Democrats approved of it, while seven...of 10 Republicans disapproved. Just a few days after reaching that agreement, an inside-the-Beltway publication reported another area of bipartisan agreement...while Washington Democrats have always viewed GOP voters as a problem, Washington Republicans "in many a post-election soul-searching session" have come to agree. More precisely, the article said the party's Election 2012 failures have "brought forth one principal conclusion from establishment Republicans: They...

The disastrous 2012 election and embarrassing fiscal cliff standoff has brought forth one principal conclusion from establishment Republicans: They have a primary problem. The intra-party contests, or threat thereof, have become the original sin that explains many of the party’s woes in the minds of GOP leaders. It’s the primaries that push their presidential nominees far to the right (see “self-deportation” and “47 percent”); produce lackluster Senate candidates (Todd Akin has almost become a one-word shorthand); and, as seen most vividly in the last two weeks, dissuade scores of gerrymandered House members from face-saving compromise while politically emasculating their speaker....