Free Republic

From the corners of the conservative movement to the main stage, signs of hope. Or at least that the GOP is grasping at reality again. The Conservative Political Action Conference has gotten more conservative. It hasn’t moved to the right, exactly – there’s not a lot of room remaining on the visible spectrum – but it’s definitely gotten more sedate. A little more self-contained, a lot more self-conscious, and maybe even a bit serious. Don’t get me wrong: CPAC is still very much a circus. You can’t book sideshow acts like Donald Trump, Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter and then...

There are so many good conservatives in and running for office that could take America back from liberal socialists and moderate spend thrifts that it’s hard to know them all without excessive effort. Sens. Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Reps. Paul Ryan, and candidate Elizabeth Cheney are all known names, but somebody has something bad to say about everybody. Romney was equally conservative but allowed his name to be smeared by moderates led by Boehner in Congress who cost him the election by attacking conservatives. Tea Party members need to stop being churlish when it comes to some of...

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas is holding the nation's first primary election Tuesday with a political free-for-all in Republican races that could push the state further right, though Democrats are calling it the next big electoral battleground. Republican Gov. Rick Perry has decided this would be his last of a record 14 years in office, and his looming exit has set off a scramble resulting in the most open races in Texas in more than a decade. Republicans are favored to win them all come November — including Perry's seat, despite Democrat Wendy Davis building a national profile and an early...

The entire flap over SB 1062 in Arizona has left a lot of people scratching their heads, particularly given the virtual media explosion over the fate of the bill and what it means going forward. As it turns out, there is similar legislation pending in Georgia even as we speak, and even though public clamor has already led to the bill being taken off the calendar, the rampant hyperbole which marked the coverage of Jan Brewer’s decision is not in short supply. One of the leading shots across the bow was penned for CNN by the two person team of...

Reince Priebus ✔ @Reince This month, we all honor all women, including the many Republican women trailblazers http://bit.ly/ME3EMX #WHM 10:20 AM - 1 Mar 2014 RNC Statement on Women’s History Month - GOP WASHINGTON – Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Co-Chairman Sharon Day released the following statement marking the beginning of Women’s History Month: “Today marks the... RNC @GOP 21 Retweets 10 favorites RNC Statement on Women’s History Month Posted March 1, 2014 WASHINGTON – Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Co-Chairman Sharon Day released the following statement marking the beginning of Women’s History Month: “Today marks...

Like Palin, Martinez was elected on an anti-corruption platform. Upon entering office, she took a page from the former Alaska governor’s playbook by putting up for sale the state-owned luxury jet that had become as much of a symbol of waste and abuse in Santa Fe as had the Juneau-based plane that Palin put on eBay four years earlier. Mirroring her backer’s early legislative successes, Martinez has worked with adversaries in New Mexico’s state capitol, known locally as the Roundhouse, to build a budget surplus while keeping income taxes down. As a result, she has at times earned some of...

The evidence accumulates that the Republican Party is sobering up — cotton-mouthed and slightly disoriented — from its recent ideological bender. The tone of some rhetoric on the far right — no mercy to enemies, no enemies to the right — was pressed to an abhorrent extreme by Ted Nugent, who called President Obama a “subhuman mongrel.” And almost all of the right (save Sarah Palin, who finally lost her long, sad struggle with ideological delirium) recoiled at such viciousness and bigotry. No political movement can persuade a great democracy without displaying a measure of democratic grace. And any ideological...

Several high-profile conservative columnists and pundits, including Thomas Sowell [1], Ann Coulter [2], and Kim Strassel [3], have openly questioned whether Ted Cruz is hurting Republican chances by attacking fellow GOP senators. Others, like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, are supporting the Texas senator’s campaign against establishment Republicans.We asked several of our writers and columnists to answer the question: Will Ted Cruz be a plus or minus for Republicans in the midterm elections?Roger KimballIs Ted Cruz helping or hurting Republicans? Probably, he is hurting them. But to me, a more interesting question is whether Ted Cruz is helping or...

"It is an attack on God Himself." This was how Brent Bozell, founder of the conservative Media Research Center, felt about the prospect of representatives from the American Atheists attending the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering of conservative leaders and organizations in Washington, D.C. On Tuesday, the Atheists announced they would host a booth at the conference next week; within hours, they had been disinvited. The group "misrepresented itself about their willingness to engage in positive dialogue and work together to promote limited government," a CPAC spokesperson told the Washington Post yesterday. The American Atheists were invited—and...

Thomas Sowell clearly doesn’t like Ted Cruz. As a comfortable member of the tiny “acceptable conservative” journalist corps and a Black man he has a unique and comfortable position. He will not be attacked by liberals because they don’t dare do so. He will not be attacked by conservatives because THEY don’t dare do so. Each side takes its position for different reasons but the net result is the same. Last Saturday a column by Sowell attacked Ted Cruz in the type of defeatist language that usually comes from sell-outs like John McCain, John Boehner or Paul Ryan. After an...

A conservative LGBT organization will be part of this year's Conservative Political Action Conference event in Washington, DC after long being banned from the event. GOProud, a pro-gay group that holds several politically conservative views, will participate in CPAC next month as a guest organization. CPAC is an annual gathering of conservative groups held at the nation's Capital and organized by the American Conservative Union. The ACU provided The Christian Post with a statement by their executive director, Dan Schneider, regarding the matter. "We had a constructive meeting with GOProud's leadership last week. The directors have a new vision for...

Former House Speaker Tip O'Neill famously said that all politics is local. And it mostly was, in his time: He was first elected to the Massachusetts legislature's lower house in 1936 and became its speaker in 1949, and was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1952 and became its speaker in 1977. Those were years when there was constant churning and turmoil in partisan politics. Yankee Republicans yielded majority status to Catholic Democrats in O'Neill's Massachusetts. The South was still solidly Democratic, providing a majority of the Democratic Caucus when O'Neill came to Washington, but it started...

Five years after his "rant heard around the world" spawned what is now known as the Tea Party movement, CNBC's Rick Santelli appeared on Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125 and said the energy from 2009 has created a powerful political movement that has already achieved many tangible results while changing the political landscape. Speaking to host and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon, Santelli said the Tea Party movement is a big-tent movement that attracts Americans from all walks of life. He said what is appealing about the movement to him is its emphasis on...

Recently, Ted Nugent made the Authoritarian Left go into convulsions by calling our Jew hating Dog Eater in Chief, Barack Hussein Obama, a "mongrel" and "subhuman". Not one to rest on his laurels, Nugent also compared Obama's administration to the Third Reich. Needless to say, I completely agree with Mr. Nugent. The pile of human debris that has usurped the White House is indeed the lowest form of life on this planet. However, this column isn't about Ted Nugent or defending his comments. This column, like so many others that I've written, is about the utter cowardice of the Republican...

I’ve long been arguing that conservatives are generally right on principle, but tend not to be that smart when it comes to politics. Conversely, I believe that liberals are generally wrong on (or lacking in) principle, but tend to be pretty shrewd politicians. One doesn’t have to look hard to find proof of this. We live in a country in which nearly twice as many people describe themselves as conservatives as do liberals, and conservatives outnumber liberals in 47 of our 50 states. Yet, arguably the most liberal president in United States history won re-election after doubling our national debt,...

HOUSTON, TX – The nation’s leading labor union will plan to spend $300 million in 2014 trying to unseat Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and four other Republican Governors. More: AFL-CIO to Target Walker, Other Governors People’s World reported that the AFL-CIO announced on Thursday morning during a press conference in Houston that they would spend money trying to unseat Governor Walker. Other Governors that the labor organization is targeting are John Kasich (R-Ohio), Tom Corbett (R-Pennsylvania), Rick Snyder (R-Michigan), and Rick Scott (R-Florida). The American Federation of Teachers backed the AFL-CIO’s plan. President Randi Weingarten said: “In many ways it...

President Obama is going solo. Having seen his ambitious agenda run aground against Republican recalcitrance, Obama is pivoting to a more unilateral approach to achieve his goals. And when he must go through Congress, Obama has shown he's willing to eschew bipartisanship when it seems like an impossibility. On Wednesday, the White House released some early details of the president's 2015 budget proposal, which is due out next month. The biggest news is that the budget will propose $56 billion in new spending, while dropping a key compromise that would result in smaller Social Security benefits. The latter idea, known...

The party doesn't have enough smart people working on its campaigns, and those who do are playing out of position. Republicans who run campaigns gripe they lose races because of candidates and ideology. It's easy to understand why. Nominees who deny they belong to a coven or confuse—in the most offensive way conceivable—the basic biology of sex aren't ideal nominees. The more electable ones, like Mitt Romney, are forced to adopt such a rigid agenda that they irritate half the electorate before the general election even begins. So victories are hard to come by, just as they would be for...

At an annual gathering of Republican bigwigs in Florida a year ago, a top GOP strategist was chided after he gave a presentation about how his party would win the Senate in 2014, including a handout that blared “MAJORITY” in red. “Stop saying majority,” donors, consultants and even some senators told National Republican Senatorial Committee Executive Director Rob Collins, he recalled in an interview. “Just say you’re going to be able to pick up a few seats.” Fast forward to early this month, when the annual event took place again at the same posh Palm Beach resort. Far from preaching...

ABC chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl says many of Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s fellow Republican senators despise him — like, really, totally hate him. “The Republicans in the Senate had this all set. This was going to be able to pass with only Democratic votes. He stands up, says ‘I’m going to filibuster’, suddenly they need 60 votes,” Karl explained on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, speaking of last week’s vote to increase the debt ceiling. “I’ll tell you, Ted Cruz is so hated among his Republicans now — more so than even during the shutdown — that at...