Free Republic

House Republicans are quietly discussing a proposal that could fundamentally alter the way future speakers of the House are chosen, according to multiple GOP sources, with the objective of avoiding a repeat of John Boehner's embarrassing reelection vote in 2013.

The latest polls suggest the GOP now has only a 50–­50 chance of retaking the Senate. There needs to be a mass layoff — of highly paid GOP consultants. Otherwise we risk a repeat of 2012, when overconfident Republicans in the middle of the worst economy since the 1970s became convinced that all they had to do to win was not be Obama. And they lost. Romney’s strategy was simple. On the social issues, avoid, downplay, mute. On the economic issues, sound vague, promise to help job creators, and wait for the other team to self-destruct. The RNC’s “autopsy” of...

After trolling my own readers yesterday with rumors of Huckabee and Romney running again, I’d be remiss if I didn’t troll them with a rumor about a guy they dislike more than either of them. No half-measures when trolling. That’s my motto. Former presidential candidate Jon Huntsman has engaged in discussions with supporters in recent months about pursuing another White House bid — this time as an independent, according to three sources close to Huntsman… Other friends and former aides, however, suggested that the 2016 conversations were primarily a function of Huntsman’s willingness to hear out his supporters — not...

Everybody knows there is no real leader in the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. But ask voters an open-ended question — Whom do you want to be the nominee? — and the range of answers can be breathtaking. That's what I did in an unplanned and totally unscientific way on my Twitter feed Tuesday afternoon. On Monday evening I posted a piece about Mike Huckabee's preparations for another run for the nomination in 2016. Twitter reaction to Huckabee was almost entirely negative: Nobody, or at least nobody reading my tweets on a Tuesday afternoon, seemed to like the...

When we officially launched our forecast model two weeks ago, it had Republicans with a 64 percent chance of taking over the Senate after this fall’s elections. Now Republican chances are about 55 percent instead. We’ve never quite settled on the semantics of when to call an election a “tossup.” A sports bettor or poker player would grimace and probably take a 55-45 edge. But this Senate race is pretty darned close.What’s happened? The chart below lists the change in our forecast in each state between Sept. 3 (when our model launched) and our current (Sept. 15) update.As you...

Former governor Mike Huckabee (R., Ark.) implicitly made the case against Senators Ted Cruz (R., Texas), Rand Paul (R., Ky.), or Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) serving as president during a meeting with reporters about the prospect of his own candidacy. In a roundtable meeting this morning with journalists in Washington, D.C., Huckabee said that he would decide next year whether or not he will run for president, but he already knows he’s unlikely to support any of those freshman senators. “If not me, I would be supportive of someone who has had executive experience and who has been a governor...

In just four weeks, Missouri has carried out an execution, imposed a 72-hour waiting period on women seeking abortions, expanded gun rights and become the poster child for the militarization of police and racial discord. Its public school system is struggling beneath the weight of an ongoing funding crisis, and an entire local police force is under federal investigation. While the killing of unarmed black teen Michael Brown by a small-city cop and the fiery protests and heavy-handed police response that followed has drawn national attention and scorn, the incident is but a glimpse into the current social and political...

Michigan's primary elections were last month and for a young progressive who loves all things political, it was Christmas in August for me. As a member of LaunchProgress PAC's Candidate Advisory Board, I was excited to support our Michigan candidates Jon Hoadley, Stephanie Chang, and Kristy Pagan who won big on August 5, and Rebecca Thompson, a strong LaunchProgress candidate who was just 500 votes shy of winning her election. But still, I'm haunted by the text message I received the afternoon of the primary, "Today are elections? Wasn't Obama just re-elected?" Sadly this is the reality our country lives...

House GOP Setting the Stage for Massive Crony Capitalist Pay Backs in a Lame Duck House Republicans are preparing a continuing resolution to keep the government open. In doing so, they’ve decided to be total sluts for K Street and Wall Street. The Crony Capitalists, emboldened by the Chamber of Commerce’s help during primary season, are doing some very unusual things. Here’s what I hear is happening. First, they will reauthorize the Ex-Im bank, which is something K Street is desperate to see happen. Second, current reports are that they will spend more than the original Paul Ryan — Patti...

Yesterday, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s Democratic challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes, blasted him for returning to work in Washington D.C. Grimes is starting to fall behind in the polls, with the New York Times basically saying that McConnell’s re-election is the most probable outcome come Election Day. Nevertheless, it’s beyond desperate that Grimes is attacking McConnell, who is part of the GOP leadership (he sort of has to come back), for returning to D.C. to work, while she also heads off to raise money…in D.C. The new web ad blasting McConnell for doing his job labeled the Senate Minority Leader as scandal-ridden, which alludes to...

For several years Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky and the son of presidential candidate Ron Paul, has been one of the most interesting politicians in his party and in congress as a whole. At a time when new ideas have become increasingly scarce, and the policy bandwidth increasingly narrow in Washington, Mr. Paul, whether speaking about US intervention and foreign policy or more recently about militarization and the police, has been one of the few politicians with views outside of his party’s mainstream. With the 2016 presidential election approaching, this has made Mr. Paul one of the most...

America’s two great political parties are constantly transforming themselves, sometimes in small increments, sometimes in sudden lurches. They respond to cues sent to them by voters — which can range from attaboy! to fuhggedaboutit — and to the initiatives of party leaders, especially presidents. But when the other party has held the White House for an extended period, the transformation process can be stormy and chaotic. Which is a pretty apt description of the Republican Party over the past few years. Its two living ex-presidents, the George Bushes, withdrew from active politics immediately after leaving the White House, and its...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Pat Buchanan predicted Mitt Romney will run for president on this weekend's broadcast of The McLaughlin Group. "There is no doubt Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Mitt Romney are in the establishment category or bracket that are headed for the finals," Buchanan said. "I think Mitt would come out first but I really don't see Bush as really having the drive or inner drive. And I think, then you get Mitt Romney against someone like a Cruz, or someone like that, and I think that would be the finals. And I think that Mitt has got it in his heart...

It was not until Thursday night's debate in Sacramento between Gov. Jerry Brown and his GOP rival Neel Kashkari that I realized what a gift the challenger has given the Republican Party. Up until then, he hadn't impressed me much. Had Assemblyman Tim Donnelly won the runoff, he likely would have delivered some bon mots on illegal immigrants that would have dominated debate coverage and sent the rest of the party into a defensive crouch. If Kashkari had amassed the type of country-sized fortune as 2010 GOP nominee Meg Whitman, he likely would have waged a big-money campaign that would...

Is Alaskan Sen. Mark Begich sorry for his “pants on fire” ad against Republican Dan Sullivan? Apparently, he’s not. The ad insinuated that Dan Sullivan, who at the time was Alaska’s Attorney General, shares some of the blame in a brutal 2013 murder, where an elderly couple was killed, along with the sexual assault of their 2-year-old granddaughter and the girl’s 91-year-old great-grandmother. Where was Sullivan at fault? He gave out light sentences to sex offenders, one of which committed the horrific crime. The ad was pulled after the victims’ family voiced their outrage at not being consulted. Additionally, the...

The Obama administration is scheduled to brief members of Congress about the Islamic State (ISIS) on Friday after the beheading of two American journalists, but several Republicans on key committees involved told Newsmax on Thursday that they knew nothing about the classified session. The briefing is to be conducted by officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center, news reports say. The officials are expected to brief members of the congressional leaders' staffs, as well as the House Intelligence Committee, Foreign Affairs Committee, Armed Services Committee, and the defense and foreign operations appropriations...

In 1988, Republicans slammed Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis over Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who attacked a man and sexually assaulted a woman compliments of Massachusetts’ weekend furlough program. This was used to paint Dukakis as soft on crime. Willie Horton 1988 Attack AdIt was a particularly nasty ad (I mean that in a good way)–and Democrats seem to be trying to do the same thing to Republicans in some of the 2014 elections. Trying to spin legal decisions in a way that portrays them as incompetent, soft on crime, and, at times; engaging in a war on women....

This is a perennial question which has flummoxed Republican strategists for years and continues to defy conventional political logic and planning. While it is impossible – and politically perilous – to attempt to take any American demographic group and treat them as a homogenous block, on the major issues of the day one would think that the GOP would be a natural fit for the majority of American Jews. When you look, in particular, at which party provides the staunchest support for Israel, there really is no comparison. A host of other topics appear to be a good fit as...

For years, liberals have pointed to demographic projections with glee.White people seem headed to becoming less than a majority in America. Liberals say this poses a problem for the Republican Party as most white people now vote Republican, providing the party’s base. But the scenes of rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, pose a similar problem for the Democratic Party.In recent years, Republicans have diversified without becoming Democratic Lite. Democrats haven’t. Republicans have three Hispanic senators (Democrats have one) a black senator (Democrats have one), two Hispanic governors (Democrats have none) and two governors whose parents were born in India (Democrats have...

In Dallas at an Americans For Prosperity event, Heritage Foundation president and former-Sen. Jim DeMint put his thumb firmly on the scale for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) over fellow Texan Gov. Rick Perry for the coming 2016 presidential contest. “I think Cruz even more than Perry right now,” DeMint told the Associated Press. “Ted has become really the national conservative leader.”(continued)