Free Republic

It looks like Planned Parenthood won't be defunded and Obamacare won't be repealed thanks to three Republican senators. Republicans failed to rally enough senators to vote for the Better Care Reconciliation Act, which would repeal and replace Obamacare. Then, Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, announced the Senate would instead only vote on repealing the pro-abortion healthcare law. The bill repealing Obamacare would also defund Planned Parenthood for one year. Three Republican senators, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Susan Collins of Maine, have all said they'd vote against the bill. This means McConnell doesn't...

His North Vietnamese captors told him he’d never go home. They beat and tortured him to no end, but the Navy flyer’s patriotism manifested itself in historic defiance, refusing to do the easy thing for his own reward. He would not accept freedom before other prisoners who’d been there longer than he: It wasn’t the right thing to do, he thought. Instead, he gave the enemy hell. Now he has brain cancer. And he’s 80 years old. It’s the appropriate time to loudly honor this war hero for his toughness and resolve in combat and captivity, but subsequently during his...

Still deep cuts to Medicaid in Senate bill. Will vote no on MTP. Ready to work w/ GOP & Dem colleagues to fix flaws in ACA.

NEW YORK (AP) — MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough says he’s leaving the GOP. The “Morning Joe” co-host has become a sharp critic of President Donald Trump. Scarborough said Tuesday during an interview with CBS “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert that “I’ve got to become an independent.” He appeared as a guest with his co-host and fiance, Mika Brzezinski, who recently was attacked in sharply personal terms by the president. Scarborough says it’s inexplicable why so many Republicans look the other way when Trump says or does something that betrays the party’s core values. He told Colbert...

LANSING, MI -- Gov. Rick Snyder on Friday vetoed a bill that would have created a "choose life" fundraising license plate option for Michigan motorists. Senate Bill 163 would have the state develop and issue a fund-raising license plate with the message "choose life." The funds raised by the purchase of these plates would have gone to the Choose Life Michigan Fund, controlled by anti-abortion group Right to Life Michigan, to fund things like pregnancy centers. It passed 25-11 in the Senate and 65-43 in the House. But it failed to get a signature from Gov. Rick Snyder.

The urgency was easy to find inside the private receptions and closed-door briefings at the Koch brothers' donor retreat in Colorado Springs, where the billionaire conservatives and their chief lieutenants warned this weekend of a rapidly shrinking window to push their agenda through Congress. No agenda items mattered more to the conservative Koch network than the GOP's promise to overhaul the nation's tax code and repeal and replace President Barack Obama's health care law. At the moment, however, both are bogged down by GOP infighting that jeopardizes their fate...... "If we don't get health care, none of us are coming...

Viral posts claim John McCain has quit the Republican Party. The facts: Sen. John McCain is still a Republican, despite fake stories that claim otherwise. A story posted on WashingtonFeed.com says: “Senator McCain has definitely renounced any affiliation with the Republican Party.” It quotes the Arizona senator as saying, “I am and always will be opposed to Donald Trump. In fact, I’ve decided that any party that supports supports [sic] him supports the worst America has to offer. For that reason, I’m leaving the GOP and Caucusing [sic] as an independent with the Democrats.” FactCheck.org works with Facebook to help...

HACKETTSTOWN, N.J. — The Republican candidate for governor of New Jersey sat on a plush beige couch in the Republican mayor’s condo, surrounded by Republican county officials and politicians, and offered up her plan to stem what is perhaps the state’s most daunting challenge — its deepening property tax crisis. She adopted it, she said, from an unexpected source. “This is a page out of the Democratic playbook, it really is,” Kim Guadagno, the lieutenant governor said, noting that the plan came from a proposal in deep-blue Illinois. With Republicans controlling the White House, both chambers of Congress and having...

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain in 2012 turned over nearly $9 million in unspent funds from his failed 2008 presidential campaign to a new foundation bearing his name, the McCain Institute for International Leadership. The institute is intended to serve as a “legacy” for McCain and “is dedicated to advancing human rights, dignity, democracy and freedom.” It is a tax-exempt non-profit foundation with assets valued at $8.1 million and associated with Arizona State University. Conservative and liberal critics, however, believe the institute constitutes a major conflict of interest for McCain, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned. McCain,...

Rep. Mark Sanford said Thursday that President Trump was “partially” to blame for some of the hostility in the country that led to the shooting of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and others this week. “I would argue the president has unleashed, partially, again not in anyway totally, but partially to blame for the demons that have been unleashed,” Mr. Sanford, South Carolina Republican, said on MSNBC.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Gov. Scott Walker said Monday that when President Donald Trump comes to Wisconsin, he will see that people outside of Washington "still like his policies." Walker spoke on the Mike Gallagher radio show about a fundraiser Trump is hosting for Walker in Milwaukee on Tuesday night. Trump is also touring a technical college with Walker in the Milwaukee area. The fundraiser comes as Walker prepares for an expected re-election run in 2018. Walker didn't initially endorse Trump, but came around after he secured the Republican nomination. Trump carried Wisconsin by less than a percentage point.....

GOP Rep. Martha McSally (Ariz.) recently voiced concerns about Republicans losing the House to Democrats due to controversy surrounding President Trump's administration, according to a report from Tuscon Weekly. In a private speech to the Arizona Bankers Association last week, McSally fretted that Trump's tweets are creating "distractions" that "it's basically being taken out on me." "Any Republican member of Congress, you are going down with the ship," McSally said, according to the report. "And we're going to hand the gavel to Pelosi in 2018, they only need 23 seats and the path to that gavel being handed over is...

Watching this reminds me that the day is coming, maybe sooner than we think, when Democrats will be trolling the new Republican president by comparing him unfavorably to Trump. Which reminds me that the day is also coming when we on the right will be trolling a new Democratic president by comparing him unfavorably to — gasp — Barack Obama.

President Donald Trump has failed at getting the proper message out during his time as a politician and is "sabotaging his own agenda," political analyst Karl Rove wrote in an opinion piece. Rove, who worked in the White House under former President George W. Bush, argued in The Wall Street Journal that Trump's Twitter habit is causing a lot of problems for him. "Mr. Trump has figured out how to tweet his way around the mainstream media," Rove wrote. "Yet by disregarding basic fact checking, he is deepening the already considerable doubts Americans have about his competence and trustworthiness."

Washington • Just days after launching a new political action committee, former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden will join Republican officials and donors at a weekend retreat hosted by former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Biden will be interviewed by Romney during a Friday evening event in Park City, at the invitation-only summit, according to a Biden spokesman and participants briefed on the schedule. The speaker lineup for what is traditionally a gathering of Romney allies is packed with high-profile Republicans, among them House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain.

Senators went into a recess skeptical over whether they could agree to legislation repealing and replacing ObamaCare. They will return on Monday more doubtful than ever. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), one of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) most loyal allies, said Thursday that it’s “unlikely” the GOP will get a healthcare deal. “I don’t see a comprehensive healthcare plan this year,” he told a local news station. Senate Republicans hoped to have a draft bill this week, but it now looks like there will at best be an outline.

6.7K Romney urges Trump to support Paris climate deal 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Wednesday expressed his support for the U.S. to remain in the Paris climate accord, arguing it was an opportunity to remain a leader on the world stage. “Affirmation of the Paris Agreement is not only about the climate: It is also about America being the global leader,” Romney tweeted.

During Politico’s “Off Message” podcast discussing his book “The Vanishing American Adult,” never-Trumper Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) said President Donald Trump “comes out of a reality TV world,” which gives him “lots of anxiety about whether or not that kind of world is really what we want for our kids.”

Former House Speaker John Boehner said earlier this week that Donald Trump’s presidency has been “a complete disaster” thus far and that the billionaire-turned-commander-in-chief is still learning on the job. “Everything else he’s done [in office] has been a complete disaster,” Boehner said during a question-and-answer session at a conference in Houston on Wednesday. “He’s still learning how to be president.” ~snip~ He seemed content with his life as a retired politician and was quick to shoot down any talk of a future presidential bid. “I wake up every day, drink my morning coffee and say hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah,” Boehner...

The top Republican in the Senate on Tuesday rejected President Donald Trump's suggestion that his party change the chamber's rules to undercut the ability of Democrats to block legislation with filibusters. "There is an overwhelming majority on a bipartisan basis that is not interested in changing the way the Senate operates on the legislative calendar," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters.