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February 8, 2013 Nuclear war over Rove's claims to work for Reagan; Gipper biographer says no Paul Bedard The war of words between conservatives and former Bush advisor Karl Rove has gone nuclear, this time over Rove's claim that he worked for Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign and on a Reagan advisory board. The bottom line: While Rove told The O'Reilly Factor Thursday that he worked for the Gipper, Reagan's acclaimed biographer Craig Shirley says there's no evidence to back Rove up. Worse: In an email Shirley is sending to conservative leaders, he reveals that Rove backed former President Ford in...

Republican strategist Steve Schmidt said early Wednesday morning on MSNBC that it’s time for Republican leaders to stand up to “extreme statements” and “nonsense” coming from within the GOP, including Rush Limbaugh. “Now, people calling for revolution and these extreme statements — when I talk about a civil war in the Republican Party, what I mean is, it’s time for Republican elected leaders to stand up and to repudiate this nonsense, and to repudiate it directly,” Schmidt said. Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83454.html#ixzz2BW8uQVhy

The sourcing on this one is awfully thin, which raises two possibilities. One: The details are exaggerated or outright made up to try to start a firestorm among ObamaCare-hating conservatives. Two: The details are spot-on and are being deliberately leaked to see how ObamaCare-hating conservatives react. Can some parts of this thing be preserved or must the stench of The One's greatest victory be completely expunged before Congress takes another run at health care? If the law is upheld, Republicans will take to the floor to tear out its most controversial pieces, such as the individual mandate and requirements that...

A blonde finds lipstick on her husband's collar. Suspicious that he's cheating on her, she heads to a local gun shop and buys herself a pistol. That night, she hides in her bedroom closet. Sure enough, the husband comes home with his redheaded secretary on his arm and leads her to the bed. As they began to caress, the wife jumps out of the closet and holds the gun to her head. "Sweetheart," the husband pleads, "don't do it! Don't shoot yourself!" "Shut up, Johnny!" she cries. "You're next!" That blonde now runs the Republican Party. Hence, the GOPs dedication...

A recount of the Jan. 3 Iowa Republican caucus results has Rick Santorum leading Mitt Romney in the race for the GOP presidential nomination by 34 votes, with data from 8 precincts missing and never to be certified, GOP officials told The Des Moines Register on Wednesday. Despite Santorum's advantage, the state Republican party views the results as a wash.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - The 2012 GOP primary between Sen. Richard Lugar and challenger Richard Mourdock is still more than six months away, but you can get a sense of what kind of battle it will be in this week's WISH-TV/Franklin College Poll. Lugar has a big advantage in some areas. When it comes to name identification, more than nine out of 10 voters recognize him, while Richard Mourdock's name registers with only two-thirds of the voters. Lugar also has a high favorability rating at 59 percent. Mourdock gets a positive response from just 17 percent. Yet if you place Mourdock's...

Whether he's right or not, Rick Perry has a point -- there are a ton of debates planned this year. There's a reason for that: An internal agreement within the Republican National Committee means the party is using some sanctioned debates as an incentive for good behavior, and others as a tool to mollify members who might otherwise cause trouble. Back in March, the RNC announced it had formed a committee that would authorize presidential debates. RNC chairman Reince Priebus said the committee would help the party streamline the nominating process, and party strategists hoped it would provide guidance and...

In 2008, John McCain's campaign team discussed whether they should let Sarah Palin be sworn in as vice-president if they were to win the election, according to campaign staffer Nicolle Wallace. "There certainly were discussions -- not for long because of the arc the campaign took -- but certainly there were discussions about whether, if they were to win, it would be appropriate for her to be sworn in," Wallace tells Time's Claire Suddath. In her new novel, It's Classified, Wallace has a character -- a mentally ill female vice-president -- which she says is based on her experience working...

Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock picked up an endorsement from a presidential candidate in his primary challenge to Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) this week. Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain announced he would support Mourdock’s primary bid to unseat Lugar during a Monday visit to Indianapolis, the Associated Press reported. Cain reportedly met with Mourdock after addressing Indiana Republicans on the invitation of the state party. Indiana Republican Party Chairman Eric Holcomb invited all the GOP presidential candidates to speak to the Republican faithful in the state, but Cain was the first to schedule a visit. Cain placed fifth in Iowa's...

He has served six terms in the Senate and won his last race with 87 percent of the vote, but that hasn’t prevented Indiana Sen. Richard G. Lugar from emerging as perhaps the most vulnerable Republican senator of the 2012 election cycle. And the big danger is coming from Mr. Lugar’s right flank...

Rep. Steve King (R.-Iowa) is predicting that--despite his own and other conservatives' efforts to the contrary--this Republican-controlled House of Representatives will continue throughout its two-year tenure to allow funding for Planned Parenthood and the implementation of Obamacare. “They are going to allow that to happen, the way it looks to me,” King said in a videotaped interview with CNSNews.com. Shortly after midnight on Friday morning, the House voted to approve a continuing resolution to keep the government funded from the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30 through Nov. 18. According to an analysis by the conservative Republican Study...

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A tea party candidate who plans to run against Sen. Olympia Snowe in next year's Senate Republican primary is inviting Snowe to debate him.

Barbara Stanwyck: "We're both rotten!" Fred MacMurray: "Yeah - only you're a little more rotten." -"Double Indemnity" (1944) Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary America. Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats' health care bill will be...

Link only - Kathleen Parker: Perry's lead points to a battle within the GOP for 'godliest'

Link only, per FR posting rules

Calling himself a tea party true believer, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on Tuesday in the same interview both praised the debt ceiling deal and said he plans to vote against it. Hatch, who faces a looming primary challenge from the right from Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), took to Fox News’s “Fox and Friends” to tout his own tea party credentials. “Look, I think the tea party people deserve a lot of credit,” he said in response to a question about Democrats and Vice President Joe Biden reportedly calling freshman GOP members of Congress terrorists. “We wouldn’t be where we are...

Polls indicating that the Republican Party is moving further to the right are leaving a large faction of moderate Republicans feeling disenchanted with the party’s conservative drift, reports The Boston Globe. In 2010, some of the GOP’s most outspoken leaders helped propel Republican candidates into power in the House. The tea party movement was influential in securing this takeover. But Gallup poll findings to be released Friday indicate that the GOP’s conservative shift is isolating its moderate wing, the Globe reported. Self-described moderates made up almost one-third of the Republican Party just 10 years ago. Now, that fraction has dropped...

A large umbrella group for Tea Party activists targeted Republican leaders Tuesday for what they called caving in on the deficit talks. The Tea Party Nation put House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on notice "for betraying the movement that put Republicans in charge of the lower chamber last year." In a press release, Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips drew a hard line for the Tea Party position. Phillips warned that his organization is on the lookout for Republicans voting to give away "more borrowing authority to President Obama" without also ensuring spending...

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) doesn’t yet have an official primary opponent, but he might as well be running against the Club for Growth. A nasty war of words has erupted between the two sides, setting the stage for what appears to be a likely effort by the Club to unseat Hatch next year. (snip) The Club earlier this week released ads in Utah and Indiana (where it is also considering targeting GOP Sen. Richard Lugar), urging the two men to resist raising the debt limit, while also taking some shots are their records on government spending. But as we’ve written...

For years now there has been a clear power struggle within the Kansas Republican Party, but some major party figures say something about that tussle has changed. The rift between conservatives and moderates, they maintain, is widening into a chasm that could have significant implications for the party and the state. "I see Kansas Republicans being more divided than in years past," said Senate Majority Leader John Vratil of Leawood. (snip) ...conservative forces in the Capitol are stronger than ever. But many aligned with that side of the party want more. They seek decisive legislative majorities that could push an...