Free Republic

As his lies are being exposed daily, Marco and his team are losing their heads.- The panic among the amnesty pimps has reached hysterical proportions. As conservatives increasingly discover how the 'Gang of Eight' amnesty bill would be an abject disaster for America, and also realize how Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has lied to them about its provisions, Rubio and his team have reacted with La Raza talking points, and now disgraceful race-baiting. Case in point, Rubio's spokesperson Alex Conant - in a Twitter exchange with Washington Examiner columnist Conn Carroll, R- said, “We haven’t had a cohort of people...

Paul Ryan says the Gang of Eight’s immigration-reform plan is “productive” and “getting us closer to a solution.” Ryan will give a speech on Monday in Chicago on immigration. Representative Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, a Democrat, will appear with him.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Rand Paul is calling for conservatives to embrace the cause of immigration reform, outlining a proposal that would grant some form of legal status to the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants after the federal government has certified that the border is secure. Paul’s proposal, outlined in a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington on Tuesday, carefully avoided the term citizenship. Instead, the Kentucky senator said he sought a middle ground that would include a multi-year process of granting visas to undocumented workers that would hinge on the annual verification of the security of the...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) joined President Obama for his second closed-door dinner with Senate Republicans on Wednesday. Rubio had been invited but had not committed for most of the day of the dinner. The Florida Republican's office said immigration meetings might get in the way of him going to the dinner, but later said he would attend. Besides Rubio, Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), John Boozman (Ark.), Susan Collins (Maine), Mike Crapo (Idaho), Mike Enzi (Wyo.), Deb Fisher (Neb.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), Johnny Isackson (Ga.), Pat Roberts (Kan.), John Thune (S.D.) Roger Wicker (Miss.) dined with Obama. Obama's first meeting with...

President Obama’s second big dinner with Senate Republicans will be at the White House Wednesday night, press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday. Carney declined to say which senators will join Obama but Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), who is organizing the guest list, said Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) will join him at the dinner. Isakson’s office said he would release the full guest list Wednesday. The dinner follows Obama’s initial outreach to Senate Republicans last month. That dinner grew out of discussions Obama had with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). Carney said topics of discussion will include Obama’s...

President Barack Obama is keeping up his congressional charm offensive, with a second dinner with Senate Republicans planned for next month. Obama dined with a dozen GOP senators earlier this month at a hotel near the White House. …

The national Republican Party released a scathing self-analysis Monday that party leaders hope will be the first step toward returning the GOP to a winning track after its election losses of November. The report, issued by a Republican National Committee task force, minces no words. "Public perception of the party is at record lows," the report says. "Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country. When someone rolls their eyes at us, they are not likely to open their...

The Republican National Committee (RNC) has released its long-awaited study on the 2012 elections, with detailed recommendations about how the party can improve its future. The report, entitled the “Growth and Opportunity Project,” was compiled by a special committee consisting of former Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, veteran GOP adviser Sally Bradshaw, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, Puerto Rico committeewoman Zori Fonalledas, and South Carolina committeeman Glenn McCall. For several months, RNC chairman Reince Priebus has referred to the committee’s report on the state of the party as an “autopsy.” It is an apt description, because the 100-page report...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush gave the keynote speech Friday night at the Conservative Political Action Conference 2013 Reagan Dinner and received what was described as a “respectful” standing ovation when introduced, as reported by Twitchy.com. As he laid out what appeared to be the foundation for a future presidential campaign platform, there was a general lack of enthusiasm that brought some to describe it as tepid.

As the GOP struggles to broaden its appeal, the head of the American Conservative Union declared Thursday that the Republican Party is not a home for everyone, as prominent voices in Republican politics gather with thousands of conservatives and tea party activists outside Washington. The Conservative Political Action Conference offers Republican leaders—past and potential presidential contenders among them—a high-profile stage to court their party's most passionate voters. The three-day gathering also shines a spotlight on deep divisions within the Republican Party as it tries to recover from a painful 2012 election season. “I’m a firm believer that if the Republican...

President Obama and Republican senators had a “good exchange of ideas” this evening during their roughly two-hour-long dinner at the posh Jefferson Hotel, just blocks from the White House, according to a senior administration official. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., gave the meeting a thumbs up as he exited the hotel, saying it was “just fine,” “great” and “wonderful.” McCain told reporters gathered across the street that it was a “very enjoyable evening,” but declined to discuss specifics. Obama invited 12 GOP senators to break bread as part of a larger effort to jump start budget negotiations and try to cut...

Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, the former campaign adviser to 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, has repeatedly argued that the Republican Party should be more inclusive — of almost everyone, it seems, except Sarah Palin. On Friday night’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” during its online “Overtime” segment, Schmidt tersely responded to a viewer question about McCain’s selection of Palin to be his running mate: MAHER: Steve Schmidt, ‘Is it possible you picked Sarah Palin the wrong year?’ Oh, my. ‘Could she have swung the women vote in 2012 enough to have put Romney in the White...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican Party's problems with minority voters have preoccupied strategists since November, and it's possible those difficulties will persist or worsen. But an opening for marked improvements in GOP-minority relations may be at hand, or at least close by.Republican leaders would have to make some timely decisions and get a few breaks, which campaign consultants don't rule out.The party desperately needs to draw more support from Latinos, a fast-growing sector that gave President Barack Obama 71 percent of its vote last fall. Two big opportunities now present themselves.If Republican lawmakers allow far-reaching immigration changes to become law,...

Marco Rubio’s softening stance toward immigration reform boils down to his mom, a new profile of the fast-rising Florida senator reveals. “Don’t mess with the immigrants, my son,” Oriales Garcia Rubio told her youngest son during a Dec. 21 phone call, Time magazine reports. Illegal immigrants, she said, are “human beings just like us, and they came for the same reasons we came. To work. To improve their lives.” Rubio took his mother’s words to heart, and says they are shaping his work on immigration. “I have to balance that humanity with reality,” he said. “We have immigration laws. They...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will speak for the first time at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, a clear sign that he is mulling a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. The American Conservative Union, which sponsors the conference, announced Tuesday that Bush will address the group, set for March 14-16 in National Harbor, Md., just outside Washington. Bush has been invited by the group to speak at CPAC several times, but this will be his first appearance. “We are pleased to announce that my friend Gov. Jeb Bush will be a featured speaker at CPAC 2013,”...

He's already being treated like the 2016 GOP presidential front-runner, and now there is another reason Republicans are excitedly buzzing about Florida Sen. Marco Rubio: He alone would reverse the party's slide among Hispanic voters. A new nationwide poll from JZ Analytics found that Rubio would get 48 percent of the Hispanic vote, about twice what Mitt Romney won in 2012. Republican strategist told Secrets that a win among Latino voters that big would assure Rubio the presidency, since he would also likely keep the regular GOP base. "If he does that good, then he's the next president," said a...

Demography isn't destiny—and assuming that it is will likely make liberals overreach again. Many are arguing these days that President Obama has forged a new majority coalition of women, minorities, young people and upscale cultural liberals so large and durable that he can do what no president has done before—pursue a very liberal agenda without serious opposition or defections from his own party. Demography is destiny, this argument holds, and it is irrevocably on the side of Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party. Yes, there will be fewer whites and more minorities in the future, and Republicans will have to...

“I don’t think the party dies immediately,” Gilmore says. “It’s not going to just disappear like the Whigs did, since there is so much law that supports the two-party system. But Republicans will be locked into a permanent minority at the national level unless we seriously rethink our approach.”

Many are arguing these days that President Obama has forged a new majority coalition of women, minorities, young people and upscale cultural liberals so large and durable that he can do what no president has done before—pursue a very liberal agenda without serious opposition or defections from his own party. Demography is destiny, this argument holds, and it is irrevocably on the side of Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party. -snip- Republicans have a perception problem with Hispanics, but the GOP earned 44% of Hispanic votes in 2004 and can do so again with the right policies, many more Hispanic...

As a group of senators unveil their bipartisan proposal for immigration reform today and President Obama heads west this week to rally support for his own ideas, a separate bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives is on the verge of finalizing its own designs for comprehensive immigration reform. The discussions, which top aides close to the talks discussed on the condition that they not be identified, are described as “Washington’s best-kept secret.” Last week, House Speaker John Boehner spilled the beans on the secret group, revealing that the lawmakers had been “meeting for three or four years...