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Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk hasn't endorsed a GOP candidate for president, but it's looking more and more like he's on Mitt Romney's team. Kirk said Monday the field is getting down to "Romney and the anti-Romney," listing all of the GOP darlings -- Palin, Bachman, Trump et al -- that have fallen by the wayside. "The underlying story is the rise and rise of Mitt Romney," Kirk said. In regards to the Herman Cain sexual harassment controversy, Kirk said Cain "needs to respond and respond completely." "I do think his story is largely ending," Kirk said. "The critical thing is...

"I think there is room for revenues, but I think there clearly is a limit to the amount of revenues that are available," Boehner told reporters. "What I was attempting to do," he said, grinning, "was to suggest that Mr. Norquist, like millions of Americans, believes that raising taxes is not good for our economy." Boehner insisted that Republicans would only compromise on tax revenue if Democrats were willing to take significant and painful steps to shore up Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. "Without real reform on the entitlement side, I don't know how you put any revenue on the...

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) indicated on Tuesday that he has come around to Mitt Romney on the issue of healthcare. “Romney’s been very clear that he’s against ObamaCare and he’s going to repeal it. So I for a second don’t worry about whether he’s going to shy away from repealing the president’s health care law,” Ryan said in an interview with The Weekly Standard. (snip) Ryan went on to compliment Romney on a variety of issues. He described Romney as proving himself “pretty capable and strong and resilient” when it comes to the slew of GOP debates over the past...

(snip) Graham said it is crucial for the U.S. to continue to support Israel, and said the president has "thrown Israel under the bus" by talking about settlements and pre-1967 borders. "It is our best friend in the Middle East," Graham said. He did praise the president for sending military advisers into Uganda.Graham said he is hoping to hear more on foreign policy from the Republican presidential candidates. "Rick Santorum is speaking like Ronald Reagan better than anybody else on peace and strength," Graham said. "Ronald Reagan confronted the challenges of his time. He did not isolate America." Graham declined...

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who’s taken on tough tasks from immigration reform to climate change, faces another one as he calls for spending billions of dollars overseas on unpopular foreign aid programs that he insists are vital to U.S. national security. With Congress facing mandatory spending cuts and previously sacrosanct military programs on the chopping block, Graham is trying to protect funding for foreign aid even as most Americans oppose it – 71 percent in a recent poll – and other Republican leaders call for focusing U.S. resources at home. “It is a tough sell, but you can be...

The large Republican presidential field, along with the dramatic surges and collapses of several of its candidates, may ultimately be much ado about nothing. That, at least, is the conclusion of the Republican strategists surveyed in this week's National Journal Political Insiders Poll, who almost unanimously identified Mitt Romney as the most likely candidate to win the nomination. In the five times the GOP Insiders have been asked that question in 2011, Romney has never surrendered the top spot.

LAS VEGAS — For most Republican politicians, there is no smear more loathed, more insulting or more politically perilous than to be called a RINO — a Republican in Name Only. Not for Linda Lingle. “I’ve been called a RINO before, which I don’t mind,” the former Hawaii governor told a crowd of diehard Republican activists huddled in a Las Vegas ballroom. “There are a lot of people who support these RINOs, whether it’s me or [former New York Mayor] Rudy Giuliani or [former New Jersey Gov.] Christine Todd Whitman.”(snip) And from Lingle’s point of view, moderate Republican candidates such...

(snip) Beyond South Carolina, Graham thinks the GOP should look to all corners of the country, “our pretty deep pool,” for its vice-presidential nominee. The Northeast, he predicts, could be the place to find a leader who balances the ticket. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, he says, would be excellent. Or, if Republicans were looking to Florida, freshman Sen. Marco Rubio, “a good guy, would obviously be very helpful.” Those two names, I say, are obvious. Graham smiles and floats another: Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor. “I know it would create problems on the social side,” he...

Health care remains one of President Barack Obama's greatest political weaknesses. The issue remains an equally serious problem for Republican Mitt Romney. President Obama's program to centralize medical decision-making in Washington remains as unpopular as ever. Insurers are raising premiums and canceling policies. The president's promise that Americans can keep their existing coverage has turned out to be void. Health care providers and insurers are cutting back operations and dropping jobs to comply with the new law. Washington has been forced to issue temporary waivers — over 1400, as of mid-June — to moderate the legislation's impact. Moreover, ObamaCare has...

A leaked U.S. diplomatic cable shows that Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain promised to help Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi obtain U.S. military hardware in 2009. The cable, released by the open information group WikiLeaks, reveals the pledge came at meeting that was attended by other prominent members of Congress, including Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).In the meeting, Muatassim Qadhafi, the Libyan leader’s fifth son and national security adviser, requested U.S. assistance in obtaining military supplies, both lethal and non-lethal. The cable indicates that McCain was the dominant voice among the congressional delegation in a...

LORETTA FUDDY, DIRECTOR OF HEALTH, STATE OF HAWAII’S MEMORANDUM IN OPPOSITION TO PLAINTIFF’S EMERGENCY EX-PARTE MOTION FOR EMERGENCY ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE AND TO COMPEL ATTENDANCE FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS AND FOR ATTORNEY’S FEES AND COSTS Complete Opposition posted...

Perry is Bush lite and Sarah Palin in a skirt Todd J. Gillman August 7, 2011 GOP consultant Alex Castellanos dumped all over Gov. Rick Perry this morning on NBC's Meet the Press, calling him "Sarah Palin with a skirt" and a lesser version of George W. Bush - and not in a good way. "He has some challenges. One of them is that people think he's a little bit of a coffee table book. He's kind of Sarah Palin with a skirt. Not a substantive candidate," Castellanos said when host Dick Gregory asked if Perry could give the current...

With one day to go before his Houston prayer rally, Texas Gov. Rick Perry dropped hints about his potential presidential bid, telling Christian Broadcast Network that God will have a hand in his presidential decision. "I have no idea what God's plans are for me but I'm gonna try to be as faithful to him as I can be. I know I will fail as I have often but the good news is we have a forgiving God and I try to follow His directions," Perry said in an interview. "God's got a great sense of humor, I know that...

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...

(snip) MCCAIN: ... just wants to spend money. Hello? He just wants to spend more money. You and I are -- remember when Ronald Reagan said the worst deal he ever made was when he sat down with the Democrats and said they would cut spending $3 and raise taxes for every $1. Guess what? They raised taxes and they didn’t cut spending. That’s why the Tea Partiers and others would – I’m not a Tea Partier -- but the fact is, we need a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. We couldn’t get it through the Senate as the...

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.), a Republican presidential candidate, called Saturday morning for Republicans and the Tea Party to stop fighting and work together to help save the country, presumably from Democratic policies, although he was not specific. "On the right, take note," McCotter said on the House floor. "It is as unwarranted and injurious for a Republican to call a Tea Partier a hobbit as it is for a Tea Partier to call a Republican a RINO."McCotter was referring to a comment earlier this month from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who compared Tea Partiers to hobbits. That sparked rebukes from...

So the debt limit debate has come to this: John McCain, who you may recall was the GOP’s 2008 standard bearer, is now openly accusing conservatives of actively misleading America with their completely unrealistic demands, which he labeled “deceiving” and “bizarro.” In a seminal moment in this debate, here’s some video of McCain on the Senate floor today, unleashing an angry tirade at conservatives who are still holding out for a balanced budget amendment as part of any compromise on the debt ceiling. McCain accused them of “deceiving” America into believing such a thing can pass the Senate:

Sen. John McCain ruffled America’s already disheveled political feathers today with a Senate floor rant mocking the Tea Party’s position on the debt ceiling debate comparing them to hobbits and disparaging them for turning Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into Republican nominees. Unsurprisingly, Sean Hannity had a bone to pick with the senator tonight on those comments, and on his opinion that the Republicans will get the blame for a debt default if they do not compromise. Hannity came out swinging at Sen. McCain, wondering why the senator had turned on the Tea Party– “why not attack the President?” Sen....

SALT LAKE CITY — Former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, a top supporter and adviser of Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney, strenuously backed the core piece of President Barack Obama’s health-care law and urged the states to move forward together in adopting health insurance exchanges. Speaking to a bipartisan group of governors at the National Governors Association, the former Republican governor who served as secretary of health and human services in the Bush administration, called the exchanges where individuals and small businesses can purchase health plans “a very practical solution to a problem that needs to be solved.”

There are “too many people” in the room to work out a deal to raise the debt ceiling, House Speaker John Boehner complained on Thursday night as negotiations between President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans stay stuck in a stalemate. “Whatever gets suggested, it gets debated to no end,” the Ohio Republican said on Fox News’s “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.” “The room’s too big. You know, too many people are in there trying to negotiate what is a very difficult — could be and will be a very difficult agreement. And there’s just too many people in...