Free Republic

THERE HAS BEEN MUCH WRINGING OF HANDS over how the Obama campaign’s use of big data and technology was (and is still) so much more advanced than anything we have on the right. Much of this concern is grounded in reality. The left has a big advantage here, and it’s one post-election problem that the GOP must tackle. The Obama campaign used a data analytics program that had been perfected over six years, and which broke the electorate down into very small and targeted subsets of demographics (think single Hispanic women living in Colorado). This approach was unprecedented in presidential...

The former head of the RNC's Hispanic outreach committee in Florida is so fed up with the national party's stance on immigration that he's switching teams and registering as a Democrat. The final straw for Pablo Pantoja, who worked for the RNC in the 2010 and 2012 elections before quitting last summer, was apparently the new, flawed Heritage Foundation study on the cost of immigration, co-authored by Jason Richwine who previously wrote that "No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites." The Tampa Bay Times and the Miami Herald picked up on the Monday email from...

May 9, 2013 Report: RNC scrapped pre-election Benghazi ad; Conservatives demand to know why Twitchy Staff Did the RNC make a big mistake last fall? A new report by ABC News’ Jonathan Karl has many conservatives seeing red. Johnatha Karl, ABC News, reports that this ad was put together by the RNC last fall but was “scrapped at the last minute because of objections from the Romney campaign, which was concerned the ad would distract from Romney’s efforts to focus on the economy.” Regardless of whether or not the Romney campaign actually played a role in the RNC’s final decision,...

It is an amazing testament to how bad the other candidates were that Mark Sanford ran away with the race in South Carolina’s first congressional district. A deeply flawed man, he was the one guy the primary voters knew wouldn’t go wobbly in Washington. But they, and I, presumed he was over the issues with his ex-wife. Unfortunately, a couple of weeks ago we learned things were not settled. The NRCC and GOP abandoned Mark Sanford as a result. In a race the GOP could still — even now — win, the GOP decided it would rather lose than win....

Following revelations that his ex-wife accused him of trespassing on her property earlier this year, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford (R) has lost the support of his national party. The news comes as controversy continues to swirl around Sanford and his personal life — a process that began with his well-publicized 2009 affair but was inflamed, the Washington Post has learned, when one of the Sanfords’ sons met Mark Sanford’s former mistress for the first time the night he won the GOP nomination. The National Republican Congressional Committee on Wednesday took the unusual step of telegraphing that it will...

National Republicans are pulling the plug on Mark Sanford’s suddenly besieged congressional campaign, POLITICO has learned — a potentially fatal blow to the former South Carolina governor’s dramatic comeback bid. Blindsided by news that Sanford’s ex-wife has accused him of trespassing and concluding he has no plausible path to victory, the National Republican Congressional Committee has decided not to spend more money on Sanford’s behalf ahead of the May 7 special election.

Just days after the Republican National Committee (RNC) rejected most proposed rules changes that would undo the power grab from last year’s convention, a number of grassroots activists stopped by to express their disappointment with party leaders and let them know that they would not give up the fight. Shortly after 10am, around 50 activists (pictured above) showed up at RNC headquarters in Washington, DC to present a representative from the party with a open letter to Chairman Reince Priebus that hit at the heart of grassroots’ frustration with the party. “As grassroots fiscally conservative activists from states across the...

Members of the Republican National Committee will gather in Los Angeles on Friday for their spring meeting and vote on a resolution to continue their opposition to same-sex marriage. The resolution is expected to pass by an overwhelming majority, according to Politico. Although the conservative party has seen some dissidents, predominant GOP leaders still believe that marriage should be defined as being between one man and one woman. A copy of the "Resolution for Marriage and Children 2013" bears a striking similarity to the 2012 Republican Party's platform regarding same-sex marriage. The resolution states that, among other things, "the Republican...

Michigan Republican National Committeeman Dave Agema, who caused a stir last month when he posted an article to his Facebook page that labeled the homosexual lifestyle as “filthy,” is now comparing homosexuality to alcoholism and says it leads to drug abuse.

Having grown up in a family where the term “progressive” was not used by Republicans as a pejorative to describe their political opponents, Theodore Roosevelt IV tells Newsmax TV that he does not necessarily see today’s GOP spinning off a third party any time soon. “Our family’s been sort of kind of like a third party for a long time,” Roosevelt acknowledged in an exclusive interview on Tuesday. “Goes back to 1912. We’ve been waiting a long time. I’m not sure I see a third party emerging in the near future.” Roosevelt, the great grandson of President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt,...

At a meeting of the Ripon Society held in Washington, D.C.'s exclusive Capitol Hill Club on Tuesday, new Republican National Committee Chief of Staff Mike Shields effectively declared war on the conservative grassroots. In a strong attack, Shields coined a new derogatory term, "the professional right," to refer to groups that have publicly criticized the recent RNC "Autopsy" report. "It's a term I'll be using often in the coming months," he told the crowd of about 40 Ripon Society members, RNC insiders, and Capitol Hill staffers. But Reagan biographer Craig Shirley, who was not one of those in attendance at...

Lady Ga Ga reportedly turned down a $1 million offer to perform at the Republican National Convention last year. Dolly Parton and Pitbull also declined to appear....

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A Michigan member of the Republican National Committee said Thursday he will not resign after posting an article critical of gay people on his Facebook page, despite calls from members of his own party that he step down. Dave Agema, who served as a state representative from 2007 until December posted an excerpt from an article titled "Everyone Should Know These Statistics On Homosexuals" on his Facebook page Wednesday. A group of 21 Michigan Republicans has called it "deplorable."

The GOP is working with Silicon Valley investors to digitally target voters and donors in a broader effort by the Republican National Committee to revive the party. The venture, whose mission is still being refined, will create an interactive platform available to any GOP campaign to access the party's vast amount of data on voters. This platform will likely work in conjunction with the RNC's efforts to improve its own database of voter information. The venture is being backed by Karl Rove and fomer Bain & Co. executive and private equity investor Richard Boyce. Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy will...

STEPHANOPOULOS: That was Bill Clinton after Dukakis's loss in '88. BRAZILE: That was Bill Clinton after Walter Mondale lost, after Jimmy Carter lost. We had a dynamic governor who was reform minded, who took those reform issues and brought them into the national forefront. He really helped recharge the Democratic Party. But, you know, the Republican Party is out to lunch. I watched CPAC Charl -- I mean Karl. (LAUGHTER) BRAZILE: Charles was a former friend. ROVE: I thought I was a current friend. BRAZILE: But you're always a friend, but you owe me some chili. ROVE: But you owe...

Economist and conservative author Thomas Sowell tells Newsmax TV that “Republicans have a decades-long record” of reaching out to the black vote in the “most unpromising way possible.” And based on the party’s strategy moving forward, he says, not much has changed. “I’m baffled by so many things that the Republican Party does nationally,” Sowell tells Newsmax on Friday in an exclusive interview. Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, tells Newsmax the GOP’s current plan to woo minorities is the same misguided strategy employed decades ago by former President Ronald Reagan. “When [Reagan] set out...

Jobs began rebuilding Apple not by focusing on products, suppliers, or market shares, but by asking a simple question: “Who is Apple and what do we stand for?”

The catfight between former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and his replacement, Reince Priebus, has reached screech level, with Steele belittling the party's new focus on minorities as old news. Appearing on the "Andrea Tantaros Show," a nationally syndicated radio show, Steele called the GOP establishment that on Monday unveiled a $10 million minority outreach effort a bunch of "numb nuts" for ignoring the plan he instituted four years ago. Steele also sounded ready to beat up Priebus. Asked by Tantaros who would win in a cage fight, Steele said, "Oh, no question, I would clean his clock." How?...

Right blasts RNC 'autopsy' as power grab By: Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman March 18, 2013 12:21 PM EDT The GOP’s prescription to cure the ills that helped bring on yet another disastrous presidential cycle would revamp its presidential nominating rules in ways to benefit well-funded candidates and hamper insurgents - a move that quickly heated up the already smoldering feud between the Republican establishment and the tea party-inspired base. Tucked in near the end of the 97-page report, formally known as The Growth and Opportunity Project, are less than four pages that amount to a political bombshell: the five-member...

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...

The Republican National Committee’s internal evaluators argued that true conservatism loses the Republican Party elections in a new report released Monday. The evaluators were charged by chairman Reince Priebus with helping the GOP reach a larger voter base. A copy of their report was obtained by Breitbart News. On page 54 of the report, authors Henry Barbour, Sally Bradshaw, Ari Fleischer, Zori Fonalledas and Glenn McCall argue that true conservatism hurts the Republican Party in elections. “Third-party groups that promote purity are hurting our electoral prospects,” they wrote. That entire section was based on quotes from MSNBC host Joe Scarborough...

For as long as he’s been president, Barack Obama, has been the top target for attack at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. D.C. But this year, there may have been a close second: the Republican political-consultant class, which many CPAC attendees blame for the party’s poor 2012 showing. -snip- Without directly taking on Romney, Republican National Committee member Morton Blackwell, from Virginia, joined Caddell in criticizing the practice of many campaigns of allowing consultants to take a commission when they score media placements, which skews the campaign’s efforts away from grassroots efforts and direct contacts with voters...

A much-anticipated Republican National Committee Chairman report due out Monday on how to reverse the GOP’s fortunes is expected to call for fewer Republican debates, a condensed primary calendar and an earlier party convention. In an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus outlined those three main recommendations for the 2016 presidential election. The RNC’s so-called “autopsy” — a detailed review of the GOP’s 2012 failures and roadmap going forward — will also include suggestions to improve the party’s digital capabilities and bolster its voter database, among other proposals. Priebus is set to unveil the plan...

The biggest donors in the Republican Party are financing a new group to recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party’s efforts to win control of the Senate. -snip- The Conservative Victory Project, which is backed by Karl Rove and his allies who built American Crossroads into the largest Republican super PAC of the 2012 election cycle, will start by intensely vetting prospective contenders for Congressional races to try to weed out candidates who are seen as too flawed to win general elections.

“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.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has been overwhelmingly re-elected to his post by committee members.

Republicans prepare for a comeback: ‘We can’t come off as a bunch of angry white men’ By Chris Moody, Yahoo! News Political Reporter CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Republican National Committee members gathered here to re-elect Chairman Reince Priebus for a second term. But by week's end, that vote seemed secondary to the question of the party's long term survival. After three months of denial, anger, despair and depression over the results of a bruising national election that gave Democrats an edge in Congress and kept President Barack Obama in the White House, Republicans know they must adapt if they are to...

Kevin Madden, a GOP strategist who worked on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign last year, said the retreat gives lawmakers a chance to start laying the groundwork necessary to re-establish the GOP brand. “Right now, we are caught in a vicious cycle of just reacting to events that happen in two-week increments. Instead, we have to look at our challenge of rebuilding in a much more comprehensive fashion,” Mr. Madden said. “What is the positive impression that we want voters to have two years from now, and then four years from now, when we have another presidential election?” SNIP Ford O’Connell,...

RNC leadership meets in Austin with cheap labor lobby to discuss how to garner "Hispanic" votes and the Texas Solution. Stop the Magnet protests to stop the abandonment of law and order and concern for American citizens.

It's hard for a lot of people, particularly on the right, to recognize that the conservative movement's problems are mostly problems of success. The Republican Party's problems are much more recognizable as the problems of failure, including the failure to recognize the limits of that movement's success. American conservatism began as a kind of intellectual hobbyist's group with little hope of changing the broader society. Albert Jay Nock, the cape-wearing libertarian intellectual -- he called himself a "philosophical anarchist" -- who inspired a very young William F. Buckley Jr., argued that political change was impossible because the masses were rubes,...

I received a donation request from the RNC today. I responded...

Right now the political landscape is grim for Republicans–and in the short term, thanks to the so-called fiscal cliff, things may get grimmer still. But moments like these can pass, often quicker than we think. And next year may turn out to be one in which the pernicious effects of the Affordable Care Act–aka ObamaCare–really begin to kick in, from higher premiums to the loss of employer-based health insurance to the start of enrollment in insurance exchanges. It will become more and more clear to the public what a nightmarish law the Affordable Care Act actually is. “The administration is...

Last night my local County Republican Executive Committee held elections for officers. The two term chairman (GOP-E in my opinion) who ran on his ability to raise funds was denied and replaced by a (TEA orientated) member who worked tirelessly to build the membership and get out the vote. I'm energized and am going to step up and help out any way I can. Any changes in your local leadership?

The internal battle for the direction of the Republican Party has enveloped Washington’s GOP consultant class, as pragmatic party strategists hired to win campaigns ponder how to reclaim control of the primary process from powerful conservative activist groups. This developing conflict comes in the aftermath of consecutive election cycles that saw Republicans blow as many as five Senate races because the party nominated flawed candidates over those who were better suited to compete in the general election. Some of these losing 2010 and 2012 nominees received crucial support from Washington-based tea party groups that made their primary campaigns viable. GOP...

The biggest story of the past election was how President Obama’s team was able to get his interest groups to the polls and how correspondingly the Republicans feel behind on certain interest groups. It is clear Republican failed to capture the votes of Hispanics, Asians and other groups. So let’s take a look at where they are and what they need to do. To discover what happened one has to look at what the Republicans have been doing and why they failed to attract certain voters. The first and most important point is not that they have failed policies or...

FLORIDA’S GOP ESTABLISHMENT TRYING TO REDISTRICT ALLEN WEST OUT OF A SEAT? - January 31st, 2012Allen West: House GOP leadership ‘sold us down the road’ for ‘pathetic policy’ - January 06, 2012

After the shocking loss in the November election, Republicans are once again considering whether to change leadership at the top. Reince Priebus wants a second term as RNC chair and still has considerable support for another go, but apparently some committee members have begun recruiting alternative candidates, among them former Congressman J.C. Watts. Watts tells Politico that he's not sure he'll run, but he's interested: Watts, an African-American conservative who served in the House from 1994-2002, said the GOP defeat on Election Day demonstrates that Republicans need to broaden their appeal to minority voters, and cannot continue on their current...

Much of the conservative world seems shocked that the RNC is constrained from doing anything about voter fraud. The left wing blogosphere is laughing at everyone who didn’t know this already. To me, it’s old old news – sort of like the abolition of poll taxes. In fact, the abolition of poll taxes in 1964 is closer in time to the consent decree that the RNC entered with the DNC in 1982 than we are today distant from that same 1982 consent decree. Simply, under the terms of the order, the RNC cannot engage in ballot security efforts to combat...

Eric Erickson at Red State  has been tracing the web of ownership and (conflict of?) interests among the various Republican consulting operations, the 527s and staff at the RNC, NRCC, NRSC, etc. It is complex, but here is a sample. TargetPoint Consulting and WWP Strategies, two groups connected to Alexander and Katie Packer Gage, both received money from the Romney Campaign wherein Katie Packer Gage served as deputy campaign manager while also serving as a partner at WWP Strategies. Katie Packer Gage's husband, Alexander, is the CEO and founder of TargetPoint Consulting, which got money both from the Romney campaign...

Billions wasted over the past decade. The RNC has been so bad, conservatives couldn't do worse if the RNC had no existed... (video)

Ghandi: 'First they ignore you... Then they mock you... Then they fight you... Then you WIN' ______________________________________________________  Say Anything   Breitbart   Christian Science Monitor   AMERICAblog   Zazzle   Quoteland   Mizteez  PatriotFlags

Former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele is floating the idea of running for his old post again. In an interview on C-SPAN on Sunday, Steele was first asked if he thought current RNC Chairman Reince Priebus should run for another term. Priebus has suggested that he is leaning toward running for reelection.

For the most part everything played out as I feared in this February 16th, 2010 article Coming Sequel to the Romulan-GOP Schism. The thesis of our party splitting our conservative votes over multiple candidates, thereby electing the ONE weak candidate in the race became the reality. The pundits of Fox News who are mainly responsible for this outcome are now telling us we need to further abandon the fundamental principles upon which our party was founded. We need to further -become- the Democrat Party to defeat them as though this were simply a sporting event devoid of any moral rectitude....

With just hours to go before the polls close on this historic election season, the candidates and their campaigns have made their closing arguments. Voters will soon render their verdict, and the choice seems starker than at any point in this race. Mitt Romney has offered America a path to a better future and a detailed, specific “Plan for a Stronger Middle Class.” His policies would create 12 million new jobs and increase take-home pay. They would restore fiscal sanity to the nation’s capital and opportunity to an economy that has lacked it for four long years. Mr. Romney has...

A late surge of support and months of restrained spending have left the Republican National Committee flush with cash with little time to spend it — $68 million as of Oct. 17, which was nearly seven times the amount the Democratic National Committee had in the bank. Adding in the cash from other presidential campaign committees, the mismatch still was stark: $156 million for Mitt Romney and his GOP allies to $94 million for President Obama and his allies. State Republican parties also had 50 percent more cash than their Democratic counterparts, according to an analysis by The Washington Times....

Can we stop pretending that Barack Obama’s candidacy is some grass-roots uprising? Obama’s campaign has outspent Romney’s campaign. The Democratic National Committee has outspent the Republican National Committee. While Romney’s SuperPAC (Restore our Future), has outspent Obama’s SuperPAC (Priorities USA), that $40 million Romney SuperPAC edge doesn’t come close to making up for the Obama campaign’s $180 million edge. There is legally undisclosed spending going on here, and there’s reason to believe Romney benefits from more of it than Obama, but that’s not conclusive, and we don’t know how big Romney’s edge is in that category. Obama argues that his...

The domestic violence in Shepard’s past is both shocking and repulsive in detail. On February 15, 1998, police were called to then-Mrs. Shepard’s house (the couple had been separated since June of the previous year) by a girlfriend. According to the police report (.pdf file), Mrs. Shepard said of her husband: Read on. Joseph entered my home. I told him to leave. He came up to me looking angry. I put my hands up to protect my breasts as they are sore (cancer). He has hit me before in the breast. He grabbed my wrist and arm and pushed me...

Talk about a mismatch. The RNC will be able to help out many marginal campaigns with that $83 million while Dems will have to pick and choose carefully which races they will invest in. Politico: ***** The Democratic National Committee was unable to keep up with the Republican National Committee's fundraising again in September, despite taking out $10.5 million in loans. The DNC raised $20.3 million in September, including the loans, and only $3.7 million of its total fundraising came from individuals and political action committees. The rest came from transfers and offsetting operating expenditures. As of Sept. 30, the...

<p>The official Federal Election Committee reports for September are out, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s DNC is a complete wreck. The Democrats ended September with cash on hand of $4.6 million, compared to the Republican National Committee’s $82.6 million.</p> <p>That’s nearly an 18-to-1 cash advantage for Republicans.</p>

The Democratic National Committee was unable to keep up with the Republican National Committee’s fundraising again in September, despite taking out $10.5 million in loans. The DNC raised $20.3 million in September, including the loans, and only $3.7 million of its total fundraising came from individuals and political action committees. The rest came from transfers and offsetting operating expenditures. As of Sept. 30, the DNC reported having $4.6 million in the bank and $20.5 million in total debt – almost double the $11.8 million it owed at the end of August. The committee owes about $5.5 million of its total...