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Karl Rove denied Tuesday that he said Hillary Clinton had brain damage. "I didn't say she had brain damage, she had a serious health episode," he told FOX News, suggesting that her hospitalization in January 2013 for a blood clot could thwart her presidential ambitions.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Republican National Committee wants to take more control over how the party picks a White House nominee. The RNC was to meet Wednesday in Memphis, Tennessee, to choose members who will effectively set the calendar for 2016's long list of potential presidential contenders. If the party's chairman, Reince Priebus gets his way, the GOP will pick its nominee more quickly than during past contests and have fewer debates in which candidates could criticize each other. The RNC also was expected to put penalties in place for candidates who don't follow the committee's plans. RNC officials described...

North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis (R-NC), the frontrunner in the North Carolina GOP Senate primary, told a crowd two and half years ago that we must "divide and conquer" people on government assistance. Tillis proposed pitting those who are legitimately in need against those who made bad choices. Tillis made the comments in October 2011 in Asheville, North Carolina. They were reported by local press at the time and are being circulated now by the campaign of Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) whom Tillis is vying to unseat. They were highlighted on MSNBC"s Hardball Monday. "What we have to do...

Frustrated with President Barack Obama’s reaction to Russian action in Ukraine, a group of Republican senators said Wednesday they will introduce legislation outlining a more muscular response. “What we’ve seen from the administration is a lot of rhetoric,” Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning. The White House has been dealing “with the situation after something bad has already occurred,” he said. Earlier this week, violence flared up in another area of Ukraine that hugs the Russian border, as the new government in Kiev criticized local police...

SANFORD For months, Republican Thom Tillis’ Senate campaign touted his accomplishments and focused his attacks on Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan, acting like a frontrunner with his eye on November. Now, in the final days before the May 6 primary, Tillis is changing his strategy. Last week, he mailed a flier to voters that attacked his top GOP rival for not paying his property taxes on time. He also debuted a TV ad that trumpets his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. Tillis hit the social conservative issues Saturday in his speech at the 2nd Congressional District GOP convention in Sanford....

A video clip has been posted of Speaker John A. Boehner mocking his colleagues’ reluctance to take on an immigration overhaul today while campaigning for re-election in Ohio:

The House could come up with a bill to overhaul the country’s immigration system by August, according to the House’s No. 4 Republican. “I believe there is a path that we get a bill on the floor by August,” Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-Wash.) the Republican conference chairwoman, told The Spokesman-Review last week. An August deadline would resolve the troubled issue months before November’s midterm elections, where the GOP is looking to grow its advantage in the House and pick up enough seats to take over the Senate. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has pushed for a bill and even mocked members...

The Republican National Committee marked Tax Day by suing the Internal Revenue Service.The lawsuit charges that the IRS is withholding records sought by the RNC’s May 2013 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, in which the committee sought to review documents and correspondence related to criteria used for reviewing and approving 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organizations.The FOIA request seeks all documents dated between Jan. 1, 2010, and May 20, 2013, containing the words “tea party,” “patriot,” and/or “9/12 project,” referring to the group created by Glenn Beck, along with any documents pertaining to increased scrutiny of 501(c)(4)s, especially using “be on...

… Take a look at how Republican National Committee Rule No. 40(b) read before the 2012 convention changes:Each candidate for nomination for President of the United States and Vice President of the United States shall demonstrate the support of a plurality of the delegates from each of five (5) or more states, severally, prior to the presentation of the name of that candidate for nomination.Simply put, the rule meant that any candidate for the GOP presidential nomination who showed up at the convention with the largest number of delegates in five states—or was able to twist enough arms at the...

Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour defended Jeb Bush’s recent comments that some illegal immigration is an “act of love,” saying it’s very similar to what former President Ronald Reagan thought. “What people want you to do: Tell the truth,” Barbour said Tuesday at the LBJ Presidential Library’s Civil Rights Summit. “And if Jeb feels that way about it — it sort of reminds me of my boss, Ronald Reagan.” Barbour, who was an aide in Reagan’s administration described what the president used to call the “gates test” during a panel Tuesday with Democratic San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro. “Ronald Reagan...

Jeb Bush's "act of love" comments about immigration over the weekend drew massive headlines with some conservatives criticizing him for his latest apostasy on the issue. But, it's the lead-up to Bush using the phrase "act of love" that's actually the really important part of what he said. Here it is with our bolding added: "There are means by which we can control our border better than we have. And there should be penalties for breaking the law. But the way I look at this -- and I'm going to say this, and it'll be on tape and so be...

Suzy Welch, the power business journalist and former editor-in-chief of the Harvard Business Review, thinks former Florida Governor Jeb Bush would be a loser if nominated for president. The wife of former General Electric CEO Jack Welch is hardly a tea partier who feels more at ease among staunch conservatives than on the ideas circuit. In fact, with her Harvard and Andover pedigree, the author of the best-selling 10-10-10 book may be most comfortable in the elite worlds of academia, finance, and culture that make up the Acela Corridor. This is the same world that is clamoring for Jeb Bush...

It's not hard to understand why. Even without a replay of the Bachmann-Cain-Gingrich-Perry-Paul GOP primary freak show of 2012, the party is heading into its confrontation with Hillary Clinton at a serious general election disadvantage. Some of the weakness has demographic roots that no single candidate can change in a single race. But the rest is a product of the party's rightward lurch over the past six years — and a restive base that demands absolute ideological purity on the part of candidates. The result, as in 2012, is likely to be a primary contest devoted to winning the Real...

With eyes increasingly on him, Jeb Bush signaled on Sunday the kind of campaign he would mount if he ran for president: one arguing against ideological purity tests while challenging party orthodoxy on issues like immigration and education. Even as he sharply criticized President Obama for his handling of foreign affairs and health care, Mr. Bush made clear that he would run against the style of politics that has characterized recent Republican nominating contests. He said he would decide by the end of the year, in part on whether he thought that with a “hopeful” message, he could avoid “the...

It is a sad and unfortunate fact that the vast majority of Americans haven’t read our Constitution. Including the amendments, the Constitution is not a long read being only about 7,400 words long. However, the Republican Party, “the party of the Constitution”, has a 2012 platform that is over FOUR times longer than the Constitution at 30,693 words. This fact begs the question, if Americans haven’t read the Constitution, how many have actually read the GOP platform and know what Republicans believe? From the creation of the party in 1856 through 1952, the GOP platform only exceeded the Constitution’s length...

The first opponent is the left. They still call us the “Tea Party,” though we rarely use that term anymore. It’s fun to hear the liberals say it – it’s like listening to grandparents trying to sound cool. Yeah, those hepcats are sure hip with their cool jive, daddy-o. Every day, the lefty punditry opines about the Tea Party’s death spiral. And every day, the Tea Party refuses to crash and burn. We conservative insurgents have another opponent, but this opponent recognizes us for exactly what we are – a dangerous, existential threat. This opponent is the GOP Establishment, and...

<p>Planned changes to the Republican Party's presidential selection process are part of a rebuilding process that will strengthen the GOP brand and hopefully make its presidential nominee more competitive in 2016, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told California Republicans on Friday, calling the GOP's current primary process "a complete disaster."</p>

Republican National Committee data operatives will build a list of the millions of Americans who have lost insurance policies due to Obamacare in order to help their candidates win over these voters at the ballot box in 2014 and 2016. "Getting that information [on plan cancellations] and having good data as to who votes, who doesn't vote, voter registration, party affiliation, consumer characteristics, cross-referenced with that kind of information, I think, is important for us to have," Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told the Washington Examiner after his CPAC panel presentation Saturday morning. It's early in the process, though,...

If 2016 brings another Bush-Clinton matchup, not all famous last names are equal at the start. The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll makes clear why it’s better to be associated with the 42nd president than the 43rd and 41st, at least for now. The poll has plenty of good news for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Two-thirds of Americans say they’d consider voting for Clinton in 2016, and a full 25 percent say they will definitely support her. Again, among all Americans – not just Democrats, or Democrats and independents – one in four say they are fully on board for Hillary...

Here’s a cool trick I learned at Ft. Benning’s Infantry School a few hundred years ago. Attack your enemies, not your allies. That helpful hint totally increases your odds of victory. Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Dave Camp (Republicanish - MI) never learned that lesson. He just had to release his own tax reform plan, no doubt in response to a groundswell of enthusiasm among his K Street sycophants. His plan cuts the home mortgage and charitable deductions while slapping a surtax on the earnings of successful people. Good thinking. Shaft the folks who saved up to buy homes, give...