Free Republic

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus says the RNC has begun “focusing in” on Hillary Clinton as a candidate for 2016 and will continue to do so. Priebus was asked by radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday whether the RNC would work to attack Clinton as the presumed Democratic nominee for president in 2016, according to a show transcript. “We have. So our research shop, along with America Rising, has been focusing in on Hillary Clinton.

Trumpeting the ever-increasing weight of outside political organizations, Karl Rove's campaign groups out-fundraised the Democratic National Committee during the 2012 election cycle, according to a draft tax return obtained Friday by the Wall Street Journal. American Crossroads and its nonprofit arm, Crossroads GPS, together raked in more than $325 million during the 2012 campaign. The DNC, by contrast, raised $316 million, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. -snip- Expenditures for Crossroads GPS included donations to other conservative groups like Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, and a $538,000 salary for its president, Steven Law.

As the burning wreckage of Obamacare continues to fill the air with its toxicity, an alternative is already working its way through the House, courtesy of the conservative House Study Committee.

President Barack Obama’s second term is off to a woeful start, plagued by deceit, scandal, and standoffs—and Governor Mitt Romney saw a lot of it coming last fall in his unsuccessful bid for the White House. Romney warned at the first presidential debate that Obamacare would be fully installed and cause many to lose their health insurance plans should Obama be re-elected. Romney was hardly the first Republican to see that coming, but President Obama pledged at the same debate, as he had dozens of times before, that Americans could keep their health insurance if they liked it under the...

Chris Christie criticized strategists for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign on Sunday, saying no one should “give a darn” about their political advice, but the New Jersey Republican governor isn’t nearly as dismissive of their input as he lets on. During his re-election campaign this year, Christie hired a political consultancy firm run by Romney’s former top strategists and paid more than $46,000 for their services. According to his campaign financial reports, Christie paid $46,007.29 (plus $251 for “transportation/parking”) to the Stevens & Schriefer Group, which is run by Romney’s former senior strategists Stuart Stevens and Russell Schriefer. While Stevens...

DENVER – There are nearly 250,000 Coloradans whose health care policies have been or will be cancelled as a result of the Affordable Care Act, the state’s Dept. of Insurance announced on Wednesday. So far, just 3,408 Coloradans have purchased new insurance plans on the exchange; many more, 34,168 Coloradans, have enrolled in Medicaid since the program expanded under the law. “To have almost a hundred health plan cancellations for every exchange sign up in Colorado under Obamacare is exponentially worse than even the most extreme skeptic could have predicted,” said Kelly Maher, executive director of the group Compass Colorado.

Mitt Romney told NBC News that if he'd been elected president, he would have replaced ObamaCare with a mandate that states guarantee that all their residents are insured. Mitt Romney: Instead of ObamaCare, I Would Require States Get Everyone Insured The New American 05 November 2013 It’s official: If former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney had been elected president in 2012, ObamaCare would still be with us, albeit in slightly modified form. Last year’s Republican presidential nominee told NBC’s David Gregory that as president, he too would have demanded that all Americans have health insurance; but unlike President Barack Obama,...

Administration officials were concerned that once users were able to view the available policies for purchase on HealthCare.gov, they could be disappointed with the cost and options available. The concerns were expressed in meeting notes from the ObamaCare "war room" obtained by CNN. "In some cases, there will be fewer options than would be desired to promote consumer choice and an ideal shopping experience," the meeting notes read. "Additionally, in some cases there will be relatively high cost plans." The discussion last week among officials at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight appeared to reveal a behind-the-scenes concern...

I keep hearing this Democrat talking point being trotted out, accusing the Republicans of harming their constituents by not doing everything in their power to "fix" the Affordable Health Care Act. This one must test well in focus-groups because it keeps getting repeated. I've yet to hear one Republican answer this coherently. Here's my suggestion for a response: "If I saw a friend's house being looted would I do everything in my power to stop the looting, or would I walk over and try to negotiate with the looters? Would I call the police and try to get some neighbors...

With Obamacare shaping up as a public policy disaster that is the equivalent of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the Hindenburg, the Bay of Pigs, and Desert One combined, perhaps we should go back and take in Ronald Reagan’s warning about this back in 1961.  Reagan said that socializing health care would require socializing the patients, and voila, we have Obamacare canceling insurance plans previously agreed to between consenting adults.But Reagan also warned that doctors would come to be regulated, too: Today, the relationship between patient and doctor in this country is something to be envied any place. The privacy, the...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who lost the 2012 election to President Barack Obama, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he believed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie could “easily” become the GOP presidential nominee in 2016 and “save our party.” Christie most recently made national news when he decided to drop a legal challenge to rulings in New Jersey state courts that declared same-sex marriage legal there. And not long before that, he changed his position on the question of whether illegal aliens should get in-state tuition rates at New Jersey state colleges. Now he backs legislation...

Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney returned to the Sunday shows almost exactly one year since he lost the election to Barack Obama, only to attack the President and call his second term into question. The former Republican politician wasted no time attacking the President over his rocky Obamacare roll out during his appearance on NBC's Meet the Press. "The president failed to learn the lessons that came from the experience in Massachusetts," Romney said, repeating that he thinks a state-by-state healthcare plan would work better. Romney then launched into a greater attack on the President's "you can keep your...

MISSPEAK 1: to speak (as a word) incorrectly 2: to express oneself imperfectly or incorrectly [e.g., claims now that he misspoke himself] In an editorial of today, the New York Times couldn't bring itself to say the simple truth: that President Obama lied when he repeatedly assured Americans that, under Obamacare, if they liked their healthcare insurance policies they would be able to keep them. The most the Times was able to admit was that [emphasis added throughout] "Mr. Obama clearly misspoke when he said that." Misspoke. Yes, of course. As you see from the Merriam Webster definition above, the...

<p>Nearly 26,000 New Mexicans are having health plans terminated at the end of the year because the insurance policies fail to provide expanded benefits and other coverage mandated by a federal health care law, according to insurance industry officials.</p> <p>State Insurance Superintendent John Franchini estimates most of those individual policyholders will pay an average of 35 percent more for new coverage, but will have plans with more health care benefits.</p>

Obama's aides would not speak to the Trib with their names used for this story. The White House emailed transcripts of press conferences to defend the president's position, attributing the remarks to Obama: “The majority of people in the individual market today qualify for discounted or free health coverage when signing up for coverage through the Marketplace. One study found that 48 percent of people who buy insurance through the individual market will get a tax credit that averages at over $5,500. And 1 million in the individual market today will qualify for Medicaid in states that choose to expand...

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney passed on Chris Christie (R) as his vice presidential running mate in 2012 partly because the New Jersey governor failed to provide all background information requested by his vetters, according to a new book. According to "Double Down," which was obtained by The New York Times on Thursday, Christie’s dossier was “littered with potential land mines.” The fundraising limitations imposed on Christie as governor of New Jersey also played a part. But Christie left a number of questions asked of him blank, more than other potential candidates, according to the book, written by Mark Halperin...

Most of the talk about the Affordable Care Act has focused on website glitches and skyrocketing premiums but there are other issues looming on the horizon for the healthcare overhaul. Hospital coverage. If consumers expect to have (or continue to have) access to the best medical services at the nations top hospitals, they are in for a rude awakening. "Most of the top hospitals will accept insurance from just one or two companies operating under Obamacare." Because the ACA caps premiums, insurers will be have to offer less money to the nations best doctors and hospitals. In return, the hospitals...

In an appearance on MCNBC’s Morning Joe, Nicole Wallace (former George W. Bush adviser and McCain/Palin campaign adviser) ruined all of the gang’s orgasmic revelry of false equivalency over Obama’s bad numbers in the latest NBC/WSJ poll by pointing out that Republicans have even worse numbers, and there seems to be no bottom for the party. Wallace then warned Republicans to stop being about nothing but criticism, “So I think the peril in looking at these numbers for President Obama is to continue down the path of railing against his administration’s policies.” (VIDEO-AT-LINK)The Republican Party’s approval ratings are at an...

With his signature health-care law under fire, President Obama flew to Boston Wednesday in an effort to remind the public that ObamaCare is modeled on the plan of his former GOP opponent and Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney. “Your law was the model for the nation’s law,” Obama told supporters in Faneuil Hall on Wednesday.

BOSTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is citing the Massachusetts health care system's slow start to keep expectations low for early sign-ups for his own overhaul. And he's pointing to the bipartisan effort to get the program launched in Massachusetts to encourage his opponents to stop rooting for his law's failure. The president planned to speak about the embattled law Wednesday from Boston's historic Faneuil Hall, where Massachusetts Republican Gov. Mitt Romney was joined by the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy to sign the state's 2006 health care overhaul bill. There's been no such bipartisanship surrounding Obama's effort, particularly this...