Free Republic

Not much is truly known about where House Speaker John Boehner stands on immigration reform. He says he wants it done but has barely waded into the policy. But in a closed meeting with his closest Capitol Hill allies — a group informally known as “Team Boehner” — he’s giving more clues. On Wednesday, Boehner welcomed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) into the meeting of his inner circle in his Capitol office suite.

I've learned from my time in politics that things are rarely as bad as they seem. The converse is also true – they're rarely as good either. I'm reminded of this statement as we hash out the meaning of Speaker John Boehner's abrupt decision to depart Congress and resign his speakership at the end of October. Many leading conservatives, none more than Senator Ted Cruz, have cheered Boehner's demise, claiming a scalp and taking a victory lap. They see the speaker's departure as the obvious outcome of a grassroots uprising that demanded change. They look at Boehner's political troubles and...

Marco Rubio wants no part of Donald Trump’s “freak show,” the Florida senator said in an NPR interview aired Monday. “I’m not interested in the back and forth — to be a member or a part of his freak show,” the Republican presidential candidate remarked. “I would just say this: He is a very sensitive person; he doesn’t like to be criticized. He responds to criticism very poorly.” The comments echo what Rubio told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly last Thursday, when he called the billionaire mogul “thin-skinned and sensitive to criticism” and someone who “can’t have a conversation about policy...

Over the past several days, GOP hopefuls looked to curry favor with hardcore culture warriors. Here's what happened.Last week was one for the political books. The Pope brought his message about the need to help the poor and deal with climate change to America, apparently leading Catholic Supreme Court Justices Scalia, Alito and Thomas to boycott his historic speech to a joint session of Congress. At the same time, the evangelical activist community held its annual Values Voter Summit featuring many of the GOP presidential candidates who once would have been excited to celebrate the pope’s visit but were instead...

Amy Eldred, program chair and first vice president of RWKC, led a local caucus or straw poll about the Republican candidates for the 2016 Presidential election, after displaying a poster of all 15 of them so luncheon attendees would remember who they all are. Unofficial selections favored Ted Cruz or Carly Fiorina as Republican nominee. The Republican Women of Kerr County and their and guests held a luncheon meeting last Friday, expecting a visiting guest speaker from the Republican Party of Texas, and instead got to hold their own local caucus or straw poll about the 2016 Presidential election. When...

The last time I ranked the 10 people most likely to wind up as the Republican presidential nominee in 2016, I had Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as the third-best bet to be the GOP standard bearer. That was Aug. 2. On Sept. 21, Walker dropped out of the race, registering as a literal asterisk in his final poll as a candidate. The rise and fall of Walker — he was an official candidate for only 70 days — is evidence of the massive fluidity in the race; GOP voters are still looking around, jumping on some candidates . . . only to...

Donald Trump has a better shot at the presidency than Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and is just as likely to win the 2016 election as Jeb Bush, say two embarrassed political scientists. --snip-- Because they concluded that Donald Trump “has a 54 percent chance of being elected president if he is the GOP nominee… [and] he is as electable as [Jeb] Bush and [John] Kasich and more electable than [Carly] Fiorina and [Marco] Rubio.” --snip-- What’s powering this support? It is almost surely Trump’s ability to win GOP and Democratic votes in the blue-collar suburbs by his championing Americans and...

Marco Rubio is tough on immigration. I mean, sure, he sponsored the "Gang of 8" bill that authorized amnesty for illegal aliens, and he still supports amnesty for so-called "Dreamers" and at least a "portion" of Obama's executive amnesty for illegals, but he himself would not issue further amnesty, at least until the border is secure. He also supports keeping birthright citizenship in place, which creates anchor babies, and is willing to consider admitting more refugees from Syria. But when the pope started talking about admitting more waves of immigration, Marco started crying. It's clear where his sympathies lie. Marco...

DAVENPORT | Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio told a Davenport audience Thursday night he’s no establishment candidate. The first-term U.S. senator from Florida appeared before hundreds of people, crowded into a room at Modern Woodmen Park, criticizing federal government for overregulation, its role in education and the Affordable Care Act that he says raises costs and costs jobs. He also answered a question about how he might convince people that he’s not an establishment candidate. Voter disaffection this year has given rise to outsider candidates rising to the top of the polls. Rubio pointed to his win in the 2010...

Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio offered a measure of support for President Obama’s first executive amnesty program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, during a recent interview he conducted in Spanish this week with Univision’s Jorge Ramos. Rubio’s comments mark a reversal of sorts from criticism he offered of DACA last year, and they also put him at odds with the conservative Republican base, which he will need in his corner if he hopes to win the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.

During his rise to political prominence, Sen. Marco Rubio frequently repeated a compelling version of his family’s history that had special resonance in South Florida. He was the “son of exiles,” he told audiences, Cuban Americans forced off their beloved island after “a thug,” Fidel Castro, took power. But a review of documents — including naturalization papers and other official records — reveals that the Florida Republican’s account embellishes the facts. The documents show that Rubio’s parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than two-and-a-half years before Castro’s forces overthrew the Cuban government and...

After a summer largely spent raising money for his Republican campaign for president, Marco Rubio says he's about to start spending a whole lot more time in Iowa and the other early voting states. "There were obviously other things we needed to do," the Florida senator said this past week in an interview with The Associated Press.

This Rubio hypocrisy and deceit squares not only with the senator’s do-nothing blowhard talk, but also the hard fact that he has misrepresented at the outset of his presidential campaign that his father had fled Castro’s Cuba. In fact, his dad had freely left the island during the reign of rightest President Raul Batista, the Castros’ predecessor, who his father supported. So Marco’s father did not escape communism to become a simple bartender, as he touts so often. Similarly, Rubio has been caught lying on other occasions during his political career. Then there is Rubio’s similar boasting about how he...

Today's Donald Trump news: As a thick crowd gathered Thursday afternoon on New York's Fifth Avenue to get a glimpse of Pope Francis, the faithful caught sight of someone else – Donald Trump. The presidential candidate stepped out of his company headquarters at about 4:30 p.m. and waved. But the crowd quickly reminded Trump that – despite countless appearances on talk shows, rallies and over-populated debates – they weren't there to see him. Trump heard some cheers, but was mostly showered with boos, a reaction that might not have pleased the pope, who had just finished preaching about the Golden...

The race has come down to preferred establishment candidate, Kevin McCarthy vs. Raul Labrador. (SNIP) On Wednesday, McCarthy assured Chamber of Commerce lobbyists that under his leadership, it would be business as usual… (SNIP) La Raza’s Labrador Retriever pledged to make amnesty the GOP’s #1 priority in 2015… Immigration reform should be “one of the first things” Republicans take up. Before coming to Congress, Labrador ran a website called rapidimmigration.com, with “easy to understand advice for illegal immigrants seeking amnesty”…

Latest WORLD survey shows support consolidating behind a handful of candidates. Republican Marco Rubio still holds a commanding lead in WORLD’s third evangelical insiders survey, but GOP rival Carly Fiorina is gaining ground on the heels of another standout debate performance. The findings are part of a monthly survey of 103 evangelical leaders and insiders, 91 of whom participated in September. The results are not scientific or representative of all evangelicals but offer a snapshot of how some well-connected evangelicals are leaning in the 2016 presidential election. This month’s survey took place in the days after last Wednesday’s GOP debate,...

Donald Trump earned a rare rebuke from a conservative audience on Friday after criticizing Sen. Marco Rubio, who as emerged as his prime sparring partner in recent days. Speaking to a social conservative crowd at the Values Voters Summit, where Rubio spoke earlier in the day, Trump was met with a wave of boos after calling his Republican rival a “clown” in his speech.

Donald Trump belittled GOP presidential rival Marco Rubio as “a kid” on Thursday, boasting that he’s better versed on Syria than the Florida senator, who sits on both the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees. “I know more about Syria than Marco Rubio knows about Syria,” Trump said on CNN. “Marco Rubio . . . he’s like a kid. He shouldn’t even be running in this race, as far as I’m concerned. He’s a kid.” Trump, 69, who has mocked GOP rival Jeb Bush as “low energy” and Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton as “shrill,” called Rubio, 44, a legislative lightweight. “He’s...

The Fox News Channel’s efforts to promote the presidential candidacy of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) are not working out so well, according to the Fox News Channel’s own polling. Rubio is at just nine percent, according to the latest Fox News poll, trailing GOP frontrunner billionaire Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson by a significant margin. Trump has 26 percent according to the new Fox News poll, and Carson has 18 percent. Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is tied with the struggling Rubio’s nine percent, while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) comes in next with eight percent. Former Florida Gov....

Sweaty. Lightweight. A no-show worker. Disloyal. A kid. A borrower “with no money, zero.” Donald Trump has spent the past two days bashing Marco Rubio with these insults as a way to send a message: Criticize the big dog and get bitten. On Thursday, Rubio barked back at Trump, calling him “a very touchy and insecure guy.” Rubio also attacked Trump at his points of pride: his stage presence and his poll numbers. “He had a really bad debate performance last week,” Rubio told Kentucky Sports Radio. “He takes shots at everybody that gets anywhere close to him, in terms...