Free Republic

Perfectly rational in one sense, deeply surprising in another. And not just for the obvious “RINO versus RINO” reasons. How the heck did Rand Paul lose the “bash Christie” sweepstakes to Lindsey Graham? “It seems to me that this whole bridge thing reinforces a narrative that’s troublesome about the guy, he’s kind of a bully,” Graham told NBC News on Thursday on Capitol Hill, referring to the scandal over land closures on the George Washington Bridge that’s engulfed Christie over the past two days… “If anybody in my office had done such a thing, they knew what their fate would...

Former Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said he’s still pondering a run for the White House because he doesn’t want Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) define the GOP. King, who’s made five trips up to early primary state New Hampshire and admitted in July that he’s toying with the idea of a presidential campaign, told MSNBC he hasn’t made up his mind yet and his decision should come “sometime next year, either next year or the beginning of 2015.” “Again, I’ve been up there five times. I am looking at it. People are talking...

When an attempt was made to railroad George Zimmerman into prison for defending himself when assaulted, most conservatives fell silent, and some joined the lynch mob -- and, to the best of my knowledge, not a single public official stood up to denounce what was going on. More recently, when A&E suspended Phil Robertson of the Duck Dynasty for have the effrontery to repeat age-old Christian doctrine in an interview with Gentleman's Quarterly, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, and Ted Cruz let A&E have it. But the Republican establishment was present and accounted for only in its absence from the scene....

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Neal Boortz, subbing for Sean Hannity on his radio show on the day after Christmas, took the opportunity to unload a heap of libertarian wrath upon social conservatives, saying that Republicans will not win another election if they continue ”screaming and yelling about abortion, about gay rights, about prayer in school.” Boortz spat the words “social conservative Republicans” into the airwaves as he railed against (some unnamed) Republicans who, apparently “obsessed” with social issues, are running around the country raging against the forces trying to take prayer out of school. Boortz seemed particularly upset with Republicans who want to peer...

Karl Rove, the voice of the Republican donor class, is predicting that tea party-backed primary candidates will lose nearly all their primary fights against business-backed GOP politicians during 2014. “Every Republican senator and virtually every representative challenged in a primary as insufficiently conservative will win,” Rove wrote in a Dec. 26 blog post, an excerpt of which appeared in The Wall Street Journal. The op-ed listed his predictions about American politics in 2014. Rove’s business vs. tea party prediction is somewhat self-serving — he’s positioned himself as a leader of the GOP-affiliated donors and businesses who are facing criticism from...

As 2013 heads for the exits, it is clear the Obamacare debacle has shattered the rose-colored lenses through which many Americans have viewed President Obama ever since his dramatic address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. The vaunted Obama charm can no longer obscure the fact that the president mislead the nation by promising people that Obamacare would let them keep the insurance plans and doctors they like and save thousands of dollars on health care costs. As a result, a growing number of opinion surveys point to the emergence of a new public consensus that Washington spends too much,...

When “The Deal” was struck in the House this week there was one element which nearly had some of the congressional Democrats in open revolt. (And may still proved to be a problem in the Senate.) The progressive members wanted to tie an extension of unemployment benefits into the mix. But doing that without being willing to find the money to pay for it was going to prove a deal buster for the GOP, so it didn’t make the final cut. Never one to give up on an idea once he’s gotten his teeth into it, Chris Van Hollen has...

Cornyn was rated the second most conservative of all incumbent U.S. senators by the nonpartisan National Journal, based on his voting record in the last Congress, which sat during 2011 and 2012. He scored 93.8 percent on the Journal’s “composite” conservative scale, which melds ratings on economic, social and foreign policy votes. Similarly, the anti-tax group Club for Growth has consistently rated Cornyn among the most conservative GOP senators over the years. The anti-abortion National Right to Life Committee gave Cornyn a rating of 100 percent in the last Congress, and also 100 percent in the current Congress to date....

Throughout the government shutdown, a great deal of speculation concerned when Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) would cut loose the Tea Party and deal with Democrats. That time has now come. Despite strong opposition from the right, Boehner threw his weight behind the bipartisan budget agreement reached by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), which passed the House Thursday by a 332–94 vote. In doing so, Boehner essentially gave the finger to the same forces who've repeatedly cornered him on thorny issues in the past and made his speakership, at times, quite miserable. "Frankly, I...

With the GOP in disarray and the president an increasingly lame duck, Democrats need to take the next three years to refind their focus. Between 1968, when Lyndon Johnson left the White House, and the end of the century, the nation elected only two Democratic presidents. Both were Southern populists who had been careful to differentiate themselves from Great Society and their liberal predecessors. That all changed in 2008, when Barack Obama defeated the party-establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton, and then Republican John McCain with a campaign that pledged to end political and ideological polarization with pragmatic problem-solving—from a liberal point...

The 2014 midterm elections are less than one year away, and the day after the 2014 elections begins the 2016 presidential election. While the Obama liberal agenda is collapsing, Republicans must not get complacent. The only thing that matters is winning elections and governing. The Super Bowl winner gets a trophy and a parade. The loser gets garbage. Politics is no different. There is winning, and there is garbage. President Obama has used his 2012 election victory to ruthlessly punish those who did not vote for him. He treats half the country like garbage, and the only way to fight...

Old and busted: Healthcare.gov will be fully operational by November 30th. New hotness: Healthcare.gov will, er, work better than it did by December 1!Brought to you by the same people who insisted that if you liked your insurance plan, you could keep it: Obama administration officials said Monday that some visitors to HealthCare.gov will experience outages, slow response times or try-again-later messages in December. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) delivered the message in the latest attempt to downplay expectations for Nov. 30, the administration’s self-imposed deadline for fixing ObamaCare’s federal enrollment site. CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille said...

Editor’s note: Below is the video and transcript of the panel discussion “2014: And the Future of the Republican Party,” which took place at the Freedom Center’s 2013 Restoration Weekend. The event was held November 14th-17th at The Breakers resort in Palm Beach, Florida. 2014: And the Future of the Republican Party from DHFC on Vimeo. Ralph Reed: Thanks so much. When I was elected state party chairman in Georgia in 2002, we had not elected a Republican governor in my state in 134 years. And in fact, if you go back to the time since the first Europeans landed...

President Obama delivered remarks today supporting Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision to deploy the “nuclear option” ending minority filibusters of some judicial nominees. The Democrats tried to limit the effect of their action, stating that it only applies to nominees below the Supreme Court level. But the damage done will go far beyond judicial nominees. Bipartisanship in the Senate is dead. Harry Reid and Barack Obama had already done grave damage to it by passing Obamacare. Today they finished it off. Democrats currently hold a 53 seat majority, plus 2 Independents who tend to side with the Democrats. A...

Nobody, not even President Obama, is pretending that the rollout of the Affordable Care Act has been anything but a debacle. Reading headlines in the national press, though, you’d get the impression that repeal is right around the corner. For that to be true, though, several dozen House Democrats and over a score of Democrats in the Senate would have to be willing to vote with Republicans to override a veto. And even under these miserable circumstances, only 39 House Dems, overrepresented by representatives of swing districts, voted with Republicans for the so-called “Upton bill,” to allow health insurance carriers...

The New Republic magazine was, appropriately, the stimulant that last week gave the Democratic base a frisson of anticipation about a possible Elizabeth Warren presidential candidacy in 2016. Now in her 11th month as a Massachusetts senator, she is suited to carry the progressive torch that was fueled 99 years ago this month by The New Republic’s founding. Its first editor was Herbert Croly, whose 1909 book “The Promise of American Life” — Theodore Roosevelt read it, rapturously, during his post-presidential travels — is progressivism’s primer: “The average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent...

House Democrats held a press conference on Thursday following President Obama’s press conference on Obamacare. They refused to apologize for repeatedly lying to the American people.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Over 5 million Americans have lost their health insurance so far thanks to Obamacare. The Weekly Standard reported: At a press conference Thursday evening, House Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Xavier Becerra, and Jim Clyburn were asked if they would like to apologize for making the same false claim. All of them declined. “I don’t think there’s anything for us to apologize for,” said Clyburn.“There is nothing in the Affordable Care Act that said...

Ted Cruz is wily, smart and deceptive. He'll be a Republican candidate for president in 2016. Ted Cruz, the Republican Senator from Texas with presidential aspirations, is a product of our celebrity culture. He makes sure he says the most outlandish things – one guesses to gain continuing attention and to appeal to a right-wing base, which seems to consistently turn more radical. In a state that often talks secession from the union, Texans love him, but this affection is not now shared, even among many fellow Republicans, maybe because of the "upstage factor." He spent much of the summer...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Wednesday said that former President Clinton's comments about ObamaCare were an effort to distance his wife from the program ahead of a possible 2016 run. “That was certainly revealing, and it suggests perhaps that Hillary Clinton is looking to run away from President Obama and run away from ObamaCare," Cruz, who's seen as a potential 2016 candidate, told "Fox & Friends" on Wednesday morning. "And that ought to be a signal to Democrats, this thing isn’t working." Clinton said President Obama should change the law to allow people to keep their existing plans under ObamaCare....

John McCain is apparently fielding a “spate of e-mails and letters and phone calls” from people who want him to run for president again. But, the Republican senator from Arizona told the Arizona Republic that he’s not really considering another run for the White House: “‘Particularly since the shutdown, I’ve had a spate of e-mails and letters and phone calls saying, ‘Run for president again,” McCain told The Arizona Republic. ‘As you know, I’m seriously thinking about running for re-election to the Senate. But I think, in the words of the late Morris K. Udall, as far as my presidential...