Free Republic

Businessman David Perdue stunned Georgia’s Republican political establishment Tuesday by capturing the party’s U.S. Senate nomination in his first run for office. The former CEO of Reebok and Dollar General toppled 11-term Rep. Jack Kingston by a narrow margin, setting up a battle of political newcomers with famous kin in the fall. Perdue’s cousin, Sonny, was a two-term governor and Nunn’s father, Sam, was a four-term U.S. Senator....

Statement regarding Halbig v. Burwell.July 22, 2014 | (202) 228-7561WASHINGTON, DC -- U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, today released the following statement regarding the Halbig v. Burwell decision: "The D.C. Circuit's decision today in Halbig v. Burwell is a repudiation of Obamacare and all the lawlessness that has come with it," said Sen. Cruz. "The Obama Administration, through the Internal Revenue Service, has attempted to dispense revenues to the states without proper congressional authorization, robbing Congress of its constitutionally-provided power of the purse. This decision restores power to Congress and to the people and if properly enforced, should shield citizens...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)During a town hall with young people, President Obama explained how he deals with people who criticize him. “I just don’t watch TV,” Obama joked, after he was asked about his critics during a town hall promoting the White House "My Brother's Keeper" initiative. Obama advised young people to listen to critics who actually had their interests at heart. “Who gives you constructive criticism because they’re invested in the same things you are but maybe can see the things you can’t, versus folks who are just -- what’d someone say -- hatin’? Somebody just hatin’, just haters?” Obama said. Obama...

In the wake of President Obama’s reelection in 2012, reporters found one source of solace for the GOP. “One race the Republicans appear to be winning is the one for the deepest bench of rising stars,” wrote the Washington Post, and plenty of folks followed up. Democrats, meanwhile, had nobody on the bench but Hillary Clinton – a formidable candidate if she were to run, but that wasn’t even certain. Beyond Clinton, there seemed to be a wasteland populated by ambitious governors no one had ever heard of (Martin O’Malley), and some who were well known but not widely liked...

On July 7th, the Mississippi GOP Executive Committee certified the results of the June 24th primary run-off, declaring Thad Cochran the winner. Senator McDaniel has not accepted this result, and has refused to concede the election. McDaniel volunteers have been scouring ballot boxes and poll books across Mississippi’s 82 counties .. when they have been allowed access. Approximately two dozen county clerks still refuse to allow the McDaniel camp to examine the records. McDaniel representatives are expressing confidence that they have a case to make, believing they can cast overwhelming doubt on the 7,600 vote margin of victory that the...

Ronald Reagan won two presidential elections by fighting for the "Forgotten Man," and Sarah Palin said Republicans will only win presidential elections in the future if the party sticks up for the "little guy" and the "Forgotten Man" of all races and backgrounds. Building upon the themes she has always fought for and distilled in a landmark speech in Indianola, Iowa in 2011 in which she denounced the bipartisan permanent political class and their brand of crony capitalism that extracts wealth from American workers, Palin told attendees at the Western Conservative Summit in Colorado on Saturday to think about what...

From reducing student loan debt to expanding voter rights to dealing with the scourge of violent crime, liberals have laid out an ambitious agenda for the waning years of the Obama presidency. At a day-long summit Wednesday organized by Generation Progress, the youth division of the influential Washington-based think tank Center for American Progress, speakers such as Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi articulated their goals to a Washington audience of more than 1,000. Here are five issues that came up again and again at the Make Progress National Summit, and the...

As I’ve noted here before, the current crisis of unaccompanied minors crossing the border has had one upside. It has forced the actual GOP stance on immigration out into the open, increasingly boxing Republicans into a position where their main solution to the broader immigration crisis is effectively advocating for maximum deportations from the interior, including of the DREAMers. Now, as the battle over the crisis continues to roil the political landscape, the point is being underscored by none other than Ted Cruz: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz plans to take a hard-line stand that could rile up conservatives just as...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren now says that last year’s government shutdown was about birth control. Warren did not make the remark in an off-the-cuff setting. She made it in a prepared speech. Warren said it on the floor of the Senate while supporting a bill that she knows has absolutely zero chance of becoming law. “Remember last year’s government shutdown that nearly tanked our economy?” Warren asked. “That fight started with a GOP effort to hold the whole operation of the federal government hostage in order to try to force Democrats and the president to let employers deny workers access to...

One of the things I admire most about Senator Chris McDaniel is that he is keeping the fire burning. His updates not only help us keep our spirits high they restore confidence in our elected officials. He is still a state senator and he could have chosen the path of less resistance but he is fighting for the integrity of the process. ItÂ’s not as easy as he has made it look. There has been a lot of pressure for him to not pursue this but he remains focused but he is staying close to supporters who are following this...

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." —Barry Goldwater The 50th anniversary of Barry Goldwater's clarion call for liberty acceptance speech for the Republican nomination passed this week. In a modern world where politicians talk, but their words are hollow, listening to Goldwater's message a half a century later is like a drink of fresh water. But the words were no less scary to politicians less than a year from President Kennedy's assassination. The establishment Republicans, then known as Rockefeller Republicans, played...

Iran! Oil prices! Rick Perry! Even if you think you know who’ll control Congress next year, the road to the November midterms will be full of big surprises.From a deal with Iran to an uptick in the employment rolls, a lot can happen to shift the political conversation between now and November. Immigration reform, for example, was supposed to help Democrats in the midterm elections. Clashes on the border between angry Texans and buses carrying immigrant children fleeing gang violence and sex trafficking highlighted the GOP’s opposition, and Democrats thought maybe this was the game changer they needed. But the...

We have an immigration problem along our southern border, mostly with the Texas portion. The border is leaking like a sieve, with hundreds of children fleeing Central America and the drug induced bloodshed that has moved recently from Mexico down to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. A child has a higher chance of being killed in Central America than they do in Chicago’s South Side. Who are buying the drugs that are causing all the violence in Central America? Americans are. So if we want to stop the influx of children from Central America we need to do something about...

Hillary Clinton already wears the mantle of presumptive nominee for president. She's an accomplished lawyer, a member of Walmart's board of directors, a close adviser to her husband when he was president, a two-term senator from New York, and secretary of state. And yet, she is a horrible politician. So far, she has been able to sew up lots of Democratic money and support, and build an organization without actually beginning her campaign. She hasn't even decided on running, but maintains the repose of someone awaiting her party's coronation. That is a wise strategy. Consider that Clinton has run in...

Business group has been major force in 2014 races.On the day after New Jersey and Virginia’s gubernatorial elections last fall, Mitch McConnell showed up at a board meeting of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with another race on his mind. He announced that the day’s most consequential contest had been neither Chris Christie’s victory nor Ken Cuccinelli’s defeat. Instead, the Senate minority leader explained, it had been a GOP primary in South Alabama. The Chamber had shelled out about $200,000 in the sleepy district on the Mississippi border to rescue a mainstream candidate who was struggling to fend off a...

On Monday, Morning Joe played a game of “Fact or Fiction” and Joe Scarborough had a lot to say when they arrived at this prediction: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) will win the 2016 GOP nomination. “Fiction, fiction, fiction,” Scarborough declared. Scarborough admitted that if Paul runs he will probably do well in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, but beyond that, “he will be his father’s son.” MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said he “would have agreed” with Scarborough assessment, but does not know who on the Republican side has what it takes to beat Paul. “I have to continue to look...

The economy might play a role in presidential politics, but its impact is near nil in the midterms. This month's surprisingly strong jobs report elicited fresh optimism that at long last, the economy was poised to recover its full strength. And in Washington, naturally, the question quickly became: Would Democratic candidates receive an unexpected boost from a late-in-the-election-cycle economic surge? The short answer? Don't count on it. Even if job gains do spike—and there's plenty of reluctance to predict an accelerating recovery after years of stop-and-start growth—it's unlikely voters will feel demonstrably better about the economy in time for November....

Obama is the Antichrist, Republicans are heretics, and compromise is unholy. Politics can’t explain how the right acts.America has long been the incubator of many spiritual creeds going back to the Great Awakening and even earlier. Only one of them, Mormonism, has taken root and flourished as a true religion sprung from our own native ground. Today, however, we have a new faith growing from this nation’s soil: the Tea Party. Despite its secular trappings and “taxed enough already” motto, it is a religious movement, one grounded in the traditions of American spiritual revival. This religiosity explains the Tea Party’s...

Iowa Senate candidate Joni Ernst will take a break from campaigning for two weeks to take part in active-duty training for the Iowa National Guard. But before lacing up her boots, Ernst was to record the Republicans' national radio address, the Republican National Committee said Friday. Ernst, a lieutenant colonel and state senator from southwest Iowa, recorded the speech Thursday evening just hours before she was scheduled to report for duty at 6 a.m. From central Iowa Ernst was leading a convoy to Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, where for the next two weeks she will drill with her transportation battalion....

For a few political cycles now, Republican leaders have strained to distance themselves from some in their midst and focus on the basics to secure and extend their power in Washington: The less-than-sweeping economic recovery and President Obama’s foundering, as they see it, at home and abroad. And those in their midst have continued to define the party in ways that drew an injurious response from key voter groups. There was the dust-up in 2012 when Todd Akin, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Missouri, defended his opposition to abortion by positing that women’s bodies blocked conception resulting from rape....