Free Republic

Trent Lott wasn’t always this way. He was once a conservative champion, who came to Washington to change the ruling-class narrative. But now he’s a profile in what Washington does to you if you stay too long — unless you have Winston Churchill-like courage of conviction, and few mere mortals do. Mr. Lott was originally part of a group that included former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Vin Webber, who were dubbed the “Young Turks.” They were among the chief lieutenants of the Reagan Revolution back in the day. Best known for fighting the Fraternal Order of Establishment Republicans....

Much has been made of the fact that when losing Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) leaves office in January, Louisiana will not have a Democratic statewide elected official in office for the first time since the 1870s. The Republicans who occupy all of the Pelican State’s high offices are in good company; Republicans now control every U.S. Senate seat, legislative chamber, and governor’s mansion across the Deep South – from Texas to the Carolinas. This condition is giving some Democrats, loyal to the party for whom the term “Solid South” was coined, indigestion. The best example of this phenomenon is an...

For Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the issue of sexual assault on college campuses is personal. During his years at Princeton University, Cruz spearheaded efforts to fight date rape at the school. In an exclusive interview with Business Insider, he said his focus on the issue was in part inspired by a dark chapter in his family history. "When I was in student government in college, protecting student safety was a real priority, and no student should ever have to face the threat of sexual assault," Cruz said in an email to Business Insider. "In my own family, my aunt experienced...

In the minority, Republicans did not have responsibility for governance. However, with a few defections, as we saw in the 2013 shutdown, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) could start a rumpus, delay business, get attention and decry his fellow Republicans’ weakness when his own plots blew up. Come January, he will have a new challenge: remaining relevant. Cruz will not be the most hawkish Republican, even among the potential GOP presidential candidates. Recall that he favored changes to the National Security Agency that would have decimated the program and a “reform” in military investigations of sexual assault claims that would have...

With Mary Landrieu exiting the Senate, the usual rounds of finger pointing and recriminations have already begun. In the eyes of her supporters, the reasons are numerous and obvious. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the unpopularity of the President or the issues she espoused. No, the only reason that a Republican will occupy that seat next year is that the South is full of hateful, bigoted, stars and bars waving racists and homophobes. This, they will claim, is the result of an ongoing process which began simmering after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,...

For some reason that I should probably determine one day, I've always found internal disputes with the conservative movement/Republican party somewhat more interesting than internal disputes within the liberal movement/Democratic party. Perhaps it's because, as a liberal, I get a little Nelson Muntzian charge out of watching the folks on the other side tear themselves apart. Or perhaps it's because, immersed as I am in the liberal world, the disputes on the left make more sense to me and therefore plumbing their mysteries isn't so compelling. Regardless, it has often been the case that one side is unified as the...

Republicans have lost the last two presidential elections, but not much else over the past six years. They’ve captured the House and Senate. They now hold 31 governorships and 69 of the 99 state legislative chambers. What this means is pretty simple: There’s an emerging Republican majority. The GOP still has significant emerging to do before reaching majority status. It may never get there. The rise this year may be Republicans’ peak for now. They may have achieved nothing more than what University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato calls “the emerging outline of possible GOP victory in 2016.” At the...

In the days since Election Day, and during the coming weeks and months, the message from the White House has been and will be put forth endlessly as accepted wisdom, the lie repeated often enough until it becomes truth: that Americans voted for Congress and the White House to “work together.” That what they want is government action to solve their problems. This assertion, which is not just wrong but disprovable, serves the White House purpose of quieting conservatives who are willing to muck up business as usual in order to scuttle or at least make a vigorous point about...

First Democrats, now a former Senate GOP leader is attacking Sen. Ted Cruz for standing his ground instead of compromising on key issues. Trent Lott, a former Senate majority leader from Mississippi and now a lobbyist, dubbed Cruz one of the “problems” in the Senate and urged incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to quickly “co-opt” new Republican senators before Cruz and others in the “Far Right” deputize them. “There are problems,” said Lott, pushing bipartisanship at a media roundtable hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “Yes, we’ve got the Ted Cruzes in the Republican Party, and we’ve got Elizabeth...

Sen. Ted Cruz is winning on social media. Between Sept. 1 to Dec. 1, the Texas Republican garnered the most mentions on Twitter out of 10 potential 2016 candidates, with 4.55 million mentions to his two handles, @SenTedCruz and @TedCruz, according to data provided to Politico. Cruz also had similar success on Facebook, with 1.8 million people talking about him, adding up to a whopping 5.6 million interactions (posts, comments and likes) between Aug. 22 and Nov. 22. The only other candidate with as much clout as Cruz on social media was former Secretary of State and likely 2016 Democratic...

There may be disagreements on foreign policy among conservatives, but one thing that there's near universal agreement on is that President Obama's foreign policy has been an abysmal failure. That's why it was especially noteworthy that Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., already facing an uphill battle in winning over conservative primary voters on foreign policy, has embraced the disastrous, John Kerry-led negotiations with the radical Islamic Iranian regime. Speaking at a meeting sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, "Mr. Paul said he doesn’t favor increasing sanctions on Iran as the U.S. continues diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the Iranian nuclear weapons...

Ted Cruz and House conservatives are once again trying to derail John Boehner's plans. Who could've guessed? When the House GOP leadership floated its government funding strategy early this week — the (please kill me immediately for typing this) “cromnibus” plus a separate protest vote denouncing President Obama’s immigration executive action — the first thought I had was “Oh my God, Ted Cruz.” Then I thought “Oh my God, Steve King.” As in: Ted Cruz and Steve King will not at all be happy with this, and they’ll probably try to nuke it. Just look at the way the maneuver...

Following up on an earlier item, House Republicans are still weighing their options when it comes to a possible government shutdown next week, but as the process unfolds, there will be quite a few meetings behind closed doors. Take this one, for example, scheduled for this morning. A cadre of the House’s most conservative members will meet Wednesday morning at the Capitol Hill Club for Rep. Steve King’s regular breakfast to discuss lame duck legislation. Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who often serves as a de facto spokesperson for congressional hardliners, is expected to attend. It’s worth pausing to appreciate...

Sen. Ted Cruz slammed the White House on Tuesday for a "failure of leadership" as President Barack Obama prepares to nominate his administration's fourth defense secretary. The Texas Republican, who is considering a 2016 run in hopes of heading his own White House administration, called the unusually high turnover at the helm of the Defense Department emblematic of a White House that puts politics above U.S. national security. "It seems what the administration is looking for is a defense secretary who will follow the orders of a political White House rather than focus on defending the national security interests of...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Forget Mitt Romney. Another former Republican presidential candidate is stoking 2016 rumors. It seemed like another run-of-the-mill interview with a politician on late-night television. Sen. John McCain was on The Colbert Report on Tuesday night to talk about his love of deep-frying turkeys and his new book with Mark Salter, Thirteen Soldiers: A Personal History of Americans at War. At the end of the show, host Stephen Colbert asked McCain if he wanted to be the next Defense secretary. And then McCain dropped the mic. "Actually, I was thinking about running for president again," he said. "What do you...

Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, predicted Tuesday that neither Gov. Rick Perry nor Sen. Ted Cruz can win the presidency in 2016, calling them both too divisive to garner broad support. “When you get to the general election, people don’t generally want either an angry person or a very harsh, shrill, partisan person,” Castro said about Perry’s prospects. “They want somebody … whose aim at least is to bring people together.” Castro — in a rare joint appearance with twin brother Julián Castro, the Housing and Urban Development Secretary, at a Politico event titled “Lessons from Leaders” — said Cruz...

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas was the most exciting entrée that president Mort Klein dished up at his Nov. 23 Zionist Organization of America dinner at Manhattan’s Grand Hyatt. The ballroom rocked with chants of “Run Ted Run! Run Ted Run!” Will these hordes of supporters pass the pushke to help fill Cruz’s coffers? Cheerleading burnishes the ego, but barrels of shekels churn out the votes. That’s why Cruz was cruising Jewish right wing at the ZOA affair. The tea party darling was one of 1,000 guests, including such major machers as real estate mogul/media honcho Mortimer Zuckerman, deep-pocketed Michael...

Sen. Mary Landrieu is relying on a close group of staunch Democratic supporters as she makes a final push to save her Senate seat from Republican challenger Rep. Bill Cassidy ahead of a Dec. 6 Louisiana runoff election. The momentum seems to favor Cassidy. The GOP quickly coalesced behind Cassidy after the general election in November in which Cassidy and Landrieu received the most votes, but neither won enough to avoid a runoff. Cassidy has received a fresh round of endorsements from big-name 2016 contenders, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ken., and Texas Gov. Rick Perry....

Americas population is booming with Hispanics and a half Cuban, Ted Cruz may just be this countries answer to fixing his Texan and Arizona borders. Who best to speak on immigration issues, afterall Cubans have been trying to get to America for decades and their value and contribution to the USA can not be overstated....

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Columnist Pat Buchanan predicted that either Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) or Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) would be in the "finals" for the GOP nomination in 2016 on Friday's "McLaughlin Group.""If you want to get the nomination, you don't worry about independents in a general election, you excite the base, the Tea Party, the conservatives, the activists, the libertarians, and this is exactly what Cruz is doing. And I think it's a correct strategy as a nomination strategy, it's risky in a general election" he stated....