Free Republic

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) has made no secret of his disdain for Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ted Cruz (R-TX). Speaking to the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF) at their presidential forum, King lambasted the senators and implied they aren’t “responsible adults.” “[Rand Paul] is concerned about drones, he’s afraid the CIA might use drones to attack Americans drinking coffee in Starbucks,” King said, drawing a few laughs from the crowd. He suggested ISIS might be further emboldened to attack America if the commander-in-chief thinks the “real threat” is the CIA killing Americans with drones. “Then we have Ted Cruz,...

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) says that immigration reform will not be voted on in the House because of the Tea Party and that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is their “House leader”. Rangel made the comments while hosting the Manhattan Neighborhood Network’s ‘Represent NYC’. During the program that was posted online last week, Rangel explained his theory on why immigration reform will not reach the floor of the House, that Sen. Cruz is considered by some to be “Speaker Cruz” and how that if “everybody without papers would disappear - our economy would go sliding into a deficit.” (VIDEO-AT-LINK)“I truly believe...

Kentucky is one place in America where a tea-party firebrand and a Republican from the governance wing amicably meet.For two Republican senators from the same state, Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell could not be more mismatched. Senator Paul is a man in a hurry, with presidential stars in his eyes after a mere four years of serving Kentucky in Washington. The loquacious libertarian is a darling of young conservatives – a relaxed jeans-and-boots kind of guy. Senator McConnell, after three patient decades in office, has finally reached his dream job of Senate majority leader. A man of few words, he’s...

Sen. Barbara Mikulski’s (D-MD) decision to retire at the end of her term has sparked a predictable succession feud among Democrats in that deep blue state, but the coming internecine squabble has the potential to engulf the entire party. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), a six-term member of Congress and the former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, wasted no time in declaring his intention to run for Mikulski’s seat. On Friday, he received a powerful endorsement from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. “I enthusiastically endorse Chris Van Hollen for the United States Senate,” Reid said in a statement....

And now, Ted Cruz has offered an alternative to Obamacare. And it’s, uh, better than a tattoo of Winston Churchill.Ted Cruz cares about people in need. Stop laughing. Okay, you can laugh a little. The Texas right-wing firebrand (by way of Calgary, Canada) unveiled his alternative to Obamacare on Tuesday. I guess we can call it "Cruzcare" or maybe even, "TeddyCare." You see, Cruz is apparently deeply concerned about the 7.5 million Americans in 36 states who might lose federal government subsidies now provided by Obamacare to buy health insurance in a few months. That very scenario could happen if...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Will the Republicans’ congressional dysfunction in 2015 hurt the party’s chances in 2016? That’s not some liberal talking point—some GOP lawmakers are very nervous about the prospect. I happen to think the fear is overstated, and we’ll get to that in a moment. For all the sound and fury, it was almost an afterthought when John Boehner’s House passed a funding bill for the Homeland Security Department on Tuesday, with Democrats carrying the ball and Republicans supplying just 75 votes. This, of course, was a complete capitulation from earlier threats to shut down the department rather than acquiesce in President...

Is there an inherent danger in electing a freshman Republican senator to the American presidency in 2016? After all, if one of the biggest criticisms then-candidate Obama faced from conservatives in 2008 was that he was too inexperienced, why should Republicans turn around and nominate someone like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio or Rand Paul this election cycle? If we’re being honest with ourselves, are they really any more qualified than he was? As it happens, this is a question some of my colleagues debated last week during a panel discussion at CPAC:(VIDEO-AT-LINK)I agree with Katie that successful governors have a...

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky won the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll Saturday, his third victory in as many years. This year he carried 26 percent of the vote. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz placed third, with 11.5 percent, while former Gov. Rick Perry came in eleventh, with 1.1 percent. Both Paul and Cruz openly campaigned at the event. Cruz volunteers distributed custom-made buttons that said "Cruz Crew." Perry had a smaller get-out-the-vote operation at the conference. The contest comes after three days of speeches from presidential contenders and noteworthy conservative activists. On Thursday, Cruz touted his battles within...

As Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and other Republican lawmakers battle the Obama administration on his executive orders on immigration, a national gay rights group is targeting the potential 2016 presidential candidate over another executive order protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination in the federal workforce. The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, on Wednesday released a comprehensive research report on Cruz that highlights his record on gay rights. Cruz, who is addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington Thursday, is an outspoken opponent of same sex marriage. With...

One of the least interesting news manias of the week has been former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani discussing his opinion that President Obama doesn't really love America (or you, or me, or him). Obama has been the very living embodiment of American government power for the past 7 years, and not too reluctant to use it against enemies, and just random citizens, both foreign and domestic—whether it comes to foreign policy, spending, taxing, regulating, and arresting. Thus, I doubt any alleged lack of love for the U.S. of A matters in any way that Giuliani or the people delighted to...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Potential Republican presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham has "no doubt" that President Obama loves his country, refuting comments made by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani earlier this week. “Well, I love Rudy, but I don’t want to go there. The nation’s very divided. President Obama has divided us more than he’s brought us together and I don’t want to add to that division,” Graham initially said on ABC's "This Week" today, before adding, “I have no doubt that he loves his country. I have no doubt that he’s a patriot. But his primary job as president of the United...

Marco Rubio is hot again. The junior senator from Florida is in the midst of a comeback, fueled by a self-assured stand against easing relations with Cuba, some savvy campaigning in Iowa and a meeting that impressed well-heeled donors. He still faces a daunting path to the White House. Voters in his own state would rather he seek a second Senate term in 2016. He’s no longer the only bright young Republican star in the field. And he continues to come under fire for a shift on immigration, particularly from the Latino community that Republicans want to woo. Rubio seems...

It's still early, but the future candidate is in serious trouble. Here's why his beloved Tea Party is to blame. Just before sundown on Monday, Politico unveiled a report on how Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s support for auditing the Federal Reserve has been received thus far on Wall Street. “Very poorly” seems to be the answer. According to Politico, in fact, the likely presidential candidate’s attempts to bring “the Fed” into the light may have permanently lowered the stock of “the most interesting man in politics” — at least among the conservative members of the 1 percent. “The Fed is...

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has a Ron Paul problem. Or maybe it's a Ron Paul opportunity. Both sides of that particular coin were on display Friday, when Ron - Rand's father - spoke to the International Students for Liberty Conference in Washington, DC. It was the elder Paul's kind of audience - young and enthusiastic about the libertarian emphasis on robust individual freedoms and miniscule government. Crowds like this had fervently supported the former congressman's quixotic bids for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and 2012, where he proved to be a pesky participant in the debates and a headache...

President Obama is putting Republicans on notice that he plans to run through their cynical politics and opposition during his final two years in office. While speaking at a DNC fundraiser in San Francisco, the president said: "And one of the things I am absolutely determined to do over the next two years is not just consolidate the gains that we’ve made, not just move forward on new initiatives like free community colleges for young people around the country who need to be trained for the 21st-century economy, but part of my goal is also to restore a sense of...

Since the U.S. Supreme Court rejected hearing Alabama’s appeal on gay marriage earlier this week, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has taken the firmest stance of all potential Republican presidential candidate on the issue. Cruz introduced the State Marriage Defense Act just two days after the high court’s decision, which would allow states to decide on how to define marriage, rather than federal judges. While Republicans have long been the party supporting only traditional marriage, media reports have recently stressed how slow likely Republican 2016 presidential have been to speak out on the Alabama matter. The Supreme Court opted not to...

The unofficial death of the moderate American Democrat went largely unnoticed last week. Tim Ryan — a once-strident champion of the Rust Belt city of Youngstown, filled with moderate Catholic Democrats whose issues are still firmly pocketbook-based — penned an op-ed saying he now supports abortion. The Ohio congressman, who once sat on the board of the Democrats for Life in America advocacy group, made that surprising reversal as he contemplates a run for U.S. Senate. You see, plenty of Jacksonian Democrats remain in his district — and all across the country, for that matter — but no tolerance for...

On ABC News with host George Stephanopoulos, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) had the audacity to insist yesterday that Democrats are the “top one percent” party, reported Raw Story. Stephanopoulos was interviewing Cruz about the current economy and Hillary Clinton’s prospects of running for president in 2016. Stephanopoulos noted that there were one million new jobs added to the American labor market in the last three months. “Look, if Hillary Clinton wants to run by telling Americans that the economy is doing great and that you can credit President Obama and Hillary Clinton for that, I would encourage her to follow...

Representative G.K. Butterfield (D., N.C.) accused Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) of opposing the confirmation of President Obama’s attorney general nominee because she is “an African American legal scholar.” “The Congressional Black Caucus recognizes Senator Paul’s unfounded argument as nothing but an excuse to keep an African-American legal scholar from holding this high position, and we directly call on him and Republicans to allow the nomination of Loretta Lynch to proceed to an up or down vote in the Senate,” Butterfield, the chairman of the CBC, said in a Thursday statement. Paul says he opposes Loretta Lynch taking over for...

Sen. Rand Paul on Wednesday pointed to several ways he was personally open to teaming up with the White House, noting that the 2016 Republican nominee will be affected by whether the GOP-dominated Congress can accomplish anything. Paul (R-Ky.), a near-certain presidential contender, offered those remarks to the Ripon Society, a Republican group, at the Capitol Hill Club in an early-morning speech the day after the State of the Union. During the speech, he also offered an impassioned defense of his foreign policy views. “If we’re looking forward to 2016, and some of us are,” he said to laughs, “we...