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Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report is somewhat baffled. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll gave Republican voters a list of potential presidential candidates and asked whether the voters could support each candidate in the primaries. On that measure, Marco Rubio finished first. And yet when pollsters have asked GOP voters to name a top pick, Rubio inevitably finishes far from the top. Why is that? And why is Scott Walker doing better? Walter writes: Yet, if Rubio’s got such obvious advantages, why is he stuck in the low single digits while Walker has become a “co-frontrunner” with Bush?...

"Jeb couldn't be here today and you better be glad, 'cause it would have been $10,000 a plate. Cruz couldn't be here 'cause he's building a fence. ... Any Democrats here? You better be glad Scott Walker's not here, 'cause he would beat you up." The jokes are decent, as far as jokes about people running for president go. A little dad-ish, a little amateur, but not bad—they get at the essence of three Republican candidates, short and punchy, and not mean, per se, but also not not mean. If I was Senator Ted Cruz, and I heard myself described...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Ted Cruz today? No, try Bobby Kennedy in 1968. That’s how old the left’s doomsday rhetoric is; the actual causes come and go — pollution, acid rain, global cooling, global warming, generic climate change, whatever. The end result is that the world will soon come to end — unless we elect socialist politicians who pretend to be a cross between scientists, mystical clerics and slide rule technocrats. Or as I wrote a couple of years ago, linking to Bobby’s speech in ’68, Carter’s malaise speech a decade later, and Obama’s Dr. Strangelove-esque “science” “czar” John Holdren, “Welcome Back My Friends...

LANSING, MI -- A Republican presidential candidate hasn't won Michigan since 1988, but with 2016 on the horizon, GOP lawmakers are proposing bills that could help a second-place finisher win some electoral college votes here. • Rigging? State Rep. Cindy Gamrat, R-Plainwell, this month reintroduced legislation that would award Michigan's electoral college votes by Congressional District, ditching the winner-take-all model that most states use and diminishing the influence of large cities that can swing a vote. David Weigel of Bloomberg News, calling the bill part of the "electoral college-rigging movement," noted that Republican nominee Mitt Romney would have won nine...

A while back I observed the contrast between the modern leftists’ self-image and the actual political reality of the policies they support. [T]he media and Hollywood types have always convinced themselves, as George Lucas did, that their villains were metaphors for George W. Bush or a cautionary tale about the evils of the right. But here we are, the Old Republic is being dissolved, and it’s their hero who is doing it. They find themselves on the side of the Empire. In effect, they have become the Party of Palpatine. You never thought that a fictional dictator, such as the...

Slate reports on the King of Insanity in the Senate… After Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz held court for a glut of reporters in Statuary Hall, and his response to the Israeli prime minister’s message was unequivocal: The current situation with Iran, Cruz said, is just like the run-up to World War II. “The deal being negotiated today is reminiscent of Munich in 1938,” the slow-talking Texan said, referring to the Munich Agreement that let Nazi Germany annex part of Czechoslovakia. “And when the administration comes back to America and promises peace in our time, we shouldn’t believe...

By now most of us have heard the excruciating news that Debbie, Charlie and Alan are considering running for Rubio's Senate seat in 2016. This is where we need Jeb Bush to come in And Put A Stop To It !!. If Jeb runs, you know the GOP and Conservative Base will make sure he keeps the seat Red. His odds of getting the GOP nomination will likely dwindle in the coming months. Hopefully when he sees the numbers and the tea leaves, where as he will never surpass the four leading contenders, he will then have to consider running...

A fine example of “MacGuffinization” by the left, as Sally Kohn reduces a high-stakes struggle between Obama and the GOP over separation of powers and the future of detente with Iran to white guys from the other party not respecting a black man enough. I don’t mean to minimize the charge, though. In the liberal hierarchy of offenses, racism ranks much higher than treason. Taken as a whole, this list suggests a troubling pattern of profound disrespect for the President. But more than this, it seems to reflect an anti-Obama fever that has gripped the Republican Party — one that...

I … guess this makes sense? Paul’s got the same problem here as he has on most issues not related to cutting spending, trying to find a spot on the Venn diagram where libertarians and conservatives overlap. He signed Cotton’s letter, obviously, because he knows he’ll be attacked in the primaries as a squish who can’t be trusted as commander-in-chief and he can’t hand any more ammo to the competition on that point. Now, when Rubio or Ted Cruz or whoever slams him for being dovish, he can point to the Cotton letter as rebuttal. Having pandered to conservatives, though,...

During his remarks before the Concord City Republican Committee last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suggested that robust military spending is absolutely necessary to defeat ISIS forces abroad, and that, as president, he would use the military itself to force Congress to reverse budgetary cuts to defense and intel. In brief audio obtained by BenSwann.com, Sen. Graham purportedly suggests he would use the military to restrict the movement of Congress until they complied: …[A]nd here is the first thing I would do if I were President of the United States: I wouldn’t let Congress leave town until we fix this....

These 7 Senators did NOT sign the letter: Jeff Flake - Ariz Bob Corker - Tenn Lisa Mukowski - Alaska Lamar Alexander - Tenn Thad Cochran - Miss Susan Collins - Maine Dan Coats - Ind

Income inequality was a prominent theme among the many potential presidential candidates who addressed the International Association of Fire Fighters presidential forum on Tuesday. But no one else had a line quite like that from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). “We’ve seen over the past number of years two Americas emerge. At the very top, top 1 percent today, with the largest federal government we’ve ever had, the top 1 percent earn a higher share of our income [than they have] since 1928,” said the Texas Republican. Veterans of recent presidential campaigns probably did a spit take. "Two Americas" is a...

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...