Free Republic

…and burns his lips, which may make it more difficult for him to kiss a certain Majority Leader’s arse. From Breitbart, Julia Hahn reporting, we learn that Don Marco may be in trouble: The populist, anti-establishment groundswell could spell trouble for the presidential campaign of donor-class darling Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) — who has twice fearlessly ignored voters and risked his political career to advance the goals of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. … Now that the Republican base has its sights set on Mitch McConnell, it could pose a serious problem for the campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio, whose...

2016 GOP presidential candidate Senator Rand Paul (R-KS) called into Kilmeade & Friends and talked about Senator Ted Cruz being rebuffed on the senate floor by republicans who failed to allow him a roll call vote, John Boehner stepping down as Speaker of the House, why he feels it’s important to be present for votes on the senate floor, defunding Planned Parenthood, why he thinks Scott Walker dropped out of the race as well as news coming out of the UN on Syria and Russia. Listen here: (AUDIO-AT-LINK)Senator Ted Cruz being snubbed with not one republican granting him the procedural...

Why, god? Why? Don't look now–I mean it. Don't look, for the love of god!–but the Republicans in the United States Senate just guaranteed Ted Cruz's presidential campaign a huge boost among those anonymous hayshaking Bible-bangers who are the only Republicans who matter to that effort. And the way you know that is the fact that, in response, Ted Cruz got up on the floor of the Senate and brought the temple down on his head.​ After the Senate voted to end debate on a resolution to fund the government, Cruz tried to procedural move to bring up one that...

A year ago, if you had asked me whether Chris Christie, Scott Walker, or Rand Paul would be the last man standing of those three, I would have told you Rand. Christie would surely drop out early, done in by Bridgegate and his sheer RINO-ness. Walker was a serious threat to win, but there was a real chance that his voters would be gobbled up by more talented center-right and conservative retail politicians like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Paul, however, had his own niche. Libertarians are a smallish minority of the GOP but even a smallish minority can be...

Armchair psychoanalysis of political figures can be a dubious and even disreputable business. But one presidential candidate presents the following symptoms: feral aggression, reflexive demagoguery, self absorption, paranoia, grandiosity, disdain for social norms and an inability to cooperate with others. When such a person habitually imagines himself as Winston Churchill, the effect is truly destabilizing. So let us add to the DSM a newly discovered malady: Ted Cruz Syndrome. For the historic figure Cruz most evokes is not Churchill, but a nascent Joseph McCarthy. It is not his fault that he resembles the young McCarthy (though he does), but that...

I've learned from my time in politics that things are rarely as bad as they seem. The converse is also true – they're rarely as good either. I'm reminded of this statement as we hash out the meaning of Speaker John Boehner's abrupt decision to depart Congress and resign his speakership at the end of October. Many leading conservatives, none more than Senator Ted Cruz, have cheered Boehner's demise, claiming a scalp and taking a victory lap. They see the speaker's departure as the obvious outcome of a grassroots uprising that demanded change. They look at Boehner's political troubles and...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/09/elizabeth-warren-black-lives-matter

Non-House members have received votes for speaker, and that’s a trend that seems to be growing.Who can replace Speaker of the House John Boehner, who announced Friday he’s quitting? Almost anyone. Maybe even you. This isn’t a comment on the job Representative Boehner has or has not done in his role as leader of his legislative chamber. It’s meant to illustrate a little-known fact: Under the Constitution, the speaker does not have to be a member of the House. He or she doesn’t have to be an elected lawmaker or government official. The speaker can be an ordinary, private citizen....

WASHINGTON — Hours after House Speaker John Boehner announced that he would be resigning from Congress, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz added fuel to the fire by saying he’d heard “early reports” that Boehner cut a deal with Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to continue funding some of President Barack Obama’s most controversial measures. “I will say, the early reports are discouraging. If it is correct that the speaker, before he resigns, has cut a deal with Nancy Pelosi to fund the Obama administration for the rest of its tenure, to fund Obamacare, to fund executive amnesty, to fund Planned Parenthood, to...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) TRENTON — U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez became the latest critic to lash into Donald Trump's controversial plan to combat illegal immigration, saying the Republican presidential frontrunner's proposals will never be put into action. "Let me say now: There will be no Berlin-style walls to divide us," Menendez (D-N.J.) said during a speech Sunday celebrating the sixth annual Hispanic Heritage Month at his alma mater, Union City High School, according to video posted by local news outlet Hudson County View. "There will be no mass deportations," he added, drawing loud applause from the crowd. "There will be no denying our...

NEW YORK (AP) — Two New York legislators are leading a campaign to designate Stonewall Inn as the first national park honoring LGBT history. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) made their announcement Sunday in front of the Greenwich Village tavern that was the scene of a 1969 uprising at a key moment for the nascent gay rights movement. “When we look at our country, we have recognized women’s rights, civil rights, all kinds of rights,” Gillibrand said. “The time has come to give this part of our history an imprimatur of national importance.”(continued)

Donald Trump may be a hit with the public, but Republicans appear to have little confidence.Seemingly immune to controversies and gaffes that would have ruined less ridiculous men, Donald Trump has topped every single poll taken on the Republican Primary race since late July. But while his controversial views on everything from immigration to trade with China have appealed to a wide swathe of Americans, it has earned him few friends within the party. Statistics site FiveThirtyEight has analysed the endorsements given to each candidate by their fellow party members, weighting the approval of governors, senators and representatives in descending...

A Michigan political consultant working for Rand Paul says he was punched in the face by Marco Rubio's deputy campaign manager during an alleged incident at a bar in Mackinac Island, where the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference is set to begin Friday. John Yob, who is national political director and chief strategist of Paul's Michigan campaign, wrote that Rubio deputy campaign manager Rich Beeson "literally physically assaulted me by punching me in the face." "Last night I went to a bar on Mackinac Island for the GOP Mackinac Conference. I ran into a guy named Rich Beeson, who frankly I...

GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump will never win the White House because he is playing to aging white voters and turning off blacks and Hispanics, U.S. Sen. John McCain said. “I don’t think he could win the White House because we have to attract voters,” McCain said on Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” show yesterday. “We have an aging white population in America and a growing Hispanic and African-American population and we have to reach out to them.” McCain said the Hispanic vote, particularly in a border state such as his home state of Arizona, is especially important. “The Hispanic voter...

Republican legislators have gotten their messaging instructions from their top leaders: Tout unpopular free-trade measures during the August recess, ignore popular curbs on the migration that saps Americans’ wages. Breitbart News has exclusively obtained an internal August recess messaging instruction set for Republican legislators produced by Sen. John Thune (R-SD), who orchestrates the GOP Senators’ PR pitch. This 20-page messaging instruction manual seems to confirm prior reports by Breitbart News that Republican Congressional leadership has no plans to enact popular immigration reforms to curb large-scale migration. Each August, Senators and Congressmen return home to listen to constituents’ concerns and to...

Juicy, but I don’t know how scandalized we should be at learning that Boehner holds a view we all assumed he held in the first place. Next we’ll find out that Mitch McConnell thinks Cruz is a jackass too. This isn’t the first time he’s been accused of saying something privately to fundraisers that he wouldn’t dare dream of saying publicly. Remember when he allegedly told a bunch of donor-class amnesty fans that he was “hellbent” on passing comprehensive immigration reform in 2014? Two months later Dave Brat upset Eric Cantor in their House primary by running hard against illegal...

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC) said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday that fellow candidate Donald Trump has tapped into the "dark side" of the GOP. Graham was explaining how his rival has managed to dominate the Republican presidential race, polling as high as 35 percent depending on the survey. Graham said the support still represented a minority of the GOP. “Twenty-five percent of our party that probably thinks Obama was born in Kenya or wants to believe that. There’s 25 percent of our party wants him to be a Muslim because they hate him so much,"...

The conservative 2014 Senate challengers have endorsed the candidate who, like them, hopes to be a vessel for anti-establishment frustration.Ted Cruz's presidential campaign may not get many endorsements from Senate colleagues. Not coincidentally, the Texas senator is racking up support from primary challengers who tried but failed to unseat some of those senators last year. Tennessee's Joe Carr, Mississippi's Chris McDaniel, and South Carolina's Lee Bright, three conservatives who opposed longtime GOP senators in 2014 primaries, have all backed Cruz for president. It's a small part of Cruz's effort to do next year what those candidates did last year: serve...

In order for a candidate to attract supporters, he needs at least one of two things: to show that he is winning, or to show that he has the potential to win. In the early stages, which we are now, a candidate can be viable and still be in single digits in the polls, as long as people think he has potential to move up. The minute he concedes that he's not going to win, he's lost. And that's just what Rand Paul has reportedly done. In March, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul put his odds of winning the Republican presidential...

Donald Trump said that he did not want to “waste a lot of time” talking about his rival Rand Paul, but decided to respond to the latest criticisms sent his way from the candidate who took up the mantle left by Rick Perry and Lindsey Graham. Trump pointed out how Perry and Graham have seen low poll numbers after speaking against him, and said that Paul is heading in the same direction. From there, Trump attacked Paul for “using the people of Kentucky” by standing against him and running for president while he is still serving as one of the...