Free Republic

Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, sounded off on the possibility of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Romney’s 2012 running mate, as the next Speaker of the House. Romney told show host Jake Tapper Ryan as Speaker of the House would lessen the possibility he could make a future run for president. “We need Paul in two spots at once,” Romney said. “You know, there haven’t been a lot of people that have gone on from speaker to the White House, so I’d hate to lose him as a potential...

This Tuesday, Rep. Ryan Zinke, a former Navy SEAL Team Six commander, confirmed with Brandon Tyler Webb, founder of the SofRep special operations news site, that he is considering running for House speaker so as to take a stand “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” including President Barack Hussein Obama. “I think there are a few people who can do that,” the Montana Republican told Webb. “If folks like Paul Ryan and others step aside, and more of my colleagues ask me to run, I will hear the call to serve. Leadership is about service to country, not self. It’s...

Paul Ryan is still reluctantly mulling a bid for speaker. But his adversaries on the far right want to discredit his campaign before it even begins — and they’re using Ryan’s extensive pro-immigration record as their key weapon. From his days battling a restrictive California immigration ballot measure in the early 1990s, to his quiet efforts the past two years to help build GOP consensus for immigration reform, Ryan has a lengthy history of pushing for an overhaul that runs counter to the most conservative wings of his own party. There will be a “major intraparty battle over immigration if...

A spokesman for House Ways and Means Committee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) confirms yet again that despite all the donor class and political establishment wooing, Ryan is not running to replace outgoing Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) as Speaker of the House.

The U.S. Congress hasn’t elected an African-American as speaker of the House of Representatives since 1874, when South Carolina lawmaker Joseph Rainey became the first black speaker. More than 140 years later, the next person to be third in the line of succession to the Oval Office could be Washington lobbyist J.C. Watts, an African-American. A former college football star and former Republican representative from Oklahoma, Watts told current House members who approached him about running for speaker that he was interested . . .

I do like her principles, from what I've seen -particularly on amnesty and PP- and she's a pretty skilled communicator too, comes across as sincere. Blackburn has a corp and entrepreneurial background so must have some experience with managing people before... YouTube

When House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy dropped out of the race for House Speaker, it opened it up to a new field of Republican Representatives being touted for the position. Most of the media's attention has been on former Vice Presidential candidate and Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan. Ryan has even earned the endorsement of amnesty advocate Rep. Luis Gutierrez! Ryan's position on immigration is fairly straightforward; he supports work permits and legal status for illegal aliens and he supports massive increases in legal immigration. NumbersUSA is not making endorsements on who the next House Speaker should be. And we know...

With unacceptable candidates Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan now smushed-up in our wheelwell, America's resurgent right rolls-on, retaining effective veto power over the Republican Party's choice of new leader in the US House as we all now contemplate wiser, far more palatable candidates. Darrell Issa always gave me high hopes with all his investigations- inquiries which never seem to result in nailing the bad guys to the wall. Isn't that a microcosm of today's weak-kneed Gee-Oh-Pee establishment? Lot of noise, but no effective challenge whatsoever? Alas, we need a dragon-slayer in the Speaker's seat, and Rep. Issa seems to lack the charisma and ability to punch-it-into-the-enzone...

As of this writing, House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan has not decided whether to run for speaker. He has been bombarded by all the Republican factions. Even Mitt Romney says the Wisconsinite can unify the Republican conference and take ON the job. I applaud Ryan’s leadership and policy skills and think he would make a good speaker But there’s a backstory to the current chaos of the GOP conference and the withdrawal of Kevin McCarthy from the speakership race. The GOP leadership in the House and Senate has failed to pass legislation to repeal the Obama agenda and...

Politico’s Mike Allen thinks President Barack Obama likes the idea of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)58% for Speaker. The White House would like that idea,” Allen said during an interview with Laura Ingraham on her radio show today. “Because they would like one more win … what they’ve always told me is that they admire Paul Ryan for being a substantive, smart guy.” Speaking to business leaders in Washington D.C. last month, Obama acknowledged that his administration was working with Ryan to negotiate some level of tax reform, even though Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)50% disagreed. “To his credit,...

Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Sunday slammed Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) and the House Freedom Caucus for "holding the House hostage" and blocking Republicans from electing a successor to outgoing Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who wants to resign at the end of the month. Hewitt said on NBC's "Meet The Press" that he hopes Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) — who has said he doesn't want to be Speaker — will change his mind. Hewitt then criticized Brat, who was on the roundtable, and the conservative House Freedom Caucus for giving Ryan a tepid response. "There's like 15 of you...

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) would make a great conservative Speaker of the House, suggests the American Conservative Union’s member scorecard. The American Conservative Union’s (ACU) Executive Director Daniel Schneider joined guest host Matthew Boyle on Breitbart News Sunday on SiriusXM, expressing that, out of the names that have been thrown out there for Speaker of the House, he thinks Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has the highest score by the ACU. “We’ve been doing these ratings of Congress for 45 years,” Schneider explained. “During Pelosi years, every Republican looked pretty conservative.”

By Kevin “Coach” Collins A recent political cartoon showed a group of “Republican” elephants standing around a body marked, “Boehner” with multiple arrows in its back. One asks, “What now?” A second responds, “Maybe we should have thought this through first.” In just eight words, without realizing it, the propagandist who created the cartoon has epitomized the problem with the Uniparty rule of government. These enemies of freedom just don’t get it. When John Boehner resigned as Speaker he did not do so willingly. As an apparatchik for the Uniparty’s control of our lives, his job was to bludgeon Americans...

The worst job in the world, it turns out, isn’t the U.S. presidency but speaker of the House of Representatives. “It’s where you go to die,” as one veteran Hill watcher put it to me. Volunteers? In the wake of Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) sudden withdrawal from his once-certain ascent to the speakership, several others are considering running for the job. McCarthy’s fall wasn’t only owing to his verbal blunder suggesting that the House select committee investigating Benghazi was primarily created to bring down Hillary Clinton. Like Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), he was shafted by the three dozen or...

Crowds gathered at the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. were led in a “down, down USA” chant Saturday morning by a female speaker. The Native American woman proclaimed that Muammar “Gaddafi is still alive” and called for President Barack Obama to pardon Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist who was convicted of murdering two Federal Bureau of Investigation officers in 1975. The woman then led the crowd in a chant of “down, down USA.” “They have a whole race of indigenous people on reservations, concentration camps. They’re out there killing the indigenous people spiritually,” she said. The woman followed...

John Boehner is out (eventually). Kevin McCarthy is out. Conservatives in the House of Representatives are on a roll. But where is the roll going? I applaud the ouster of these insiders. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the career ambitions of politicians. But what comes next, what follows bold action, is just as important, if not more. On that front, it seems conservatives were wholly unprepared. Nothing against Daniel Webster or Jason Chaffetz, but are they really people who leap to mind when you think “leader?” Or even “articulate and quick-witted conservative”? Have...

Under mounting pressure, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan emerged as the reluctant would-be savior of the fractious Republican House caucus yesterday, even being urged by 2012 GOP ticket-mate Mitt Romney to run for speaker. “I wouldn’t presume to tell Paul what to do, but I do know that he is a man of ideas who is driven to see them applied for the public good,” Romney said in a statement yesterday. “Every politician tries to convince people that they are that kind of leader; almost none are — Paul is.” Romney’s glowing endorsement of his former running mate came after the...

Cruz For President Steve, I need your continued advice and support. SURVEY CODE: #92570-5332481 Please find your personalized Official 2015 Presidential Platform Survey below. Follow this link to receive your platform survey. Please submit your survey answers to help me solidify my campaign platform and unite America's conservative majority behind my 2016 presidential campaign. Your personalized survey will account for helping to organize my Official Presidential Platform on key issues like: foreign policy, healthcare, economic, and social issues. My campaign team has pre-selected you as a strong conservative with a solid voting record. You are exactly the person I need...

There’s some strange happenings afoot in Florida this week and the fallout from a pending court case could impact the careers of several Sunshine State legislators, including Daniel Webster. (R – FL 10) Webster is a favorite among the House Freedom Caucus and a rapidly rising star in the conservative ranks, but he may have some bigger fish to fry if the lines of his home district are suddenly redrawn in a way that will place him in the midst of a heavy Democrat majority. We won’t know for sure until it hits the state supreme court, but the...

[NOTE: this is Revised and Updated for this posting] Many conservatives across the land have rejoiced over the withdrawal of Kevin McCarthy from the Speaker election. They shouldn’t. House Republicans are largely a collection of phonies. In my view, there are only two who have earned the Speakership: Louie Gohmert and Steve King. I am confident that few conservatives would disagree that these two Representatives have demonstrated honesty, courage and outspoken defense of true conservative principles. Each towers far above the rest of the field. The election of anyone else as Speaker would be a travesty, indicating Republican business as...