Free Republic

“Mitch McConnell has an unusual admonition for the new Republican majority as it takes over the Senate this week: Don’t be ‘scary.’”... Democrats are dubious of McConnell’s pledge to avert edge-of-the-cliff moments. They believe he will run into the same problems that have bedeviled House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) during the past four years — including the inability to corral rabble-rousers such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to support an agenda that conservative critics will probably view as not bold enough in challenging Obama. Appeasing those far-right conservatives will lead to an agenda that Democrats hope to exploit in...

The Democrats? I’d rate the chances of the party reining in its extremes at below zero.

Republicans are split over whether to change the Senate’s rules to allow filibusters on executive and judicial nominations. As they head into a conference meeting on Tuesday, some Republicans say it’s time to undo a wrong committed by Democratic Leader Harry Reid and go back to rules that require 60 votes to clear most nominees. “I think it’s rank hypocrisy if we don’t,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said when asked about reversing the rule change. “If we don’t, then disregard every bit of complaint that we made, not only after they did it but also during the campaign,” he added....

Practically everyone expects California Attorney General Kamala Harris to win re-election handily in November. The Democrat won 53 percent of the vote in a crowded June primary. A rising star expected to ascend someday to the governorship, perhaps a U.S. Senate seat, Harris has won the endorsement of major newspapers in the state. She's such an attractive candidate that even though it was true, President Barack Obama had to apologize last year for calling her "by far the best-looking attorney general in the country." Yet Harris faces two unusual obstacles in the November runoff. One is Ron Gold, a never-elected...

Former Democratic pollster Pat Caddell blasted the Republican Party for not making the president’s planned executive amnesty a national issue ... The Republican Party, they’re not called the stupid party for nothing. These people are able to, are willing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory given the opportunity,” he stated. “It's amazing to me. I've never seen a party that doesn't grab opportunities thrown at it like this,” he declared. And “they [Republicans] should be taking this issue and making it a national referendum issue against every Democrat, and for every Republican in the country.” He speculated that...

The National Security Agency’s headquarters in Ft. Meade, Md., will go dark if a cohort of Maryland lawmakers has its way. Eight Republicans in the 141-member Maryland House of Delegates introduced legislation Thursday that would deny the electronic spy agency “material support, participation or assistance in any form” from the state, its political subdivisions or companies with state contracts. The bill would deprive NSA facilities water and electricity carried over public utilities, ban the use of NSA-derived evidence in state courts and prevent state universities from partnering with the NSA on research.

If U.S. Chamber of Commerce strategist Scott Reed really wants “no loser candidates” and “no fools on our ticket,” as he told the Wall Street Journal last week, then he might want to start by banishing himself from any involvement with the 2014 elections. It takes a truly foolish Republican consultant to declare war on the party’s most energized troops — the same foolish politico who once advised Republicans to work in favor of gun control and who ran the incompetent 1996 presidential campaign of Bob Dole. If Reed wants “no loser candidates,” presumably he will be working to rid...

The Ryan-Murray budget deal is a fake and a fraud that the Stupid Party thinks is on the level and the Democrats have constructed as a trap for them. It has only just been announced and it has already caused another split in the Republican Party which is just what the Democrats wanted to happen. This “split”was designed to happen. It was a very simple trap that is forcing the Republicans into another intramural war. The Democrats have once again played rope-a-dope with the hapless GOPe; and once again John Boehner, the Charlie Brown of politics, has fallen right into...

In case you missed it, John Boehner has hired Rebecca Tallent. Tallent worked for the left-of-center “Bipartisan Policy Center,” and is a serious amnesty advocate. She helped John McCain and Ted Kennedy during the Bush era on that disastrous plan. Here’s what is going to happen. Boehner will wait until 2014, after qualifying for all the serious challenges to incumbents is over. Then he’ll get all these Republicans talking out of both sides of their mouths and the Democrats together for a bipartisan immigration reform push. The threat of primary challenges well passed, they’ll get their amnesty deal done. The...

<p>While the Senate majority leader is blowing up his institution, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) held an interesting press conference, giving some broad hints as to where that body is going.</p> <p>First, Boehner suggested that the House isn’t merely going to club the president over Obamacare.</p>

In light of a recent report, Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) fears the National Security Agency may be spying on President Barack Obama. “They could well be spying on the president, for all I know,” Paul says, in an interview with National Review Online. “He has a cell phone, and, in fact, my guess is that they have collected data on the president’s phone.” Paul also believes the federal government may be tracking Pope Francis. “The most important question we need to ask the NSA is, ‘Are you telling us you’re collecting no data on the pope?’ And, ‘Did you...

Immigration reform advocates plan an aggressive campaign to bring the issue back — and the White House has signaled it’s on board. Can Obama emerge from the fiscal crisis with enough momentum to win the immigration fight? As the fiscal fight roiling Washington nears its end, the White House is already signaling that it plans to use the political momentum it has gained during the shutdown fight to charge back into the immigration debate. And this time, Democratic pollsters and advocates say, they could actually win. The final chapter of the current crisis hasn’t been written yet, but Democrats in...

Lets raise the Debt Ceiling to 100 Trillion dollars,it's all borrowed money anyway,digitized,monetized,whatever.We pay off the 17 Trillion dollar debt,send everyone in the United States a check for a 1000 dollars and there will be trillions left over to fund everything!

Is there such thing as “class” in America? Not if you ask Rick Santorum. The once and possibly future GOP presidential candidate spoke to a Republican gathering in Lyon County, Iowa late last week and shared this piece of advice with his party: “Don’t use the term the other side uses.” That includes the “middle class.” Santorum proceeded to tear into President Obama for constantly invoking the term “middle class” in his speeches about the economy. “Since when in America do we have classes?” Santorum asked. “Since when in America are people stuck in areas or defined places called a...

Sticks and stones may break bones, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just hopes his words are enough to get Republicans to back off Obamacare. “We’re not going to bow to Tea Party anarchists who deny the mere fact that Obamacare is the law,” Reid said this morning. That was just the start of it, though. Reid used words like "fanatic" and "extremist" to describe Republicans threatening to hold up a budget until Congress votes to defund Obamacare and its exchanges, which open for enrollment in eight days. “Are Republicans so intent on undermining President Obama and the signature health...

On Friday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer mocked the Republican tactic of using the budget process to defund President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care reform law. Krauthammer called the House’s vote to defund the law “Kabuki” and warned that it would come back to haunt congressional Republicans. “I think the Boehner speech is what you would expect,” Krauthammer said. “He didn’t want to do it. He had to do it, so he had to defend it, and that’s Kabuki. I think it’s going to go to the Senate and if we end up...

George Santayana, and before him the 18th-century British philosopher-politician Edmund Burke, had history in mind in observing that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. Events five years ago hardly qualify as "history," yet the evidence is mounting that many supposedly well-informed people have forgotten what got the U.S. into—and out of—the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. How else to describe the common attitude toward the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Ben Bernanke? The Fed and Mr. Bernanke were instrumental in pulling the country—and ultimately the world economy—back from the abyss. Yet the heroic effort...

I belong to the stupid party. I’m a Republican. We specialize in self-destruction. The latest example is the recent decision by the Republican National Committee to ban CNN and NBC from covering any debates during the next GOP presidential primaries. Somehow, in head-up-your-butt land, that makes sense. But out here, in the real world, it’s insane. And petty, and one more sign that the people running this party are, in scientific terms, frigging idiots. Here’s the story. Apparently there is this she-devil named Hillary Clinton who wants to run for president. She’s the one who said we didn’t need more...

President Obama has “contributed to [Egypt's] descent into chaos” by providing foreign aid to the military regime while maintaining an otherwise “detached and abstract” position, according to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who called for an end to financial support. “President Obama’s detached and abstract statement yesterday on deteriorating conditions in Egypt is only the most recent manifestation of this administration’s failed policy in that country,” Cruz said. “As there can no longer be any reasonable doubt that what occurred in July was a military coup, the first step is to send an unequivocal message that the United States is a...

Former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich told a meeting of the Republican National Committee that his party needs to move beyond its image of steadfast opposition to President Barack Obama and convince voters its goal is to improve the country. “We have to get beyond being anti-Obama and we have to convince people you can have hope in America,” Gingrich said on Wednesday. “What we have to do, in a sense, is be a party of optimism and a party of hope and show actual cases of how it can work.” Speaking at a Boston hotel adjacent to where Republican...

In his latest book, Collision 2012, Dan Balz, a Washington Post writer, expresses his incredulity over “the inability” of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign to “humanize” its candidate. This is one reason why, in Balz’s estimation, Romney lost the 2012 election to Barack Obama. Yet there are two other reasons that he supplies to account for Romney’s defeat. The one pertains to the “technically superior” character of his rival’s campaign. The other is in regard to Romney’s “ambivalence” concerning his bid for the presidency. The first thing that should be noted is that if Romney’s consultants had difficulty in “humanizing” their...

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio warned Tuesday that some on the Republican side of immigration reform could come up empty-handed if the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” plan fails. In an appearance on WFLA’s “The Morning Show with Preston Scott” in Tallahassee, Fla., Rubio explained that President Barack Obama will be tempted to enact his own immigration reform measures by executive order if Congress does not pass an immigration bill. An Obama executive order would legalize 11 million undocumented immigrants, he said. “I have been saying now for over a year I believe that this president tempted, will be tempted, if...

Sen. Rand Paul outlined his fears about President Obama’s health care law on “The Daily Show” late Monday, arguing “dinosaur syndrome” has prevented well-intentioned authors of the law from crafting effective reforms. “I’m afraid it’s going to be unaffordable and that’s the real problem,” the Kentucky Republican told John Oliver, interim host of “The Daily Show” in Jon Stewart’s absence. “I’m afraid that everyone will pay a lot more for insurance. And I think precisely the people it was intended to help it may well hurt, because they may not be able to afford it.” Mr. Paul, a potential presidential...

Nearly a hundred top Republican officials sent a letter to the House GOP on Tuesday urging lawmakers to pass a bill that legalizes illegal immigrants, arguing that the current system is already allowing them to stay and so it makes sense to register them and bring them into the system. The donors, led by former Bush administration Cabinet officials Carlos Gutierrez and Spencer Abraham, also said that immigrants are potential Republican voters who can be won over — if the party can be seen as welcoming to immigrants. “Doing nothing is de facto amnesty. We need to take control of...

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio warned in an op-ed on Thursday that there is “mounting evidence” Obamacare creates more problems than it solves and he called on lawmakers to stop the “disastrous” law from taking effect. “It is time to admit that Obamacare isn't going to work, decide not to waste a single cent more on it, and replace it with market-based reforms that will give people more health insurance choices and options,” Rubio penned on the Fox News website. “It's still not too late. This September may be our last best chance to do anything about this disastrous law.”...

ObamaCare is at the center of a rapidly escalating fight that threatens to shut the government down this fall. Republicans have tried this maneuver in Obama’s first term, only to back off later to the chagrin of Tea Party leaders. This time, GOP lawmakers are emboldened by problems plaguing the administration’s ObamaCare implementation.

Two ranking Republican members of the US Senate Armed Services Committee urged the Obama administration on Sunday evening to take “decisive” action against the Assad regime in Syria. Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina spoke at a news conference in Jerusalem after meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders.

Earlier this year, Jeb Bush told ABC that both his father George H.W. Bush, and brother George W. recommended he run for president in 2016. Mama Barbara Bush is not keen on the idea, declaring in April that “the nation’s probably had enough Bushes.” But in the constantly shifting equations of potential Republican hopefuls for future president and vice president, the former Florida governor’s name has been tied with another former governor: Sarah Palin. The pair have now been framed as a “the GOP’s only chance” in the race by American Thinker contributor Michael Sheppard. “Would Jeb Bush have as...

Ready for the kicker? Discussing #immigration and why border security MUST come first on this issue in 25 minutes on @FoxNews #AZ #tcot— Jan Brewer (@GovBrewer) June 24, 2013 Stupidity or something worse? Border security doesn’t “come first� in the Gang of Eight bill, of course; it comes before green-card eligibility but after probationary legalization, which is why Rand Paul, for instance, can’t support it. Illegals are granted a legal claim to staying here before anything happens on the border. Which leaves three possibilities. One: Brewer’s confused about what the bill says. That seems … doubtful. She’s the governor of...

EXCERPT “I don’t think we have a definitive on that yet,” Bachmann said. “I think there’s still a loophole that the speaker might allow himself — that he won’t hold himself to the Hastert rule. In the shorthand, this is what I think is going to happen — the very bad bill is going to be in the Senate. We’re going to have a Trojan Horse bill that will look very good. It will look like border security in the House. Conservatives will vote for it in the House. Both bills will go to conference committee. The guts will get...

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R) argued Wednesday that the United States should pass immigration reform because the U.S. economy needs the labor of young immigrants, and immigrants are “more fertile.” “Immigrants create far more businesses than native-born Americans,” Bush said at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to the Majority conference. “Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families, and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population. Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity.” Bush said immigrants are an advantage that the United States has over China, Europe and Japan, which don’t have the same...

(CNSNews.com) - In his prepared text for a speech he is delivering today at the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, Sen. Rand Paul (R.-Ky.) said to illegal aliens who want to live and work in the United States: “[W]e will find a place for you.” Paul also said he envisions today’s illegal aliens becoming additional “taxpayers.” “Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers,” said Paul. Illegal aliens working in the United States today are not exempted from complying with the nation's tax laws anymore...

In his prepared text for a speech he is delivering today at the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, Sen. Rand Paul (R.-Ky.) said to illegal aliens who want to live and work in the United States: “[W]e will find a place for you.” Paul also said he envisions today’s illegal aliens becoming additional “taxpayers.” “Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers,” said Paul.

A week ago, he noted on his Facebook page that his poll numbers after voting no on Toomey/Manchin put him somewhere south of “pond scum.” Today, this. He won’t face the voters again for five and a half years, but he shares a home state with Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly. They can hurt him by campaigning against him in 2018 more than they can anyone else in the Senate. No wonder he’s looking for ways to flip: Republican Sen. Jeff Flake told CNN he is willing to reverse his opposition to expanding background checks for guns if the Senate...

WASHINGTON (AP) — You don't see this very often: a majority of Senate Republicans voting to make people who buy stuff on the Internet pay state and local sales taxes. The Senate could vote as early as Thursday on a bill to empower states to require online retailers to collect state and local sales taxes for purchases made over the Internet. Under the bill, the sales taxes would be sent to the states where a shopper lives. On Wednesday, the bill passed a test vote in the Senate, 74 to 23, with 27 Republicans voting in favor. Senate Majority Leader...

Alex Conant @AlexConant: "We haven't had a cohort of people living permanently in US without full rights of citizenship since slavery". Mind you, he isn’t talking only about illegal immigrants. He’s talking about any non-citizen who lives in this country permanently, including millions of Green Card holders. And by implication: Conn Carroll @conncarroll: For those of you keeping score at home, Rubio spokesman @AlexConant just compared all Schumer-Rubio opponents to slave owners If this is Team Rubio’s strategy for winning over conservatives, good luck with that.

When confronted with the Republican Party’s poor standing among minority communities, GOP politicians have usually taken one of two approaches: claim these communities constitute “natural conservative constituencies” or advocate a broad change in policy or ideology to attract minority voters. Neither one of these tactics has been effective, for various reasons–chief among those reasons is that the communities under consideration are usually not “natural conservative constituencies.” Take Hispanics, for example. It is often noted by GOP politicians that Hispanic immigrants are hard-working, family-oriented strivers who tend to be religious. That may be true, but polls showed that while Mitt Romney...

Sen. Rand Paul R-Ky. delivered an effective speech at Howard University, even though he rhetorically stumbled at points. The audience was mostly silent through Paul’s prepared speech, which highlighted traditional Republican policies such as school choice, free markets, and limited government. Paul’s more libertarian ideas, however, appeared to resonate with the audience, as they applauded for his views on reduced jail penalties for non-violent drug users and a more humble foreign policy. “Republicans are often miscast as uncaring or condemning of kids who make bad choices,” Paul said. “I, for one, plan to change that.” Paul admitted that Republicans had...

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele on Tuesday said he doesn't understand why gun owners fear the registration of their firearms. "I don't get the fear of registration," Steele said on MSNBC. "I don't get the, the concern about trafficking. Are we saying that we want criminals to, you know, make … back-alley sales out of the trunks of their cars?" Steele was part of a panel on MSNBC's "The Daily Rundown," during which former Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) said that responsible gun owners insure their guns, which means they're registered. "I mean, I don't understand," she said. MSNBC...

Sources inside the Senate tell me that the Republican Conference is scared to death of the tactics of Senators Lee, Cruz and Paul – that it is supposedly putting them in a tough spot. Several of the Republicans are using the Manchin-Toomey compromise plan as an excuse to cave on the gun filibuster. They claim that Senators Lee, Cruz, and Paul are running ahead of the conference in their insistence on a filibuster. What they fail to see is that the cloture vote is the vote to stop the gun legislation from passage. Several Republican Senators intend to vote against...

...First, and most important, is focusing on the economic concerns of working-and middle-class Americans, many of whom now regard the Republican Party as beholden to “millionaires and billionaires” and as wholly out of touch with ordinary Americans. This is a durable impression—witness Bill Clinton’s effective deployment of it more than 20 years ago and its continued resonance during the 2012 campaign when Team Obama portrayed Mitt Romney as a plutocrat who delighted in shutting down factories and moving jobs overseas. Sure enough, in November exit polls, 81 percent of voters said that Barack Obama “cared for people like me”; a...

Once again, those “moderates” of the Republican Party inner circle are exhibiting a determination to obliterate any lingering shred of credibility left in the GOP. Appearing in the shadow of a stellar CPAC 2013 gathering this past weekend, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus outlined the results of an introspective analysis of the party’s lapses during the November 2012 elections. Predictably, the advice from the self-anointed “experts” is to move the party further left in order to persuade its opponents of a general willingness among the party hierarchy to abandon principle in a futile quest for votes. The venue from...

Hey, remember that awesome CPAC speech by Mitch McConnell? The one where Mitch McConnell said — and I quote — “Obamacare should be repealed root and branch. And we’re not backing down from this fight.” And the same speech where Mitch McConnell also said, “This law is a disaster, and anybody who thinks we’ve moved beyond it is dead wrong.” Well, as I told you, Mitch McConnell excels at saying one thing and doing another. Yesterday, Mitch McConnell voted to fund Obamacare. Hey Utah, he joined Orrin Hatch in doing so. Remember, just last year on the campaign trail Orrin...

--snip-- The ever-growing U.S. government has an edgy social, ethical, and political character. It is distasteful to a majority of persons who vote Republican and to independent voters, as well as to perhaps one fifth of those who vote Democrat. The Republican leadership’s kinship with the socio-political class that runs modern government is deep. Country class Americans have but to glance at the Media to hear themselves insulted from on high as greedy, racist, violent, ignorant extremists. Yet far has it been from the Republican leadership to defend them. Whenever possible, the Republican Establishment has chosen candidates for office –...

Sen. Rand Paul says he'll wait until 2014 to decide whether to run for president, but he believes voters are ready for a Libertarian-minded Republican candidate. "I would absolutely not run unless it were to win," the Kentucky Republican said on "Fox News Sunday." "Points have been made, and we we will continue to make points. But I think the country is really ready for the narrative coming — the Libertarian Republican narrative." Voters want a "different face," he said. In order to expand the party's reach, Paul believes the GOP should embrace candidates who are willing to push a...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) will deliver the Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address on Feb. 12. Rubio's response will be delivered in both English and Spanish, according to Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) office. "Marco Rubio is one of our party’s most dynamic and inspiring leaders. He carries our party’s banner of freedom, opportunity and prosperity in a way few others can. His family’s story is a testament to the promise and greatness of America," Boehner said in a statement on Wednesday. "He’ll deliver a GOP address that speaks from the heart to the hopes and dreams...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich tells Newsmax that Republicans need to be the “party of ideas,” offering real solutions instead of playing “bumper sticker politics.” Gingrich also says the GOP’s stance on immigration during the presidential campaign was “devastatingly destructive,” but he’s hopeful that reform can be implemented thanks to Sen. Marco Rubio’s “very important leadership” on the immigration issue. … In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV, Gingrich discloses how he reacted to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s recent pronouncement that the GOP should “stop being the stupid party.” “I broke out laughing because when I was first running for...

It’s has been widely assumed this morning by some immigration advocates (and by yours truly, too) that the new immigration reform plan’s process of citizenship for the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants is contingent on a commission of Southwestern officials declaring the border secure. Not true. I’ve now got clarification from Senate staff working on the bill, and it turns out that the enforcement commission’s judgments will only be advisory, and are entirely nonbinding. Congress’ actions will not be dictated by what this commission concludes; neither will actions taken by the Department of Homeland Security. The citizenship process will be...

ou might remember that in July of 2011, when fighting over the debt ceiling, president Obama- right before he left for his 17th vacation at Martha’s Vineyard that year- complained about congressional inaction by saying that’s it time for the country “to eat its peas.” From CBSNews:"I've been hearing from my Republican friends for some time it is a moral imperative to tackle our debt and deficits in a serious way," Mr. Obama said. "What I've said to them is, let's go."The president said today he would not accept a smaller, short-term deal. "We might as well do it now," he said....

ou might remember that in July of 2011, when fighting over the debt ceiling, president Obama- right before he left for his 17th vacation at Martha’s Vineyard that year- complained about congressional inaction by saying that’s it time for the country “to eat its peas.” From CBSNews:"I've been hearing from my Republican friends for some time it is a moral imperative to tackle our debt and deficits in a serious way," Mr. Obama said. "What I've said to them is, let's go."The president said today he would not accept a smaller, short-term deal. "We might as well do it now," he said....