Free Republic

John McCain is the quintessential enemy from within on the right. I am long past the argument of honoring his service to this country. He served his country long ago with distinction, now he’s serving it on a platter to the Communists. At every turn he has betrayed America in recent years. Just two words describe the good he has done this country: Sarah Palin and she is Tea Party. Now, in an act of political cleansing, McCain has set about to gut the Arizona GOP of Tea Party riff-raff using an Obama San Francisco donor. How richly appropriate for...

Republicans: Political purges may work in totalitarian states, but in a democracy they can be self-defeating. The senator who called the Tea Party "wacko birds" should realize the GOP's real enemies are called Democrats. It's been said that all politics is local, and normally a state party's internal squabbles would not be national news. But when they involve a former presidential candidate on an issue that will affect the selection of the GOP's 2016 presidential nominee and chances, we sit up and take notice. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who lost the 2008 election to Barack Obama and who is running...

Academics and pundits have many criticisms of the Tea Party, e.g., its members are racists, sexists, homophobes, etc. These are unfounded claims, but there is one criticism that is true and it is holding this movement back: the Tea Party is disorganized and lacks sophistication and cohesion. This lack of organization has benefitted the Tea Party in some ways, but the time has come for this passionate but underdeveloped movement to reach its full potential. The Tea Party's goal for the new year should be to once again become a visible and vocal actor in American politics. Claiming that the...

In a Wednesday post, Hot Air reported on something a friend of Mitt Romney said about the 2012 presidential candidate’s desire to enter the 2016 race. It seems that if it looks like Jeb Bush is the frontrunner, Romney will sit the next race out. However, if Ted Cruz is on his way to the nomination, Romney will enter the race to save the Republican Party and the country from the conservative firebrand. One of the many raps against Cruz is that, while he is the favorite of the conservative, tea party base, he lacks the ability to reach out...

Change is coming to Washington in 2015 with the Republicans controlling the House and Senate for the first time in eight years. They will have their largest House majority in more than 75 years. The outgoing Congress managed to agree on a spending bill to keep the government running, but a recent Pew Research Center poll suggests Americans are not cheerful about the future. Only 20 percent believe President Obama and Republican leaders will make significant progress on the country's biggest problems. The upcoming 2016 presidential elections will also be part of the discourse. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is...

The TEA Party divided the GOP for six years. It was destructive and a failure to negotiate much needed legislation throughout the 112th and 113th Congress. TEA Party goals are destructive rather than constructive. Congress’ poor favorability rating can be attributed directly to the party within a party which is supported by the most wealthy Americans such as the Koch brothers. In 2008 the TEA Party was making plans for a presidential bid in 2016; they will fail. Although politicians may be extremists, the majority of Americans are more centrist. The TEA Party made a splash in 2008 and again...

Sen. John McCain is no fan of the tea party – and he’s now doing his best to purge the Arizona Republican Party of its influence. According to Politico, McCain is preparing for his 2016 reelection bid by dismantling Arizona’s tea party apparatus. That includes a massive effort to remove or undermine the many local officials who have influence across state politics and could cause trouble for McCain in a primary. Prior to Aug. 26, when the races for the party offices were held, the vast majority of the 3,925 precinct slots were filled by people McCain’s team considered opponents....

TEXAN LOOKING TO SHORE UP “CONSERVATIVE” SUPPORT IN PALMETTO STATE. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz will attend the 2015 South Carolina Tea Party convention next month, sources close to the event tell FITS. The Texan – who along with U.S. Sen. Rand Paul is seeking to emerge as a leading alternative to the GOP “establishment” – is the third presumptive “Republican” presidential prospect to commit to the event, which is being held in mid-January in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Also attending? Social conservative Rick Santorum – who ran unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination in 2012 – and neurosurgeon/ author Ben Carson, who...

After releasing our report on Monday covering the accounting issues of the PAC and campaign finance reports of the Texas Legislature, the Texas Ethics Commission (TEC) issued a response defending its “important work”. In the two page letter, TEC chairman Paul W. Hobby, a Joe Straus appointee, admitted that we were correct about the TEC’s limited enforcement powers (thanks to the Legislature) and bemoaned the appeals process that hindered prosecution. He defended the commissioners’ diligence, claiming they have “met much more than is required by law.” Unfortunately, the figures the TEC provides only tell half the story. One of the...

Before Jeb Bush announced he was “actively exploring” a presidential bid came news he was just as actively seeking a way to avoid appealing to conservatives. (The Bushies prefer the word “pandering.”) The would-be King Bush III consulted one of the country’s foremost experts on excelling in the Republican Party without being too conservative: Arizona Sen. John McCain. “I just said to him, ‘I think if you look back, despite the far right’s complaints, it is the centrist that wins the nomination,’” McCain told Bush, according to The New York Times. It’s definitely true that the establishment candidate usually wins...

I considered saving this for tomorrow night, just to send you off into 2015 on the most depressing, eeyorishness note possible. But then I reconsidered.For maximum eeyorishness, I should really end the year with a “Romney 2016″ post instead, no? Team McCain’s goal? Unseat conservative activists who hold obscure, but influential, local party offices.Under the byzantine rules of Arizona Republican Party politics, these elected officials, known as precinct committeemen, vote for local party chairmen. The chairmen, in turn, determine how state and local GOP funds are spent, which candidates are promoted in an election year, and which political issues...

Nearly a year ago, tea party agitators in Arizona managed to get John McCain censured by his own state party. Now, he’s getting his revenge. As the longtime Republican senator lays the groundwork for a likely 2016 reelection bid, his political team is engaging in an aggressive and systematic campaign to reshape the state GOP apparatus by ridding it of conservative firebrands and replacing them with steadfast allies.

The tea party has, to date, been a uniquely Republican movement, with would-be progressive analogs fizzling and fading. “Occupy Wall Street” seemed more interested in drum circles than political engagement. And do you remember the Coffee Party? I didn’t think so. The lack of a tea party left is in part because having the White House helps paper over a lot of intraparty divisions. And it’s also in part a function of the parties’ differing structures, with the GOP’s recent purity pushes abetted by a media-entertainment complex that incentivizes ideological fidelity over electability as well as the conservative movement’s historical...

Some prominent moderate establishment Republicans in Utah are plotting to target conservative icon Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) with a primary challenge in 2016. Lee’s offense? He didn’t drink the Washington Kool-aid and see the D.C. cesspool as a jacuzzi after he ousted incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT), who had supported the TARP bailouts, in 2010. When Lee prevailed over Bennett, he gave other conservatives across the country hope that they could also defeat entrenched incumbents who cared more about preserving the status quo above all else. Once Lee arrived in Washington, he didn’t turn his back on the base, which...

Last week, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush announced his intention to "actively explore" a run for president. That announcement spurred spasms of joy in some segments of the Republican Party who have been itching for an effective counter to the enthusiasm of the grassroots right. Those Republicans -- largely coastal donors who scorn social conservatives as rubes, and shun the supposed fiscal extremism of the tea party -- have been searching for a candidate who will buck the base on immigration, who doesn't mind hand-in-glove corporatism, and who, most of all, feels the same way they do about the grassroots....

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Here's Bob in Nashua, New Hampshire, as we head back to the phones. Great to have you with us, sir. Hello. CALLER: Yeah, thanks, Rush. Yeah, this theme of the GOP establishment that the Tea Party and conservatives are the main enemy not the Dems, it's nothing new. It goes back, really, to the 2008 presidential election when the Republican establishment -- or at least many in the establishment -- sabotaged McCain-Palin. Because, to them, Palin was the bigger threat, the bigger enemy than the Democrats winning. You know, the funny thing is now more than six...

For the past six years, I have been a passionate, active black member of the Tea Party. Unlike the vast majority of black Americans, I did not fall for the radical left's Trojan Horse in the form of a shiny new smooth-talkin' black man back in 2008. When presidential candidate Obama told Joe the Plumber that he planned to spread the wealth around, I knew he was nothing more than another socialist/progressive liberal who hated America as founded.

Top IRS officials specifically targeted tea party groups and misled the public about its secret political targeting program led by ex-official Lois Lerner, according to a bombshell new congressional report. The Daily Caller has obtained an advance copy of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report set to be released Tuesday morning that definitively proves malicious intent by the IRS to improperly block conservative groups that an IRS adviser deemed “icky.” (That’s right. “Icky.”) “The Committee has identified eight senior leaders who were in a position to prevent or to stop the IRS’s targeting of conservative applicants,” the Oversight...

A top IRS official considered going public with the agency’s targeting of conservative groups at a hearing just months before the 2012 presidential election but ultimately decided against revealing the bombshell news, according to a new report from a GOP-led House committee. Then-Deputy Commissioner Steven Miller wrote in an email in June 2012, about a month before a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing, that he was weighing whether to testify to “put a stake” in the “c4” issue -- apparently a reference to allegations about politics playing a role in the agency’s denial of tax-exempt, 501(c)(4) status to conservative-leaning...

It is extremely notable that Manu Raju of the Politico has written that the establishment intends to destroy Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). Raju serves as the court stenographer for the Senate GOP leadership. His pieces are routinely littered with the conventional wisdom and talking points of the Senate GOP leadership. He has more than once anticipated Senate GOP leadership strategy based on their conversations with him. So when Manu Raju says the establishment intends to go on offense against the tea party by beating Sen. Mike Lee in the Utah Republican Primary, we can be sure Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY),...