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Just a few miles from his family home, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) felt the wrath of the tea party Saturday, when activists in his congressional district booed and heckled the second-most powerful House Republican. (SNIP) “When I sit here and I listen to Mr. Brat speak I hear the inaccuracies — my family’s here.” Cantor said. As he was interrupted by the raucous crowd, Cantor’s anger was evident: “That’s enough — we are a country of free speech, so decency’s also part of this.” (SNIP) “It is easy to sit in the rarified environs of academia, in the...

A wealthy businessman with tea party ties confirmed Sunday that he is mounting a primary challenge to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, saying that after donating to the Wisconsin Republican’s past campaigns he feels “betrayed” by the speaker on trade deals and immigration. The businessman, who is not yet revealing his identity, promised that his run will “shake up the establishment in a profound way,” according to a political consultant close to the prospective candidate. The emergence of a viable Republican challenger in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District is the culmination of a monthslong recruitment effort by tea party activists who...

Tea party activists are heartened by a federal appeals court ruling that strengthens their legal push against the Internal Revenue Service for alleged targeting in past election cycles. A three-judge panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals chastised government foot-dragging while ordering the agency to give attorneys for tea party groups details on tax-exempt applicants. A U.S. district court judge in Cincinnati earlier this year certified the case as a class action. …

The big question for Cruz is whether this baton pass does more damage than good among anti-establishment voters, even if it does boost movement conservatives. Newsmax’s Nick Sanchez believes that Jeb’s conservative track record in Florida will buffer the downside, and giving Cruz and the Tea Party access to the “establishment” donor base will pay dividends as well: 3. The Bush family has a national network of supporters — Money alone cannot win an election, and — as Cruz demonstrated right off the bat in the Iowa caucus — tapping into the network of bottom-up grassroots organizing can often ensure...

A federal appeals court spanked the IRS Tuesday, saying it has taken laws designed to protect taxpayers from the government and turned them on their head, using them to try to protect the tax agency from the very tea party groups it targeted. The judges ordered the IRS to quickly turn over the full list of groups it targeted so that a class-action lawsuit, filed by the NorCal Tea Party Patriots, can proceed. The judges also accused the Justice Department lawyers, who are representing the IRS in the case, of acting in bad faith — compounding the initial targeting —...

There is one good thing about people who insult our intelligence; they're probably misunderestimating the true level of our understanding. I’ve been called a fascist by communists and a communist by fascists. I’ve been called a pagan by Christians and a Christian by pagans. I’ve been called an optimist by pessimists and a pessimist by optimists. All of us have been labeled by others. We’ve all been called this by that and that by this, we’ve all had people try to insult us by how they refer to us, but when people insult our intelligence they are usually showing their...

[SNIP]The argument against Cruz is that he’s obnoxious.His colleagues don’t like him,and exit polls show he doesn’t do nearly as well among moderate and somewhat conservative voters as he does among hardcore conservatives....That’s why,when my colleague Jamelle Bouie was betting on Cruz,I put my money on Rubio...I stand refuted.Cruz hasn’t overcome the Trump wave,but he has proved that in an angry party,his organization,discipline,and message can beat a broadly appealing rival.Republicans who vote for Trump in 2016,only to see him abandoned by elements of their party and defeated in the general election,would be at least as angry in 2020.The notion that...

Republican Christine O'Donnell returned to political debate on Thursday to slam GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump. "I have no desire to get in the fray. Now it looks like he's going to be the nominee. I can't sit back anymore. I can't hold my tongue," O'Donnell said during an interview on CNN. "He did nothing to liberate the middle class from political correctness until he decided to run for president," O'Donnell added during her interview with Brooke Baldwin. O'Donnell is known in political circles for a stunning upset during the Tea Party wave of 2010 when she defeated establishment favorite and former...

It was one of the tea party’s few highlights in Tuesday’s congressional primaries. But laying claim to former GOP House speaker John Boehner’s old seat (in all likelihood) is a big one, both for the bragging rights and the momentum it gives House conservatives in their ongoing fight to purify their party ideologically. Warren Davidson, a businessman and former Army Ranger, won a 15-way Republican primary Tuesday in the special election for Ohio’s 8th Congressional District. The tea party candidate rather easily bested more moderate candidates, including two state lawmakers, in a campaign that quickly became ground zero for the...

It was one of the tea party’s few highlights in Tuesday’s congressional primaries. But laying claim to former GOP House speaker John Boehner’s old seat (in all likelihood) is a big one, both for the bragging rights and the momentum it gives House conservatives in their ongoing fight to purify their party ideologically. Warren Davidson, a businessman and former Army Ranger, won a 15-way Republican primary Tuesday in the special election for Ohio’s 8th Congressional District. The tea party candidate rather easily bested more moderate candidates, including two state lawmakers, in a campaign that quickly became ground zero for the...

If Marco Rubio’s campaign flames out in Florida tonight, as polls suggest, it will be delicious revenge for the Tea Partiers who have been waiting years to embarrass the senator in his home state. “We’re going to have a sweet taste in our mouths tomorrow when little Marco gets embarrassed by those he betrayed. He betrayed all of Florida, but mostly he betrayed people like me who worked hard to get him elected,” said Dan Ray, a founding member of Tea Party group in The Villages, a large retirement community in Florida, where Rubio campaigned earlier this week. When Rubio...

Hartford Tea Party co-founder endorses Ted Cruz and denounces Donald Trump. As one of the co-founders of the Hartford Tea Party in 2009, I was appalled to read the statement of Debbie Dooley, claiming that Donald Trump was the choice of someone who once claimed membership in a genuine grass roots organization dedicated to upholding the Constitution, reducing the size of government, eliminating government health care and opposing high government spending. In her endorsement for Donald Trump, she claimed the following:"I have been an activist fighting for conservative principles since 1976, so I reject individuals and publications that try to...

Here are five video segments of Donald Trump's remarks at a Florida Tea Party rally held in 2011. There appear to be few if any significant differences between what he said then and what he says at his current rallies, although he his minimized the "birther" attacks on Obama because that matter is now of little relevance. Trump's remarks seem to have been received as well in 2011 as now.H/t The Last RefugeThe video segments appear to be in proper sequence. Congressman Allen West introduced Trump at the beginning of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVztgvpe4FM   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd9pMfMling   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoFnWfUF6SU   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfvKjYKvMd4  ...

A crowd of well over 100 people turned out at the hearing, and several New Hampshire lawmakers defended Jerry DeLemus, 61, of Rochester, telling a judge that he is a law-abiding peacemaker who deserves to be released on bail. DeLemus is accused of being a "mid-level leader" and organizer of a conspiracy to recruit, organize, train and provide support to armed men and other followers of rancher Cliven Bundy. DeLemus was among a dozen people in five states arrested last week, raising to 19 the number accused of inciting and leading an armed insurrection in April 2014 to stop a...

Jack Kimball was working the phones hard on Friday morning. The Tea Party organizer and former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party was drumming up support for his friend and Tea Party associate Jerry DeLemus of Rochester. DeLemus, a Marine Corps veteran and former candidate for Strafford County sheriff, faces a slew of federal charges in connection with his role in a 2014 stand-off between ranchers and federal authorities in Nevada over grazing rights on public lands. The 60-plus-page indictment handed up Thursday against DeLemus and others involved in the standoff can be read here: www.unionleader.com/delemus. - See more...

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Former top Ted Cruz adviser Rick Tyler says conservatives won’t stop making their case against the likely nominee. The big, set-piece battle of the Republican primary is very nearly over – but the guerilla war against Donald Trump may have just begun. Trump is poised to seize the Republican nomination today if the Super Tuesday polls prove predictive – but the spirits of the candidates he’s brutalized, ridiculed and (nearly) beaten are likely to haunt and harass him for the next eight months. And Ted Cruz –clinging to hopes that a win in home-state Texas would forestall an Alamo moment...

Full Title: Game Change: Jeff Sessions Endorses Trump from Stage in Alabama; Stunning Event Unites Populist, Nationalist Movement MADISON, Alabama -- 2016 GOP presidential frontrunner billionaire Donald Trump will pick up the most significant endorsement any presidential candidate in the GOP can get here on Sunday: Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). Sessions, the intellectual leader of the future of the conservative movement, has provided the brainpower behind the populist nationalist revolt against political elites that's been emerging since at least 2013. At a warm and windy rally here with thousands present in a packed football stadium just outside Huntsville, Sessions will...

Sen. Ted Cruz drew a stark contrast between Democratic donors and Republican donors during a floor speech late Monday. Democratic donors, Cruz said, don't hate the liberal base, but Republican donors "actively despise" conservatives. "On the Democratic side, the major donors that fund the Democratic Party, they don't despise their base. The billionaires who write the giant checks that fund President Obama and Hillary Clinton and the Democrats on that side of the aisle, they don't despise the radical gay rights movement or the radical environmentalist movement or all of the people that knock on doors and get Democrats elected,"...

In his remarks today at a rally in Fort Worth, Tex., Donald Trump knew he’d make news. “I’ve never said this before,” he declared. We’ll await the word of the Washington Post Fact Checker on the integrity of the statement, but Trump did appear to be veering into a new talking point. A media-law talking point, that is: One of the things I’m going to do, and this is going to make it tougher for me…but one of the things I’m going to do if I win…is I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely...