Free Republic

Greedy PACs drained the movement with endless pleas for money to support “conservative” causes and candidates. I worked for one of them. But Tea Party ideas live on. As we watch the Republican Party tear itself to shreds over Donald Trump, perhaps it’s time to take note of another conservative political phenomenon that the GOP nominee has utterly eclipsed: the Tea Party. The Tea Party movement is pretty much dead now, but it didn’t die a natural death. It was murdered—and it was an inside job. In a half decade, the spontaneous uprising that shook official Washington degenerated into a...

You almost need a flak jacket to go on an MSNBC show these days - at least judging by the rapid fire attacks displayed on the March 2 "The Dylan Ratigan Show." Either host Dylan Ratigan was trying to play to MSNBC's rabid liberal audience or he really has it in for the Tea Party movement based on some exaggerated notion it is nothing but hate and fear mongers. In an interview with Mark Williams, a conservative talk radio host and sometimes spokesman for the Tea Party Express, Ratigan asked Williams what he was doing to separate his legitimate effort...

Donald Trump's campaign spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, has been all over cable news defending Trump from the dishonest media and doing a pretty good job doing it. There are few things that make liberals more angry than Donald Trump so it shouldn't come as a surprise that Pierson got a lot of heat from the left after she went on CNN wearing a necklace made of ammunition. A clear message that she is a firm defender of the 2nd Amendment. It all started with a snotty tweet from a CNN reporter who wanted to know the "message" behind the necklace even...

           Thank You Sarah Palin! One of the most powerful and effective voices for change in American politics has been Governor Sarah Palin. Yet, even some of our conservative friends cannot resist the temptation to join in with liberals to be overly critical about one of her recent public appearances. Governor Palin has been on the front lines of every battle, rallying and motivating voters in a way that only she can. It's no wonder why the recent Public Policy Polling found that Palin is the most liked potential Presidential candidate among Republican voters - higher...

<p>We're setting up and getting ready as Congressman Curt Clawson puts the final touches on his speech for tonight as he prepares to deliver the 5th Annual Tea Party Response immediately following the President's State of the Union Address and the Republican response.</p>

A national tea party group will hold a news conference in Wichita on Monday with U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, but leaders stopped short of saying whether the group plans to endorse the Republican incumbent. “It will be an announcement,” said Taylor Budowich, executive director of the Tea Party Express, a California-based group that describes itself as the nation’s largest tea party political action committee. The news conference, set for 11 a.m. at the Sedgwick County Republican party headquarters in west Wichita, will be attended by Roberts and local tea party leaders and activists, Budowich said. Earlier this year the group...

This week, ProPublica released a report on the financial (and moral) corruption of a Tea Party group operating under the name Move America Forward, which was founded by one Sal Russo. Russo also helped start the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, aka the Tea Party Express. Move America Forward has run fake drives to give care packages to troops, stolen images of other charitable campaigns and passed them off as its own, and trumpeted a nonexistent partnership with Walter Reed Hospital — all while funneling very real millions to itself. The group is an industry leader at taking your Tea...

BILOXI, Mississippi — A staffer for Sen. Thad Cochran’s (R-MS) re-election campaign was fired after he was arrested and accused by police of stealing campaign signs for Cochran's primary opponent, state senator Chris McDaniel. Lee Ellis Blair, a member of the DeSoto County GOP executive committee and Cochran campaign staffer, was arrested late Sunday and charged with “malicious mischief,” according to a partially redacted copy of the police report provided to Breitbart News. “He's fired. Unlike Chris McDaniel, we don't tolerate that type of behavior,” said Cochran's spokesman, Jordan Russell, in an email. The police report alleged Blair “did willfully,...

  BREAKING: Elect Chris McDaniel Tour Announced Dear Patriots, Thanks to the generous contributions of our Tea Party supporters, we were able to reach our first fundraising goal- thank you so much! We are excited to announce our Elect Chris McDaniel Bus Tour and wanted to share it with our loyal supporters first. We will be holding four major rallies the weekend before the June 24th run-off election in key media markets and counties that are strategically necessary for McDaniel to win. For complete tour details click HERE.  If you reside in Mississippi or a neighboring state, we hope to...

Mississippi Showdown for U.S. Senate   Tea Party Conseratives, We need your support now more than ever, as conservative Chris McDaniel faces 47-year incumbent Thad Cochran in a runoff on June 24th. Last Tuesday thanks to full Tea Party support, McDaniel edged Cochran but by less than 1500 votes, and since neither recieved 50% of the total vote there will be a head-to-head runoff to decide the race.   The only way for Chris McDaniel to pull all the way through is for every conservative to show up and vote on June 24th, and your resources will help us...

POLLS: Too Close to Call With the election TOMORROW, polls are showing the race between conservative Chris McDaniel and establishment entrenched Thad Cochran a virtual dead-heat.   While the Cochran campaign had a slight edge just one week ago, the McDaniel campaign has seen considerable momentum as of of late due to endorsements by major national conservative leaders from across the country such as Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum and many more.  The election is TOMMOROW and represents one of the only opportunities for the Tea Party to oust a U.S. Senate Republican establishment career politician in Thad Cochran.  With the...

Though our higher education system is the best in the world, our colleges and universities are serving competing nations with the talented foreign-born graduates who study here and then get sent back home to drive their economies instead of ours. According to the Partnership for a New American Economy, only 7 percent of green cards are granted based on economic grounds. In other countries, it’s as high as 50 percent — and they will win in the long term if we do not adapt our policies to the global marketplace.Finally, we need to make the 11 million people who are...

My second biggest complaint about Republican amnesty supporters is how lazy they are.Take Sal Russo’s big pro-amnesty article. It’s virtually identical to the same amnesty pitches coming in from the GOP over the years.The only difference is that Russo throws in stuff about “misty-eyed ideals of some of the liberal do-gooder reformers” for cred while championing the exact same amnesty policy.  And he mentions “What is good for America should be the sole criteria for immigration reform.”What’s good for America somehow involves permanent Democratic Party rule.It’s six paragraphs of the same stuff about border security (under Obama) and our desperate...

Updated 5:11 p.m. | House Republican leaders are mum on a timetable for advancing immigration overhaul legislation and have so far been noncommittal on moving on the issue before the end of the 113th Congress. But a group of mayors and business leaders from across the political spectrum is determined to prove that momentum is growing for a rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws — even among conservatives. The coalition, Partnership for a New American Economy, on Wednesday held the first in a series of monthly conference calls moderated by Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist and featuring public...

Tea Party Express co-founder Sal Russo wrote an op-ed piece for Roll Call on May 14 entitled “Conservatives Need to Fix the Broken Immigration System.” In his commentary, Russo addressed what he sees as several major problems with our current immigration system, including the fact that immigration laws are not enforced, our present visa system is inadequate to supply our economic needs, border security is ineffective, and there are rich incentives for illegal immigration. Russo expanded on these problems in language that is especially appealing to conservatives focused on the economic aspects of immigration, both legal and illegal. For example:...

Sal Russo, co-founder of the Tea Party Express, announced his support for amnesty on Wednesday, reversing his organization’s statement from a year ago that it would not take a position on immigration reform. If you take a look at Russo’s background, this isn’t exactly the revelation that some in the media are making it out to be. What’s interesting, though, is the dichotomy between Russo’s position and the principles of the organization he helped to create. The Tea Party Express bills itself as anti-establishment, but Russo’s immigration proposal is nearly identical to the principles pushed by GOP House Leaders --...

The U.S. immigration system is flawed and broken. Conservatives should be at the forefront of reform so the law reflects the just interests of the United States, not misty-eyed ideals of some of the liberal do-gooder reformers. What is good for America should be the sole criteria for immigration reform. Our laws today are unenforced and citizens and companies who play by the rules are undermined by bad actors who do not. This undermines our rule of law and slows our economic growth. In today’s global economy, we cannot afford the status quo. Congress must pass legislation that will fix...

Obama dines with Streisand, Springsteen, Kardashian and Hollywood Elite The contrast could not be greater! While President Obama was hobnobbing with Hollywood's liberal elite in southern California, we were in middle America rallying working-class Americans to vote in the midterm elections.  President Obama claims to represent the working class, yet has never had a real job and prefers the company of liberal celebrities like Barabra Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Kim Kardashian, and Bruce Springsteen.   The President's hypocrisy could be smelt all the way in Minneapolis, MN where Diana Nagy was joined on stage by patriotic Americans President Obama was...

SNIP Sal Russo of the Tea Party Express broke the news in an op-ed titled “Conservatives Need to Fix the Broken Immigration System,” published by CQ Roll Call early Wednesday morning. In that piece, the longtime GOP operative and consultant argued that “conservatives should be at the forefront of reform so the law reflects the just interests of the United States, not misty-eyed ideals of some of the liberal do-gooder reformers.” That means no special pathways to citizenship that allow undocumented immigrants to cut in line, Russo cautioned, but rather some reasonable procedures that require “the 11 million people who...

When the Tea Party Patriots threw its support last month behind Matt Bevin, the underdog conservative challenger trying to unseat top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell, President Jenny Beth Martin vowed the group would be “putting our money where our mouth is.” So far, its super PAC has mustered just $56,000 worth of mailers in Kentucky on Bevin’s behalf — less than half the amount it has paid Martin in consulting fees since July. The Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, which blew through nearly $2 million on expenses such as fundraising, polling and consultants in the first three months of this...