Free Republic

Scandals: One of the nation's largest veterans groups is being required to provide proof of membership eligibility. Posts that can't or won't comply face heavy fines. Your government thanks you for your service. The IRS scandal, which President Obama says is "phony," along with the body-bag scandals of Benghazi and Fast and Furious, was once the object of faux presidential scorn. When the president announced acting Commissioner Steven Miller had resigned over his agency's "inexcusable" targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups who had applied for tax-exempt status, he feigned concern. "I reviewed the Treasury Department watchdog's report and...

It is important that we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Dr. King not only arguably delivered the greatest speech spoken on American soil, but his words were a critical turning point in the history of civil rights in America. When King said that he dreamt of the day that his children would be judged by the content of the character instead of the color of their skin, it was the point at which many white Americans began to rethink their views about blacks. Yet half a century later, it is sadly...

Howard Dean excoriated Candy Crowley’s interview with Ted Cruz on CNN Sunday morning, calling it “a very long interview with very little content,” and saying “God help us” if Cruz ever became more than a U.S. Senator.Cruz had pitched allowing people to buy health insurance across state lines as one of the policies he would put in place instead of Obamacare.“I don’t want the Texas insurance commissioner being up here in Vermont,” Dean said. “We have had universal health insurance for all our kids for twenty years. They have 22% of their children uninsured in Texas. I don’t want...

Former Vermont Gov. and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean showed that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) irritates the left as much as the Republican establishment when he declared that he was fearful that Cruz would one day become president. "God help us if he ever gets to be anything more than the senator from Texas," Dean said on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday. Dean was responding to an interview CNN's Candy Crowley had done earlier in the week with Cruz in which Cruz said that he would do whatever he could to encourage a "grassroots tsunami" that would...

With another presidential cycle starting in just two years, battle lines are being drawn - not between the two parties, but within the Republican Party itself. Interestingly the differences being aired this summer seem less about ideology than approach: Whether compromise with Democrats is ever okay; even more broadly whether government can or even should try to solve problems through policy or lawmaking. So while most Americans reflexively say they want "something done" there's plenty of difference in defining what that means, and these debates have huge potential to shape the GOP's brand in 2014 and certainly in 2016....

Tea party Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, are insisting that Republicans shouldn’t negotiate on the federal budget unless Democrats agree in advance not to try for a rise in the debt ceiling when the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. This triumvirate of the Republican far right seem to have decided that they no longer have any obligation to engage in basic governance of our people through bipartisan negotiations and compromise. Republican Sen. John McCain said the tea partiers complain that negotiations are “back room dealings” but seem not to realize that whatever agreement...

Gannett link only: http://www.wbir.com/news/article/285413/2/Lamar-Alexander-Bob-Corker-blasted-by-tea-party-leaders-as-gutless-cowards

OKLAHOMA CITY, August 13, 2013 ― The election of Senator Marco Rubio to the U.S. Senate in 2010 was a moment of celebration for the newly formed Tea Party movement as Rubio became known as the “Tea Party darling.” Rubio’s stump speech about his family’s escape from Fidel Castro’s Cuba never failed to bring people to their feet. The speech reminded his listeners that America is the greatest country on earth and a beacon to the world’s oppressed. Upon being sworn in, Rubio fought hard against Obamacare and worked to get the U.S. back on the path of economic success....

WAKE FOREST, NC, August 20, 2013 — Many Americans see the Tea Party as a bigoted movement of uneducated white men that caters to big business and the rich. That does not and never has accurately described the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party is not an officially a political party, though there are Tea Parties affiliated with the movement. It has no central leadership. People who identify with the movement do not come just from Republicans or identify only as conservatives. Independents, Democrats and liberals are all represented. It lacks any significant representation only from those who call themselves...

Steve Flesher has an interesting post over at American Thinker about “rehabilitating” Sarah Palin, or more specifically, how she can help rehabilitate the GOP. Goodness knows, the GOP needs all the help it can get. Between the very public “war” between Chris Christie and Rand Paul, the fall from grace of Marco Rubio, John McCain’s unveiled attacks on the only actual conservatives in Congress, and the lackluster, waffling of GOP leadership, the Grand Old Party is looking more old than grand. Is Sarah Palin the answer? Or at least part of it? Flesher, linked above, sure seems to think so:...

DALLAS -- Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's message to Republican lawmakers who won't support defunding "Obamacare" at the risk of shutting down the government? "Don't blink." And he downplayed the effects of a possible shutdown, telling a Dallas crowd on Tuesday evening that the last time the government experienced "a temporary suspension of non-essential federal government spending," the military kept functioning and Social Security checks were distributed. Cruz is leading the charge to defund President Barack Obama's health care law at what he calls "the single best time" to get rid of the law. And while Democrats who back the law...

Former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) on Monday night urged voters to replace any Republican lawmaker unwilling to vote to defund ObamaCare during next month's budget showdown. DeMint, the president of the Heritage Foundation, dismissed fears that Republicans would be blamed for a government shutdown, as they were in the 1990s. “The risk of that is so much less than the risk to our country if we implement ObamaCare, and so I’m not as interested in the political futures of folks who think they might lose a showdown with the president,” DeMint said at a town-hall meeting hosted by Heritage Action,...

Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander struck the latest blow in the ongoing Republican intraparty squabble between ideologues and pragmatists – or, in Chris Christie-speak, “winners” and “college professors” — in an op-ed published in the Tennessean newspaper Tuesday. The entire piece, which was written in response to calls from tea party groups for Alexander to step aside due to his willingness to work across the aisle, is worth reading but one paragraph stood out to us. Here it is: “I learned to count in Maryville City Schools. So I know that if you only have 45 votes and you need 60...

KINGWOOD, Texas — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has come home to Texas to promote his long-shot bid to defund "Obamacare," warning Tea Party activists Monday that they have only a few months to stop the health care reform law before people get “addicted” to it. Cruz, who has thrilled his conservative base with his promise to shake up business as usual in Washington, says that once the insurance subsidies kick in at the beginning of 2014, it will be too late to undo the Affordable Care Act. He said that is precisely President Obama’s goal. “His strategy is to get...

Reports of the tea party's demise are greatly exaggerated, or so its leadership would have us believe. Sure, the 4-year-old movement is maturing and all those attention-grabbing headlines from 2009 are much harder to come by in 2013. But conservative activist Brent Bozell, who is attempting to build support for defunding President Obama's health care law, said establishment Republicans are running away from their constituents, a sign that bucking the tea party's grassroots agenda is fraught with peril. "Isn't it interesting how times change; that just three years ago, Republicans were rushing to have town halls and now they're running...

Mickey: Stay down, Stay down Rocky 1974 John Rambo: Live for nothing or Die for Something Rambo 2008 I was watching Morning Joe today and as usual the entire table was united in asserting that Ted Cruz and the Tea Party caucus was wrong to consider fighting to de-fund Obamacare highlighting a piece by Krauthammer This is about tactics. If I thought this would work, I would support it. But I don’t fancy suicide. It has a tendency to be fatal. They stressed the wisdom of Krauthammer’s assertion that the GOP should not fight. It seemed an odd assertion since...

In an interview with the Daily Beast published Friday, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) suggested Tea Partiers are the "same group" who fought for segregation during the Civil Rights movement. “It is the same group we faced in the South with those white crackers and the dogs and the police. They didn’t care about how they looked," Rangel said. Because of this, Rangel said the Tea Party could be defeated using the same tactics employed against Jim Crow. "It was just fierce indifference to human life that caused America to say enough is enough. ‘I don’t want to see it and...

Conservative Republicans on Thursday pressured Congress to back their bid to cut off all funding for “Obamacare” through the spending process despite misgivings within their own party, calling themselves as a “coalition of the reasonable” who will be judged favorably even if key aspects of the health care are allowed to take root this fall. An outspoken group of senators, House members and tea party activists gathered outside the Capitol to tout their emerging campaign, speaking of the need to take away the health care law’s funding when Congress attempts to pass a short-term spending plan in September. They denounced...

The first woman to graduate from the Citadel is planning to challenge South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham in the Republican primary next year. Charleston businesswoman Nancy Mace will head to Goose Creek Saturday to announce her Senate campaign, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned. “This isn’t about one senator,” Mace told TheDCNF. “The only way to change Washington is to change who we send to Washington.” “Washington is out of touch,” she added. “Voters are frustrated. They’re looking for someone authentic.” In a June fundraising email, the Senate Conservatives Fund listed Graham as one of three Republican senators the...

Time to flood their switchboards. Don't let the traitors get away with robbing us of our jobs, destroying our economy, giving up our sovereignty. Kill the amnesty bill before it kills us!! We did it before, we can do it again. KILL THE BILL!!