Free Republic

I happened to be meeting with Senator Ted Cruz a few hours after President Obama’s United Nations speech Wednesday. We naturally started by discussing the president’s latest oratorical effort. Cruz’s judgment on the speech as a whole? “Unsurprising, but consistently disappointing.” On Obama on Russia and Ukraine? A nice statement by Obama, but “why isn’t he giving serious military aid to Ukraine, both nonlethal and lethal?” Obama’s paragraph on Iran? “It was so short and vague I almost missed it.” And on looking at it, Cruz said he found “striking” Obama’s refusal to reiterate the pledge that Iran will not...

â–¶ Sen. Ted Cruz at the 2014 Values Voter Summit - YouTube

The tax reform plan from Sens. Mike Lee and Ted Cruz could turn out to be a big deal for Republicans. Essentially, the plan sets just two rates for income tax - 15% and 35%. It also raises the child tax credit by $2,500 from $1,000 to $3,500. It also reforms corporate imcome taxes. The Week's Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry says the next Republican to win the White House will have a tax plan very similar to this one, which focuses on building the middle class. Here are two Tea Party senators, one of whom is thought to be a strong candidate...

McClatchy-Marist Poll. Sept. 24-29, 2014. N=376 registered voters nationwide who are Republicans or lean Republican. Question: "If the 2016 Republican presidential primary or caucus in your state were held today, whom would you support if the candidates are [see below]?" Jeb Bush-15% Rand Paul-13% Paul Ryan-13% Chris Christie-12% Rick Perry-7% Marco Rubio-6% Ted Cruz-4% Bobby Jindal-4% Rick Santorum-3% Scott Walker-3% Unsure-21%

Politico’s David Nather cast the most mentioned Republican presidential contenders as un-presidential on Friday in a story headlined “GOP 2016ers on Ebola: Panic.” Only Rick Perry was the responsible one, he implied: For once, President Barack Obama and Texas Gov. Rick Perry are on the same page. At separate briefings on the Ebola crisis, Obama administration officials and Perry have delivered the same message: Don’t panic — the health authorities know what they’re doing. But for other Republicans — and conservative media outlets — it’s time for panic. The likely 2016 Republican presidential candidates — except for Perry — are...

Some 13 abortion clinics in Texas will reportedly close after a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the state Thursday to fully enforce a new law that requires abortion facilities to meet the same health and safety standards as ambulatory surgical centers. In a 38-page decision published Thursday, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, granted in part, a motion filed by the state of Texas to stay a district court's injunction against the law, and finds that the law is constitutional and does not place an undue burden...

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is widely considered to be running for president in 2016. But he was really put out that someone apparently connected to him said so, anonymously, in a National Journal story and Cruz took to social media to make his point. “Heidi and I have not made any decisions about political plans past the mid-term elections,” Cruz posted on Facebook, referring to his wife. “Clearly we have an overzealous supporter out there making freelance comments, but to be clear, no decision has been made. “Whoever this ‘anonymous advisor’ was, he or she had no authority to...

NEW YORK (AP) — As same-sex marriage cases cascade through the federal courts, Republican politicians find themselves awkwardly split into three camps. There's a small but growing number who favor legalizing gay marriage, a hard-core faction that continues to denounce it, and a sizable group in between that seems to wish the issue would disappear. At one end of the spectrum, at least eight GOP members of Congress have endorsed same-sex marriage, and two openly gay GOP candidates for the House hope to join them. In Massachusetts, Richard Tisei has run ads featuring his husband. In California, Carl DeMaio ran...

Joshua Matz didn’t bother waiting to write about the Supreme Court until he went to work there. He teamed with a renowned Harvard law professor to finish a book about the court before he started his year as a law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy. Unlike Matz, Christopher Michel is not listed as an author of the book he worked on years before his clerkship with Chief Justice John Roberts. But former President George W. Bush offered warm praise for onetime presidential speechwriter Michel as his collaborator on his memoir, "Decision Points." Bush said in the book’s acknowledgements that Michel’s...

One of the most dispiriting storylines of the Obama era has been that Republicans have largely stood on the sidelines while a major cultural transformation has taken place: The country’s shift on gay rights. Republicans have either put up nominal resistance, or had nothing at all to say, as one change after another has come in rapid succession and majorities have come around on gay marriage. And yet you’d think the GOP cannot forever put off a real intra-party debate over whether the party will evolve culturally along with the rest of the country. That’s why it’s potentially significant that...

Whether it's Cruz/Carson or Carson/Cruz, the Democrat ticket will have reason to worry. An Hispanic&Black ticket is the GOP's best hope to beat Hillary, or who ever is the nominee. This ticket will have the left leaning media in a state of panic. They can't bash a minority ticket. And what will Debbie Wasserman do? Accuse Ted and Ben of wife beating? If Hillary is the nominee and she is up against Cruz/Carson, will be interesting to see how she tries to tear down the first "Black/Hispanic Ticket".

In a one-on-one interview with The Brody File, Ted Cruz blames President Obama and Hillary Clinton for America’s failed leadership in the world, calling it the, “Obama/Clinton foreign policy.” “It has been a photo-op foreign policy, a press release foreign policy, Cruz tells The Brody File during a sit-down interview at the Values Voter Summit. In addition, he says the 2016 presidential election is the most important election in his lifetime. “We are at the edge of the cliff. We are at the edge of a precipice looking over and it is now or never. I don’t think we’ve reached...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is demanding more details on the Federal Aviation Administration’s strategy to contain Ebola amid mounting public concerns about the disease’s spread through air travel.Blasting the Obama administration’s “unclear approach to addressing the threat of the Ebola virus,” Cruz said people should know how the top U.S. travel officials are protecting them from Ebola on airlines.Cruz highlighted travel restrictions enacted by several other countries and asked whether the FAA plans to limit or suspend flights. He also asked for more details about how airline workers are trained to recognize symptoms of the disease.“It is imperative that the...

So I've been catching up on all the latest accumulation of Washington wisdom — or, at least, all the wisdom that I can accumulate in a Twitter feed — and now I totally get why no one other than Rand Paul or Ted Cruz or the reincarnated Pat Buchanan can possibly win the Republican nomination in 2016. (Actually, Pat's alive and well — it's just that he's on the McLaughlin Group. My bad.) You see, the party's base voters — the ones who turn out to vote in primaries and caucuses — are too completely off the rails to nominate...

Despite his showing in polls of conservatives, it's not a done deal the Republican establishment is going to allow Ted Cruz the opportunity to mount a serious challenge in 2016 – if he chooses to run for the presidency.For the second straight year, the first-term senator from Texas won the presidential straw poll at the Values Voter Summit sponsored over the weekend by FRC Action, the legislative arm of Family Research Council. Cruz garnered 25 percent of the vote this year, with Dr. Ben Carson finishing second with almost 20 percent. Last year Cruz garnered 42 percent. Connie Mackey, president...

Conservative activists fear that lack of a national theme or agenda for this election cycle will depress conservative turnout, leaving Republicans with — at best — a bare Senate majority rather than the larger wave that some political observers have predicted. “One of the things you must give the voters is a tune they can whistle, and Republicans are not doing that this time,” longtime conservative fundraiser Richard Viguerie tells National Review Online. Instead, party leadership is too passive in waiting for Democrats to self-destruct, according to activists. ​ “The concern is that the Republicans are trying to drift past...

"The Values Voter Summit, a four-day orgy of people fundamentally opposed to orgies" (VIDEO-AT-LINK) Stephen Colbert ripped into the ninth annual Values Voter Summit, last night on “The Colbert Report.” Very few were spared. ”There were so many great speakers,” Colbert said. “Also Sarah Palin.” But the speeches were just part of the Values Voter Summit. It also holds the first large straw poll for presidential candidates....

The Texas senator stands for conservative principles. Unfortunately, that's all he does with them.Is Ted Cruz good for conservatives? Or is it the other way around? The answer matters a lot, because it's not impossible that this guy could be the next GOP presidential nominee. A close adviser to Texas' junior senator told National Journal that there is a 90 percent chance the Tea Party star will run for president in 2016. "And honestly, 90 is lowballing it." Cruz denies that he has made plans past the midterms. But boy, he sure does look like a man preparing for a...

Part of Mitt Romney's success in securing the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 bore out of the fact that he benefited from the spoils of a divided faction on the right. If Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich were ever able to consolidate the sum of their supporters around one of them, Romney's path to victory could have faced great peril. This calculation is weighing heavy on the minds of social conservatives as they look for a horse to ride in 2016. With an adviser to Sen. Ted Cruz telling National Journal Monday the Texas freshman is "90 percent" likely to...

In the straw poll at the annual Values Voters Summit for right-wing Republicans, Democrats actually did well. In fact, some Democrats did better than some of the leading… Wait, what? Yup. You heard me right. Vice President Joe Biden, Gov. Chris Christie, and 2016 Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton finished in a three-way tie. Behind them? New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez and Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin. The GOP has such awful candidates that even their own most ardent supporters aren’t believers in half of their candidates including Chris Christie who is in the midst of an extended PR campaign stumping...