Free Republic

**SNIP**Democrats have convictions. They know what to do with power when they get it and how to isolate, even punish, any member of their party who dares to take a different position on an issue. Republicans seem to constantly react to the policies of Democrats or slam each other instead of making a case for the superiority of their ideas. It doesn’t help Republicans that they lack the Democrats’ uniformity. **SNIP**

A new CNN/ORC poll indicates that the Democrats have been unable to overcome the apathy that threatens to keep much of the party’s traditional voters home this November. According to that poll’s survey of registered voters’ preference on the generic congressional ballot – a measure of voter enthusiasm that traditionally favors Democrats – the president’s party maintains a two-point lead over the GOP at 47 to 45 percent. However, among those who voted in 2010, a filter CNN/ORC uses to determine who are most likely to vote in November, the GOP holds a four-point advantage over Democrats at 49...

Red state Democrats who are fighting to overcome their support of gun control and get re-elected are asking gun control proponents Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly to stay out of their states. This comes after Breibart News' June 4 report that Giffords and Kelly planned to help Senators Mark Udall (D-CO), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and Kay Hagan (D-NC) get re-elected this November. Now Udall, Landrieu, and Hagan are pushing Giffords and Kelly to stay away from their races. According to The Washington Times, the three incumbents are trying to keep gun control from erupting as a major issue in their...

A post-election survey found that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (R-VA) support for amnesty legislation influenced a majority of voters who ousted him last week in Virginia's seventh congressional district primary that blindsided the mainstream media and rocked establishment Washington.

Top Jeb Bush adviser Mike Murphy, who did not even pay attention to Dave Brat's campaign like Breitbart News did, has falsely been claiming that Cantor's embrace of amnesty for illegal immigrants was not the reason he lost last Tuesday. Liberal writer Mickey Kaus had enough of Murphy's nonsense and slammed him on Twitter on Friday evening. Kaus became Brat's de facto press secretary and top advocate on Twitter in the last months of the campaign because Kaus, like Brat, opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants because it would hurt American workers. He mentioned to Murphy that talk radio host Laura...

It was a bit lost in the hubbub over rules and credentials fights, but the platform committee at the Idaho Republican Party convention in Moscow today voted to remove one of the most controversial planks in the party’s platform: The one calling for repeal of the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would have the effect of doing away with direct election of U.S. senators and instead letting state legislatures choose senators. “I was the one who made the motion,” said Rep. Brandon Hixon, R-Caldwell, a delegate from Canyon County. “It passed the committee. Now it will go to...

The pro-amnesty crowd -- i.e., everyone except the American people -- promptly lost its collective mind. The amnesty shills went on the attack, insisting that Cantor's historic defeat had nothing to do amnesty. Brat's triumph was touted as simply a victory for the "tea party."

The No. 2 Republican in the U.S. House is a goner. And amid the ashes of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s shocking defeat Tuesday, comprehensive immigration reform smolders. This is not to say that immigration reform would have passed if the Virginia Republican had not been the first House majority leader to lose since 1899. Immigration reform was already endangered. But Cantor’s defeat to tea partier David Brat was so intertwined with immigration -- “amnesty” and “illegal aliens” – that the few fence-sitters in the GOP-led House are going to flock back to the politically right side of the divide....

A spokesman for President Obama rushed to assure House Republicans that Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) didn’t actually lose because of his gestures toward Democrats on immigration reform. “Cantor’s problem wasn’t his position on immigration reform, it was his lack of a position,” Obama advisor Dan Pfeiffer tweeted, citing the success of Senator Lindsay Graham (R., S.C.). “Graham wrote and passed a bill and is winning big.” Cantor’s campaign sent out direct mail pieces ahead of the election maintaining that he was ”stopping the Obama-Reid plan to give illegal aliens amnesty,” but challenger Dave Brat accused him of supporting

In a stunning turn of events, conservative upstart Dave Brat has defeated House Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary for Virginia’s seventh congressional district. Immigration played a decisive role in this primary. The apparent willingness of some House Republicans to work with the White House to pass an immigration package that includes a mass legalization and expanded guest-worker programs has infuriated many moderates and conservatives, especially those who want to reinvigorate the electoral fortunes of the Republican party with a renewed focus on economic opportunity and middle-class uplift. Claiming that the House Republican leadership’s immigration “principles” constituted “amnesty,” Brat...

Despite anger in many quarters of the nation over the president's prisoner swap, Republicans are backing off impeachment threats because they fear it would rally President Obama's Democratic base and kill the GOP's chances to win the Senate, according to congressional insiders and sources. “150 days out from a general election is not a realistic time to begin such a solemn and Constitutionally important process,” said one advisor to House GOP leaders.

President Obama’s second-term focus on legacy building is coming into direct conflict with the Democratic Party’s pursuit of victory in the midterm elections. While Obama has been fundraising for his party at a steady clip, some Democrats fear the president is more concerned about the history books than in helping his party in 2014. “I think he’s always been concerned with his legacy,” said one Democratic strategist who has consulted with the White House. “One of the big misconceptions is that the president is concerned about short-term politics. I think he’s focused on what it will look like to the...

The midterm elections are less than six months away, and Republicans still can't agree among themselves on what it will take to win. The latest debate among party insiders is whether GOP House and Senate candidates should produce a document like the Contract With America that tells voters what to expect if Republicans win full control of Congress. But the fact that there is a debate at all indicates that the race is not shaping up as Republicans envisioned months ago. Much of the anxiety concerns Obamacare. The six months between October and March saw the disastrous rollout of...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) has been a prominent supporter of granting amnesty to the children of illegal immigrants and awarding more high-tech visas. Yet ten days before his primary against Dave Brat, his positions on those issues are absent from his website.

I wrote here and here about the Obama administration’s proposed rule on “affirmatively furthering fair housing” (AFFH), an attempt to dictate how we shall live. In essence, President Obama seeks to use the power of the national government to create communities of a certain kind, each having what the federal government deems an appropriate mix of economic, racial, and ethnic diversity. The proposed AFFH rule, issued last July, was expected to be finalized by the end of last year. But the year ended with no further action. 2014 was supposed to be the year Obama’s “year of action” — the...

Providing fodder for endless attack ads, challengers to Democratic incumbents in three tough Senate races voted for a budget even more draconian than Paul Ryan’s. This November’s election will never approach presidential-year numbers, but if Democrats can add a percentage or two—and in some deep red states, more than that—victory could be within reach. To boost turnout, Democrats have to make voters believe the stakes are high, and one of the best ways to do that, as history has shown, is persuading people that if Republicans are elected, they will scale back programs such as Social Security and Medicare. “It’s...

Denial: Six months ago, Rep. Nancy Pelosi promised Democrats would "stand tall" for ObamaCare. But as November elections near, more Democrats want to pretend ObamaCare never happened. And for good reason. Georgia's Senate candidate, Michelle Nunn, refuses to say whether she would have voted for ObamaCare had she been in Congress in 2010. Ditto Kentucky's Alison Lundergan Grimes and Nebraska House candidate Pete Festersen. Montana's Sen. John Walsh, who is trying to keep the seat he was appointed to in February, wants everyone to know that he was far, far away from Washington when ObamaCare votes were cast, "preparing soldiers...

Is it a campaign flier for Majority Eric Leader Eric Cantor, or Rep. Steve King (R-IA)? Cantor, whose primary race against a political newcomer, Randolph Macon economic professor David Brat, has improbably garnered national attention, has sent thousands of voters a flier claiming he is the chief bulwark against the “Obama-Reid plan to give illegal aliens amnesty.” Brat has made immigration a top issue in the campaign, ripping Cantor for his support of a proposal to give amnesty to illegal alien “DREAMers” if they enlist in the military. Over his career, Cantor has received high marks from NumbersUSA, an anti-amnesty...

Editor's Note: This column was co-authored by Michael Petrilli. Ever since election results from May 5th were finalized, a number of voices have loudly touted cherry-picked upsets—namely, the primary defeats of two incumbent Republicans in the Indiana legislature—to build what they want to present as a larger narrative of rising opposition to Common Core. This narrative is misleading. In fact, the GOP primary results from throughout this month showed, if anything, that opposing Common Core is not a ticket to office for a right-flank challenge to an incumbent, and the efficacy of attempts to take out Republicans from the right...

Wow, it’s finally happening. Democrats are catching on and turning on President Obama, at the moment off-the-record, but that won’t last for long if another midterm “shellacking” takes place in early November. Daniel Halper reports in The Weekly Standard. CNN's John King reports that Democrats are privately calling President Obama "detached," "flat footed," and "incompetent." If King is hearing about it, then it isn’t completely private. Maybe “off the record” and “not for attribution,” but not private when a journalist gets wind of it.