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RUSH: A new Gallup poll out. Headline: "Americans Continue to Shift Left on Key Moral Issues." Now, before you go off getting depressed about this, let me tell you what the reason for this is, after we give you the details. "Americans are more likely now than in the early 2000s to find a variety of behaviors morally acceptable, including gay and lesbian relations, having a baby outside of marriage and sex between an unmarried man and woman. Moral acceptability of many of these issues is now at a record-high level." It's a subtle message to the Republican Party, and...

Beware advice telling conservative parties to target the youth vote by adopting policies that may alienate their core older constituencies. Elections can be lost this way At Politico, Daniel McGraw has an interesting article on how “The GOP Is Dying Off. Literally”: It turns out that one of the Grand Old Party’s biggest—and least discussed—challenges going into 2016 is lying in plain sight, written right into the party’s own nickname. The Republican Party voter is old—and getting older, and as the adage goes, there are two certainties in life: Death and taxes. Right now, both are enemies of the GOP...

Presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio told FOX News Sunday host Chris Wallace he still believe in comprehensive immigration reform, but the votes just aren't there. Rubio this is due to the 2014 border crisis and "unilateral actions the president took in his executive orders." Rubio acknowledged former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) "partially lost" the Republican primary in 2014 because of his support for comprehensive immigration reform. "The problem is the votes aren't there in the House," Rubio said Sunday. "And as you know, for example, the Majority Leader of the House partially lost his election on the perception...

It’s clear that Jeb isn’t a conservative, but it’s mightily kind of him to be honest about it. He could also do what the Mitch McConnells of this world like to do: lie about it until they get elected after which they ‘suddenly’ become as progressive as Nancy Pelosi. That’s what Senator Ted Cruz recently said on Megyn Kelly’s show on Fox News. Well, OK, I admit I added the last part about Mitch McConnell myself, but I’m sure you get my drift. "I’m a fan of Jeb Bush. I’ll give him credit for candor and consistency. He is running...

Jeb Bush said in an interview that he would not immediately move to repeal President Obama’s executive order on immigration — suggesting he would instead wait for a new law to be passed addressing the matter. In an interview with Megyn Kelly that is to be shown Monday night on Fox News, Mr. Bush said that rather than overturning the order, he believed in “passing meaningful reform of immigration and make it part of it.” The president’s executive order seeks to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation. Most presidential candidates in the Republican field either oppose Mr. Obama’s order...

If the GOP doesn’t put together a sensible immigration policy it will lose the 2016 presidential election. When President Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012, with the former Massachusetts governor attracting only 27% of the Hispanic vote with his self-deportation argument, Republicans across the map decided they must develop an immigration-reform policy with an outreach approach to minority groups. According to the Republican National Committee, the days of harsh language and punitive legislation must end. In its place, the GOP must reconstruct the Ronald Reagan/Jack Kemp “big tent” theory of politics, where there is plenty of room for all groups...

Via TPM, I did not foresee “let’s revisit Marbury v. Madison” emerging as a minor theme of the primary. But between Carson and Huckabee it’s already a hot race to see who can pander the hardest to social cons over the upcoming Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage. Huck ante’d up recently with this comment: In Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. makes the case there comes a time when people of conscience have a moral obligation to practice civil disobedience against “unjust laws.” Do you agree with that? For example, is there anything a court...

There is a growing realization inside Hillary Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters and among the wider circle of Democratic operatives that coming up with the requisite $1 billion to $2.5 billion in campaign and super PAC cash for the 2016 campaign will be a lot tougher than anticipated — and demands a more aggressive approach to out-of-the-gate fundraising. The pace of donations to Clinton’s three-week-old campaign is surpassing forecasts — but the candidate herself wants to accelerate the timetable and just added several new New York City fundraisers to her May schedule, people close to Clinton tell POLITICO. Democratic operatives and fundraisers...

When running for office in 2012, President Obama frequently inveighed against "millionaires and billionaires" who don't pay their fair share of taxes. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist arguably to the left of Obama who plans to run for president in 2016, wants to narrow his focus to just billionaires.

Nationally syndicated radio host and columnist for the Washington Times, Steve Deace, explained that there are three specific issues animating the 2016 Republican presidential contest. “If you are weak on these, don’t even show up,” Deace cautioned conservative Republican presidential aspirants. “This is sort of the triumvirate of issues. That is amnesty, that is religious freedom, and the other is Common Core. If you are soft on these issues, or have been in the past, you’re done.” The author of Rules for Patriots: How Conservatives Can Win Again, told Breitbart senior writer and guest host of Breitbart News Sunday airing...

BATON ROUGE, La. — THE debate over religious liberty in America presents conservatives and business leaders with a crucial choice. In Indiana and Arkansas, large corporations recently joined left-wing activists to bully elected officials into backing away from strong protections for religious liberty. It was disappointing to see conservative leaders so hastily retreat on legislation that would simply allow for an individual or business to claim a right to free exercise of religion in a court of law. Our country was founded on the principle of religious liberty, enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Why shouldn’t an individual or business...

Tired of being duped by conservative-sounding Republican presidential candidates who secretly harbored support for gay marriage, abortion and other socially liberal issues, evangelical pastors plan to investigate the backgrounds of White House hopefuls and their top aides. "Personnel is policy," said David Lane, whose American Renewal Project is working with 100,000 pastors to push 80 million evangelicals and 40 million Catholics who typically don't vote to the polls in 2016 to elect a conservative Republican. "We need to bring these things up on the table," he told Secrets. "Evangelical pastors aren't as much interested in budget issues as they are...

Charles Payne, host of Fox Business News' Making Money, said on Thursday: I think that there's going to be an official apology from the White House to slavery in America and then a major push to get cash, and I'm talking lots of cash. Many including those closest to President Obama will push him to make this happen. About reparations, Scottie Nell Hughes, Tea Party News Network director and a frequent Making Money guest, said: Sure, slavery was a horrible thing that happened, but this [reparations payments] is not going to help race relations in the United States today....

This was a big week for the political press. That means it was also a good week for highlighting how the world of the political elite is so out of touch with the world of everyday Americans. The excitement for the pundits was launched by the announcement that former Secretary of State, senator and first lady Hillary Clinton is doing what was expected and running for president. This enabled breathless commentary about whether driving cross-country in a van and eating a burrito will present Secretary Clinton in a more positive light. Everyday Americans, on the other hand, recognized that nothing...

Last month, Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, became one of the first major candidates in the marathon slog that is our modern presidential election cycle. Usually, when I want to see people get hit while running an obstacle course, I binge-watch Wipeout, the popular ABC show. But as anyone on social media is certainly well aware, there is no escaping our country’s least-enjoyable reality show: America’s Next Top Presidential Candidate (until the Next One, and the Next One, and the One After That). This year, my election fatigue is already so bad, I won’t even watch political gaffes on...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-04-16/marco-rubio-tries-to-find-the-middle-ground-on-same-sex-marriage

Chris Christie took a centrist tone on guns Wednesday, calling for the “right balance” between gun control and the Second Amendment. “We’ve got to make sure we have public safety, but on the other hand we have to protect people’s rights both as sportsmen and hunters and for self protection too, find the right balance,” Christie told a group of New Hampshire voters at Chez Vachon in Manchester, according to New Jersey newspaper The Record.

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 15, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- Hillary Clinton has released a video announcing her candidacy for U.S. president in which she compares her personal political ambition to big events in the lives of everyday Americans.  The video, called “Getting Started,” shows people getting ready to take on new challenges, from new spring gardens to new business opportunities to new parenthood.  Most of the scenarios featured are fairly universal – a mom moving house in search of a better school district for her child, a couple expecting their first baby, a woman getting ready to retire, a child preparing for his...

There's an emerging conventional wisdom that the 2016 presidential race, once predicted to be mostly about economic issues, will instead be dominated by foreign policy. "This is going to be a foreign policy election," National Journal's Ron Fournier said recently. "A foreign policy election (more or less) is upon us," declared "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd. "We are likely to have a foreign policy election in 2016," said the Weekly Standard's William Kristol. The argument is that the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, an ongoing crisis in Syria, the Iranian nuclear negotiations, Russian aggression and...

Appearing on The Kelly File last night, potential GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina argued that running for president isn't about gender as supporters of Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton would have voters believe, but instead is about accomplishments and results of leadership. "The media doesn't ask Hillary Clinton basic questions like 'what have you actually accomplished?' She's been on the stage for so long. She's been a fixture of Washington for so long. She's been a fixture of politics for so long that people so often think 'well we don't need to ask what she's accomplished, of course she's accomplished something,'...