Free Republic

The GOP’s new health bill would mean Nevada cannot afford to maintain coverage for the 210,000 residents insured under Medicaid expansion, Gov. Brian Sandoval says. The governor and Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., spoke against the bill during a Friday news conference in Las Vegas. Heller said he couldn’t support the bill in its current form. . . . . “I want to make sure that we prop up Medicaid to the degree that the federal government has given in the past and that has become an expectation for the state of Nevada,” Heller said. . . . . “There isn’t...

House Republicans and the Trump administration on Tuesday filed a joint motion seeking to delay lawsuit proceedings that threaten to undo President Barack Obama's health care law, the Affordable Care Act. The House v. Price suit – formerly known as House v. Burwell, as it was filed when Sylvia Mathews Burwell was health and human services secretary – has presented Republicans with one of their most straightforward routes toward fulfilling their stated desire to do away with or dismantle Obamacare. . . . . The lawsuit, first filed by House Republicans against the Obama administration in 2014, challenged whether the...

What’s really remarkable about this plan is that for all the claims we’ll hear about how it undoes the tyrannical horror of Obamacare, the Republicans’ version of health care reform has accepted most of the fundamental goals and regulatory paths of the law they so deeply despise. This plan — authored by Senators Richard Burr and Orrin Hatch and Rep. Fred Upton — is little more than Obamacare Lite. Though the devil is in the details — and there are some devilish ones — this tells us that Barack Obama has for all intents and purposes won the health care...

When one speaks with fellow Republicans about the future of the GOP, it is common to receive some negative feedback. This is because many conservative/libertarian Republicans feel the party has simply not done enough to challenge the Obama agenda. There is a widespread feeling among the rank and file that the country is hurtling toward socialism while Republican leaders sit on the sidelines and either do nothing or propose ways to manage socialism more effectively. ... I have given up on the GOP and am simply not sure it can ever be reformed. ... For a Third Party to be...

After days of equivocation, Republican gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli on Thursday called on Congress to reopen the federal government, then fight over whether to starve the new health care law of funding. .... “Strangling government to do this is not an appropriate course to go,” said Cuccinelli, the state’s attorney general. Previously, he had said he opposed the government shutdown, but had refused to specify whether he supported efforts led by congressional Republicans to make passage of a temporary federal funding authorization bill contingent on stripping the health care law of the funding necessary to implement it. That subjected him...

Democrats and Republicans continue to be divided over the need for new gun control laws, and the most recent national survey of registered voters from Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind finds that attitudes regarding the perceived likelihood of an armed revolution to protect liberties and the truth about the Sandy Hook shooting are helpful in explaining this partisan divide. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of Democrats say that Congress needs to pass new laws to protect the public from gun violence, but the views of Republicans are almost completely opposite: 65 percent don’t think new laws are necessary. Overall, registered voters are divided...

Former congressman Virgil Goode Jr. has qualified for the presidential ballot in Virginia, the State Board of Elections ruled Tuesday, adding a potential obstacle to Republican Mitt Romney’s hopes of winning the pivotal state. The state Republican party has already challenged the eligibility of Goode, who is the Constitution Party’s nominee, and could still get him knocked off the ballot.

In a stinging comparison that is sure to leave a mark, on Sunday’s This Week With Christiane Amanpour, George Will said the rise of Herman Cain had a lot to do with Republicans coming to the realization that Mitt Romney is their Michael Dukakis. “A technocratic Massachusetts governor running on competence, not ideology,” Will observed.

Sen. John Kerry says Democrats should ignore Republicans’ demands about the stimulus plan if they’re going to vote against it anyway. Reacting to Wednesday night’s vote in the House — where not a single GOP member supported the stimulus package — Kerry told Politico that “if Republicans aren’t prepared to vote for it, I don’t think we should be giving up things, where I think the money can be spent more effectively.” . . . . Although Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) voted in favor of the tax provisions in the stimulus plan that cleared that Senate Finance Committee, it’s not...

Congressional insiders from both parties predict big Democratic gains this fall, although Democrats foresee a bigger shift than do Republicans. Average predictions: House - Democrats see pickup of +16.5 seats, Republicans see loss of 6.6 seats. Senate - Democrats see pickup of +5.8 seats, Republicans see loss of 3.9 seats. The article also quotes some of the survey responses, though without attribution.

Video on YouTube of a discussion on CNN between Wolf Blitzer and Mark Sanford

An analysis of possible McCain running mates, in three parts (but I don't think I can put all three links in the "Source URL" box): "The Conservatives" (discussed are Portman, Pence, and Cox) "The Rivals" (discussed are Thompson, Huckabee, and Romney) "The Governors" (discussed are Crist, Sanford, and Pawlenty)

A story in the Associated Press characterizes Mitt Romney's statements in a recent interview this way: [Romney] said the country would be safer by only "a small percentage" and would see "a very insignificant increase in safety" if al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was caught because another terrorist would rise to power. "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person," Romney said. Instead, he said he supports a broader strategy to defeat the Islamic jihad movement. I haven't seen the full text of the interview, so perhaps there is some missing...

From a review of Dinesh D’Souza's The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11: At first Dinesh D’Souza considered him “a dark-eyed fanatic, a gun-toting extremist, a monster who laughs at the deaths of 3,000 innocent civilians.” But once he learned how Osama bin Laden was viewed in the Muslim world, D’Souza changed his mind. Now he finds bin Laden to be “a quiet, well-mannered, thoughtful, eloquent and deeply religious person.” ... I never thought a book by D’Souza, the aging enfant terrible of American conservatism, would, like the Stalinist apologetics of the popular front period,...

Rudolph W. Giuliani as the Republican candidate for president in 2008? That might seem a bit of a stretch. Conservative voters dominate the early caucuses and primaries. Mr. Giuliani, who took the first steps toward a run last week, is the very symbol of New York City, and his politics reflect that. He is for abortion rights, for gay rights, for gun control. While in much of America he is known as the fearless mayor who led his city through the Sept. 11 attacks, he has an unorthodox history. This is a man who announced on television that he was...

It's the unexamined question of 9/11: What if Rudy Giuliani wasn't quite the hero everybody thought? .... But what if Rudy's take-charge image was mostly a load of bravado and PR? What if the actual decisions he made - before, during and after the terror attacks - were directly responsible for the city's inability to deal effectively with crucial aspects of the crisis? .... With dozens of exclusive and previously unreleased interviews, Barrett and Collins show how the ambitious ex-mayor has spent recent years revising his own truth of 9/11 - and profiting handsomely from it. Casting himself as a...

A recent Gallup Panel poll asked Republicans and Democrats whether they would find each of several possible contenders for their party's 2008 presidential nomination to be "acceptable" nominees. Unlike other nomination ballot questions that measure respondents' first choice from among a list of possible candidates, this question paints a broader picture of the level of potential support and opposition for each candidate. Hillary Clinton is the clear front-runner among Democrats when voters are asked to choose which one candidate they would prefer for the Democratic nomination for president, but the current poll finds Democrats are about equally likely to rate...

Pain will be felt all over the cityKiss the "ring of steel" security plan goodbye. Find another way to pay for protecting the subways. And start passing the hat to pay for counterterrorism training and equipment. All because Homeland Security Department honcho Michael Chertoff has slashed anti-terror funds for New York - and cities that Osama Bin Laden couldn't find on a map are getting the dough. "This year's Homeland Security grants prove that Washington still has not gotten the message," Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta writes in an op-ed for the Daily News. "At stake is critical training and equipment...