Free Republic

On his radio show recently, Glenn Beck urged his listeners to “defund the GOP.” Sarah Palin has threatened to leave the Republican Party; Rush Limbaugh calls it “irrelevant.” The Senate Conservatives Fund has targeted mainly incumbent Republican senators for defeat. Erick Erickson, one of the right’s most prominent commentators, wonders if what's coming is “a real third party movement that will fully divide the Republican Party.” Conservatives have declared war on the GOP. Tired of feeling taken for granted by a party that alternately panders to them and sells them down the river, in their view, Tea Partiers and others...

A poll released Tuesday suggests outrage over Arizona-style immigration bills — including one authored by Rep. Stephen Sandstrom, R-Orem — is sowing discontent among Latinos toward the Republican Party. The Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group based in Washington, D.C., found just 6 percent of all registered Latino voters believe the Republican Party showed concern for them. Among Latino Republicans, just 18 percent said their party showed concern for them. These findings could be viewed as alarming to the GOP — even in a state as heavily Republican as Utah, according to Kirk Jowers, director of the Hinckley Institute...

Republican leader John Boehner (R-Oh) and his Republican House colleagues released their "Pledge to America" yesterday. As you might have guessed, Congressional Democrats and their allies in the Popular Press came out swinging: Too broad. Not enough specifics. No promise to cut out earmarks. Nothing new. Blah, blah … blah. Here's what I said (I have edited this slightly to make me sound smarter than I actually was, but this is the thrust) to one of my favorite sparring partners, pollster Cornell Belcher, on CNN last night. Cornell, in your next poll ask this question: Thinking about the Republican's "Pledge...

Making pledges is easy. Keeping them? Not so much. Just ask Mr. Hope and Change. The new GOP pledge is fine as far as it goes — especially the upfront acknowledgment that government’s powers derive from the consent of the governed, not from the penumbras emanating from the fingertips of all President Obama’s czars. But actions speak louder than words. And no action bespoke of the gap between conservative rhetoric and reality louder than the hysterical votes of 91 Republicans who voted with Chicken Little Democrats under the Republican Bush administration to pass the TARP all-purpose banking/auto suppliers/life insurance/AIG bailout.For...

For much of the early part of the year, Sen. Lindsey Graham and the White House were locked in heated negotiations over legislation that could close the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, move some of the war-on-terror prisoners there to the U.S. mainland and create a system to detain Al Qaeda members captured later. The talks were so intense that they spurred suspicion on both the right and the left — and contributed to the South Carolina Republican’s status as White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s most frequent visitor among Republican lawmakers. “I thought we were close to...

I don't know which is more amusing: Democrats assuming that any candidate with Tea Party backing is certifiable, or Republicans upset with the idea that RINOs are slowly becoming an endangered species within their own party. One thing is certain: the movement both sides are trying to discredit is revealing what's really in play come November. Ordinary Americans, the very same folks who engender the bipartisan contempt of Beltway insiders, have decided that one of the oldest pieces of conventional wisdom with respect to voting — as in "choosing the lesser of two evils" — doesn't cut it anymore....The motivation...

Excuse me, sir, Mr. Rove, may I ask a question? When are you going to go on TV and criticize Lisa Murkowski? Here was a lady who swore she would abide by the decision of primary voters, and then didn't. That makes her a liar. Here is a lady who spent an entire announcement speech without a SINGLE mention of principle. Her only argument was that she is somehow more for Alaska than anybody else and that the sainted (and ethically challenged) Ted Stevens was her friend. Nice work, that: claiming an endorsement from a recently dead man who no...

One of the interesting things of this election cycle has been to see what sore losers RINOS and country club Republicans are becoming. Since the Tea Party Movement has been throwing establishment GOPers out right and left (or maybe that's let and left) some of them have responded with petulance instead of accepting the will of the voters. In fact we've been seeing quite a few little tantrums thrown by the RINO set as voters have been turning against them. Recall that "Benedict" Arlen Specter had to jump parties because Republican Pat Toomey was encroaching on the privilege that Specter...