Free Republic

The cromnibus had an unlikely savior Thursday afternoon in the form of a lame-duck lawmaker who used to raise reindeer. Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R-Mich.), who lost his primary earlier this year, was originally among the conservative Republicans who voted against the rule. Without the help of Democrats, Republicans could only lose 17 of their own to pass the rule, which sets up floor debate for the underlying "cromnibus" spending bill. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) intervened once there were 18 Republican defectors — and not a single Democrat voting "yes." Many Democrats will vote against the government spending measure because they...

Incoming Virginia congressman Dave Brat, whose historic GOP primary victory over then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor shook up Washington’s power structure this summer, is blasting President Obama’s executive fiat on immigration reform as "morally vacuous" – while stopping short of calling for impeachment.

GOP members have released their draft amendment to defund President Barack Obama’s national amnesty. “None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available, including any funds or fees collected or otherwise made available for expenditure, by this division or any other Act, or otherwise available to the Secretary of Homeland Security, for any fiscal year may be used to implement, administer, carry out, or enforce the [amnesty] policies,” says the short amendment. The new anti-amnesty language is being pushed by Arizona Rep. Matt Salmon, South Carolina’s Rep. Mick Mulvaney and Virginia Rep. Dave Brat, who unseated the GOP’s pro-amnesty majority...

Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), who shockingly toppled former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) in a primary this summer, says he'll support John Boehner (R-Ohio) for Speaker. Brat told The Hill he plans to vote for Boehner on the floor in January when the Speaker is elected by the full House for the new Congress. "As of right now, yeah," Brat said. "I'm optimistic our leadership's going to move forward on the principles I ran on."

House Republicans will have their largest majority since the 1930s next year, but that doesn't mean Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) job will be easy.The House GOP leadership's struggles in keeping members in line over the past four years have been well documented. Some of the incoming freshmen will likely join the ranks of conservatives who frequently oppose leadership initiatives.Among the new freshmen, for instance, is one congressman-elect who has called Hillary Clinton the "anti-Christ," another who has suggested Muslims don't deserve First Amendment rights, and yet another who has declared himself open to the idea of the United States invading...

The Washington Post reported Friday that party players who were supporting soon-to-be-former Congressman Eric Cantor have pulled a fast one on the man who defeated him. Last week during a 7th District Committee meeting in Virginia, “Cantor loyalists who still sit on the 7th District Committee outmaneuvered Brat supporters to strip the committee of most of its budget — nearly $400,000.” According to the Washington Post, a parliamentary maneuver allowed the money to be moved so that Brat’s campaign couldn’t use it. Brat was to use the money for a get out the vote campaign. The move may assist the...

Almost exactly two weeks ago, Dave Brat gained national attention by pulling off a primary win over then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor that he called "an unbelievable miracle." Then he went underground. In the past fortnight, Brat has mostly ducked national media, changed up his campaign staff, and started to adjust to life as -- willing or not -- a grassroots conservative icon of incumbent vulnerability. He spoke with the Washington Examiner this morning about his efforts to reintroduce himself to the public and his campaign plans moving forward. Here are highlights from that conversation: Sign Up for the Politics...

Truth is one of the most powerful forces on earth. And perhaps the force most feared by compromised politicians. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's crushing defeat came at the hands of a virtual unknown college professor, one who overcame a 26 to 1 funding disadvantage in which 377 Political Action Committees (PACs) contributed to Cantor’s 2014 campaign vs. 0 (zero) PAC contributions into Brat's 2014 campaign. It's been borderline hilarious watching so many media talking heads, politicians and campaign consultants grasp at explanatory straws. It reminds me of Mark Twain's quote, "If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If...

The other night, in the wake of Eric Cantor’s epic loss to Dave Brat, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews appeared with the left-wing news channel’s new kid on the block, Ronan Farrow. Farrow was talking about how surprised he was that a Tea Party guy like Brat could be seemed to be so smart. After all, it’s simply shocking that someone so conservative is capable of making cogent arguments! -SNIP- Hell may have frozen over, because Matthews is just plain sick of people looking down on the Tea Party: -SNIP- This looking down our noses at the Tea Party people has got...

It’s now clear why the primary defeat of the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, came so completely out of the blue last week: Beltway blindness that put a focus on fund-raising, power-brokering and partisan back-and-forth created a reality distortion field that obscured the will of the people. But that affliction was not Mr. Cantor’s alone; it is shared by the political press. Reporters and commentators might want to pause and wipe the egg off their faces before they go on camera to cluck-cluck about how Mr. Cantor, Republican of Virginia, missed signs of the insurgency that took him out. There...

Saturday at the Costco in Arlington, VA, right outside of Washington, DC, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a surprise stop to see former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signing copies of her book, "Hard Choices."

On Saturday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Up w/Steve Kornaki,” former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said there was push for outgoing-Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) to head the Republican National Committee after he leaves office in January. Steele pointed to the build-up of the 2016 presidential election cycle as a reason for the push behind Cantor.

Eric Cantor, next Republican National Committee chairman? Former RNC chair Michael Steele thinks it's a possibility after the House majority leader was defeated Tuesday in a Virginia Republican primary. "With the upcoming presidential election, there's a lot of interest in Eric Cantor serving as national chairman of the RNC," Steele said Saturday on MSNBC's "Up With Steve Kornacki.""In fact I think he'd be interesting because he started dialogues on poverty and some other issues that were sort of outside of what Republicans have traditionally talked about. So he could bring a very interesting voice into that space," he said. (VIDEO-AT-LINK)

As soon as a little-known conservative toppled House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Tuesday night, tea party enthusiasts turned their sights to the next big election-year targets: Mississippi and Kansas. The two states are next up on the GOP's primary calendar as Washington insiders, particularly 76-year-old Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, are fighting hard-right upstarts in an environment in which outsiders have suddenly gained currency. New ads went on the air in Mississippi two days after Cantor's defeat, hammering Cochran as a veteran lawmaker who deserves respect — but not another term in office. In Kansas, Milton Wolf, who is...

Considering it’s the first time a sitting House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated in a primary since 1899, and Dave Brat was out-spent $5.4 million to $200,000, Brat pulled off our biggest political upset since George Nethercutt beat then-Speaker Tom Foley in 1994. The first time a House Speaker had been unseated since 1862. By now most of us have already read and celebrated plenty of analysis of Brat’s statement win on Tuesday. But there are three things to learn from this upset that have largely gone unnoticed elsewhere, and provide a necessary blueprint for conservatives going forward. 1....

In the wake of Eric Cantor's shocking primary election loss to Dave Brat earlier this week, the choice to replace him as House Majority Leader seemed a foregone conclusion, as Pete Sessions (R-TX) decision to bow out appeared to seal the decision and ascend Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to the second highest position in the House. This changed yesterday as Raul Labrador (R-ID) announced he will challenge for the role, a move Dignitas News Service both applauds and has no reservations in providing our endorsement for. Not only would the second-term Representative from Idaho bring solid conservative credentials and voting record...

Predictably, Cantor's defeat has undammed a flood of punditry on why he lost, most of it focusing on immigration policy or on the tea party's supposed resurgence. In truth, it's way too soon to know exactly what went on in Virginia's 7th District, and by the time we get any perspective, it's not clear that anyone will care. But one way to look at Cantor's humiliation might be as an indictment of the culture of incumbency itself, and of the dysfunctional way in which a lot of Washington politicians get used to communicating, or don't.

Former vice presidential candidate discusses the state of the GOP

After Eric Cantor’s stunning defeat to political neophyte and economics college professor Dave Brat in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, the political and media elite are beside themselves trying to understand how this could happen. How could they, in their all knowledge and insight, not see this coming? How could a nobody, a man who spend less than 200,000 on his campaign, and had zero name recognition or political experience, beat the House Majority Leader, the great (and smug) one himself, incumbent Mr. Cantor? First of all, Eric Cantor is not a conservative, he simply isn’t. It is also fair to...

“All of the investment banks, up in New York and D.C., they should have gone to jail.”That isn’t a quote from an Occupy Wall Street protester or Senator Elizabeth Warren. That’s a common campaign slogan repeated by Dave Brat, the Virginia college professor who scored one of the biggest political upsets in over a century by defeating Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary last night.The national media is buzzing about Brat’s victory, but for all of the wrong reasons.Did the Tea Party swoop in and help Brat, as many in the Democratic Party are suggesting? Actually, the Wall Street...