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Eighteen months later, Nevada Republicans have completed a count of all delegate ballots from last year's state convention. A group of disaffected Republicans says it feels vindicated after a Friday night count of missing ballots from the April 2008 gathering showed three delegates for U.S. Rep. Ron Paul should have been sent to the national convention. Paul supporters said they felt party leaders cheated them out of a place at the national convention when they abruptly recessed the convention before delegate ballots from the state's 2nd Congressional District could be counted. The district was allowed to choose three of the...

And Romney was nowhere to be seen. BY BRENDAN MINITER Amidst the stunning events in New York's 23rd congressional district -- with Republican-turned-independent Doug Hoffman suddenly surging to the front and likely to win today's race -- collateral damage has been suffered by some of the GOP's presidential hopefuls who misread the race and the mood of the Republican electorate. Mitt Romney -- formerly a man who seemed willing to show up and plug for any Republican anywhere to pick up a few chits -- was nowhere to be seen in the district. Mike Huckabee, a favorite for religious conservatives...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 (UPI) -- There is a "political rebellion" going on in America that the Republican Party is hoping to speak for, the U.S. House minority leader says. Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, speaking Sunday on CNN's "State of Union," said an incident in which a GOP-endorsed New York congressional candidate withdrew from an election under pressure from Republican conservatives showed that "we're in the middle of a political rebellion going on in America." Boehner said, "This rebellion are by people who really have not been actively involved in the political process. And they don't really care whether you're...

Conservatives are sick and tired of being taken for granted, misrepresented, and talked down to by the same "elite" Republicans in Washington who hopelessly screwed everything up during the Bush years.         Everybody knows exactly whom we're talking about here.  The same snobby, elitist, stuffed shirt, squishy, poll-obsessed Country Club Republicans who went to D.C., forgot who put them there, wasted the incredible opportunity they had to change this country for the better, and are now pointing the finger at everyone except themselves for their mistakes.         Here are five messages for those people:         We're not going back to the Bush years:...

"Perhaps more ominously for his ( Newt's )rapidly fading hopes for a 2012 Presidential bid, conservatives are beginning to question his integrity. His constant repetition of the false "she's locally selected" mantra seems as off message as Scozzafava's numerous well documented campaign missteps.""Either Newt Gingrich is lying, or someone misled him."But how can "the smartest guy in the room", with a reputation as a scholar and seeker of truth have been so easily misled about a set of facts that could be discerned with half an hour's worth of phone calls?"

ALBANY—Former House speaker Newt Gingrich never mentioned Doug Hoffman's name during a radio appearance this morning, but had a clear message for Republicans in the 23rd Congressional District: "The vote you're going to cast for a third-party candidate is going to guarantee the election of a Democrat. If you think that adding another vote to Nancy Pelosi's majority is a good idea, that keeping Nancy Pelosi as speaker is a good idea, then it's fine. But don't kid yourself.""John McHugh is a moderate Republican, he's held the seat for a very long time, I think 20 years," Gingrich, who has...

If vindication means anything its name is spelled George Bush. As former U.S. president George W. Bush spoke to a Saskatoon audience, I stood in the wings, sneaking a peek through the curtains at the spectators beyond the footlights. The crowd was friendly to be sure. But more than that, the relationship was like a musical virtuoso carrying the audience through every nuance, crescendo and dynamic of a composition. With every pause, smile, laugh and down stroke of seriousness, Bush had the crowd in his hand. Before the show, a friend who recently dined with the former Texas governor and...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: In NY-23, Real Clear Politics: "Doug Hoffman, plus five."  Doug Hoffman may in fact win this with nowhere near the amount of money the two Democrats have.  I know there's a Democrat called a Republican, but we actually have two liberal Obama Democrats, one calling herself a Republican, and you've got the Reagan conservative Hoffman in there.  Tim Pawlenty threw in with him today, by the way, so you have Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson, Rick Santorum, who else?  (interruption)  Sue Collins endorsed -- so?  Is that a surprise?  That's going to sway a lot of votes.  Susan...

I’ve taken some heat for posts I’ve written on Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava versus conservative Doug Hoffman in NY-23. My posts have been misinterpreted as supportive of Scozzafava, which they truly were not. Blame that on me, as the posts weren’t clear enough about the thought process going on behind the scenes. But that’s less important than the issue at hand. My conservative credentials are intact. But how conservatives win the current civil war within the GOP is important to me. We must build the party up and become strong, not simply tear things down because we disagree with them. Scozzafava...

WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Republican Senator John McCain said on Wednesday his party needed a positive agenda to better attract those Americans who are disenchanted with Democratic policies. McCain said he sensed "a lot of anger and a lot of frustration" among Americans over taxpayer-backed bailouts of banks and auto companies while they cope with a persistently high U.S. jobless rate of 9.8 percent and see bank executives get "obscene" bonuses. McCain, who was his party's presidential nominee and lost the 2008 election to Democrat Barack Obama, spoke to a Reuters Summit in a roundtable interview with journalists.

Democrats once flirted with running Republican Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava for the seat Rep. John McHugh will soon vacate in NY-23, but now that she's a leading contender for the GOP nod, they are rushing to bolster conservative concerns about her alleged tax troubles. Soon-to-be-former state Democratic Chairwoman June O'Neill today confirmed reports that Scozzafava's husband, an upstate labor leader, talked with key local Democrats and union heads about the possibility of his wife running on Row A if the party's presumed first choice, state Sen. Darrel Aubertine, takes a pass. "Her husband spoke with several Democratic officials and, you know,...

When a runaway hot-air balloon reported to be carrying a six-year-old boy made headlines last week, many were surprised to find out it had all been a hoax. Admitted the six-year-old boy on live television, “We did this for a show.” Another hot-air balloon by the name of Lindsey Graham also made headlines last week by putting on a show of his own, as the South Carolina Senator held court at a town hall meeting, touting his conservative credentials before an angry crowd that wasn’t buying it. “They’re a political fringe group” Graham said of his critics, “I’m the conservative...

Mitch McConnell and his deputies in the Senate Republican leadership are responding very cautiously to Olympia Snowe’s decision to become the first GOP vote for a Democratic health care reform bill. That’s about all they can do. “My job as whip is not to twist her arm but to bring all the information that we can bring to bear on the issue and hope that people vote the way we would like to see them vote,” said McConnell’s No. 2, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). Kyl said a heavy-handed approach “doesn’t work.”

An outburst at an angry South Carolina town hall meeting has exemplified the growing fissure in the Republican Party across the nation. “We're not going to be the party of angry white guys," liberal Republican Senator Lindsay Graham told a Greenville, South Carolina, audience at Furman University where some supporters of Congressman Ron Paul were heckling him. Ron Paul responded on CNN's Situation Room October 14 that Graham's attack was unfair. “For him to ... say that everybody who is upset with the government and upset with his type of voting record are angry white people or angry men, that...

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is taking the opposite route of most defeated presidential candidates: rather than quickly bow out of national politics, McCain is working to become a transformative force in the Republican Party, Politico reported Friday. Concerned about the GOP's direction, McCain has been recruiting and raising money for candidates who share his pragmatic center-right style. McCain has been a particularly generous advisor to Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL), who he encouraged to run for Senate and threw a $500,000 fundraiser to support.

When FOX News host Glenn Beck said during an interview with Katie Couric this week, “John McCain would have been worse for the country than Barack Obama,” his comments made headlines. Beck explained that “McCain is this weird progressive like Theodore Roosevelt was.” Beck laid out this view in better detail on his television program earlier this month: I am becoming more and more libertarian every day, I guess the scales are falling off of my eyes, as I’m doing more and more research into history and learning real history. Back at the turn of the century in 1900, with...

Mitt Romney has not announced whether or not he’ll make a second run for the White House, but his former aides are staying in campaign shape by managing key races across the nation that could benefit their old boss in future elections. In at least six crucial races around the country, veterans of the former Massachusetts governor’s presidential campaign are working to guide new candidates to victory. It may appear a simple case of political professionals moving to new clients, but Romney’s team has kept in close contact should a second presidential campaign come to fruition. That could pay off,...

Saying she was "alarmed about the direction our nation is headed," former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton officially launched her bid today as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. Surrounded by hundreds of supporters in a ballroom at the Marriott Tech Center, Norton, who has been serving as the executive director of the Denver Police Foundation, said she wanted to stop what she saw as an out-of-control government in the nation's capital. "At every turn, Washington's giant hand seems to be grabbing everything in sight," said Norton, who served as lieutenant governor under former Gov. Bill Owens. "Seizing control of...

(snip) SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Well, I thought the president is eloquent. I thought he had a lot of passion. (snip) MCCAIN: I hope he gets a bill. I hope we can sit down together and do the things that all of us agree on. And there are a number of things that are -- that we can agree on. And I think the American people, obviously, want that. I don't know what the administration and the Democrats will insist on. Facts are stubborn things. The bills so far have had no bipartisanship associated with it. They were drawn...

WASHINGTON (CNN) — CNN's Deirdre Walsh reports that Republican Rep. Joe Wilson called the White House Wednesday night to apologize for his outburst during President Obama's speech, and spoke with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.