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William Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine and Defense secretary under former President Clinton, blasted GOP lawmakers challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election in a Thursday interview in which he suggested the formation of a new political party. Cohen made the comments on CNN's "The Situation Room" while discussing Sen. Josh Hawley's (R-Mo.) plans to object during Congress's counting of the Electoral College vote on Wednesday. Cohen called Hawley's actions "shameful" but warned that Republicans are just following President Trump's lead, calling him the party's "ringmaster." "We have to remember that the current occupant of the White...

Donald Trump is set to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.) during a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin on Friday evening, Fox News reported. The expected endorsement comes three days after Trump told the Washington Post he was not “yet” ready to back Ryan in his upcoming primary election next Tuesday against Wisconsin businessman Paul Nehlen. While Trump publicly praised Nehlen for running “a very good campaign” earlier this week, Ryan is expected to win the primary by a landslide. The House speaker leads Nehlen by 66 points, according to a poll released Friday by the Remington Research Group. Trump...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who lost the 2012 election to President Barack Obama, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he believed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie could “easily” become the GOP presidential nominee in 2016 and “save our party.” Christie most recently made national news when he decided to drop a legal challenge to rulings in New Jersey state courts that declared same-sex marriage legal there. And not long before that, he changed his position on the question of whether illegal aliens should get in-state tuition rates at New Jersey state colleges. Now he backs legislation...

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...

Former president George H. W. Bush offered an informal endorsement of Mitt Romney in remarks published Thursday, saying that Mr. Romney “is the best choice for us.” The former president told reporters for The Houston Chronicle that he supported Mr. Romney because of his “stability, experience, principles. He’s a fine person,” Mr. Bush, 87, said. “I just think he’s mature and reasonable – not a bomb-thrower.” The paper reported the comments, made this week, on its Web site Thursday afternoon. A spokesman for Mr. Bush confirmed the accuracy of the comments and said they fully reflect the views of the...

The leading Republican candidates promise more of the same. BY MICHAEL D. TANNER In the wake of the disastrous Bush presidency and the Republican defeats of 2006 and 2008, it was widely assumed that the GOP had repudiated the idea that big government could be harnessed for conservative ends. And, of course, in 2010, the Tea Party led a return to conservatism's traditional small-government roots, resulting in the biggest Republican landslide in 70 years. One would think that settled the matter. Yet, just five weeks out from the Iowa caucuses, both of the front-runners for the Republican nomination are strong...

LAS VEGAS — For most Republican politicians, there is no smear more loathed, more insulting or more politically perilous than to be called a RINO — a Republican in Name Only. Not for Linda Lingle. “I’ve been called a RINO before, which I don’t mind,” the former Hawaii governor told a crowd of diehard Republican activists huddled in a Las Vegas ballroom. “There are a lot of people who support these RINOs, whether it’s me or [former New York Mayor] Rudy Giuliani or [former New Jersey Gov.] Christine Todd Whitman.”(snip) And from Lingle’s point of view, moderate Republican candidates such...

Is the GOP co-opting the tea party movement, or are tea partiers taking down the establishment and sending the RINOs packing? A lengthy New York Times magazine article this week quoted several establishment Republicans crowing over what they see as the demise of the two-year-old tea party activism. Bill Kristol, the neoconservative editor of the Weekly Standard and a Fox News contributor, said the tea party peddles "an infantile form of conservatism."Veteran Republican strategist Scott Reed took the disdain one step further, saying the GOP is steadily co-opting the grass-roots movement. "That’s the secret to politics: trying to control a...

(snip) I'm sure that some among you think that the point of my mental note is that, since all politicians make mistakes in judgment, it's unfair to single out any one of them in particular? But that's not what I was thinking. I was thinking that mistakes in judgment are inevitable when you agree to participate in a system that makes winning the only standard that matters. Mistakes in judgment are inevitable when you base the conduct of politics on an understanding of government that makes "getting things done" the only standard that matters. Mistakes in judgment are inevitable when...

The National Republican Senatorial Committee gave $43,100 to Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch’s campaign, despite recent pleas from Tea Party activists that the organization wait until a Republican nominee is selected before supporting a candidate. New filings show that the NRSC also contributed the same amount to Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar, who is also facing a GOP primary challenge. That candidate, Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, also enjoys the support of Tea Party activists. A spokesman for the NRSC said its standard practice for the organization to give money to incumbent senators. “The NRSC would not exist were it not...

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is still weighing a presidential bid, said Sunday that the Republican Party should stop focusing on gay marriage and "get the heck out of people's bedrooms." Giuliani, who personally supports civil unions but not same-sex marriage, said that he was against the recent vote in New York to legalize gay marriage in the state. But while he called that decision "wrong," he described it as a "democratic vote" and urged Republicans to move on. "I think that marriage should be between a man and a woman, but I think that the Republican Party...

It is a truism of political dynasties that there is a chosen heir - the one who should or would or could have been next. It is certainly apt of the Bush family. Jeb Bush is the son who was groomed for the presidency. He was the one most Republicans expected to succeed his father into the Oval Office. And today, looking at their, let's be frank, lacklustre field, many Republicans still wish he would do just that. "It's very flattering to be asked that regularly," Jeb tells me in his office at the Coral Gables Biltmore Hotel. "I don't...

From dynamic presidential hopefuls such as Rep. Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain to rank-and-file party activists from across the country, Republicans who gathered in New Orleans Friday all pledged their fealty to the cause of defeating President Barack Obama in 2012. But Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former national party chairman, delivered a stern warning to Republican Leadership Conference delegates: Don't look for perfection in the potential nominees and don't even think about drafting a third-party candidate when the nomination fight is done. "Don't get hung up on purity," he said. "In politics, purity is a loser. ... In this...

Romney is simply the front-runner (“Romney Wins N.H. Straw Poll”), the “Billion-Dollar Man” and the president’s most implacable foe (“Romney: First Thing I Would Undo Is Obamacare”). A survey of the past 13 months of Drudge headlines found only one debatably negative reference to the 2002 Olympics CEO (“Bachmann Outraises Romney”) — and a survey of aides to his rivals found a rising level of frustration at what one described as “favoritism” by one of the most important, if also one of the quirkiest, referees.

Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Mitt Romney and other Democrats by Steve BarrettWhy is Mitt Romney still running for president?Let me rephrase: Why is Mitt Romney still running for president — as a Republican? Shouldn’t he be seeking the Democrat nomination and snapping up as many center-left votes as possible while Barack Obama forages for support on the MoveOn.org fringe? After all, there’s incontrovertible evidence of Romney’s Democrat credentials. It’s called RomneyCare, and he merrily shepherded it into law as governor of Massachusetts. How’d that work out? Well, it’s estimated that without radical reform of RomneyCare, annual premiums for a typical...

Last week, I gave advice to Mitt Romney, Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour, and Tim Pawlenty on how they could win the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. In this week’s column, I offer advice to Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum and Herman Cain on how they can emerge from this cycle as winners even if they do not get the nomination. 1. Mike Huckabee: Convince Establishment He Can Take Down Palin Huckabee leads the GOP field in many early polls. Some of these polls have also shown him defeating Obama in a one-on-one matchup. Granted, these polls...

The repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy owes much to Sens. Susan Collins and Joseph I. Lieberman, who kept the issue alive when it appeared dead in the kind of partnership that is likely to become a model for getting things done in next year's divided Congress. Mr. Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent from Connecticut, and Miss Collins, a Republican from Maine, plan to join President Obama at the White House on Wednesday when he signs the bill into law. The signing ceremony caps off a late-season effort that saw the military's ban on openly gay men and women...

The House Republican Steering Committee selected Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) on Tuesday as the next chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, while Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) will be the next chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The two were among the slate of new committee chairs elected by the 34-member committee, according to House GOP aides. The full House Republican Conference is slated to vote Wednesday on whether to ratify the panel's recommendations, a step that is largely a formality. Rogers bested Reps. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) and Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) to win the appropriations spot. Kingston had been...

Much has been written about the House GOP Leadership’s plan to ban earmarks for two years. The praise they have received from conservatives is justified, because it seems, at least for the time being, that their proposed moratorium doesn’t have the weaselly wiggle-room sometimes employed by politicians. It is also likely that their stance pushed former earmarker-extraordinaire Sen. Mitch McConnell into supporting a similar ban in the Senate. Who knew the ‘road to Damascus’ veered past the Potomac? So far, so good. The ban on earmarks may be largely symbolic as it won’t, on its own, lower federal spending, but...

Interviewed by Lou Dobbs, Michelle Malkin rips the mask of conservatism from Karl Rove. She calls him a RINO and the one who encouraged Bush's weakness on border security and his huge prescription drug entitlement. Now, with mid-term elections close and the Republicans heavily favored to take back Congress, Rove has decided to commit what she calls "bloody RINO suicide."