Free Republic

Cornyn: GOP's stance on social issues alienating independents A striking admission from NRSC chair John Cornyn, buried in today's New York Times article about the GOP and the Tea party: Mr. Cornyn, who has been on the receiving end of anti-establishment anger, argued that the Tea Party had helped Republicans in one important respect, by moving the debate away from social issues. While Tea Party supporters tend to be socially conservative on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion, most say they don't want to talk about them; they believe that by spending so much time on those issues, the Republican...

"This is probably one of the few times we're going to disagree here." -- Sean Hannity to Karl Rove regarding Christine O'Donnell. I'll say. Even after Fox News called the Delaware GOP senatorial primary for Christine O'Donnell tonight, Karl Rove continued to rip the winner, questioning everything from O'Donnell's "rectitude" to her "character." Concluded the pessimistic Rove: "this is not a race we're going to be able to win." Sean defended O'Donnell staunchly, but was met with a litany of Roveian criticism of Christine, including these comments: View video here.

Suddenly, it's becoming less of a stigma for bigwigs to associate with gays in the Republican Party. Not only has former RNC chairman Ken Mehlman's 9/22 fundraiser for gay marriage rights attracted numerous high-octane Republican donors and activists, but Sen. John Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and Rep. Pete Sessions, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee will help the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group, raise money for its political action committee. A glossy pamphlet advertising the Log Cabin Republicans' national dinner at the Capitol Hill Club highlights an hour-long cocktail gathering with...

Ken Mehlman's fundraiser for same-sex marriage will be, among other things, a gathering of some of the most high-profile -- and deep-pocketed -- backers of gay marriage on the right. The names of Bill Weld, Christie Todd Whitman, Steve Schmidt, and Mary Cheney's didn't surprise me. Other names did a bit: Bush aides Mark and Nicolle Wallace are on there, as is top GOP lawyer Ben Ginsberg. Most notably, Mehlman's fundraiser extends the reach of same-sex marriage backers to the very top Republican donor pile: The private equity titan Henry Kravis (who's also Mehlman's boss at KKR) is among the...

Lindsey Graham was sitting in a sedan early one morning and contentedly discussing the various fellow S.C. conservatives who dislike him — Tea Partiers, Constitutionalists, immigration hardliners — when Van Cato, his Upstate regional director, lifted a hand from the steering wheel and said: “That’s the leader of them right there. There’s his sign. He’s running for Greenville County Council.” “Harry Kibler,” Graham, South Carolina’s senior U.S. senator, murmured as he read the campaign poster. “He’s the one that has that prop of your legs sticking out of a toilet in the back of his truck,” Cato added helpfully. Graham...

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The chairman of the Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele pledges big bucks to support Carly Fiorina's senate campaign against Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer. Steele was in San Francisco Thursday morning, talking about California politics and the money it will take to win in November. Show me the money, but of course he wouldn't -- to ABC7 anyway. The question is will he show Fiorina the money? The two are scheduled to sit down together on Friday. Steele told reporters financial help for GOP candidates is coming. "We're going to be in play here, big time...

PHOENIX (AP) — The National Rifle Association has endorsed John McCain in Arizona's Republican Senate primary.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican Party asked the Supreme Court on Friday to allow political parties to raise unlimited contributions, the latest outgrowth of the court's decision to unleash corporate and labor spending in federal elections. The filing sought to undo the ban on the raising of soft money — unlimited donations from corporations, unions and others — by national party committees. The GOP said the Supreme Court's rationale in January for removing restrictions on corporate and union spending in federal elections should lead to a similar removal of the restriction on such fundraising by national political parties. The soft...

By Laura Meckler So what exactly happened when the chairman of the Republican National Committee met with immigration activists Wednesday? According to a news release put out by the activists, he said he would try and recruit Republican support for comprehensive immigration legislation. The RNC says he made no such commitment. The immigration activist who led the meeting said he did, but then backpedaled after being signaled by a staffer that he may have gone too far.

(snip) PALIN: The point here is that Senator McCain and I agree on the big picture, where it is that the country needs to go. There are so many challenges facing America right now, and Senator McCain has been on the right track trying to get the country back on that track that will lead to more prosperity, more security for this nation. We agree on those things that have to take place in order for us to kind of undo some of the things that Obama is doing and get us back on that right track towards prosperity and...

MANISTEE, Mich./WACO, Texas/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Some Tea Partiers say they can pinpoint the precise moment when they made it clear to the Republican Party they had no intention of being its lapdog. On a bright, brisk afternoon in mid-February, with snow still thick on the ground from storms that had battered Washington the week before, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele met with more than 50 members of the Tea Party, the Twitter Age conservative movement that is reshaping the U.S. political landscape. Steele, RNC chairman since January 2009, had invited them to the plush Capitol Hill Club, built as...

There aren't any major differences in beliefs between "Tea Party" activists and the Republican Party, the top House Republican said Thursday. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the GOP and the groups conservative activists across the country are indistinguishable when it comes to policy. "There really is no difference between what Republicans believe in and what the tea party activists believe in," Boehner said during an appearance on the conservative Mike Gallagher's radio show.

Enclosed are some excerpts from Senator John McCain's letter that he E-Mailed to his followers today. I'm pleased to see someone on Capital Hill who is standing up to Obama and the Democrats and their outrageous wasteful spending..... "My Friend, I have spent much of my career fighting against wasteful spending in Washington. I'm not afraid to speak out when I see taxpayer dollars wasted. And in all my years in public office, I have never seen spending as out of control as it is under the current Democratic leadership. Our national debt has reached an all-time high of $12.4...

Frum sees him as an antidote to the Tea Party madness: Strong on defense and school choice, opposed to the Obama administration’s signature initiatives, Brown voted in favor of Mitt Romney’s health plan in Massachusetts. He describes himself as pro-choice (subject to reasonable limitations), accepts gay marriage in Massachusetts as a settled fact, and told the Boston Herald editorial board he would have voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor.

<p>He called Lindsey Graham in despair. Listen to these people, McCain said. Why would I want to be the leader of a party of such a**holes?.......</p> <p>Among the many juicy, anonymously-sourced passages in Game Change........</p> <p>McCain aides John Weaver and Mark Salter begged McCain to ease up. He was already the face of the Iraq surge. Now he was becoming the face of what opponents called “amnesty.” Just tone down the rhetoric, his advisers pleaded.</p>

The temporary increase in the national debt ceiling approved this month — combined with the prospect of a huge trillion-dollar-plus increase early next year — has once again prompted criticisms of President Obama for runaway spending and record deficits. All this borrowing is only necessary, we are told, because Obama ran up $1.4 trillion of debt in his first year. It's true that the White House is pushing big spending items, not least of which is his multitrillion-dollar scheme for government-run health care. But many critics, either out of ignorance or malice, are blaming Obama for deficits that are not...

GOP U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown has been all but abandoned by the same national Republican committees that pumped hundreds of thousands in campaign cash to former governors Mitt Romney and William Weld

Congressman Henry Brown's "Stand Up for Christmas" resolution is just another example of Republican politicians' long history of exploiting social and cultural issues to distract voters from their big government records.

George W. Bush is gone from Washington but his legacy, like an abandoned toxic waste dump, lingers on. Like President Franklin Roosevelt before him, President Bush helped redefine American freedom. And like Roosevelt's, Bush's changes were perversions of the clear vision the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us. What did freedom mean in the era of George Bush? In Iraq in September 2004, the U.S. military constructed Camp Liberty, a tent compound to house Iraqi detainees next to the Abu Ghraib prison. (The torture scandal and photos had been revealed in late April.) Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller declared that Camp Liberty...

This week the Senate grinches stole Christmas. The Obama Nation is getting Obamacare. It’s easy to blame the sixty Democrats, as the Wall Street Journal does, for "the worse bill ever." It solemnly declares: "These 60 Democrats are creating a future of epic increases in spending, taxes and command--and control regulation." True enough. But what's the root cause of this permanent disaster? Sorry, friends, but it’s not the Democrats, nor the American people who elected them. The real culprits are two Republicans who ran the show the previous eight years: George W. Bush and his "master political strategist" Karl Rove....