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Talk about your Hobson's Choice . . . on today's Morning Joe, Nicolle Wallace, citing GOP consultants, suggested that--other than social conservatives--Republicans concerned with foreign policy should consider supporting Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Hillary supporter Harold Ford, Jr. could be heard chiming in with a "well said." Wallace was echoing the argument laid out by Joe Scarborough: that on a range of issues from foreign intervention to Israel, taxing the rich to breaking up the banks, Clinton's positions are closer to those of the GOP establishment than Trump's. But Joe, Nicolle and those Republican consultants are forgetting one overriding...

The quest for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination has turned into a race with three big lanes - establishment voters and social conservatives, plus Donald Trump's coalition of blue collar GOP voters. In setting the stage for a possible three-candidate showdown for the GOP nomination, this split bodes particularly well for social conservatives, who staged strong but ultimately failed runs in past two-way races. There's a lot to be said for driving in the social conservative lane. That candidate gets a well-defined base of voters that's been there before and that turns out. Consider the last few Republican presidential fights...

Republican Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor and unabashed culture warrior, enters the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday facing competition for the support of social conservatives who backed him in 2008. The ex-governor of Arkansas, 59, became a national figure by staging an upset win in Iowa's kickoff nominating contest during his 2008 presidential bid. This time around other Republicans with national recognition have emerged as rivals for the role of leading crusader on social issues such as abortion rights and gay marriage. Polls show Huckabee's support among Republican voters is only in the single digits....

Senator Ted Cruz’s announcement he’s running for president during a March 23 speech at Virginia’s Liberty University made him the first candidate to declare his candidacy official in the 2016 cycle. Here are five things to know about Cruz and his presidential run: 1. He wanted to be the first candidate to announce because he thought it would bring him attention. Being first out of the gate, his campaign hopes, will catch the eyes of both high-engagement Republican primary voters and the media—and, in the process, might slow or stop Governor Scott Walker’s rapid rise. From The New York Times:...

The Hill reports: “Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will be among the possible 2016 Republican presidential candidates speaking to a prominent group of conservatives in Iowa this spring. Walker and Cruz will speak at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition’s spring kickoff event on April 25, the group announced in a Monday statement.” Ironically, in an election cycle in which many pundits discount the influence of Christian conservatives, they could play a critical role in selection of the nominee. In past cycles, these values voters have split their vote, never managing to unite behind a single,...

The Republicans trounced the Democrats in Tuesday’s elections. The GOP took the Senate, picked up three governorships in deeply Democrat states, staged several high-level upsets, and came close to victories in races that were supposed to be Democratic blowouts, such as the still-undecided Senate election between Mark Warner and Ed Gillespie in Virginia.

Part of Mitt Romney's success in securing the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 bore out of the fact that he benefited from the spoils of a divided faction on the right. If Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich were ever able to consolidate the sum of their supporters around one of them, Romney's path to victory could have faced great peril. This calculation is weighing heavy on the minds of social conservatives as they look for a horse to ride in 2016. With an adviser to Sen. Ted Cruz telling National Journal Monday the Texas freshman is "90 percent" likely to...

Via WaPo, compare and contrast. Here’s Mitch Daniels four years ago: Beyond the debt and the deficit, in Daniels’s telling, all other issues fade to comparative insignificance. He’s an agnostic on the science of global warming but says his views don’t matter. “I don’t know if the CO2 zealots are right,” he said. “But I don’t care, because we can’t afford to do what they want to do. Unless you want to go broke, in which case the world isn’t going to be any greener. Poor nations are never green.”And then, he says, the next president, whoever he is, “would...

Should fiscal conservatives and libertarians join social conservatives to promote social conservative policies? Is the political divide between wings of the GOP based more on perception or passion than on reality? Higher government spending is driven by social issues – and liberal policies regarding families and children. In fact, fiscal conservatives can never achieve their goals of limited government, balanced budgets, and low tax levels without working on the concerns raised by social conservatives. Focusing only on government spending ignores factors that lead to the desire to spend more by some politicians and some voters. Major drivers of skyrocketing national...

Yesterday, Cato Institute senior fellow Michael Tanner made the case at National Review Online that the Tea Party is waning. He identified what he sees as the main problem: the Tea Party is getting mixed up in social issues, which is not only hurting their brand but also driving away libertarians.It is true that on Capitol Hill, the Tea Party has lost a great deal of influence. Since September, the Tea Party has seen the government reopen without slowing – never mind stopping – the Affordable Care Act. The debt ceiling has been dissolved and raised, respectively, and a budget...

<p>On Friday a producer and former CBS reporter named Itay Hod put up a Facebook post intended to out Illinois Rep. Aaron Schock. The tabloid media, for years, has played a game with the young Republican—wink-wink stories about his photoshoot for a men's health magazine, the sexy celebrities he follows on Twitter, stuff like that.</p>

On Thursday, semi-retired radio talker Neal Boortz predicted the Republican Party will not win control of the U.S. Senate in the 2014 midterm elections, despite all the pitfalls the Democrats and President Barack Obama are facing, particularly with regards to Obamacare. The reason, Boortz said, would be the GOP’s tendency to run on issues related to social conservatism. Boortz explained the importance to the republic for a GOP win next year while guest hosting Sean Hannity’s Thursday radio show:

The fight for the soul of the Republican Party intensifies this week as Republican leaders gather in Washington to court religious conservatives. The Faith and Freedom Coalition, a group created by former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, is launching a conference Thursday designed to strengthen the evangelical influence in national politics while giving many religious conservative activists their first look at potential 2016 presidential candidates. … Reed told The Associated Press that religious conservatives have a simple message for GOP leaders: “Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the pro-life, pro-family and pro-marriage positions that candidates have taken and will take in...

Illinois Republicans have just forced state party chair Pat Brady to resign because of his support for gay marriage. What is this, Alabama? Brady, rather famously, came out in support of gay marriage in January of this year, and even made phone calls to lawmakers urging them to support gay marriage legislation before the Illinois legislature. And now he’s politically-dead, killed by a Republican party so permeated with hate and intolerance that even in a moderate-Republican state like Illinois, the GOP just couldn’t stomach having a fag-lover as party chair. This is why I, an Illinois Republican, left my party...

Conservatives often like to divide themselves into economic conservatives who care about the economy, and social conservatives who care about moral issues. But the mother of the post-war conservative movement, Phyllis Schlafly, says that both issues are linked, and that a decline in moral values harms a nation: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/schlafly-gop-establishment-gave-us-losers-dole-mccain-and-romney Schlafly quoted from the article: (Schlafly said the establishment wants candidates that “will only talk about economic issues” and not social or moral issues or even national security issues". “And that’s such a terrible mistake, because those social issues are the cause of the fiscal issue, and they are the issues...

Recently reporter Thomas Edsall - who has spent most of the last 30 years covering politics for the Washington Post and the New Republic - had some advice for the GOP. He draws upon some recent polling data to argue that "the Republican Party can afford to marginalize . . . Christian right leaders because evangelical social conservatives . . . are not going to vote Democratic." Thus, he reasons that Republicans can, as he puts it, "concede defeat in the culture war" in the hopes of picking up more socially liberal voters. Mr. Edsall might want to check with...

Even though I agreed with much of what Ron Paul had to say, all I could ever think is 'this isn't my guy' for president -too odd a demeanor/un-electable- not to mention foreign policy positions that were appalling to a peace-through-strength Republican like myself, particularly statements made re. Iran and Israel. But lo-and-behold, now we have fervent offspring Rand Paul who -while libertarian in his views- apparently saw wisdom in distancing himself from his father's take re. the volatile Muddled East.. and that's when I started listening to him. Maybe I've changed in my hawkishness too- I'd rather have not been involved...

I am wondering about the structure of a third "Constitutional" party. Would it be better to form a party exclusively on a fiscal issues basis? What would be the pros and cons of taking social issues completely off the table? I mean, are there really enough "social issues" in the text of the Constitution itself to warrant making them a permanent policy of a new party and subsequently risking vicious debate and division? I guess I am thinking of the inevitability of Conservatives locking antlers with the "socially" left wing of the Libertarians", who are otherwise fiscally right wing. Shouldn't...

***SNIP*** [L]et's be honest. We had little reason to believe that Romney was truly dedicated to improving our social and cultural conditions -- indeed, that all-important thing called the human condition -- because he talked endlessly about his business experience. Most Americans don't like their bosses and have trouble with landlords and creditors. Talking about one's business experience is not usually a good way to win them over. On election day, it became clear to me that the Republican Party had been led into Purgatory by the Laodicean wing. In case you aren't familiar with Revelation 3:14-17, here is what...

It is time to throw the social conservatives out of the GOP. Look at what they got us — Barack Obama. It was the social conservatives who did it. They insisted the GOP support real marriage and children. To hell with that. I’m getting this, in various forms, from lots of tea party activists. The GOP establishment in Washington is whispering it to each other. They look at Todd Aiken and Richard Mourdock and conclude that they, not Tommy Thompson, Heather Wilson, George Allen, Scott Brown, etc. are the problem. It is time to get rid of the social conservatives.What’s...