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In June, we broke the news that Stewart Mills is a Packers fan. That being the case, perhaps nobody should be surprised to learn that dude knows how to party. SEE ALSO: Rick Nolan calls on Obama to "man up" and fire somebody over Obamacare website debacle Photos obtained by City Pages show Mills, the Mills Fleet Farm VP and seemingly inevitable 2014 GOP challenger to Rick Nolan, hitting a beer bong and playfully licking the lips of a woman. The Democratic source who sent along the photos said the following two pictures, posted to Facebook by Mills's wife in...

Editor’s note: Below is the video and transcript of the panel discussion “2014: And the Future of the Republican Party,” which took place at the Freedom Center’s 2013 Restoration Weekend. The event was held November 14th-17th at The Breakers resort in Palm Beach, Florida. 2014: And the Future of the Republican Party from DHFC on Vimeo. Ralph Reed: Thanks so much. When I was elected state party chairman in Georgia in 2002, we had not elected a Republican governor in my state in 134 years. And in fact, if you go back to the time since the first Europeans landed...

Nobody, not even President Obama, is pretending that the rollout of the Affordable Care Act has been anything but a debacle. Reading headlines in the national press, though, you’d get the impression that repeal is right around the corner. For that to be true, though, several dozen House Democrats and over a score of Democrats in the Senate would have to be willing to vote with Republicans to override a veto. And even under these miserable circumstances, only 39 House Dems, overrepresented by representatives of swing districts, voted with Republicans for the so-called “Upton bill,” to allow health insurance carriers...

House Democrats held a press conference on Thursday following President Obama’s press conference on Obamacare. They refused to apologize for repeatedly lying to the American people.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Over 5 million Americans have lost their health insurance so far thanks to Obamacare. The Weekly Standard reported: At a press conference Thursday evening, House Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Xavier Becerra, and Jim Clyburn were asked if they would like to apologize for making the same false claim. All of them declined. “I don’t think there’s anything for us to apologize for,” said Clyburn.“There is nothing in the Affordable Care Act that said...

On Thursday, the U.S. Senate passed legislation to protect gay employees from job discrimination with an overwhelming bipartisan vote. Republicans should support these protections, and I hope the GOP leadership in the House schedules the bill for a vote. It’s the morally right thing to do. No one should lose their job, or not get hired, because of their sexual orientation. Allowing people to be successful in their workplaces is an essential piece of individual opportunity and liberty. Working for a living is one of America’s freedoms. It’s a virtue to be encouraged — and supporting it is important to...

The current conventional wisdom floating around the media, seemingly extrapolated largely from quotes to the press from businessmen and their surrogates, is that "Big Business [is] trying to unseat the Tea Party." However, there's no evidence that this is happening. Remember the first time Tea Party House Republicans held a gun to the U.S. economy, refusing to pay America's debts unless Democrats accepted a wide-ranging set of demands, and as a result, business leaders promised to spend big to defeat hostage-taking radicals? "We'll get rid of you," said Tom Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the Tea...

Just days after comparing the tea party to the Ku Klux Klan, Florida’s most-outspoken Democratic Congressman, Alan Grayson, addressed the state party faithful Saturday and likened some Republicans to Confederate flag-waving “bigots.” Grayson made his comments during a mock reading of a fake Republican Party agenda in which he suggested conservatives were also gay marriage-bashing gun nuts. “At 8:30 a.m., the morning breakout sessions,” Grayson said, reading the made-up GOP agenda. “Ballroom A: the bigots. Ballroom B: the paranoids. And Ballroom C, the largest group of all: the gullible.” The speech, largely applauded by the attendees of the Florida Democratic...

Who’s to blame for the ObamaCare debacle? “First off all, in fairness,” Howard Dean told the Morning Joe crew earlier today, ou have to blame Republicans for some of this because they delayed everything they possibly could.” First we have to blame the party that (a) didn’t cast a single vote in favor of the ACA and (b) had no control over its 42-month rollout? At which stage in the process do we hold responsible the people who spent $400 million in three and a half years, and who assured everyone all along the way that things were going swimmingly?...

In a truly misguided display of chutzpah, some members of the Tea Party are congratulating themselves over a supposed “historic victory” in the government shutdown debacle. Yet the shutdown gang led by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas extracted no concessions and instead hurt the GOP’s nationwide reputation and shaved GDP growth. Over at The American Spectator blog, Mark Meckler, a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, trumpets the “glorious battle” fought by “committed warrior[s]” that put Republicans “poised for massive gains in 2014.” This contradicts pretty much all evidence to the contrary, including poll after poll showing Americans were unhappy with...

President Barack Obama is using the disastrous crash of his Obamacare website to extract cash and volunteer hours from his supporters. “By now, you’ve probably heard that the website has not worked as smoothly as it was supposed to,” Obama told his supporters in an email sent out late Tuesday. “That’s why I need your help,” he said, in a video pitch that links to an online fundraiser. “The other side has already spent a whopping $400 million in anti-Obamacare TV ads,” says the language on the fundraiser site. “We don’t have to beat that, but we need to have...

In case you haven’t heard about this, Senator Dick Durbin claimed in a Facebook post that a House Republican told Barack Obama during the shutdown negotiations that “I cannot even stand to look at you.” Republicans vehemently denied it, and now the White House agrees: White House press secretary Jay Carney on Wednesday flatly denied that a House Republican told President Obama “I cannot even stand to look at you” during negotiations over the government shutdown. “It did not happen,” Carney said, saying he discussed the incident with a “participant in the meeting.” … “Many Republicans searching for something to...

Watch out, Charlie Crist. Beverly Young has sent a letter to the former Florida governor telling him not to attend Thursday’s funeral service for her late husband, GOP Rep. Bill Young, according to the Tampa Bay Times. According to the paper, Young’s widow wrote in the message: “This e-mail is to officially advise you that your presence at my husband’s memorial services will be unacceptable. I have watched over the years, as Bill had, your transparent attempts to manipulate the political arena. I don’t want my husband’s memorial service to be another opportunity for that and I will not tolerate...

The future of the GOP? With the government shutdown and debt ceiling fight in the rearview mirror, Republicans can move on to more important matters — like determining which of the party's warring factions will control the GOP going forward. The recent fiscal fist-fighting ostensibly pit Republicans against Democrats, but the real power struggle was between Tea Partiers and the GOP establishment. The conflict, bubbling beneath the surface for some time, finally boiled over into a messy public spat that, even as the shutdown came to a close, showed no signs of stopping. The fissure has been growing since 2010,...

That’s basically Jonah Goldberg’s take on the Republican Party’s conduct regarding the Continuing Resolution and the government shutdown. And I basically agree with him. Certainly, mistakes were made — either by Ted Cruz and House hardliners (as I believe) or by Republicans who disagreed with Cruz’s approach. And, in principle, it is time to move on.

Via RCP. Wait, wait, wait — before you start shaking your first at him, isn’t his point here oddly simpatico with what tea partiers say every day about Beltway squishes like King himself? It all depends on what benchmark you use to define “Republican.” The Republican establishment of the past 10 years has been fiercely interventionist, willing to bend on civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism, and happy to back new entitlement programs like Medicare Part D so long as their guy’s in the White House. Rand Paul, by contrast, tilts towards isolationism, wants to sue the NSA...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid should do the job he was elected to do and quit lecturing Republicans, says former Florida GOP Rep. Joe Scarborough. "Harry Reid should really be quiet and go back and do the job that he was hired to do, and, at least, pass one appropriation bill. And then come out lecturing us," Scarborough, the host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," said on his program Tuesday. "I hear Harry Reid lecturing [House Speaker] John Boehner every day about getting things done. And Harry Reid's Senate that Harry Reid runs, first of all, went four or five years...

The vision of democracy is that the federal budget—and all activities of the federal government—reflects the values of a majority of Americans. Yet most people feel that the federal budget does not currently reflect their values and that the budgeting process is too complex to understand. It is indeed a complicated process. Many forces shape the federal budget, some of them are forces written into law—like the president’s role in drafting the budget—while other forces stem from the realities of our political system.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tells Newsmax TV in an exclusive interview that Democrats are feverishly raising money to defeat his re-election bid because "I'm a thorn in the side of the president," especially when it comes to trying to defund Obamacare. "I'm sure they'd like to defeat me," the Kentucky Republican tells Newsmax. "I'm frankly proud of my enemies." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is among several prominent Democrats and their supporters who are raising millions to stop the five-term McConnell in his election next year against Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes.

A House minority from white districts want to destroy the first black president, and the GOP majority abets them. On the day the Affordable Care Act takes effect, the U.S. government is shut down, and it may be permanently broken. You’ll read lots of explanations for the dysfunction, but the simple truth is this: It’s the culmination of 50 years of evolving yet consistent Republican strategy to depict government as the enemy, an oppressor that works primarily as the protector of and provider for African-Americans, to the detriment of everyone else. The fact that everything came apart under our first...

On Friday, MSNBC host Ed Schultz insisted that Republicans threatening to pass a budget which defuneds Obamacare, which could possibly result in a government shutdown, is motivated by the fact that President Barack Obama is “other.” Schultz said that the GOP is moved by “hate” and that an “element of serious racism” was clearly evident. “This is all about one thing: obstructing this president,” Schultz said. “To come to the conclusion and to have a big summary to the American people that this president is not legitimate. He is other. We’re not going to let him succeed.” Schultz said that...