Free Republic

So Karl Rove was involved in a cover-up. Well, leave it to Karl -- the “boy genius” and the “architect” -- to orchestrate a cover-up that actually hides information exculpatory to his President and his party. He did just that on the issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in Iraq. This is not an outlier either -- this is just Rove being Rove. And ‘Rove being Rove’ has sewn the seeds of destruction that gave us Barack Obama in 2008, and again in 2012, and has scattered political germs that still haunt Republicans to this day. This goes back...

We have been seeing America go to the "dogs" for 6 years now and still some "brain dead" fools cling to the idea that they will stay home rather than vote for a "Pubbie" that they deem a RINO.

Just as a high stakes gambler in the wrong place at the wrong time might get "rolled" from time to time, Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson appears ripe to get "Roved" yet again based upon reports he's "donated $10 million to a Karl Rove-backed outfit boosting Republican Senate candidates and promised a similar amount to an allied group focused on House races."

Tuesday might have been a bad night for immigration reform -- but not necessarily. That's the message from Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform. He favors the kind of immigration reform -- including a large guest worker program and more legal immigration -- that many Tea Party activists vehemently oppose. But it’s not guaranteed, and it depends on the media narrative that emerges, he added. “Give it ten days,” Norquist said. If a consensus emerges that Cantor’s stance on immigration lost him his seat, then that’s a big problem for reform proponents. “If the narrative hardens that...

Neel Kashkari swings an axe in his ubiquitous television commercial. But he hasn't found an axe big enough to cut into Tim Donnelly's lead among Republican voters. A new Hoover Institution "Golden State" poll shows that Kashkari is only pulling 5% of the vote, barely above the 4% margin of error, a distant third behind popular Democrat incumbent Gov. Jerry Brown at 36%, and Tea Party favorite Assemblyman Tim Donnelly with 12%. A large chunk of voters--35% overall--is still undecided. Kashkari will need to tap into those voters in the final few days of the race in order to finish...

More Republicans are pushing for an immigration overhaul.House Republican leaders are mum on a timetable for advancing immigration overhaul legislation and have so far been noncommittal on moving on the issue before the end of the 113th Congress. But a group of mayors and business leaders from across the political spectrum is determined to prove that momentum is growing for a rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws — even among conservatives. The coalition, Partnership for a New American Economy, on Wednesday held the first in a series of monthly conference calls moderated by Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist...

Conservative activist Grover Norquist wants to name 3,000 things after Ronald Reagan. His next target is a small mountain in Democratic Sen. Harry Reid's home state. The would-be Mount Reagan, at 3,366 feet, is not nearly the highest peak in Nevada. But it does overlook Las Vegas and, as such, would remind all who visit and live there of the former two-term California governor who went on to become president and lodestar of the Republican Party.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Grover Norquist, the influential conservative who serves as president of Americans for Tax Reform, thinks there are only six Republicans who can win the 2016 Republican nomination for president. His list, which he told Business Insider in an approximately hour-long interview Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. "There are only six people who can credibly run start-to-finish, and any of them could conceivably win the presidency," Norquist said....

If GOP consultant Karl Rove is trying to figure out why he’s struggling to rally support for his causes, maybe he should remember an old truth: that the Republican Party’s true strength is its conservative base. Donations to Rove’s three political groups have dropped an astounding 98 percent since he waged his war on the tea party. Much of that decrease may be because 2013 was not an election year. But the plunge can also be attributed to donors’ realization that Republican candidates generally win elections only when they act Republican and not “Republican light.” In 2012, Rove-founded groups took...

On Election Night 2012, Democrats had more than the reelection of President Obama to celebrate. Karl Rove, the mastermind Republican strategist hated and feared by Democrats, had a meltdown live on Fox News. A new documentary, "Mitt," Greg Whiteley's film of Mitt Romney and his family during his 2008 and 2012 presidential bids, released on Netflix on Friday, sheds more light on that bizarre incident. Rove's famous hissy-fit took place when the network called the state of Ohio for Obama, putting the president over the 270 electoral votes needed to win reelection. Rove argued that Fox's analysts had acted prematurely.

Recently released tax forms shed light on the big salaries that an elite corps of political organizers earned during the 2012 elections — and those who made the most often boasted the fewest wins. The new disclosures reveal fresh specifics about the six- and seven-figure salaries reaped by the political consultants, lawyers, fundraisers and media buyers who ran the top super PACs and politically active nonprofits in 2012. -snip- Steven Law, the president of the American Crossroads super PAC and its tax-exempt affiliate, Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, made $1.1 million during the election cycle. That includes $602,935 from Crossroads GPS...

Billionaire Harold Simmons died Saturday night at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, says wife Annette. He was 82. Annette Simmons tells our Alan Peppard that the East Texas native, who currently sits at No. 40 on Forbes’ list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, has been “very sick for the last two weeks,” and in Baylor’s intensive care unit for the last eight days. She did not reveal the specific cause of death. “He’s had a hard time,” said Annette of her husband, namesake of the foundation that has dispensed hundreds of millions to local organizations.

Karl Rove and more than one hundred Republican donors sent a letter to Republican members of Congress on Tuesday, urging them to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would include, among other provisions, granting "legal status" to illegal aliens who meet certain criteria. Anticipating that lawmakers will face resistance to the bill when they go home for the August recess, the letter marks the escalation of a campaign in which Republican leaders and donors are pressuring House Republicans to act on an immigration reform bill. The letter begins: “We write to urge you to take action to fix our...

A conservative nonprofit is launching a new ad touting Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) as partners in the fight against ObamaCare. The ad, from Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, is backed by a $382,000 buy and will run for a week across the state. “For Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, fighting ObamaCare isn’t about politics. It’s a fight for the Kentucky families who are losing their health coverage,” the ad says. It adds that the two are “working together to stop ObamaCare.” The spot could give McConnell some cover on his right flank, where he faces a challenge...

In response to the news that Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS is funding Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) to the tune of $26 million in 2012, Tea Party Patriots National Coordinator Jenny Beth Martin told Breitbart News that Rove cannot buy his way into the conservative movement. “The old adage 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer' is more relevant in today’s political arena than ever before,” Martin said. “It is not surprising that there are groups we thought were in this fight with us have been shown to have ulterior motives."

Tax documents from Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS show that Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) is largely funded by Rove, ProPublica’s Kim Barker reports. -snip- On its 2012 tax return, Barker reported, the biggest grant Rove’s Crossroads GPS gave to anybody was a $26.4 million grant it gave to Norquist’s ATR for “social welfare.” -snip- ATR spokesman John Kartch and Rove spokesman Jonathan Collegio both declined to answer specific questions from ProPublica about the grant.

President of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist heaped praise upon Chris Christie on Wednesday, calling him a “strong voice for conservative governance” who has “moved mountains” in his state. In an interview with Katherine Timpf of Campus Reform, Norquist called Christie “one of the six or seven who could run as a successful governor for the Republican nomination.” -snip- Norquist called Christie a “fine voice for the Northeast Republicans,” and said we must “grade on a curve” for Republican governors who have had to manage divided governments as Christie has.

Americans for Tax Reform, the politically active nonprofit headed by longtime antitax activitst Grover Norquist, raised and spent nearly $31 million in 2012, according to its tax filing for the year -- a new record for the group. -snip- In addition, the vast majority of ATR's funds -- $26.4 million, or 85 percent -- came from Crossroads GPS, the 800-pound-gorilla among conservative dark money nonprofits that are highly politically active and don't disclose their donors. That means that ATR used at least a sizable portion of the Crossroads grant to fund its political ads, even given the fact that it...

On its 2012 tax return, GOP strategist Karl Rove’s dark money behemoth Crossroads GPS justified its status as a tax-exempt social welfare group in part by citing its grants of $35 million to other similarly aligned nonprofits. (Here’s the tax return itself, which we detailed last week.) The return, signed under penalty of perjury, specified that the grants would be used for social welfare purposes, “and not for political expenditures, consistent with the organization’s tax-exempt mission.” But that’s not what happened. New tax documents, made public last Tuesday, indicate that at least $11.2 million of the grant money given to...

Leaders of the Republican establishment, alarmed by the emergence of far-right and often unpredictable Tea Party candidates, are pushing their party to rethink how it chooses nominees and advocating changes they say would result in the selection of less extreme contenders. The push comes as the national Republican Party is grappling with vexing divisions over its identity and image, and mainstream leaders complain that more ideologically-driven conservatives are damaging the party with tactics like the government shutdown. The debate intensified on Wednesday after Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the deeply conservative Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, lost a close race...