Free Republic

Machiavelli’s famous advice to politicians is that it is better to be feared than loved. Less often quoted is an equally valuable admonition: avoid being hated. Jim DeMint, the former senator-turned-Tea Party leader at the helm of the Heritage Foundation, never tried to win the love of the Republican establishment. He did, however, succeed over the past several years, first as the junior senator from South Carolina and since last year, as head of the GOP’s most prominent think tank, at being feared by his fellow Republicans. But now he finds himself in the position of being merely despised. Read...

While Heritage has drawn the ire of Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) for its frequent opposition to leadership proposals, the presenters largely ignored the party leaders. Instead, the lawmakers who took the stage on Monday went out of their way to align themselves with the increasingly controversial organization. “When you’re working with the Heritage Foundation, I’ll bet on that team every time,” Jordan said, calling it “the greatest policy think tank in the whole wide world.”Conservatives on Monday offered a vision of a nation without ObamaCare, Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, and with the federal government offloading authority over a broad...

With President Obama vowing to make 2014 a "year of action" by executive fiat, top conservatives are sounding the alarm.  Obama “has acted like the playground bully who when he can’t have everything he wants, he decides to take his ball and go home” says Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint in a video address.The former GOP senator from South Carolina, warned that “our union will be much weaker and even more divided if the President attempts to rule the country by itself.” “President Obama warned that he has a pen and a phone—and that’s all he needs to rule from Washington,”...

Think Republicans have been making fools of themselves? Blame Michael Needham. Link only to a very interesting article. Consider the source.

Dick Cheney said Sunday that Republicans need to look to a new generation of leaders as the party deals with poor approval ratings following the government shutdown. The former vice president said Republicans have faced challenges before and it's healthy for the party to work to rebuild. The GOP "got whipped" in the 2012 presidential campaign, when President Barack Obama won re-election over Mitt Romney, and the party needs to build its base of supporters and find "first-class" candidates and turn to a new generation of leaders, Cheney told ABC's "This Week."

Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint called for an end to “pretend votes” and “gimmicks” to kill the Affordable Care Act and said Republicans must use the budget resolution to defund the president’s health-care law once and for all. DeMint dismissed the obstacles that a Democrat-controlled Senate and a likely presidential veto could pose to a House budget resolution. “This is must-pass bill. Our point is Republicans should fund the government in its entirety except for Obamacare,” he said. “They should send that bill to the president, to the Senate, make it clear to Americans, they don’t want government shut down.”...

Link Only

Heritage Action on Wednesday said it opposes a military strike against Syria, a position that will put pressure on Republicans to block President Obama’s request. The group said Tuesday’s Senate hearing made it clear there was no vital U.S. interest at stake. “Further, there is not a clear, achievable, realistic purpose to the use of force being contemplated by the Obama administration and officials offered little evidence such action would prevent further abuses,” the group said in a statement.

Conservatives such as Larry Holland say President Barack Obama’s health-care law will doom the nation and are urging Republican leaders to not abandon the fight against it. The 57-year-old retired firefighter was among about 650 people to pack a town-hall meeting in Columbus last night, calling on Congress to withhold funding in a last-ditch effort to block implementation of the law. “I want (House Speaker John) Boehner to defund it, but he doesn’t have the guts,” said Holland, of Mt. Vernon. “Our country is going down the tubes, and Obamacare is going to put companies out of business.”As implementation of...

South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint unexpectedly quit Congress this winter, saying essentially that he could better advance the conservative cause as president of the Heritage Foundation think tank than in Congress. Roughly eight months later, DeMint has no doubt pressed Congress, and House Republicans in particular, to take a conservative stance on such issues as the Farm Bill and President Obama’s health care law. Heritage and DeMint won at least a partial victory on the recent Farm Bill vote, getting the House to split funding for food stamps from the rest of the bill but saying more reform is...

Former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) on Monday night urged voters to replace any Republican lawmaker unwilling to vote to defund ObamaCare during next month's budget showdown. DeMint, the president of the Heritage Foundation, dismissed fears that Republicans would be blamed for a government shutdown, as they were in the 1990s. “The risk of that is so much less than the risk to our country if we implement ObamaCare, and so I’m not as interested in the political futures of folks who think they might lose a showdown with the president,” DeMint said at a town-hall meeting hosted by Heritage Action,...

Video at link

Former Sen. Jim DeMint (R – S.C.) is standing by the controversial Heritage Foundation study that put a $6.3 trillion price tag on the Senate immigration bill, saying: “There’s no doubt that these numbers are real.”

When South Carolina’s Republican Senator Jim DeMint resigned to head the Heritage Foundation most “outside the Beltway” conservatives were at first apprehensive about the net effect it would cause. The thinking on DeMint’s move slowly evolved to “Jim can do things outside of the system he can’t do/say while in the Senate.” It sounded reasonable – after all this was Jim DeMint. Since he took over Heritage DeMint has been an irritant to the Gang of Eight as they fight to destroy America by erasing our borders, but time has shown that alas he is not the “all in” warrior...

When South Carolina’s Republican Senator Jim DeMint resigned to head the Heritage Foundation most “outside the Beltway” conservatives were at first apprehensive about the net effect it would cause. The thinking on DeMint’s move slowly evolved to “Jim can do things outside of the system he can’t do/say while in the Senate.” It sounded reasonable – after all this was Jim DeMint. Since he took over Heritage DeMint has been an irritant to the Gang of Eight as they fight to destroy America by erasing our borders, but time has shown that alas he is not the “all in” warrior...

USBC News Wire- According to a study published by the Heritage Foundation, the shocking total cost of the controversial new amnesty program which was proposed by Democrats and liberal Republicans could reach as high as $6.3 trillion dollars. The entire federal budget for 2013 was for $3.8 trillion dollars...

I Have Seen Shameful Things By: Erick Erickson (Diary) | April 22nd, 2013 at 04:30 AM | 30 I am an immigration squish. There are jobs Americans won’t do at the existing price point. We have a real need in this country for unskilled workers who will pick domestic crops and do jobs Americans will not do for a low wage. I know a number of people who came here illegally who are harder workers than me, who love this country, and who just want a job. More specifically, I know a number of illegal immigrants — a few of...

Both the process and the content of the current immigration bill violate America’s core principles and legacy of immigration, according to Heritage President Jim DeMint. “This whole process is not really American, to take a few people and go behind closed doors and then come out and suddenly have it on the floor of the Senate for debate,” said DeMint on “The Mike Huckabee Show” earlier this week. (Listen here) “Instead of incomprehensible, comprehensive bills that are thousands of pages, we need to take a step-by-step approach so people know what we’re doing, and with immigration, the obvious priority is...

Sporting his new hat as the head of the Heritage Foundation, former Sen. Jim DeMint said Saturday said that conservatives should not rely on the GOP establishment to deliver the movement's message. He said it is time to take matters into their own hands.

<p>Columbia, S.C. – South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is expected to name Rep. Tim Scott as the replacement for outgoing Sen. Jim DeMint, Fox News has learned.</p> <p>Haley is slated to announce her decision at noon on Monday at the Statehouse. Scott was elected to Congress in the 2010 Republican wave. Haley's selection would make him the first black U.S. senator from South Carolina.</p>