Free Republic

Over the last few days, since Romney clinched the GOP nomination for President by going over the 1,144 committed delegates needed with his win in the Texas Primary on Tuesday, May 29, 2012, a number of new endorsements have come in for Romney's bid for the Presidency. These include George Shultz, former Secretary of State; Condoliza Rice, former Secretrary of State and National Security Advisor; Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas and presidential candidate; and Nancy Reagan, wife of President Ronald Reagan. Here's what each of them had to say on the date they endorsed Romney: NANCY REAGAN endorses Mitt...

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., has defeated fellow Republican Rep. Don Manzullo in the state's 16th District GOP congressional primary. The AP called the race for Kinzinger just after 11 p.m. Eastern time. With 85 percent of precincts reporting, Kinzinger led Manzullo 56 percent to 44 percent. The race between Kinzinger and Manzullo, forced because Illinois lost a congressional seat and state Democrats controlled the redistricting process, followed a common tea party-against-establishment trend in recent GOP primaries. But the script flipped here, with 10-term veteran Manzullo garnering the bulk of the tea party and movement conservative support while Kinzinger, a freshman,...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) endorsed Mitt Romney's presidential bid on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday morning.

BALTIMORE, Md. — During a House GOP retreat in Baltimore on Friday, press secretaries for Speaker of the House John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor balked when asked if their bosses believe Attorney General Eric Holder should resign over Operation Fast and Furious. Sixty-three congressmen, two senators, two sitting governors and every major Republican presidential candidate have demanded Holder’s ouster over the resulting scandal. And 89 congressmen have signed a House resolution of “no confidence” in Holder as the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Between the two lists, which don’t perfectly overlap, 101 members of the House have...

60 Minutes� grilled Majority Leader Eric Cantor on why he is Republican. “You’ve taken a lot of criticism from American Jews for being a Republican… They’re very critical of you.� Video Maybe because democratic policies are bankrupting the country?… Maybe because 50% of Democrats oppose Israel.How dare he stray off the plantation. Lesley Stahl profiles House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. In this wide-ranging interview, Cantor describes his childhood in Virginia, his identity as a Jewish Republican, and his current reputation as a legislative “Dr. No.� Despite mounting public frustration with partisan bickering in Congress, Cantor says he is willing to...

Has anybody know anything as to why Cantor tabled the Inside Trading Bill. He said something about the bill needs more looking into? Hay, Cantor let me write the bill. Even a Elected Elite would understand. 1)All Federal elected personal and immediate family are subject to inside trading laws and bribing laws. 2)All Federal employees and immediate family are subject to inside trading laws and bribing laws. 3)All Non Paid Staff members and immediate family are subject to inside trading laws and bribing laws.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- The FBI says a Tennessee man has been charged with threatening the family of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia. Agents arrested 62-year-old Glendon Swift of Lenoir City on Wednesday. He is accused of leaving two voicemail messages...

Rush Limbaugh admonished House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Monday for acknowledging on “Fox News Sunday” that the Occupy Wall Street movement has some legitimate gripes. Cantor insisted that protesters’ focus is misdirected — on Wall Street instead of on policymakers on Congress. Limbaugh had none of that, insisting on his show Monday that accepting any part of the ‘Occupy’ message is inappropriate and hurts the Republican Party. ...more (w/video)...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said repeatedly Sunday that Republicans agree that too few people control too much wealth in America. "We know in this country right now that there is a complaint about folks at the top end of the income scales, that they make too much and too many don't make enough," Cantor said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, toning down his earlier criticism of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Liberal group takes credit for audience member asking Obama to raise taxes By Alicia M. Cohn - 09/28/11 09:32 AM ET Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, a campaign by the progressive group The Agenda Project, on Tuesday took credit for a member of the audience who asked President Obama to raise his taxes during a town hall meeting in Silicon Valley on Monday. “Will you please raise my taxes?” the man said. “It kills me to see Congress not supporting the expiration of the tax cuts that have been benefiting so many of us for so long." It was a...

The legions of protestors around the nation demanding more economic parity, coupled with anger over the Obama administration’s Israel policies, will drive more Jews to vote Republican next year, said the Jewish majority leader of the House, who recently referred to those protestors derisively as a “growing mob.” “There’s no secret that most American Jews are Democratic, but I do think [the 2012] election will be different,” said Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in Congress, in an exclusive interview with The Jewish Week during a New York visit Sunday. “I do think the attraction that American Jews have to...

Chris Christie's departure has left most of the Republican Party resigned to a choice between Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, but there are holdouts, and some of those holdouts are, I'm told, carrying a torch for a new figure: Eric Cantor. The House Majority Leader, subject of a big New York Magazine profile this week, has given no indication at all that he'd run for president, and this seems extremely unlikely to change. Nonetheless: "You’ve got a lot of the same guys who were looking at Christie who still thinks there’s an opening," said a prominent Republican operative. "A lot...

A senior advisor to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is leaving his federal post to open a "super PAC" that can raise unlimited amounts from individuals and corporations to back conservative Republican candidates and causes. The move by John Murray, who served as Cantor's deputy chief of staff, is another indication that congressional leaders are looking to raise fund through super PACs, new, technically independent political organizations that were spawned as a result of a controversial Supreme Court decision in 2010. In an interview Wednesday, Murray confirmed that the new super PAC fundraising is intended to support efforts such as...

Few people are enthused about the the president’s jobs plan, as Obama’s low approval and climbing disapproval rates attest, but Republicans have said they’re willing to work with him on some of his proposals. House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, for example, has said his vision and the president’s vision might overlap in the territory of corporate tax reform. That doesn’t mean, however, that House leadership concedes the importance of comprehensively passing the president’s bill with all the urgency Obama has sought to make seem imperative. In fact, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said today on CNBC that Republicans are...

A popular idea in President Obama's new jobs bill could represent a step toward fundamentally transforming the existing system of federal jobless benefits. Some critics say such a move is long overdue--but others worry that a major overhaul could threaten a program that since the Depression has been a core component of the social safety net. Obama's jobs measure, sent to Congress Monday, contains a provision that would encourage states to replicate a voluntary Georgia program that allows jobless workers to continue collecting unemployment benefits while training with potential employers. (Last month, we looked at how effective the Georgia program...

Eric Cantor: potentially responsible for the death of school kids. That was the despicable depth to which Chris Matthews has sunk in his desperate attempt to stir up support for President Obama's latest stimulus scheme. On this afternoon's Hardball, Matthews suggested that by refusing to spend hundreds of billions on PBO's latest list of supposedly shovel-ready projects, Virginia Republican Rep. Cantor is endangering the lives of kids riding school buses across ostensibly rickety bridges in his district. The Hardball host helpfully ran a scroll of all such bridges in Cantor's district. View video here.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) issued the following statement on the debt limit negotiations: "Tonight, months after we had begun negotiations with President Obama, Vice President Biden, and the Administration, Speaker Boehner and I are ending discussions with the White House and beginning conversations with Senate leaders in the hopes of finding a solution to the debt limit debate in order to avoid default. Throughout the months of discussions, we have worked to identify real spending cuts, binding budget reforms, structural changes to save our entitlement programs, and significant debt reduction. Unfortunately, time and again...

House Republican leaders have missed a 36-hour deadline President Obama set during a Thursday meeting for lawmakers to give him a plan to avert a national default. The deadline came and went Saturday morning without a response from House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Instead, Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) plan to move the Cut, Cap and Balance Act on the floor next week, which would require passage of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution before the debt limit is raised. A House GOP leadership aide said at noontime Saturday that Boehner and Cantor did not send...

Reporting from Washington— A plan by the Senate's two top leaders to allow President Obama to raise the debt limit without congressional approval is emerging as the most likely strategy to avoid a looming federal default. The plan being drafted by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada would lock in about $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years — a figure considerably smaller than Republican leaders and Obama had been seeking. Administration officials have said they still would prefer a more sweeping deal on the deficit, but they signaled...

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has become both a key player and big pain to more seasoned negotiators in the White House talks over how to keep the government paying its bills after next month. "Eric, don't call my bluff," President Barack Obama warned late Wednesday after a dramatic back-and-forth with the Virginia Republican that made some in Cantor's party wince. "Enough is enough." Not for Cantor, second-in-command to Speaker John Boehner who is widely assumed to aspire to the House's top job. The testy exchange with Obama left Washington bubbling with speculation about whether the self-styled...

“Eric, don’t call my bluff,” the president said, warning Cantor that he would take his case “to the American people.” He told Cantor that no other president — not Ronald Reagan, the president said — would put up with the treatment he was getting from the House majority leader. The latest and sharpest in a series of harsh exchanges between the two leaders heightened concern that markets could crash at any time amid fear of a reduction in the rating on once-ironclad U.S. debt. Cantor accused the president and congressional Democrats of progressively low-balling, over the last several days, the...

.At his press conference on Monday, President Obama made clear that his frustration with House Republicans' intransigence in negotiations to raise the federal borrowing limit did not extend to their leader. "I think Speaker Boehner has been very sincere about trying to do something big," Obama said, one of several compliments in an extended embrace of his negotiating partner. "The politics that swept him into the speakership were good for a midterm election; they're tough for governing." Tough indeed. And a death hug from a polarizing Democratic President doesn't make the task easier for Boehner. From the start of his...

Thank you, Eric Cantor.  Thank you for walking out on useless talks, presided over by Vice President Biden, addressing raising the limit on our nation’s debt. According to press accounts, Republican House Majority Leader Cantor called it quits on talks between Democratic and Republican leaders because Democrats refuse to give in on raising taxes. This, I am sure, is true.  But we also must understand the deeper and broader issue. We are in nothing less than hand to hand combat, fighting for what America is about and what it takes to get this country back on track of growth and...

The GOP is now totally out of budget negotioations and the Democrats are spinning it as them throwing the leadership of Boehner and McConnell under the bus. The conventional wisdom they are trying to establish is that deficit reduction will never happen without hiking taxes and nobody in the GOP wants to be that kamikaze pilot. Cantor specifically is being painted as selfishly putting his power first. Even if we wanted to grant that may be true, it's only 1% of the story. They are ALL putting their power first. This is a crisis that may take the nation to...

While most speakers at the Faith and Freedom Coalition played up conservative themes, Donald Trump delivered a crowd-pleasing reprise of a few old favorite themes. But also in his sights: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who has called for spending offsets for disaster-relief funds following a tornado in Joplin, a southwest Missouri town, that killed at least 138 people. “Rep. Cantor, who I like, said we don’t want to give money to the tornado victims. And yet in Afghanistan, we’re spending $10 billion a month,” Trump said. “But we don’t want to help the people that got devastated by tornadoes,...

For a political party, the only thing worse than losing an election, is losing an election that that party should have won.  Such was the case in New York's 26th Congressional District on May 24, where the Democratic candidate won a victory that by all rights should have gone to the Republican.But from the ashes of defeat, one can glean something positive.  For in the course of winning a single election, in a single district, the Dems have revealed their strategy for 2012.  They have opened their playbook to reveal both the issue -- Medicare -- they intend to...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor turned the policy temperature down on austerity this week by rolling out a strong economic-growth agenda. Headlined by a 25 percent top tax rate for individuals and business, the Cantor package includes regulatory relief, free trade, and patent protection for entrepreneurs. It’s job creation and the economy, stupid. Sounds Reaganesque? Well, Eric Cantor has a lot of Reagan blood in him. Back in 1980, while Cantor was still in high school, his father was the Virginia state treasurer of the Ronald Reagan presidential campaign. So the apple never falls far from the tree. In fact,...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Monday that he would like to see House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan run for president in 2012 and suggested that any candidate considering a 2012 bid should embrace the Wisconsin Republican’s budget plan to cut trillions over the next ten years. “Sure,” Cantor replied enthusiastically when asked if he would like to see Ryan jump into the race against President Obama. “Paul’s about real leadership. I think that that’s what this public so desperately wants to do right now. They want to see Washington that will lead. They don’t want to see individuals that...

What a difference a half-year makes. Just months after the 2010 mid-term victory for Republicans, they’ve been pushed to the brink of irrelevancy. Here are five reasons that the Republicans should simply concede the upcoming 2012 presidential election and cut their losses now: 1) Obama got his man. Nothing irks Republicans so much as a Democrat they can’t paint as being soft on crime or terrorism. Obama’s hit on Osama Bin Laden will go down as one of the most masterful military operations in American history. No one is shooting this sheriff. 2) The GOP doesn’t have their man. Or...

When it comes to a possible run for the presidency by Donald Trump, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is apparently not among those in the real-estate tycoon's camp, citing Trump's push to make sure President Obama is constitutionally eligible for the job. During an interview on CNN's "American Morning" today, Cantor was asked, "Would you support a Donald Trump candidacy, especially with all this birther talk?" The Republican from Virginia said, "No, I don't think he is really serious when we launch a – see a campaign launched on the birther issue." CNN host Kiran Chetry then asked, "But don't...

In a sign that Donald Trump’s self-promotion tour and possible run for president continues to make the Republican establishment nervous, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Wednesday minimized the wealthy developer’s run because he was focusing on President Obama’s birthplace. “I don't think he is really serious when we … see a campaign launched on the birther issue,” said Cantor (R- Va.) speaking on CNN’s “American Morning.”Trump has become almost a fixture on cable television shows in recent weeks as he has resurrected the issue of where the president was born. The Obama campaign long ago released documents showing Obama...

(CNSNews.com) - House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said on Monday that the new continuing resolution (CR) the House will consider this week to keep the federal government funded will permit the Obama administration to spend money on the implementation of Obamacare. Last Thursday, Reps. Steve King (R.-Iowa) and Michele Bachmann (R.-Minn.) sent a letter to Cantor, House Speaker John Boehner (R.-Ohio) and Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers asking them to include language in any future CR that would prohibit the administration from spending any money to implement Obamacare. King and Bachmann vowed not to vote for any CR that permitted...

Virginia Tea Party activists this weekend turned up the pressure on House Majority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) over the speed at which the GOP-led Congress is looking to cut spending.  Leaders of the Virginia Tea Party Patriot Federation issued a tough statement on Sunday, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, calling on Cantor to make deeper cuts to the budget at a faster pace. "We are extremely disappointed in Eric Cantor, but not surprised," Mark K. Lloyd, the group's chairman, said in a release. "The will of the American people was pretty clear in November — cut, cut, cut spending. Apparently,...

On Friday, 92 Republicans, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, joined all of the Democrats to defeat an amendment offered up by Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn to ensure the GOP lived up to its “$100 billion in cuts” pledge. This was a failure of leadership, particularly by Eric Cantor. Blackburn’s amendment, by its own description, would have “reduce[d] spending by 5.5% in 8 non-securiy spending subsections of the bill and reduce[d] Legislative Branch appropriations by 11%.” In other words, just as Republicans pledged to bring spending down to 2008 levels, Congresswoman Blackburn’s amendment would have...

It’s the story that won’t die – possibly because MSNBC doesn’t want it to, since it seems that it could delegitimize the Republican Party and conservatives: Taking “fringe notions” and portraying them to be mainstream, including the issue of President Barack Obama’s citizenship. On Tuesday’s “Hardball,” host Chris Matthews led off his program and scrutinized the reasons why Speaker of the House John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor won’t condemn Republican members that question the president’s citizenship. His conclusion? Boehner and Cantor are collaborators, using the myth for political gain. “OK, you know what I want to do...

The race for the 2012 Republican nomination for President is becoming more concrete. GOP candidates made their pitches to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington on Feb. 10-12 and a straw poll of attendees was taken. The Washington Post reports Rep. Ron Paul of Texas won the poll, with about 30 percent of the 3,742 ballots cast. The poll doesn't say much as not one candidate received more votes than the other. Some of the biggest news from the weekend came from former vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin and she didn't even attend the conference. Palin hired...

<p>The new Republican House majority leader says he doesn't think questions about President Barack Obama's citizenship should play a role in the discussion of policy matters.</p> <p>Two years into the Obama administration, so-called birthers continue to argue that Obama isn't a natural-born citizen and that he hasn't proved he's constitutionally qualified to be president. Birth records in Hawaii haven't dissuaded them.</p>

It’s been a while for me, so I’m no longer sure of the protocols of dog dares, but this seems like a jump right to a triple. Harry Reid has insisted that any attempt to pass a full repeal of ObamaCare in the House would be doomed in the Senate and therefore a waste of time. In response, Eric Cantor told Reid to put it up for a vote if he feels that confident in the results: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor isn’t one to hold his feelings back — especially when it comes to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.On...

Last week was the week when the idea that Sarah Palin is going to run for president began to sink in properly. As I explained, she is an immensely viable candidate for the 2012 Republican nomination. Frank Rich, in the New York Times, argues that she is a shoo-in for Republicans because time is ripe for her populist stance, and because her defects are no greater than George W Bush’s when he jumped into the 2000 primary race. I am not so sure. The debates would prove a stiff test of her grasp of detail, and if she found the...

Sarah Palin’s use of crosshairs to target Democratic House incumbents is dangerous symbolism, Democrats say. But a party spokesman says it’s “a stretch” to compare Palin’s imagery to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s use of red and white bullseyes last year to target Republican incumbents. Broward County Democratic Chairman Mitch Ceasar played the Palin card this week when he condemned GOP congressional hopeful Allen West for urging tea partyers to make Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Klein “scared to come out of his house.” Palin endorsed West last week. So Ceasar noted that the former Alaska governor and VP nominee also...

Reid to Cantor: Stop 'throwing these bombs' Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is not backing down from his staff's attacks that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) is preparing to push an "extremist" agenda. "Well, I think we set the tone working together in the lame-duck session, the most productive in the history of our country, and we did that by working together," Reid said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "And I say to my friend, Eric Cantor, 'Let's stop throwing these bombs and doing things like thinking it's-- the American people are happy that you're sleeping in your office...

Following is the police statement that I found on liberal sites, using it to say the shot was "random" as the AP did. While the shot may not have had much force after it penetrated the window, this PRELIMINARY police statement does NOT reach any conclusion the shot was fired at "random". At least one liberal site posting this report acknowledged Cantor has reported other threats aside from the bullet: "The Richmond Police Department is investigating an act of vandalism at the Reagan Building, 25 E. Main St., Richmond, Virginia. A first floor window was struck by a bullet at...

Federal authorities have arrested a Philadelphia man and charged him with threatening to kill House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and his family. Norman Leboon will be charged with two federal counts: threatening to kill a member of Congress and interfering with his federal duties, and posting video online containing such threats. He is scheduled to appear in federal district court in Philadelphia on Monday afternoon. The arrest is the most serious in a string of threats of violence against lawmakers in wake of the divisive health care vote. At least 10 Democrats along with a handful of Republicans, including...

The man arrested in Philadelphia for a video death threat made against Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) did not limit his activity to the GOP minority whip. At his YouTube account, going by the name shiamuslimcantbestop, Leboon recorded hundreds of rambling, poorly-lit video threats against movie studios, politicians, religious figures and media pundits. I’ll be interested to see what conservatives do with the information that Leboon donated to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign — that decision aside, there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the threats Leboon would make, looking into a camera, as the self-appointed “messiah.” Leboon threatens...

My wife just told me that Eric Cantor is speaking about a gunshot through his window...sorry, that is all I know right now

Nothing online yet. Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, just before the news conference started, read a statement from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor that the House of Representatives was postponing all legislative business next week.A new schedule will be announced on Sunday. Presumably, the vote to repeal Obamacare will be put off from the planned January 12 date.

Changing how Washington works begins with a change in schedule, according to Brad Dayspring, spokesperson for Majority Leader-elect Rep. Eric Cantor. Cantor recently released the schedule that will govern the GOP’s first year of majority in the House. Kevil Nevins, who will serve as Cantor’s Deputy Chief of Staff, said the new schedule is possibly the biggest structural overhaul of the House calendar in 40 years. It’s a plan Nevins said Cantor is very committed to because he believes an altered structure will affect the House’s output. Two changes the office is hoping will pay off – literally – for...

Offered as a correction to this morning’s Headline item. Initially, the Hill reported that Cantor wanted to retain ObamaCare’s framework for preexisting conditions. Not so, as they now note in a postscript to the article: He wants to repeal the whole thing, then replace it with a GOP bill that will have its own, different preexisting conditions provision — but no individual mandate.How that’s going to work in practice, I have no idea. Cantor stressed that while he supports full repeal of the current law, Republicans share some of the same goals as Democrats, although they propose different ways of...

A so-called "Christmas" exhibit on display at the Smithsonian is coming under fire from Republican leaders on Tuesday. According to an article at The Blaze, the exhibit includes "mature themes" such as: ...images of male genitals, naked brothers kissing, men in chains, a mouth being sewn shut and an Annie Lebovitz portrait of comedian Ellen Degeneres grabbing her breasts. The exhibit, named “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” also includes video images of an ant-covered Jesus on a crucifix and a painting the Smithsonian describes as "homoerotic." David C. Ward, co-curator of the exhibit, told CNSNews.com: “This is an...

House Majority Leader-designate Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Monday that Republicans will not be seeking to completely scrap the healthcare reform law. Cantor said there are certain elements of current law that will be included in the GOP plan, which he said will move simultaneously with a repeal measure through the House. Provisions that Republicans will seek to retain include the barring of insurance companies from refusing coverage to patients with a pre-existing condition and allowing young people to stay on their parents' insurance plans until age 26. Speaking to more than 100 students at a town hall event at American...