Free Republic

The push to elect the Asian-American women is part of Republican efforts to tap into Democrat-style identity politics to try to find a way to stop — or even reverse — its eroding support among minority voters. “California is a precursor of the dynamic change, demographicswise, in America,” said Shawn Steel, a member of the Republican National Committee from California whose wife, Michelle, is one of the candidates. “So this is a harbinger. This is a call in the dark night saying, ‘Look, guys, let’s change. We have to adapt or die.’” In the state that controls the single biggest...

Sen. Lamar Alexander easily dispatched rival Republican Joe Carr in the Tennessee primary Thursday, completing a clean sweep for this year's Senate incumbents who faced intraparty challengers claiming the Tea Party label. Yet while they were winless, the hard-core conservatives intent on selecting a Senate more to their liking this year were far from utterly defeated. All of the challenged GOP incumbents reacted to the pressure by working to reconfirm their credentials with conservatives. This held true even for those whose credentials should have been least in doubt. Having induced this embrace of their policies and principles, the GOP's most...

A Democratic candidate for a judicial seat in Plainfield, Conn. was forced to answer questions about her husband this week after a watchdog group exposed his ties to the white supremacist movement. The Norwich Bulletin newspaper reported on Thursday that attorney Anna Zubkova, who is running for a seat as a probate judge, said she does not share the views of her husband, who runs a blog called "Mindweapons of Ragnarok" where he waxes about his views on race and white pride. The newspaper reported that the couple have been married for 17 years. "He did not have those views...

I don’t know who is going to win Saturday’s special Democratic Senate primary between Sen. Brian Schatz and Rep. Colleen Hanabusa — and it’s not just because there’s a lot going on in Hawaii right now (an earthquake rattled Hawaii on Thursday, and two tropical storms are on course to hit or come near Hawaii in the next five days). Instead, the polling picture in the Aloha State is a mess. One poll has Hanabusa up by 8 percentage points, and another puts Schatz up 8 points. Why the discrepancy? Hawaii’s diversity has troubled pollsters in the past and looks...

New York Times best-selling author and long-time journalist Ed Klein said that Valerie Jarrett has been engaging in secret meetings with Sen. Elizabeth Warren in recent months, giving rise to speculations that the Massachusetts political newcomer is actually the administration’s choice to head the White House in 2016. “President Obama has authorized Valerie Jarrett, his most important political adviser, to hold secret meetings with Elizabeth Warren to encourage her to challenge Hillary Clinton because the Obamas do not want to see the Clintons succeed them in the White House,” Mr. Klein said during a broadcast interview on “America’s Forum” on...

Democratic Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis on Thursday questioned the deployment of 1,000 National Guard troops on the border with Mexico to curtail illegal immigration and she promised, if elected, that she will study withdrawing them. The troop contingent was promised a month ago by current Republican Gov. Rick Perry, and it is expected that in the coming days they will begin to be deployed along the Texas-Mexico border, which stretches some 2,000 kilometers (about 1,240 miles). "The action I am ordering today will tackle this crisis head-on by multiplying our efforts to combat the cartel activity, human traffickers and...

Getting the president’s backing isn’t what it used to be—he looks set to go 0-2 on Saturday, with the two candidates he endorsed in his home state apparently headed for defeat.When Barack Obama vaulted onto the national stage a decade ago, part of his appeal was that he seemed to be from so many places at once. All corners of the country could lay claim to him: He was Hawaiian by birth, Illinoisan by choice, and Kansan by heritage, and he spent his formative years in New York City. He marched through the 2008 primaries by winning in both the...

Robert Draper’s New York Times magazine piece, “Has the ‘Libertarian Moment’ Finally Arrived?” dutifully if rotely runs through the greatest hits: Kennedy was on MTV, Nick Gillespie wears black and quotes Jack Kerouac, people bring guns to PorcFest, David Koch exists, libertarians disagree about abortion, and Rand Paul is not the ideologue his father is. There are some notable false notes, too: Draper describes Glenn Beck as a “partisan gunslinger” when he is if anything the opposite, a man who believes that “the Republicans have betrayed their own values” and who pronounces himself “done with them.” Glenn Beck no longer...

When Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, claimed earlier this week that Democrats were waging a “war on whites,” he lifted the lid on a simmering resentment that is very real and very resilient and feeds on anxiety — and fear — about a changing America, and the possibility of those changes upending historical architectures of privilege. On Monday, Brooks was on Laura Ingraham’s radio show to talk about Republicans’ deportation policies. She played a clip of Ron Fournier of National Journal on Fox News saying: “The fastest-growing voting block in this country thinks the Republican Party hates them. This...

In the August issue of Townhall Magazine, where this column originally appeared, RedState director Bryan Pruitt makes the case for why it's far past time for Arizona Republicans to find a real conservative to represent their state. It seems that you can’t go a day lately without Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) appearing on television advocating the United States invade another country. On a recent particularly snarky appearance, when asked to name one country we absolutely shouldn’t invade no matter what the circumstance, an answer eluded him. Not even Canada, really? Now of course, the context for the conversation was the...

Thursday at the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health hearing titled, “Combating the Ebola Threat,” Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) said he will be requesting funding for a "pandemic." Smith said, "This is unprecedented. Many people are not cooperating with efforts to contain the disease. There is an information gap. Despite the efforts through cell phone and radio to get the message out, there is a learning curve. as we consider what to do to meet this health challenge, I suggest we get funding levels for pandemic preparedness. This is for congress and the executive branch, in a restricted...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Wednesday’s political coverage was about as predictable as the drive by media fawning over the Obama regime. The narrative had already been set. Now the media, flush with Potomac fever, a disease far worse than Ebola, announced the tea party is dead. For liberals, the tea party probably is like a monster from a bad horror movie. Unfortunately, liberals never seem to learn. The monster in the bad horror movie never dies. Neither does the tea party. The left picked a curious race to call as the end of the tea party. In Kansas, Dr. Milton Wolf, Barack Obama’s second...

Three events occurred in the tight confines of Capitol Hill last week that underscore the Republican Party’s extraordinary institutional decline and its responsibility for the Congress’ fully deserving its “do-nothing” label. First, early in the week, all but seven Republicans in the GOP – controlled House of Representatives voted to give Speaker of the House John Boehner of Ohio the go-ahead to sue President Obama because they claim his executive orders are in violation of the constitution. The purpose of that “political stunt” – the president’s words for the lawsuit, which he and the Democrats have come to relish for...

On Tuesday conservative activist and commentator Steve Baldwin penned an article for the right-leaning website Barbwire calling for the emergence of a third political party in the US, one made up of religious and fiscal conservatives that could supplant the Republican Party. Baldwin even proposed a leader for this new political coalition – Sarah Palin, erstwhile governor of Alaska and, memorably, the vice-presidential Republican nominee in 2008. According to the activist, the thrust of this new political force would be to eliminate “all federal abortion funding, reversing Roe vs. Wade [the Supreme Court decision to legalise abortion], and prohibiting the...

PHOENIX -- Sarah Palin has endorsed Arizona Treasurer Doug Ducey for state governor. "Doug Ducey is the private sector job creator and proven conservative leader that Arizona needs as its next governor," the former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate said on her Facebook page. Ducey's endorsement came hours after the announcement of an event hosted by former Mesa Mayor Scott Smith and Gov. Jan Brewer, where she is expected to officially endorse Smith. Palin joins Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and many other conservatives who also endorse Ducey for governor. "Through his efforts as CEO, Doug grew Cold Stone Creamery...

It appears Hillary Clinton has launched her 2016 presidential campaign. HollywoodLife.com can exclusively report that Hillary has leased office space on a high-level floor of a corporate New York City office building, overlooking Times Square, for what sources are saying, is her campaign headquarters. It looks like Hillary Clinton has officially begun her campaign to be the next President of the United States. Three sources tell HollywoodLife.com that the former Secretary of State has rented sunny, spacious digs for two years in a midtown office tower, as the headquarters for her 2016 presidential bid. Hillary Clinton Sets Up Campaign Headquarters...

It is highly amusing, after six years of racist attacks on our first black president, to listen to Rep. Mo “war on whites” Brooks (R-AL), as Jason Easley wrote here yesterday, blame “Democrats for Republican racism by claiming that Democrats are using racism to divide the country and drive up minority voting turnout.” The “logic” here being that if we support the rights of minorities to be treated like people, we are anti-white, which differs not at all from the idea that if we support the equal rights of other religions we are anti-Christian. While all minorities are being attacked...

Via RCP, I want to believe it, I almost believe it — but I don’t really believe it. All the makings of a Democratic clusterfark are there. If O legalizes five million workers, plenty of blue-collar Democrats are bound to put two and two together and wonder what that means for their wages. And plenty of Democratic Senate incumbents in red states, like, oh, let’s say Mark Pryor, are going to panic, knowing what could happen if the backlash among conservatives is as ferocious as everyone expects. In fact, as Newt alludes to, both Pryor and North Carolina’s Kay Hagan...

Could Sarah Palin revive her political career through an ultra-conservative third party? If one former California State assemblyman has his way, yes. In an op-ed published on conservative Christian site Barbwire, activist Steve Baldwin says the GOP establishment just isn't cutting it. And he thinks Sarah Palin is his woman to change that. "We don’t want the GOP to pursue a 'socialism-lite' agenda. We want them to go on the warpath and do whatever it takes to stop the destruction of our constitutional Republic," Baldwin wrote. "It has become increasingly clear that the GOP leadership will do everything in its...

Lately, I had been thinking about writing a piece asking the question of whether Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is more like the late Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) or if he is more like President Ronald Reagan. For those of you who don’t remember — or who weren’t born yet — the irascible Helms served in the Senate from 1973-2003. He was well known for his independent streak, and he was certainly not shy about ignoring the will of Senate leaders when he did not see things their way. Some of his stubborn pursuits and lonely battles in the Senate are...