Free Republic

E.W. Jackson, a minister and attorney from Chesapeake, pulled off a stunning upset last night, topping six rivals for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor. Jackson fended off a late charge by Pete Snyder, a Northern Virginia technology entrepreneur, capping an epic four-ballot battle at the Richmond Coliseum that lasted nearly 10 hours.

Conservative activist and political pundit Gary Bauer believes former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin would make a "fantastic" United States senator. A recent Republican survey showed the high-profile former GOP vice-presidential nominee with a two-percent edge (32% to 30%) over Alaska Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell for the right to challenge incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Begich next year. Joe Miller, the tea party-backed nominee in 2010, finished a distant third with 14 percent. The poll was commissioned by the Tea Party Leadership Fund, which is hoping to convince Palin to enter the race. Thus far she has not expressed any public interest...

Less than a month remains before the June 4th special election for Congressman in Missouri's 8th Congressional District. Both major candidates continue to get endorsements from within their own party. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has endorsed the Republican contender Jason Smith while the Democratic contender has received an endorsement from Governor Jay Nixon. Others running for the open seat, that was vacated when Jo Ann Emerson resigned, include Constitution Party candidate Doug Enyart, Libertarian Bill Slantz and two write-in candidates Thomas Brown and Doctor Robert George.

Republican Sen. Dean Heller (Nev.) is preparing legislation to prevent the Internal Revenue Service from hiring new agents to implement ObamaCare in light of the agency's targeting of conservative groups. The scandal has prompted fears that the IRS is incapable of neutrally enforcing major provisions of the healthcare reform law, including its individual mandate to buy insurance. "It is necessary that both Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services [HHS] look closely at the money given to the IRS through the healthcare law," Heller wrote to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Tuesday.

The campaign of civil disobedience in Birmingham ended with a deal between white business leaders (77 in all) and black leaders to desegregate the city and hire more black employees in private businesses and city government alike. On the afternoon of Friday May 10th Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and Dr. Martin Luther King appeared with other black leadership to announce the deal and a few hours later white business leader Sidney Smyer released a statement acknowledging the deal. White leaders kept a low profile fearing retaliation. The Ku Klux Klan had kept quiet during the protests in Birmingham, but they had...

Even with Republicans holding unprecedented political power across the South, Democrats remain mostly in charge of urban centers in otherwise conservative states. Yet increasingly that control is threatened, not at the ballot box, but by Republican-led legislatures reaching into local governing decisions, often over objections. In Georgia and North Carolina, GOP efforts range from regionalizing the Charlotte airport, the Atlanta metro transit system and the Asheville water system to redrawing district lines for local offices to benefit Republican candidates. Republicans insist there’s no power play at work as they do battle with Democrats such as Charlotte Mayor Antony Foxx, who...

RALEIGH — The historians, doctors, preachers, lawyers, raging grannies, students and others gathered around the second-floor fountain inside the Legislative Building and belted out “This Little Light of Mine” and other songs. They were diverse in age and backgrounds but united in voice as part of a protest movement gaining numbers in recent weeks. In the four months since North Carolina Republicans took control of both General Assembly chambers and the governor’s mansion, the lawmakers have proposed rapid and sweeping change to the state’s electoral processes, health care policies, welfare management and publicly-funded education systems. The Republicans, some who emerged...

Here is an excellent YouTube video by Bill Whittle of PJTV Afterburner.[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7BSgwtNNS8?feature=player_detailpage] video linkMr. Whittle makes quite valid points and we -- as well as the Grand Obsolete Party (GOP) -- should take them (and him) seriously. Will the GOP do so, or simply continue doing more of what hasn't worked and won't work again? I expect the latter but would very much like to be pleasantly surprised. Tip of the hat to Geneb527.

My name is Nicholas Buford. I'm a 19-year-old black Republican from Georgia. I currently attend Valdosta State University, where I have just wrapped up my freshman year, attempting to major in political science. I serve as the senator of the freshman class of Valdosta. I am the first black Republican in my family of very religious, conservative Democrats. No one in my family had ever been politically active before, but I have loved politics since I was 13 years old. After the election in 2008, I decided to find out the values of the two political parties. I came to...

On Thursday, Republican senators put the brakes on the confirmation of President Obama’s nominee for EPA chief, Gina McCarthy, saying that they were “completely unsatisfied� with the answers she was providing to their lines of questioning. Via Reuters: The dispute over McCarthy stems from more than 1,000 written questions Republican senators asked her after her confirmation hearing – what Democrats say is a new record for the number of written questions asked of a nominee. … David Vitter of Louisiana, the top Republican on the Environment Committee, told reporters their boycott was not related to McCarthy’s qualifications but to her...

President Obama continues to hold a substantial advantage over congressional Republicans in public regard. Obama’s job approval is back in positive territory at 51%, after slipping to 47% in March. By comparison, just 22% approve of the job Republican leaders in Congress are doing, among the lowest approval rating for congressional leaders from either party in 20 years. Furthermore, a record-high 80% say Obama and Republican leaders are not working together to address important issues facing the country, and by nearly two-to-one (42%-22%) more blame Republican leaders than Obama for the gridlock. Despite GOP leaders’ poor job ratings, the Republican...

CHARLOTTE (CBS Charlotte) – Angry about his sister’s congressional election loss to Mark Sanford, Stephen Colbert did the logical thing – and declared Sanford his new sister

After his late Wednesday release from jail Dr. Martin Luther King was angry. He thought jail time would advance the movement but President Kennedy wanted to defuse any increase in tension. The Kennedy Administration cajoled Birmingham's black leaders to get him out. MLK had hoped JFK would help the civil rights cause but Kennedy wanted to hold the coalition of northern blacks and liberal whites who with southern segregationist whites had narrowly elected him president in 1960. King now set an 11am Thursday May 9th deadline for a final deal between white business leaders and black leaders in Birmingham to...

In the short time as a Republican, Emmanuel "Manny" Roman has made more than a few enemies at the Miami-Dade Republican Party. And now that Roman is running for vice-president of the county party, he's feeling the backlash... Roman voted for and contributed to Barack Obama in 2008, that he became a Republican less than two years ago and that he "DID NOT VOTE in the 2012 general election!"

Illinois Republicans have just forced state party chair Pat Brady to resign because of his support for gay marriage. What is this, Alabama? Brady, rather famously, came out in support of gay marriage in January of this year, and even made phone calls to lawmakers urging them to support gay marriage legislation before the Illinois legislature. And now he’s politically-dead, killed by a Republican party so permeated with hate and intolerance that even in a moderate-Republican state like Illinois, the GOP just couldn’t stomach having a fag-lover as party chair. This is why I, an Illinois Republican, left my party...

Chief Executive magazine releases its ninth annual survey of CEO's opinions about the best and worst states for business – and Republicans are governing in all of the top 10. “In the minds of most leaders, a state’s friendliness is closely aligned with its tax and regulatory regime. Similarly, workforce quality also measures the perceived cooperativeness of workers with management, as well as the people’s general work ethic and education attainment,” the report write-up states. Only three Republicans govern in the bottom 10 states – Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey (ranked 46th), Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan (ranked...

When the "Senior Citizens Committee" of Birmingham got together late on Tuesday May 7th the business leaders who had defeated Bull Connor felt defeated by the civil rights protests and the demands for integration in the city. At least one of them suggested asking Governor George Wallace for a martial law declaration. But the pressure was on for a negotiated solution. The official line from the Kennedy Administration was that the President was "monitoring" the situation in Birmingham but in reality his people were leaning on the business leaders and Dr. Martin Luther King for a negotiated solution. The negotiations...

Dave Wasserman �@Redistrict 5m It's over: Sanford wins. #SC01 Retweeted by Jay Cost and 1 other

When non-violent protestors faced the dogs and water cannon of Bull Connor in Birmingham, spectators by the hundreds were angered. They shouted at the police and firefighters to be sure, but then some of them picked up rocks and other objects and began to hurl them. As the media spread the images of the violence around the country sympathy and outrage spread. People were moved to give money to the protest movement, others wanted to come down and get arrested like the children who first walked into the paddy wagons did. And yet others were just angered towards police and...

<p>CHICAGO -- There are published reports Illinois GOP Chairman Pat Brady is planning to step down for personal reasons.</p> <p>The reports have Brady announcing his resignation on Tuesday.</p> <p>Republican State Rep. Jim Durkin told the Chicago Sun-Times Brady is "leaving on terms that he's imposed on himself." Durkin says Brady, who he calls a dear friend, wants to spend more time with his family.</p>

Governor Palin via Facebook: More new taxes?How can we be divided on new taxes? In this horribly weak economy with an over-reaching, over-spending, anti-small-business government continually making the wrong decisions, Republicans can’t even stay committed to “No New Taxes”?Please step away from your Washington, DC bubble and get back in touch with the hard working people who sent you there. Read the planks in our party’s platform and then read our lips. Learn from history or face repeating it: NO NEW TAXES.- Sarah Palin The Governor also took to Twitter and released the following:

Cesar Conda is Marco Rubio’s Chief of Staff. He recently made his Tweets private (protected) so the general public can’t read them. Cesar Conda has been pushing amnesty for illegals on Twitter and else as Marco Rubio’s PR agent. Conda, who is an immigration lawyer, went to work for George Soros before becoming Rubio’s Chief of Staff. Cesar Conda worked on the editorial advisory board of George Soros magazine, The International Economy Magazine. Cesar Conda had been spinning lies about the amnesty bill about how illegal wouldn’t get welfare, wait more than 10 years for citizenship, etc. Those lies have...

NPR’s popular “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me” trivia show gets its fair share of big name political guests (Bill Clinton called in once, for example), but host Peter Sagal knows that there’s a specific shortage he’d like to fill: Republicans. Asked by Vulture, “Is there a dream guest for you? Someone you’ve been trying to get that you think you never will?” Sagal responded, “I would love to get more Republicans on the show.” "One of the things I really envy about Jon Stewart is how many times he’s able to get Republicans on his show. And that’s to his...

On May 3, 1963 Eugene "Bull" Connor was still officially the duly elected Commissioner of Public Safety responsible for the police and fire departments of Birmingham. But the election a month before of business community backed Albert Boutwell as mayor had his days numbered pending a final ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court. After the massive protest by hundreds of black children, some as young as six and seven years old, the day before Connor's jails were filled with them. He had no more room. When hundreds more students emerged from the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church at noontime, Connor had...

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) told Boston’s conservative radio host Howie Carr on Wednesday that the political momentum is starting to turn against the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill. When Carr asked the senator if this process behind the push for this bill is the “same thing as Obamacare” where “we have to pass it so we can read it,” Sessions replied: “Absolutely, it really is.” “That is exactly what it is,” Sessions said. “They’re selling the sizzle. They’re selling the smell. And it’s a shoe leather instead of a steak.” Carr said that though everyone...

On yesterday’s edition of “All In with Chris Hayes” we were greeted with narrative creation at its finest as host Chris Hayes attempted to define the arguments in favor of Voter Identification laws in North Carolina as merely the spoils of victory as opposed to any type of actual reasoned position.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) HAYES: If a skeptical person looks at what’s going on in north carolina and says, look, this is why we had elections, we had elections, the republicans won, they won the governorship, they haven’t had it since 1988, they’ve got all three branches of state government for the first...

Video at link

Back in the days of Operation Rescue protests blocking abortion clinic entrances I was in the mainstream media supervising news coverage on weekends when the demonstrations occurred. Police had apparently infiltrated the movement because they had advance knowledge of the first protests. They knew when I knew about a protest. I told protest leaders not to call me in advance but to wait until the protests began. I would then call the reporter and photographer to send them out. When Martin Luther King led a failed campaign of civil disobedience in Albany, Georgia in 1962 police and FBI informants were...

Can the Tea Party and establishment, moderate-minded conservatives ever reconcile? At The American Prospect, Abby Rapoport cites a new study as evidence it won't happen. [T]he gap between the two groups is huge. In the YouGov survey the study uses, more than two-thirds of Tea Partiers put themselves in the two most conservative categories on economic policy, social policy, and overall policy. Only 23 percent of non-Tea Partiers place themselves in the most conservative categories on all three issues; nearly 40 percent don’t locate themselves in the most conservative categories for any of the three policy areas. Most jarring: On...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This is A.J., San Francisco.  A.J., thank you for holding.  Great to have out program.  Hello. CALLER:  Yes, I had a question Rush.  On your Friday show you took a call and you said that if the GOP passes the immigration law, it's the end of the GOP, they'd be dead.  On yesterday's show you took a call from somebody and you said that Marco Rubio is a true conservative, basically we should still support him. So my question to you is, how can we support somebody who is sponsoring a bill that will kill the GOP?...

"Do the words 'Senator Sarah Palin' excite you?" That's the opening line of a recent email by The Tea Party Leadership Fund, which is trying to draft the former Alaska governor and past Fox News commentator to run for the Senate in 2014. The fund argues Palin has a clear path to victory in part due to recent polling showing incumbent Sen. Mark Begich, a Democrat, with less than 50 percent of the vote. But, it being a draft, the group hasn't talked with Palin about whether or not she's interested. And Palin – whose PAC didn't respond to request...

It is an amazing testament to how bad the other candidates were that Mark Sanford ran away with the race in South Carolina’s first congressional district. A deeply flawed man, he was the one guy the primary voters knew wouldn’t go wobbly in Washington. But they, and I, presumed he was over the issues with his ex-wife. Unfortunately, a couple of weeks ago we learned things were not settled. The NRCC and GOP abandoned Mark Sanford as a result. In a race the GOP could still — even now — win, the GOP decided it would rather lose than win....

A few days ago in the Senate, Harry Reid gave a small speech in which he called tea partiers "non-violent anarchists". Most people will probably either debate the merits of his points or refute them, I want to point out that historically, he is in line with what earlier progressives believed. Before I give you the quotes, my reason for doing this is to highlight one single thing: Progressives do not change. They change the outside; they wear different suits, they use different language and key words, they even call themselves by different titles. "I'm a liberal", or "I'm a...

Hold your horses! While all the talk’s been about which Democrat will be the next mayor of Philadelphia, there’s something brewing in the previously pulseless, but now rejuvenated local GOP - including the possible candidacy of a surprising dark horse. In the party’s worst-kept secret, the power brokers from the divided factions in the city’s Republican Party have been quietly meeting over the past few months, and there are signs that the party may be ending its civil war and rallying behind a new leadership team as early as this week. This would be welcome news for party activists that...

Southern Christian Leadership Conference Executive Director Wyatt Walker called it "Project C" for confrontation. After a failed campaign of civil disobedience in Albany, Georgia the year before, Dr. Martin Luther King planned a new better planned campaign in Birmingham for the spring of 1963. There was a sense of hope in the air on Wednesday April 3rd. A "new era" was being hailed in Birmingham with the 8-thousand vote victory for white reformers who intended to change the city's commission form of government with a strong mayor and city council. The business leaders of Birmingham had engineered the campaign to...

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) during a hearing on Friday said that he believes that Islam as a whole is a threat to the United States, labeling it as a religion that will “motivate people to murder children.” Think Progress During a hearing he chaired on “Islamist Extremism in Chechnya: A Threat to the U.S. Homeland?” Rohrabacher continually referred to the 2004 Beslan hostage situation — in which Chechen extremists took control of a school in Russia resulting in the death of more than 180 children — as an example of the threat that Islam poses. At one point, the California...

Despite assurances by the likes of Nate Silver that these are solid polls showing "Overwhelming majorities of 80 to 90 percent of the public say they favor background checks," I have previously noted my skepticism of these claims. To me, it wasn't too surprising that the Senate voted down the gun control bill about 10 days ago. My concern is that people were really just being asked about whether they wanted to keep criminals from getting guns, not about the particular legislation being voted on by the Senate. Well, now there is another poll by the PEW Research Center that...

Frank Luntz may smugly believe that Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and other right wing talk radio hosts are "responsible for the stark polarization within the nation's political discourse" and therefore "problematic" for the Republican Party. I submit the problem is that Luntz, and a misguided over-reliance on focus groups, has neutered and thus destroyed any semblance of courage in the GOP's message. Luntz is conflating, as many wonks and number crunchers do, cause and effect with regard to the bigger realities and polarization. The country is polarized because, well, we are polarized. Rush and "the great one" didn't make it...

Republicans want to limit the number of bullets federal agencies can purchase so American gun owners can buy more.

Back in the 1970's with guys like Al Franken behind the skits, you could always count on a political edge to comedy on "Saturday Night Live." One such skit featured Garrett Morris as Martin Luther King and Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi as the Kennedy brothers (John and Bobby). The skit was about King asking for support for civil rights from the Kennedys and the Kennedys changing the subject. As a child I read John Birch Society literature ("Teddy Bare" by Alan Stang) making the point that Ted Kennedy was more "liberal" than his older brothers. Presidents are the ultimate...

Sentator Cruz recent remarks

The Republican party is full of rebranding efforts these days. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has his. And the NRSC is working on appealing to the young and hip with their Buzzfeed-style website. Now there’s Sen. Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, whose campaign is out with a new web video that splices inspirational lines from McConnell speeches and argues that the GOP is the party of opportunity for minorities and immigrants. But the video also has a decidedly Tea Party feel at times. It has gotten more than a million views in a day.

In the two-year cycle of the political calendar, it is candidate-recruitment season—the time when Washington operatives fan out across the country to size up the political horseflesh. In the months to come, they will meet with scores of state legislators, small-town mayors, community activists, and upstanding business owners, gauging which ones might have what it takes to run for a House or Senate seat, or for governor or state treasurer. These political scouts will take many qualities into account, from life story to speaking ability to baby-kissing skills. But they will be looking, in particular, for a few good women....

Sen. John McCain on Friday pleaded with business leaders to rally behind the immigration reform bill that he negotiated as part of the Senate’s Gang of Eight. Speaking at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's immigration reform summit, McCain (R-Ariz.) said the bill needs the full-throated support of industry to make it to President Obama’s desk. “We need your help. We need you to inform the people you represent. We need their active support, not just passive,” McCain said. “We need all of you, we need all of the people you represent to be actively engaged in the community.” Business groups...

The unfailing reverence on the American right for Ronald Reagan is understandable. He was the only exemplar of modern conservatism to win the White House, and unlike liberal icons such as Roosevelt or Johnson or Obama, he presided over an economic boom and became beloved by voters not normally drawn to his party. No wonder that Reagan, long before his death in 2004, attained mythical status in the conservative movement and the Republican Party. But that myth has become a burden for the modern GOP. It has bound Reagan’s followers on the right to policies and positions that were time-specific....

Mark Levin was incensed to learn that John Boehner has been negotiating with Democrats, in secret, to pass legislation that would exempt Congress, their families, and their thousands of staffers from Obamacare… “What a bunch of frauds! Absolute frauds!” Click excerpt link for audio ->

Republicans in the Senate and House are expected to introduce a joint bill Friday that would limit the amount of ammunition that federal agencies are allowed to buy and stockpile over the next six months, the Washington Free Beacon reports. The bill, titled the Ammunition Management for More Accountability or “AMMO” Act, is being proposed after several lawmakers have voiced concerns about some federal agencies, like the Department of Homeland Security, seemingly stockpiling large quantities of ammo. “DHS, for instance, has placed two-years worth of ammunition, or nearly 247 million rounds, in its inventory,” the Free Beacon notes. In a...

A fun clip from yesterday’s show via RCP, not just because this little wishcast/harangue is so obviously the product of spite and disgruntlement over losing the big vote but because it’s so obviously wrong. If you saw the new data from Pew this morning, you know why. Ninety percent support for expanded background checks in no way means that 90 percent of the pubic is angry at the GOP over the Senate vote. Rather, the vote on Toomey/Manchin was more of a proxy vote on gun control generally: If you want more GC then you’re angry or disappointed, if you...

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had a warm meeting with Obama for America Organizing for Action volunteers in Arizona, as the senator and the members of President Obama’s former campaign apparatus thanked each other for their alliance in support of Obama’s desired gun legislation. “The speakers commended Senator McCain for showing leadership on this issue, and made it clear that we’re still hopeful that, with his help and support, we will get a bipartisan law to protect our country and our local community,” OFA’s Erin Kelly wrote in a blog post today. “We were shocked and excited to see Senator McCain...

Institutions Worthy of Our Parties: Should the U.S. Switch to a Parliamentary System? Efforts to curb legislative partisanship have weak track records, so maybe we should consider changing the other side of the equation in order to establish a government that can actually get things done. Rick Hasen has a really interesting paper up discussing partisan polarization and the possibility of changing the Constitution to deal with it. (And you should really read Jonathan Bernstein’s response, too.) Hasen starts off by asking whether we should be considering moving toward a more parliamentary style of government. It’s a fair question. We...