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While calls for U.S. Attorney General Eric "Stonewall" Holder's resignation grow and the House GOP gears up for a contempt vote next week, it's worth remembering how we got into this mess. In two words: feckless bipartisanship. "I like Barack Obama and want to help him if I can." That was Utah GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch in January 2009, just weeks before the Senate voted on President Obama's attorney general nominee, Eric Holder. Right out of the gate, upon Obama's election in November 2008, Hatch signaled that he would greenlight the administration's top law enforcer. "I start with the premise...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was accused on Wednesday of flip-flopping for comments he made in 2007 indicating he was open to a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Romney's remarks, made on NBC's "Meet the Press" when he was a candidate for president, were circulated by rival Newt Gingrich's campaign the day after the former Speaker of the House of Representatives came under similar fire for suggesting during a debate Tuesday night that he was in favor of such a pathway for immigrants. Opponents of a pathway, a large swath of the early-voting Republican electorate, have...

<p>“I do not believe that the people of the United States are going to take people who’ve been here for a quarter of a century … [and] separate them from their families and expel them,” Gingrich said during a discussion about illegal immigration and border security. “I do believe we should control the border. I do believe we should have very severe penalties.”</p>

Washington and Des Moines - Throughout the roller-coaster Republican presidential contest, one thing hasn't changed: the stubborn refusal of many tea party supporters to warm up to Mitt Romney. The swift rise and abrupt fall of a succession of GOP candidates has been driven in part by the restless search for a Romney alternative by that group of voters, who energized the GOP's big turnaround in 2010. "They don't trust Mitt Romney," said Simon Conway, a Des Moines radio host popular with tea party followers. "Mitt Romney can be tea party one minute, and the next minute introduce 'RomneyCare'" —...

Republican leaders have started laying the groundwork to persuade GOP lawmakers to support a compromise on a tax increase, an issue that has deadlocked a congressional "super committee" pressed to come up with a deficit-reduction plan by next week. GOP leaders on Tuesday presented to their rank-and-file members a scenario under which Republicans would agree to $250 billion in new tax revenue over the next 10 years, largely by limiting itemized deductions for upper-income households.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) indicated on Tuesday that he has come around to Mitt Romney on the issue of healthcare. “Romney’s been very clear that he’s against ObamaCare and he’s going to repeal it. So I for a second don’t worry about whether he’s going to shy away from repealing the president’s health care law,” Ryan said in an interview with The Weekly Standard. (snip) Ryan went on to compliment Romney on a variety of issues. He described Romney as proving himself “pretty capable and strong and resilient” when it comes to the slew of GOP debates over the past...

The large Republican presidential field, along with the dramatic surges and collapses of several of its candidates, may ultimately be much ado about nothing. That, at least, is the conclusion of the Republican strategists surveyed in this week's National Journal Political Insiders Poll, who almost unanimously identified Mitt Romney as the most likely candidate to win the nomination. In the five times the GOP Insiders have been asked that question in 2011, Romney has never surrendered the top spot.

LAS VEGAS — For most Republican politicians, there is no smear more loathed, more insulting or more politically perilous than to be called a RINO — a Republican in Name Only. Not for Linda Lingle. “I’ve been called a RINO before, which I don’t mind,” the former Hawaii governor told a crowd of diehard Republican activists huddled in a Las Vegas ballroom. “There are a lot of people who support these RINOs, whether it’s me or [former New York Mayor] Rudy Giuliani or [former New Jersey Gov.] Christine Todd Whitman.”(snip) And from Lingle’s point of view, moderate Republican candidates such...

Is the GOP co-opting the tea party movement, or are tea partiers taking down the establishment and sending the RINOs packing? A lengthy New York Times magazine article this week quoted several establishment Republicans crowing over what they see as the demise of the two-year-old tea party activism. Bill Kristol, the neoconservative editor of the Weekly Standard and a Fox News contributor, said the tea party peddles "an infantile form of conservatism."Veteran Republican strategist Scott Reed took the disdain one step further, saying the GOP is steadily co-opting the grass-roots movement. "That’s the secret to politics: trying to control a...

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) touted “common ground” measures to spur job creation in the GOP weekly address on Saturday. The California lawmaker – a former small business owner – took to the airwaves promoting several areas in which he says there is bipartisan agreement. “By finding ways to support small business and promote entrepreneurship, we can rev up our economy and grow the jobs we need," he said. "And this shouldn’t be an exercise of partisan gamesmanship or credit-claiming." Noting that the Congress approved three trade deals for the president’s signature last week, McCarthy says that there are...

The Obama administration may have relied much more heavily on Romney’s Massachusetts healthcare legislation as a blueprint for Obamacare than was previously believed. White House visitor logs obtained by NBC News revealed that three of Romney’s healthcare advisers had up to a dozen meetings with senior administration officials, including one in the Oval Office presided over by President Barack Obama. “They really wanted to know how we can take that same approach we used in Massachusetts and turn that into a national model,” MIT economist and Romney healthcare adviser Jon Gruber told NBC. What’s more, the records show Gruber was...

(snip) Beyond South Carolina, Graham thinks the GOP should look to all corners of the country, “our pretty deep pool,” for its vice-presidential nominee. The Northeast, he predicts, could be the place to find a leader who balances the ticket. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, he says, would be excellent. Or, if Republicans were looking to Florida, freshman Sen. Marco Rubio, “a good guy, would obviously be very helpful.” Those two names, I say, are obvious. Graham smiles and floats another: Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor. “I know it would create problems on the social side,” he...

Florida’s most experienced political professionals are closely divided on whether Rick Perry or Mitt Romney will win Florida’s Republican presidential primary, but overwhelmingly they see Romney as the stronger candidate to beat Barack Obama in Florida. More than 100 of Florida’s sharpest political minds participated in the latest St. Petersburg Times Florida Insider Poll - including campaign consultants, lobbyists, activists - and the results were striking: Two thirds of Democrats and two thirds of Republicans pegged Romney as the stronger general election candidate, though Republicans were considerably more confident than Democrats that Perry would win Florida’s crucial presidential primary early...

One of New York's best-known Republicans is calling on pres idential hopeful Rick Perry to choose Rudy Giuliani as his running mate for next year's election. Former state GOP Chairman William Powers, a longtime Giuliani friend and a key player in his first mayoral election in 1993, told The Post that such a move by Perry could deliver key swing states like New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio to the Republicans. "He'd be the best No. 2 anybody in the world could pick," said Powers, who has a longstanding relationship with leading Texas Republicans like Karl Rove, former President George W....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Racing the clock to avoid a government default, President Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders reached historic agreement Sunday night on a compromise to permit vital U.S. borrowing by the Treasury in exchange for more than $2 trillion in long-term spending cuts.

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.), a Republican presidential candidate, called Saturday morning for Republicans and the Tea Party to stop fighting and work together to help save the country, presumably from Democratic policies, although he was not specific. "On the right, take note," McCotter said on the House floor. "It is as unwarranted and injurious for a Republican to call a Tea Partier a hobbit as it is for a Tea Partier to call a Republican a RINO."McCotter was referring to a comment earlier this month from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who compared Tea Partiers to hobbits. That sparked rebukes from...

A large umbrella group for Tea Party activists targeted Republican leaders Tuesday for what they called caving in on the deficit talks. The Tea Party Nation put House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on notice "for betraying the movement that put Republicans in charge of the lower chamber last year." In a press release, Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips drew a hard line for the Tea Party position. Phillips warned that his organization is on the lookout for Republicans voting to give away "more borrowing authority to President Obama" without also ensuring spending...

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones) - U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) said that Republicans are open to between $150 billion to $200 billion in increased federal revenues as part of an agreement to cut federal deficits in a bid to smooth the passage of a debt ceiling increase. But Kyl said these figures didn't include closing any of the business tax deductions that Democrats have been pushing for, saying instead the total was reached by increasing fees charged to entities regulated by the federal government or sales of federal-owned property. "I have characterized those as things like fee increases, revenue from...

(Washington, DC) -- Republican congressional leaders are reportedly agreeing to billions of dollars in revenue increases as federal deficit discussions continue. Republican Senator Jon Kyl announced the move today saying revenue increases don't necessarily mean tax hikes. On the Senate floor Kyl said, quote, "If the government sells something and gets revenue from it, that's revenue." He also suggested user fees for government services could provide additional revenue. He says all the revenue increases Republicans have agreed to amount to between 150 billion and 200 billion dollars.

Top congressional leaders agreed Thursday to a four-year extension of the anti-terrorist Patriot Act, the controversial law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks that governs the search for terrorists on American soil. The deal between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner calls for a vote before May 27, when parts of the current act expire. The idea is to pass the extension with as little debate as possible to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government. SNIP "I still have some concerns, and at this point I'm...