Free Republic

Republican strategist Karl Rove says the GOP should quit while it's not as far behind as it could be. Appearing Tuesday on Fox News Channel's "On the Record," Rove said Republicans fighting for concessions on Obamacare and entitlements are weakening their position the longer they hold out. "At some point you have to focus on, as Ronald Reagan said, getting as much of the pie as you possibly can get," Rove said. Republicans aren't even going to be able to get 80 percent of what they want now, he said, because they have been weakened over the last two months...

Here’s some free market advice to GOP legislators at all levels thinking about introducing bills supporting the state health exchanges under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA): Be prepared to wear the “Care” moniker around your name. You know? As in HillaryCare, RomneyCare or ObamaCare. Colorado’s Amy Stephens, a Republican state representative from El Paso County, was once considered a future Lt. Governor, or member of Congress. Instead, she may have flamed out her career by sponsoring a bill that would opt Colorado out of ObamaCare by implementing a so-called “health exchange” under PPACA. Yet that didn’t stop...

Breitbart News reported that House Republicans have offered a new deal to the White House to end the fiscal stalemate. The GOP plan, authored primarily by House Budget Chair Rep. Paul Ryan according to Hill sources, would meet Obama's demands in exchange for negotiations on a longer-term budget agreement. At least two high-ranking Capitol Hill sources have told Breitbart News that Ryan’s plan would also help protect Obamacare as it is currently implemented. Ryan's office deny the claims. “What your sources are attempting to attribute to Congressman Ryan is not accurate,” Kevin Seifert, Ryan’s spokesman, said in an email. But...

House Republicans, and notably Ted Cruz in the Senate, led the fight against Obama's signature health care law. They made defunding or delaying Obamacare a demand in legislation the House repeatedly sent to the Democratic-controlled Senate, only to see it die there. Apparently, it's now dead in the House, too. "That's currently off the table now," Republican Rep. James Lankford said in an interview on "The Lead with Jake Tapper." "That's obviously not going to happen at this point." Lankford did say that Republicans will now instead ask for a one-year delay on penalties for those who don't sign up...

One mystery of the government shutdown is why Republicans are so apoplectic about the Affordable Care Act, a piece of legislation that aims to make health insurance more affordable for millions of Americans. One theory is that the Republican leadership is scared that Obamacare actually won't be as bad as they have been saying it will be — that, in fact, Americans (including Republican constituents) will quite like it. If Americans like Obamacare, the theory goes, this will be a big blow to the Republicans' big sales pitch over the past 30 years, which is that more government is always...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), or "the joint speaker of the House" as Harry Reid calls him, argued Friday that Republicans have already offered Democrats a concession in their stand against reopening the government by demanding not a full repeal of Obamacare, but merely the defunding of President Barack Obama signature health law. “The House of Representatives has repeatedly compromised already," said Cruz, who already who spoke against funding the law on the Senate floor for 21 hours earlier this month. "The House began -- it is the view of every Republican in this body, and indeed every Republican in the...

The hard-line stance of Republican House members on the government shutdown is generating increasing anger among senior Republican officials, who say the small bloc of conservatives is undermining the party and helping President Obama just as the American people appeared to be losing confidence in him. “Fighting with the president is one thing,” said Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri. “Fighting with the president and losing is another thing. When you’re in the minority you need to look really hard to find the fights you can win.” And on Wednesday at a private luncheon, several Senate Republicans — Dan Coats...

.............Cruz responded to the anonymous comments by directing the conversation back toward the government shutdown and Obamacare, telling Politico, “It seems that there is nothing the media likes to cover more than disagreements among Republicans, and apparently some senators are content to fuel those stories with anonymous quotes. Regardless, my focus — and, I would hope, the focus of the rest of the conference — is on stopping Harry Reid’s shutdown, ensuring that vital government priorities are funded, and preventing the enormous harms that Obamacare is inflicting on millions of Americans.” It is evident that no matter what Cruz’s strategy...

House Republicans have more than taken a page out of Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) shutdown playbook. They’re following it to a “T.” GOP leaders on Tuesday introduced a series of bills to fund specific parts of the government in lieu of one sweeping package — a strategy Cruz had floated a week ago and promoted again Monday night as the government was closing its doors. The freshman senator has also been the driving force behind the plan to condition any new spending on the inclusion of provisions scaling back President Obama’s 2010 healthcare reform law. Cruz and GOP leaders have...

Earlier today, the United States Senate voted to fund Obamacare. There were 25 Republicans who betrayed their principles and voted for cloture, giving Democrats the power to implement this terrible law. This is a disappointing loss, but the bill now goes back to the House where Republicans must hold their ground and refuse to fund Obamacare. Here are the 25 Senate Republicans who voted to allow Harry Reid (D-NV) and the Democrats to fund Obamacare today: Alexander, Lamar (R-TN) Ayotte, Kelly (R-NH) Barrasso, John (R-WY) Blunt, Roy (R-MO) Boozman, John (R-AR) Burr, Richard (R-NC) Chambliss, Saxby (R-GA) Chiesa, Jeff (R-NJ)...

The GOP’s anger at Sen. Ted Cruz — expressed mostly in private meetings this week — burst onto the usually collegial Senate floor on Thursday, with Sen. Bob Corker excoriating his Texas Republican colleague for blocking a quick vote to avert a government shutdown next week. In a highly unusual Republican v. Republican exchange, Corker accused Cruz of delaying a Thursday vote simply to create a “show” to cater to his conservative activist supporters at the expense of making good policy. -snip- Cruz shot back. “Why is Majority Leader Harry Reid going to vote the same way you’re proposing to...

When Wendy Davis filibustered for abortion in Texas it was inspiring! She was so strong standing there for all of us in her pink running shoes! What a hero for women everywhere! Now when Ted Cruz filibusters to hold up a bill that he can't stop if only to send a message that most of America doesn't want this? Idiot. Wacko bird. Terrorist. Anarchist. Holding America hostage. This is not helpful. GOP: We will not support this. The difference is striking, no? Dems circle the wagons even to protect adulterers, rapists, embezzlers and people with federal drug charges. The GOP...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) criticized anonymous Republican Congressional staffers who allegedly provided Fox News host with Chris Wallace with “unsolicited research” to discredit the Texas senator’s doomed attempt at filibustering Obamacare Tuesday on the Senate floor: TED CRUZ: You know it’s quite interesting in the course of this debate there have been more than a few newspaper articles, more than a few attacks, from our friends on the Democratic side of the aisle and from our friends on the Republican side of the aisle. I’ve told my wife I now pick up the newspapers each day to learn what...

On “The O’Reilly Factor” Monday night, Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume explained how conservative radio talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin can cause serious problems for the GOP. “I’m not sure you’d say they’re calling the shots, but make no mistake about it, Bill — some of these radio talk show hosts have real influence,” Hume said. “They have a huge following particularly in very conservative areas where they are most popular and where the many members of Congress who inhabit those areas are not worried about getting reelected if they can get...

LIVE VIDEO

A source in Congress tells Breitbart News that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn are using their leadership positions to pressure other Republicans to oppose Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in his campaign to defund Obamacare. "Right now in the Senate, Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn are actively whipping Senators to shut down debate on the House continuing resolution so that Harry Reid can gut it with just 51 votes,” a senior congressional staffer with intimate knowledge of the situation said in an email to Breitbart News. “Unbelievably, they actually are leading the fight to fully...

Republicans in leadership positions spend more time trashing the tea party than they do fighting the opposition, conservative talk show host Mark Levin told Fox News Channel. "They do it because they want to hold onto what power they have," Levin said Monday on "Your World with Neil Cavuto." "They hope to eke through elections. They think they're going to take the Senate with no agenda whatsoever." Asked about Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who has called efforts to defund Obamacare "silly," and argued that other tactics and strategies should be used, Levin didn't mince words. "Where's his tactic and strategy?...

The countdown is on. The Affordable Health Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, kicks in on Oct. 1. Michael Medved told KIRO Radio's Tom and Curley on Monday that Sen. Rand Paul and Sen. Ted Cruz, staunch critics of President Obama's health care plan, have come on his show and told him there's no way to defund Obamacare. "So what are they doing, they're advancing their own careers, they're advancing their own presidential campaigns and meanwhile, destroying the party that I care about. Destroying any chance at all for Republicans to either win the Senate or to, increasingly, hold the...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) broke with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Monday, revealing that he won't filibuster legislation to fund the government in service of conservative goals to defund Obamacare. The Republican leader's decision is a major blow to the push by Cruz and powerful conservative activist groups, who wanted Republicans to unite and filibuster a continuing resolution until Democrats caved agreed to gut funding for the Affordable Care Act. "Senator McConnell supports the House Republicans' bill and will not vote to block it, since it defunds Obamacare and funds the government without increasing spending by a penny,"...

On Friday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer mocked the Republican tactic of using the budget process to defund President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care reform law. Krauthammer called the House’s vote to defund the law “Kabuki” and warned that it would come back to haunt congressional Republicans. “I think the Boehner speech is what you would expect,” Krauthammer said. “He didn’t want to do it. He had to do it, so he had to defend it, and that’s Kabuki. I think it’s going to go to the Senate and if we end up...

Video at link.

A riveting day has dawned. House Speaker John Boehner, long criticized for inconsistent conservative passion, is actually allowing members to vote on a budget bill that ties continued government operations to a defunding of Obamacare. This would be the strategy Ted Cruz and his allies have been offering for weeks, earning them harsh criticism from Democrats and timid Republicans alike. The House, run by Republicans, will pass the measure. The Senate, run by Democrats, will not. No matter what those votes might be, a presidential veto pen stands ready to kill the whole idea of a bill that funds...

Can't post Bloomberg text, but it claims Boehner says if the Republicans don't fund ObamaCare then they lose the house in 2014. That's idiocy and exactly backwards. If they DO fund ObamaCommieCare, they get voted out!! Tax paying Americans do not want this unconstitutional communist POS!! http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-09-17/republicans-weigh-defunding-health-law-avoiding-shutdown

Two new detailed polls out today, from The Wall Street Journal and the Pew Center, confirm and deepen the grim state of public opinion on Obamacare. The law remains as unpopular as ever. There is a massive intensity gap between opponents of the law and supporters (41 percent of Americans strongly disapprove, against just 26 percent who strongly approve). And the main characteristic of public opinion is that people have no idea how the law works. Lack of knowledge about the law has always been closely associated with opposition. Most of the provisions of the law, when described to people,...

This report is coming from The Hill and relies pretty much on “Republican lawmakers” and staffers “speaking on condition of anonymity” so factor that in. But given what we’ve heard from some other members over the last couple of months, I wouldn’t find it terribly surprising if this were true. Republican lawmakers are growing increasingly frustrated with what they say is a lack of communication from their leaders. Both centrist and conservative members in the House believe that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his lieutenants could have done more earlier this year to counter the Tea Party’s effort to defund...

Governor Palin posted the following on her Facebook page earlier:Remember when President Obama promised us, “If you like your current health care plan, you can keep your plan?” That was not true, and his deceptive claim falls in line with all the other lies about Obamacare – like there’d be no health care rationing. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can understand that if it is cheaper for a company to cancel employees’ health benefits and pay the $2,000 Obamacare fine instead of providing, say, a $10,000 government mandated employee health care plan, then of course that company will...

Take that, John Boehner … (and Nikki Haley). An effort by establishment “Republicans” in Washington, D.C. (and in the states) to fool GOP voters into thinking they had “defunded Obamacare” was defeated this week – forcing Boehner and his cronies to withdraw a budget resolution scheduled for a vote this week. The “Republican” plan? To pass a “rider” to the upcoming budget resolution what would have defunded Obamacare – but permitted the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate to simply strike that language from the spending plan and send it straight to the desk of U.S. President Barack Obama. This would have allowed...

The October 1st start date is only a few weeks away from a dramatic reduction in personal liberties and greater taxation and growing government power. The Affordable Healthcare Act (aka, Obamacare) started with Hillary Clinton in her aborted efforts when Bill Clinton was President. It was dubbed “Hillarycare” and deemed to be a disaster (just ask economist Brad DeLong). While George W. Bush was President, Hillarycare was transformed under the guidance of the Center for American Progress. This became Obamacare with the election of Barack Obama. After meetings with lobbyists, Congress, the Administration and the Center for American Progress (behind...

A document House Majority Leader Eric Cantor distributed to all House Republicans on Tuesday, obtained by Breitbart News, confirms that he is planning to make it appear as though the House is voting to defund Obamacare while using a legislative procedural trick which would allow the Democrat-controlled Senate to strip defunding language from the Continuing Resolution. * * *

The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday introduced a short-term continuing resolution that would maintain funding for government programs and services -- including Obamacare -- at current levels until December 15, 2013. “The Continuing Resolution introduced today is simply a temporary measure to keep the lights on in government until this Congress can fulfill its duty by approving Appropriations bills for the next fiscal year," Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said in a statement. Rogers declared the bill to be "free of controversial riders," an apparent reference to conservative calls to defund the Democrats' health care law. "This bill is free...

Sarah Palin is sick of hearing about Syria. A little more than a week after the former Alaska governor suggested the world "let Allah sort it out" in Syria's civil war, Palin posted a video to her various social media accounts urging U.S. lawmakers to ignore "this foreign fiasco distraction" and "get back to work." "It is time to bomb Obamacare," Palin wrote on her Facebook page above the video. The message, posted late Monday, has generated more than 56,000 likes. The two-minute video, titled "Just Sayin'," includes clips of political pundits debating Palin's controversial claim that the Affordable Care...

Since March 2010, when President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and its companion Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (HCERA), the administration has published in the Federal Register 109 final regulations governing how Obamacare will be implemented. These regulations add up to 10,516 pages in the Federal Register—or more than eight times as many pages as there are in the Gutenberg Bible, which has 642 two-sided leaves or 1,286 pages.Using the regulations.gov website and the Federal Register itself, CNSNews.com found 109 distinct regulations for the implementation of PPACA and the health-care related provisions of...

Republican infighting over the defunding of ObamaCare is growing increasingly nasty and could spill over into the 2014 elections. Hardline conservatives are pushing for the GOP to shut down the government if Democrats refuse to defund ObamaCare, and are threatening reprisals in primaries if they don’t get their way. Establishment Republicans are just as furious, and aren’t backing down. The GOP conflict is the most public — and heated — of any since Republicans lost the 2012 elections, and exposes a rift in the party that will likely grow deeper. The civil war could hurt the party’s chances to retake...

Vitriol has gone beyond partisan give-and-take in the nation’s politics. It is now seeping into and poisoning the ranks of the Republican Party. Mainstream Republican politicians are cringing at the proposal of tea party Senators -– Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), Marco Rubio (R-FL) -– to hold federal appropriations legislation hostage in their quest to defund Obamacare. Republicans opposing this strategy see it as lose-lose. They don’t believe this tactic will work. And at the same time, they see it producing more antipathy toward Republicans and branding them as zealots and obstructionists. I think the tea partiers are on...

Is the tea party changing the Republican Party from the inside -- or selling out to the GOP? As Republicans prepare to officially roll out Mitt Romney as their party's presidential nominee at the Republican National Convention this week, major tea party groups and figures have descended on Tampa, Florida, to schmooze with party bigwigs and rally for Romney. But Romney's conservative credentials have long been viewed with suspicion by the movement. So it came as a surprise when, before at least one event, tea party organizers committed what some activists would consider heresy: seeking approval from establishment Republicans to...

He’s politically dumb and his campaign is run by amateurs. He doesn’t have a message and doesn’t know how to deliver a message. He’s a political letdown running on autopilot who needs to grab the controls. He’s a man whom only friends, relatives and fellow Mormons will ever love. And his name is Mitt Romney, Republican candidate for President of the United States. These are stinging jabs. All were made in the past week and all share one surprising thing in common: they were delivered not from the Obama campaign’s Chicago attack machine, as you might expect, but in a...

ROSEMONT, Ill. (AP) — Republicans riding high from a string of breaks in their favor are increasingly optimistic about Mitt Romney's chances to claim the White House in November, even among conservatives who had qualms about making him the party's nominee. The bullish take is reflected in interviews with party strategists and activists, including people who supported Romney rivals during the primary season. Mood matters because it can fuel fundraising and volunteer hustle. But some of those GOP players stress that Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, has little room for error if he expects to topple an incumbent president. The...

GOP House members join GOP Senators in pushing Cook Co. into Obamacare SPRINGFIELD - Last night, with the help of 11 Republicans, the Illinois House passed HB 5007, which accelerated Cook County's movement into Obamacare provisions. Even though Obamacare may be found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, lame duck Republican House members together with those in secure districts, joined Democrats in allowing Cook County to apply for waivers that would advance its involvement into the Obamacare plan. Although House Minority Leader Tom Cross voted "NO", the following 11 House Republicans voted "YES" with their Democrat colleagues: Franco Coladipietro, Jim...

On October 1, 2010, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney described the genius of the American idea and lauded its results. “No nation has done more to lift people out of poverty than this nation,” he said in remarks at Benedetto’s, an Italian restaurant in Tampa, Florida. “Our free enterprise system has lifted billions out of poverty.” Romney spoke at a “Reclaiming America Rally” for Marco Rubio, then a candidate for the Senate. It was one of three events Romney did that day with Rubio. The two men chatted in the kitchen before their remarks to a crowd that spilled into...

When a federal judge in California last week ruled the state’s ban on gay marriage unconstitutional, several political observers braced for a flood of Republican blasts on the issue that could end up resonating in campaigns nationally. Instead, the anticipated GOP bang over the ban — known as Proposition 8 — amounted to little more than a whimper. There were angry columns and cries of protest from right-wing groups and conservative writers, but the majority of the Republican establishment kept on a bread-and-butter message — and party leaders are encouraging them not to stray. It also was expected that Democrats, outside of...

In the wake of over $1,000,000 in negative ads from the Republican Governor's Association Massachusetts Treasurer Tim Cahill has crashed in the Rasmussen poll released today. In the same poll released on April 7th showed Patrick 35%, Baker 27%, Cahill 23%. The net swing over the past 5 weeks has been Patrick +10%, Baker +4% and Cahill -9%. Tim Cahill has also dropped into 3rd place among unenrolled voters showing Baker 36%, Patrick 28%, Cahill 21%.

On March 4, I asked: Does the GOP have enough balls to fight the Left or doesn’t it? Having to ask the question answers it. And this latest, depression-inducing news about Senate Republicans backtracking on their campaign to repeal Demcare, via Ace of Spades, confirms it: GOP Already Starting To Go Wobbly On Repealing Health Care Reform Monstrosity . Iowahawk drives the point home. Sorry, I don’t feel much like laughing today.