Free Republic

Tuesday might have been a bad night for immigration reform -- but not necessarily. That's the message from Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform. He favors the kind of immigration reform -- including a large guest worker program and more legal immigration -- that many Tea Party activists vehemently oppose. But it’s not guaranteed, and it depends on the media narrative that emerges, he added. “Give it ten days,” Norquist said. If a consensus emerges that Cantor’s stance on immigration lost him his seat, then that’s a big problem for reform proponents. “If the narrative hardens that...

Radio host Laura Ingraham and Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist engaged in a heated exchange on immigration reform on Ingraham’s show Tuesday. At one point, Ingraham, a Fox News contributor, accused anti-tax advocate Norquist of “whining” over the discussion on the show. After Ingraham said allowing more immigrant workers to come into the U.S. would be “obscene to the American experience,” Norquist cut in.

Updated 5:11 p.m. | House Republican leaders are mum on a timetable for advancing immigration overhaul legislation and have so far been noncommittal on moving on the issue before the end of the 113th Congress. But a group of mayors and business leaders from across the political spectrum is determined to prove that momentum is growing for a rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws — even among conservatives. The coalition, Partnership for a New American Economy, on Wednesday held the first in a series of monthly conference calls moderated by Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist and featuring public...

Michael Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch’s Partnership for a New American Economy (a.k.a. Billionaires for Open Borders) has released what may be the most ridiculously skewed pro-amnesty poll I’ve seen. The poll, conducted by McLlaughlin & Associates, is timed to coincide with Tea Party Express executive Sal Russo’s teaming up with Grover Norquist to push amnesty (they both co-sponsored the poll as well); it purports to show that even tea-party people support Chuck Schumer’s amnesty bill, so get on with it already, Boehner! The mendacity of the whole exercise becomes apparent when you read the actual questions. After a few setup...

Sal Russo, co-founder of the Tea Party Express, announced his support for amnesty on Wednesday, reversing his organization’s statement from a year ago that it would not take a position on immigration reform. If you take a look at Russo’s background, this isn’t exactly the revelation that some in the media are making it out to be. What’s interesting, though, is the dichotomy between Russo’s position and the principles of the organization he helped to create. The Tea Party Express bills itself as anti-establishment, but Russo’s immigration proposal is nearly identical to the principles pushed by GOP House Leaders --...

SNIP Sal Russo of the Tea Party Express broke the news in an op-ed titled “Conservatives Need to Fix the Broken Immigration System,” published by CQ Roll Call early Wednesday morning. In that piece, the longtime GOP operative and consultant argued that “conservatives should be at the forefront of reform so the law reflects the just interests of the United States, not misty-eyed ideals of some of the liberal do-gooder reformers.” That means no special pathways to citizenship that allow undocumented immigrants to cut in line, Russo cautioned, but rather some reasonable procedures that require “the 11 million people who...

More Republicans are pushing for an immigration overhaul.House Republican leaders are mum on a timetable for advancing immigration overhaul legislation and have so far been noncommittal on moving on the issue before the end of the 113th Congress. But a group of mayors and business leaders from across the political spectrum is determined to prove that momentum is growing for a rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws — even among conservatives. The coalition, Partnership for a New American Economy, on Wednesday held the first in a series of monthly conference calls moderated by Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist...

Conservative activist Grover Norquist wants to name 3,000 things after Ronald Reagan. His next target is a small mountain in Democratic Sen. Harry Reid's home state. The would-be Mount Reagan, at 3,366 feet, is not nearly the highest peak in Nevada. But it does overlook Las Vegas and, as such, would remind all who visit and live there of the former two-term California governor who went on to become president and lodestar of the Republican Party.

The problem with the pledge recently crafted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which asks lawmakers to vow not to support immigration reform that would include amnesty, is that it's not an issue that all Republicans can get behind, says Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. In 1986, Americans for Tax Reform put together a pledge for lawmakers to sign promising to "vote against and oppose all efforts to raise taxes."

Heavyweight conservatives and banterweight conservatives are lining up on both sides the Comcast/Time Warner merger. The heavyweights, which include Grover Norquist at Americans for Tax Reform, Wayne Crews at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Duane Parde at the National Taxpayers Union, have penned a letter to influential Senators including Mike Lee, Chuck Grassley and Ted Cruz, urging them to look past the politics and approve the merger between the two cable giants on traditional grounds—you know, the grounds under which the anti-trust laws were written and passed in the first place? “As advocates for a free market,” the heavyweights write,...

Republican starlets Rick Perry and Sarah Palin are both known for their personalities, love of guns, sexiness, and moments of TV humiliation, but only one of them is doing something to avoid forever being labelled an idiot. After his intellectual humiliation during the last presidential election cycle — during which he was unable to remember his own policy points — Perry is becoming considerably more wonkish than we’ve previously known him, fashioning himself as something of an elder statesman, in stark contrast to Palin. The Texas governor, a pair of smart-person glasses now permanently attached to his face, has been...

If 2016 brings another Bush-Clinton matchup, not all famous last names are equal at the start. The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll makes clear why it’s better to be associated with the 42nd president than the 43rd and 41st, at least for now. The poll has plenty of good news for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Two-thirds of Americans say they’d consider voting for Clinton in 2016, and a full 25 percent say they will definitely support her. Again, among all Americans – not just Democrats, or Democrats and independents – one in four say they are fully on board for Hillary...

Grover Norquist, who founded Americans for Tax Reform (ATR)... his connections to Muslim Brotherhood groups and individuals in the U.S. is irrefutable. One such individual is Abdurahman Alamoudi. Another is Suhail Khan, whose father helped found the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim Students Association (MSA). His mother sat on the board of a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) chapter... Norquist helped Khan become the White House gatekeeper relative to selecting Muslim leaders who the Bush administration partnered with before and after 9/11. Those Muslim leaders belonged to Muslim Brotherhood front groups. ... Last year it was...

Late Tuesday, February 11, a group of respected former national security leaders and officials presented evidence against Grover Norquist (President of Americans for Tax Reform) and Suhail Kahn (Board of Directors of the American Conservative Union (ACU) of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. According to Breitbart, the 45-page dossier was issued to ACU lawyer Cleta Mitchell, “who in 2011 cleared Norquist of the allegations initially brought by former high-ranking Reagan official Frank Gaffney”. Signatories include Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former CIA Director James Woolsey, former Florida Rep. Allen West, retired Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, and former chief assistant...

A heavyweight lineup of former national security officials banded together late Tuesday to accuse Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) president Grover Norquist and high-ranking GOP political operative Suhail Khan of connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. The officials authored a 45-page dossier on the issue to Cleta Mitchell, the top lawyer for the American Conservatives’ Union who in 2011 cleared Norquist of the allegations initially brought by former high-ranking Reagan official Frank Gaffney. The signatories include numerous powerful and respected former officials, including former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former CIA Director James Woolsey, former Florida Rep. Allen West, retired Army Lt....

Norquist's Muslim Protégés By Paul Sperry FrontPageMagazine.com | 6/3/2008 If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. That appears to be the strategy of GOP powerbroker Grover Norquist in his wicked project to dress Islamists up as patriotic Republicans so they can infiltrate the government. While he's managed to get some of his Muslim proteges jobs in the Bush administration, getting them elected to public office has been another story. Voters aren't buying their makeover. Last November, his crony Faisal M. Gill lost a bid for a seat in the Virginia state legislature. Now another protege, Kamal M. Nawash,...

Both sides in the immigration debate are watching Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) closely after Thursday evening’s emphatic House vote in favor of a bipartisan budget deal. The calculus is clear in the minds of immigration reform advocates. They believe Boehner wants to get some kind of deal done on immigration, and any development that replenishes his political capital helps their cause. That Boehner’s budget victory came as he took on the outside conservative groups that have hampered his ability to lead his conference is an added plus. “Boehner’s power in the conference is going to be improved,” said Tamar Jacoby,...

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is launching ads backing eight-term Republican Rep. Mike Simpson, who faces a primary challenge in Idaho, and two GOP candidates in West Virginia as the business organization ramps up its political activity for next year's congressional elections. The Chamber's involvement in Idaho marks the second time in recent months that the group has taken sides in the internal Republican fight pitting the GOP establishment against conservative activists. The group backed Bradley Byrne over tea party favorite Dean Young in a special congressional runoff primary in Alabama, pumping at least $200,000 into the race. Byrne won...

In response to the news that Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS is funding Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) to the tune of $26 million in 2012, Tea Party Patriots National Coordinator Jenny Beth Martin told Breitbart News that Rove cannot buy his way into the conservative movement. “The old adage 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer' is more relevant in today’s political arena than ever before,” Martin said. “It is not surprising that there are groups we thought were in this fight with us have been shown to have ulterior motives."

Tax documents from Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS show that Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) is largely funded by Rove, ProPublica’s Kim Barker reports. -snip- On its 2012 tax return, Barker reported, the biggest grant Rove’s Crossroads GPS gave to anybody was a $26.4 million grant it gave to Norquist’s ATR for “social welfare.” -snip- ATR spokesman John Kartch and Rove spokesman Jonathan Collegio both declined to answer specific questions from ProPublica about the grant.