Free Republic

Rep. Marlin Stutzman is a member of the anti-leadership House Freedom Caucus, a conservative in the mold of Ted Cruz and a three-term Indiana congressman who voted against John Boehner as speaker. Now, he wants a promotion to the Senate -- and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his allies want to stop that. Privately, McConnell has made clear to his confidantes that he wants to bolster the candidacy of Stutzman's chief GOP rival, Rep. Todd Young, and push him over-the-top in the May 3 primary, according to sources familiar with the conversations. Publicly, McConnell's super PAC has made Indiana the...

Well then, you must like losing your job to someone in Mexico who will make $3/hour. Union leaders at an air conditioner factory in Indianapolis threatened with losing 1,400 jobs to Mexico said on Tuesday the plants owner expects to pay Mexican workers $3 an hour compared to an average of more than $20 an hour for the U.S. workers. "We have not given up the fight yet," said Chuck Jones, president of the United Steelworkers union local that represents workers at the Carrier Corp plant. "But Carrier has pretty well indicated that the wage differential is too great and...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2016/02/19/republican-presidential-candidate-marco-rubio-stays-indiana-ballot-commission-rules/80607168/

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Donald Trump's incendiary comments - and the GOP response - are proving political gold for Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid jumped on both Tuesday, first attacking Trump for his criticism of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., then pivoting to a larger target: the growing GOP presidential field and the entire Republican Party. Reid, D-Nev., noted that while Trump's GOP White House rivals were nearly unanimous in denouncing Trump's suggestion that McCain is not really a war hero, they were more tentative in responding to his criticisms of Mexican immigrants as "criminals" and "rapists."(continued)

A reporter in Texas recently asked GOP presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz this question: “Do you have a personal animosity against gay Americans?” Why would a reporter ask a Republican, running for president, such a question? I don’t know the reporter so I can’t say with certainty, but it wouldn’t shock me if he were trying to start trouble; if he were trying to trip up the senator into saying something negative about gays and getting some national publicity for himself in the process. But there’s another reason, I think, for the question. There’s no hiding the fact that some...

It’s not just Iraq: Bush repeatedly insists he won’t yield to popular pressure, until he does.After a week of misinterpreting, misspeaking and mismanaging the media over his position on the Iraq war, Jeb Bush’s hoped-for shock-and-awe campaign-in-waiting looked nothing like a political juggernaut. “It’s the Bad News Bears,” quipped Dave Bossie, president of the Citizens United conservative group. “The problem for Jeb Bush is he didn’t look very agile. He didn’t look smart in the sense of a rapid-response communications system that could get him out of the trouble he was in.” More troubling for Bush is that many supporters...

The editor of Breitbart Unmasked, a site that I enjoy immensely and find informative, recently told me that supporting Rand Paul disqualifies a person from being labeled a progressive. My rebuttal was that he might be right. However, I also mentioned that Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia agreed with my latest Congress Blog piece. In the article, I explain why Rand Paul is correct in questioning the legality of President Obama's troop deployments. Sadly, people at UC Berkeley are more interested in protesting Bill Maher than condemning a conflict George McGovern stated weakens our country in the same manner...

Likely presidential candidate had previously seen GOP reducing focus on issue.If presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tries to push forward a constitutional amendment guaranteeing state control over marriage laws, he'd have support from at least one potential rival. While speaking in Iowa over the weekend, Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker made it clear that he, like Cruz (and Sens. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio) thinks states should have the authority to decide whether to recognize same-sex marriages. In front of a crowd in Waukee, Iowa, he said: "I still hold out hope that the Supreme Court will rule, as...

If there is a worse example of our politics today than this, I’d hate to see it. Ted Cruz, the ultra-conservative Texas senator running for the GOP’s presidential nomination, spent an evening last week visiting with about a dozen people at the Manhattan home of Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass, the gay proprietors of, among other properties, the Out NYC hotel. Cruz’s opinions about gay marriage are very different from those of the hoteliers. But — gasp! — he and Reisner, in particular, apparently agree about other issues, notably foreign policy and America’s relationship with Israel. So they met to...

As GOP presidential hopefuls scramble to promote their political platforms and distinguish themselves from other candidates, plenty of conservatives were alarmed to see a story on Breitbart.com about Marco Rubio’s support for President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program on the basis that “there are already people benefiting from it.”

NASHUA, N.H. – Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has attended a wedding reception for a gay couple, he said Sunday, though the potential 2016 contender still believes marriage should be between a man and a woman. “That’s certainly a personal issue. For a family member, Tonette and I and our family have already had a family member who’s had a reception. I haven’t been at a wedding,” Walker said when msnbc asked whether he would be willing to attend a gay wedding. “That’s true even though my position on marriage is still that it’s defined between a man and a woman,...

He prepares to make his formal announcement Tuesday, Paul is a candidate who has turned fuzzy, having trimmed his positions and rhetoric so much that it’s unclear what kind of Republican he will present himself as when he takes the stage. “He’s going to get his moment in the sun,” said David Adams, who served as campaign chairman for Paul’s insurgent 2010 Senate campaign. “What he does with it from there will have bearing on the Republican Party.”

U.S. Senator Rand Paul is running for president … in fact, he announces his candidacy next week in Louisville, Kentucky. From there he travels to early voting Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina – including a big fundraiser in the Palmetto State the day after he announces. As we write this, money is being collected. Speeches are being vetted. He’s 100 percent in … and not only that, Paul is one of the few candidates in the race with (we believe) a path to victory. And one of the few candidates (we believe) to be worthy of real consideration. Is...

On Monday, our managing editor Javier Manjarres was on NewsMaxTV’s America’s Forum along with the host of The Agenda, Ari Rabin-Havt discussing Illinois’s new religious freedom law as well as candidates thinking of entering the presidential race. When it came to Illinois’s new religious freedom law, America’s Forum’s host, J.D. Hayworth pointed out Barack Obama voted on a similar law when he was a state senator for Illinois and asked why he was suddenly against it now. Rabin-Havt said the laws back in the day were expected to cover the same thing. He said it was to protect religious beliefs...

HOUSTON, Texas — In the second part of an exclusive interview with Breitbart News after the public grand opening of his Houston presidential campaign headquarters, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told Breitbart News that the modern Democratic Party is “so radicalized and so extreme” that it won’t stand up for the most basic tenets of the U.S. Constitution, including religious liberty as afforded by the First Amendment. “I’m proud that the state of Indiana stood to defend religious liberties,” Cruz said in the interview, which took place before the state of Indiana backed down to the institutional left’s calls for changes...

No one can have a doubt about where Ted Cruz stands on the controversy swirling around Indiana’s Restoration of Religious Freedom Act. He made it crystal clear Wednesday night.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)And in the process the Texas senator called out Republican politicians and the executives of Fortune 500 companies that he said have been running scared from the issue of religious freedom in the face of relentless attacks from the left under the guise of gay rights. “Religious liberty is not some fringe view. It is the basis of this country,” Cruz said during a town hall meeting in Sioux City, Iowa, a...

Nearly a week since Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), igniting a nationwide debate about whether the controversial law invites discrimination based on sexual orientation, most potential Republican presidential candidates have taken the opportunity to bolster their conservative credentials. "Governor Pence has done the right thing," said former Florida Governor Jeb Bush on Monday. “I want to commend Governor Mike Pence for his support of religious freedom, especially in the face of fierce opposition,” Texas Senator Ted Cruz said in a written statement. “Governor Pence is holding the line to protect religious liberty in the...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R. of Texas) on Wednesday commended Indiana Gov. Mike Pence for signing the state's controversial religious freedom law. 'Religious liberty is not some fringe view,' Cruz said. Sioux City, Iowa — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz says concern about religious freedom, awakened in the debate over a new Indiana law, could unite conservative Republicans and rally some Democrats to the GOP in 2016. Cruz told an audience Wednesday he could carry the banner for that cause in his GOP presidential campaign....

With political observations ranging from the firestorm of protest over the Religious Freedom law in Indianapolis to the Mideast threat that is Iran to the 2016 presidential election, former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle was candid in his Tuesday night return to his DePauw University alma mater. With his visit as an Ubben Lecture Series guest coinciding with the uproar over Indian's passage of the controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), Quayle tackled the question both leading off his late-afternoon press conference and again during a conversational give-and-take with DePauw Professor Jeff McCall. "From what I know about it," Quayle...

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence swatted a hornet’s nest when he signed a bill that detractors say would allow Hoosier State businesses to deny services to gay and lesbian couples. Amid threats to boycott Indiana businesses and cancel conventions, Pence is, according to news reports, “working with legislators to amend the law and ‘clarify’ that it does not promote discrimination.” Already, Salesforce.com said it would cancel its corporate travel there and hometown hero Bill Oesterle, the CEO of Angie’s List—a Republican who chaired Pence’s predecessor Mitch Daniels’ 2004 race— said that his crowd sourcing recommendation company will scuttle a deal with...