Free Republic

Immigration reform advocates plan an aggressive campaign to bring the issue back — and the White House has signaled it’s on board. Can Obama emerge from the fiscal crisis with enough momentum to win the immigration fight? As the fiscal fight roiling Washington nears its end, the White House is already signaling that it plans to use the political momentum it has gained during the shutdown fight to charge back into the immigration debate. And this time, Democratic pollsters and advocates say, they could actually win. The final chapter of the current crisis hasn’t been written yet, but Democrats in...

Over the past few years, immigration reform has been at the forefront of debates in Congress. In both the Senate and the House of Representatives, members from across the aisle have come together to develop bipartisan bills that would change the lives of over 11 million undocumented immigrants. Some in Congress have worked tirelessly to create a law that would provide a path to citizenship for millions, while others have focused the debate on border security. In an exclusive interview with Latinos Post, National Council of La Raza (NCLR)’s senior immigration legislation analyst Laura Vazquez discussed the future of immigration...

Once the fiscal crisis has been resolved, President Barack Obama is going to push for immigration reform, he told the Los Angeles affiliate of Spanish-language network Univision on Tuesday. Obama, who largely managed to hold on to office on the backs of Hispanic voters, has long looked to easing the plight of the country’s 11 million illegal immigrants, but other issues have kept coming in the way during his second term.

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...

From county chairmen to national party luminaries, veteran Republicans across the country are accusing tea party lawmakers of staining the GOP with their refusal to bend in the budget impasse in Washington. The Republican establishment also is signaling a willingness to strike back at the tea party in next fall's elections.

The sun is rising in India for America’s outsourced jobs. But it’s a bad sign for New York’s dwindling middle-class workforce, say labor analysts. New York’s labor markets are in convulsions as American employers ship more well-paid jobs to lower-cost countries like Mexico, the Philippines, China and India — where IBM, culling 747 jobs from the Empire State, has achieved landmark status. It now employs more workers in India than in the US, according to a leaked IBM document reviewed by The Post. The average IBM pay in India is $17,000, compared with $100,000 for a senior IT specialist in...

Karl Rove is a political hack good at only one thing, fundraising. Karl Rove was the biggest loser of the 2012 elections. And what does the man who squandered over $300 miillion on ridiculous election ads do? He creates a new money-making spinoff of American Crossroads; the Conservative Victory Project. Equating the term Conservative with Karl Rove is akin to likening it with Barack Hussein Obama. Good old Karl now has his hands in three Republican PACS. For those that may have forgotten, Rove and the GOP establishment backed David Dewhurst over Ted Cruz, Trey Grayson over Rand Paul, Bob...

Iran is continuinh to make slow but steady progress on its nuclear program according to the August 2013 quarterly repory [URL at link] by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Tehran continues to install more centrifuges including its second generation model. Iran's accumulated its stockpiles of uranium to 3.5 percent hashas increased modestly while the quantity of uranium hexaflouride enrichef to 20 percent remains roughly the same as teported in May. Iran is also moving forward on construction of its heavy water reactor at Stak, which could potentially provide it with a second path to producing material for nuclear weapons,...

A curious moment happened on Fox News Sunday. Chris Wallace told Karl Rove that a number of Republicans in Congress had sent him opposition research on Ted Cruz once Fox announced Cruz would be on. Rove responded. He said this was all happening because Cruz and Mike Lee had not worked out strategy in the regular Senate Republican Conference lunches on Thursdays. Rove said that was what was supposed to happen. Except that for a year now, Senate Republicans have routinely leaked the proceedings of those meetings to the New York Times and Washington Post in ways designed to harm...

A young Christian girl beheaded in Syria. The sign of extremism and fanatics, the long beards, is present in each and everyone of these subhuman Muslims who killed this small child, in their jihad to Allah – inspired by the Quran. This is Obama, Britain, France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey funded and supported handiwork. Don’t put your support behind any of these people, whether for military action in Syria, asylum, immigration, another hate preaching mosque. This is what is moving into your town, your country, your society, your neighborhood: video... This video is written with false propaganda claiming...

In 2010, Republicans took the House of Representatives by gaining 63 seats. They also picked up six U.S. senators and 675 state legislators, giving them control of more legislative chambers than any time since 1928. The GOP also won 25 of 40 gubernatorial races in 2009 and 2010. These epic gains happened primarily because independents voted Republican. In 2010, 56% of independents voted for GOP congressional candidates, up from 43% in 2008 and 39% in 2006. Today, independents look more like Republicans than Democrats, especially when it comes to health care. In a new Crossroads GPS health-care policy survey conducted...

Rush rules. Rush Limbaugh took the top spot in Right Wing News' annual ranking of the most influential people on the right — which, interestingly enough, included only two elected officials. The website said Limbaugh is “the biggest right wing talk radio host in America, a generation of conservatives grew up listening to him, and he's capable of making news, killing legislation, and selling tens of thousands of books any time he opens his mouth.” Rounding out the top 10 were Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report; former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin; political strategist and...

<p>Karl Rove is convinced the American public is being lied to, but it’s not Syria he’s worried about, it’s Libya.</p> <p>The world is focused on what the U.S. might take in Syria in the wake of a deadly chemical weapons attack, but Rove can’t stop talking about Benghazi.</p>

A group of 66 foreign policy “experts” signed a letter on Tuesday urging President Obama to conduct unrestricted military strikes against the Syrian government after last week’s deadly gas attack on civilians. “Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has once again violated your red line, using chemical weapons to kill as many as 1,400 people in the suburbs of Damascus,” the letter begins. “We urge you to respond decisively by imposing meaningful consequences on the Assad regime,” it continues, advocating for the use of “standoff weapons and airpower” against the forces responsible for deploying chemical weapons. The experts also express support for...

The GOP is a reliable thorn in Obama's side, but has been noticeably quiet on Syria [Snip] While the American public is largely against the idea of attacking Syria, another group stands, for the most part, with the president on the issue: Republicans. Influential members of the GOP, including Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), have been pushing the president to act for months, and now that he's come around to their way of looking at things, they're noticeably agreeable. [Snip] Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the ranking GOP member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took no shots...

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst — once a dominant political figure with money, power and position — is now seen after a phone call to Allen police as the one who’s hanging on the line. A Dewhurst spokesman insists that the lieutenant governor did only what anyone else would do when he called police on Aug. 3 to get a relative out of jail. But the just-released audio recording has animated his opponents and created another pothole on what has been a bumpy political path. -snip- In July 2012, Dewhurst lost the U.S. Senate race to political newcomer and tea party...

The Allen Police Department released audio Wednesday of a call the longtime lieutenant governor made at 10:15 p.m. on Aug. 3 on behalf of Ellen Bevers. Dewhurst said during the call that Bevers inadvertently walked out of a Kroger with $57 in goods she didn’t pay for, along with $42 of items she did buy... “Sergeant, you don’t know me, but I am every year the No. 1 pick of all of the law enforcement agencies within Texas. The No. 1 pick,” Dewhurst said. “And I’m a supporter of you. You don’t know it, but I’m a supporter of you....

The GOP establishment in Georgia wants to tamp down tea party fervor ahead of a primary election for an open US Senate seat. Its aim: prevent a primary that yields a candidate who can't win a general election. Four years after Atlanta saw some of the earliest and biggest tea party rallies in the country, Georgia’s GOP establishment, including Gov. Nathan Deal, are pondering strategies to reduce the right-wing insurgency’s influence on next year’s primary election for a US Senate seat – and on the larger struggle for power in Washington. To be sure, Georgia is about as red a...

Against all logic, some prominent conservatives continue to promote the absurd proposition that right-wing candidates who fail to win over GOP voters in Republican primaries would magically succeed on November ballots. This assumption enables them to retain a naive faith in the claim that "true conservatives" who can't mobilize their own base to win nominations will somehow triumph in general elections by drawing support from moderates and liberals. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has most recently voiced this idea. "You know, if you look at the last 40 years, a consistent pattern emerges," Mr. Cruz observed in a July interview with...

Keeping immigration on the back-burner helps avoid a recess filled with angry town-hall meetings reminiscent of the heated August 2009 protests where the backlash against health care reform coalesced. Doing nothing also starves Democrats of a target, Republicans argue. But for Boehner, who by all accounts wants to see some kind of immigration reform pass, that raised serious strategic problems. First, passing tougher enforcement measures before August would take all the momentum away from other more divisive measures, such as giving “Dreamers,” the children brought to the United States illegally, a legal option for staying in the country. While House...

Karl Rove, 100+ GOP Donors Send Letter to Republicans Urging Immigration Reform by Tony Lee 30 Jul 2013, 6:18 AM PDT post a comment Karl Rove and more than one hundred Republican donors sent a letter to Republican members of Congress on Tuesday, urging them to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would include, among other provisions, granting "legal status" to illegal aliens who meet certain criteria. Anticipating that lawmakers will face resistance to the bill when they go home for the August recess, the letter marks the escalation of a campaign in which Republican leaders and donors are...

Former Bush strategist Karl Rove says he’s staying out of Wyoming’s Republican U.S. Senate primary between incumbent Mike Enzi and newly-announced challenger Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. “Liz is a friend of mine,” Rove told radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday. “I also respect Sen. Enzi. This is going to be up to the people of Wyoming. They don’t need a Texan coming in there, and I grew up in the mountain west and you and I both know — particularly in the Rocky Mountain states and small states like Wyoming — they know everybody...

Former president George W. Bush, who enjoyed healthy support among Latinos during his time in office, has broken a virtual five-year silence in national politics by calling on fellow Republicans to embrace immigration reform at a time when conservatives are rebelling against the idea. The question is: Is anyone listening? -snip- Rep. Raúl R. Labrador (R-Idaho), who last month dropped out of bipartisan talks to develop a comprehensive House immigration bill, said Bush’s views would have little impact. “Anybody has to take an ex-president’s word seriously, but he’s just another voice on this issue. He’s not going to be the...

The drive to overhaul U.S. immigration law may get a high-profile boost next week, just as House Republicans begin to consider their legislative options, when former President George W. Bush addresses the matter at an immigration event at his presidential library. Mr. Bush, whose own effort as president to pass an immigration bill failed, rarely addresses current policy debates, but he has made clear that he supports the renewed effort this year. On Wednesday, he will address 20 new citizens as they are sworn in at the George W. Bush Presidential Center. Three panel discussions will follow on the topic...

Charlie Spies knows how to raise money. The Republican lawyer helped rake in $153 million for Restore Our Future, the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC. But he’s had a harder slog with one of his latest projects, Republicans for Immigration Reform, a super PAC that aims to be a dominant force in the fight over revamping the country’s immigration laws. So far, the organization has made just a tiny ad buy in South Carolina and financed a poll with two other advocacy groups. “It has been a challenge to get donors on the Republican side to reengage,” Spies said.

The Republican Party’s senior operatives publicly are committing the cardinal sin of promising to spend tens of millions of dollars of its most generous donors’ money to lard up on data: knowledge. What, instead, is required — to restore its ability to make good, winning, decisions — is virtue: understanding. This critical distinction appears lost on the politicos. Memo to the GOP donor base: to win (in 2014 and 2016 and beyond) the GOP can and must get just two things just right. First, the GOP must (and can) reunite its libertarian and conservative factions around the Constitution. Second, the...

The GOP strategist says he tried to signal to the Romney campaign that it should change course, but they didn't follow his lead. A lot has been said about why Mitt Romney lost the presidential election, from his failure to turn out more white working-class voters to his failure to win more of the Latino voters who did turn out. Republican strategist Karl Rove offered the latest take Thursday in remarks detailing how he tried, from his perch at an outside group forbidden by law from coordinating with the campaign, to signal to Romney's team that they should make changes...

As immigration reform grinds its way through the U.S. Senate, the main focus has rightly been on the legislation's policy consequences. But there are important political implications, especially for the GOP, that are worth examining. Some observers, including Phyllis Schlafly, Pat Buchanan and the Center for Immigration Studies, argue that if Republicans want to win back the White House, they should focus on white voters (who comprised 72% of the electorate in 2012) rather than worrying about Latinos. After all, new Census Bureau estimates are that 100,042,000 whites voted in 2008 but only 98,041,000 did in 2012. Wouldn't it be...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, sounding more and more like a presidential candidate in 2016, tore into President Barack Obama, calling his administration “an utter and complete failure.” Bush was the keynote speaker Tuesday night at the Conservative Party of New York State’s 51st Annual Dinner in New York City, where he received the Charles M. Edison Memorial Award, named after inventor Thomas Edison’s son, a former New Jersey governor and secretary of the Navy. Also receiving the Charles M. Edison Award Tuesday night was Christopher Ruddy, the founder and CEO of Newsmax Media Inc. Ruddy called the award “an...

On the Senate floor on Friday, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) mocked and blistered Karl Rove and his "fat cat" and "country club" pals at American Crossroads for being out of touch with working class Americas on immigration. Sessions, one of the staunchest opponents of the Senate's immigration bill, said Rove "raised a bunch of money for Crossroads to run ads in the last election that was supposed to elect Mr. Romney. Didn't do so well, Karl. Sorry about that. Wish you'd been more effective." American Crossroads wasted more $100 million last year and supported no winning candidates. He suggested Rove...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said late Tuesday that he supports securing the United States border with Mexico with a double-tiered fence but voted against an amendment to the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill that would have required exactly that. Rubio and his fellow Gang of Eight Republicans helped the Democrats kill an amendment from Sen. John Thune (R-SD) that would have required the double-tiered fence be built, as current law requires, before amnesty was granted to America’s at least 11 million illegal immigrants. The only other Republican to vote against the amendment was Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). “I support Senator...

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush is still nursing presidential aspirations, despite Republican unease about the “comprehensive immigration reform” he whole-heartedly supports, after losing an argument with himself and immediately backpedaling from a book he had only just published. Bush chose to deal with this unease by attacking the uneasy, referring to them as “chirpers” in a CBN interview following his appearance before the Faith and Freedom Coalition. ”I will be able to, I think, manage my way through all the ‘chirpers’ out there,” he said, apparently playing off Senator John McCain’s reference to his conservative colleagues Ted Cruz, Rand Paul,...

In an exclusive sit-down interview with The Brody File, Jeb Bush began to sketch out his case for President of the United States if he decides to run next year. “It will be based on my record. And that record was one of solving problems from completely from a conservative perspective. I cut taxes every year, I shrunk the size of government,” Jeb Bush tells The Brody File. And as for his critics who say he’s too mainstream establishment he offers this: “I will be able to, I think, manage my way through all the chirpers out there.” We sat...

Karl Rove's recollection of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act ("Immigration Reform and the Hispanic Vote," op-ed, June 6) is, shall we say, highly selective. That law, he writes, "essentially told those here illegally that if they had arrived in the U.S. prior to 1982 and wanted to become citizens, simply raise your right hand." He asserts that the Gang of Eight bill is different because it "has plenty of penalties and hurdles for those here illegally who seek citizenship." Well, I was there in '86. I read that bill carefully. (We did that back then.) And I can...

Former George W. Bush senior advisor Karl Rove and former Barack Obama senior advisor David Plouffe got into quite a heated debate on ABC’s This Week Sunday. When Plouffe claimed the ongoing Internal Revenue Service scandal wasn’t political, Rove pushed back twice saying “Baloney.” Rove to Former Obama Advisor Plouffe Claiming IRS Scandal Wasn’t Political: ‘Baloney’ DAVID PLOUFFE, FORMER SENIOR ADVISOR TO BARACK OBAMA: But there's been no suggestion. The independent, the prosecutor looked at this - excuse me, the inspector general - said there was no politics involved in this. No one has indicated at all that the White...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is “the smartest guy, the biggest thinker” in the Republican Party as it looks toward winning the White House in 2016, GOP strategist Karl Rove tells Newsmax TV. “Six months ago, I would have said, ‘No, he's not going to run,’” Rove tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview. “But maybe he is. I certainly hope he keeps a very strong voice.”

So somebody in State above her is talking to somebody above Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vietor at the White House at 10:00 at night on Friday night. Now we also know, Saturday morning, at a White House deputies meeting, all of the reference to terrorism are struck out of the CIA draft of the talking points. At a White House meeting. And I’ll tell you one last thing, on Friday there is a, there is just this weird email, it’s actually a summary of a Secure Video Conference. Significant people at the FBI, and the National intelligence, and in there,...

The Politico is reporting (read: let’s wait for a second source to confirm it) that the RNC, well, “[t]he Republican National Committee has chosen a Karl Rove-linked voter data project called Liberty Works to help it compete with Democrats in the digital arena. Liberty Works will team up with Data Trust, whose chairman of the board is former RNC Chairman Mike Duncan, committee spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski confirmed to Politico.” This is deeply troubling, if accurate, because I maintain the GOP must distance itself from the Bush administration players to start being successful again. Further, for all of Karl Rove’s fine...

The Politico is reporting (read: let’s wait for a second source to confirm it) that the RNC, well, “[t]he Republican National Committee has chosen a Karl Rove-linked voter data project called Liberty Works to help it compete with Democrats in the digital arena. Liberty Works will team up with Data Trust, whose chairman of the board is former RNC Chairman Mike Duncan, committee spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski confirmed to Politico.” This is deeply troubling, if accurate, because I maintain the GOP must distance itself from the Bush administration players to start being successful again. Further, for all of Karl Rove’s fine...

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...

Former Rep. Todd Akin said he regrets the comments he made about “legitimate rape” which derailed his Missouri bid for U.S. Senate last year. In an interview with KDSK-TV on Thursday, the 65-year-old was asked whether he would take back the controversial comments. “Of course I would,” the former congressman replied. “I’ve relived them too many times. But that is not reality.” …

The bipartisan effort to pass immigration legislation has driven a wedge through the heart of the Tea Party — with some of the GOP’s staunchest advocates and fiercest opponents of reform hailing from the insurgent movement. On one side, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): A Tea Party hero who was one of the movement's early success stories, Rubio is leading efforts to sell the bill to the GOP's conservative wing. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Reps. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), three other Tea Party favorites, have also been closely involved in the bipartisan negotiations.

 But others closely aligned...

Conservative,’” William F. Buckley said, “is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’” That was the main impulse behind the efforts in 11 states to amend their constitutions to ban same-sex marriage in 2004. Gay weddings had begun in Massachusetts in May, and conservative voters were determined to stop them in their tracks. But it wasn’t the only impulse behind getting gay marriage on the ballots. Karl Rove, the “architect” of George W. Bush’s re-election campaign, figured gay marriage would bring evangelicals to the polls. Nowhere was this as important as Ohio, the most important swing state that...

Hyping "growing support" for same-sex marriage, CNN's Carol Costello asked a supporter of California's Proposition 8 on Monday if he was "on the wrong side of history" for legally defining marriage as between one man and one woman. Her tone fits right with Friday's CNN panel where a traditional marriage supporter was disgustingly marginalized as a segregationist and compared to a slave owner. Costello cited GOP strategist Karl Rove admitting that he could see a Republican presidential candidate publicly support same-sex marriage in 2016. She then asked Austin Nimocks of the Alliance Defense Fund, "Austin, you heard what Karl Rove...

Karl Rove and Reince Priebus clearly do. And then there's Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin... Is it time to remake the old movie Death Wish — this time starring conservative Republicans who seem to think polls are wrong and that America really loves them and hates Barack Obama? This is not a joke. Whether conservatives even want to win is a serious question in light of the reaction to the Republican National Committee's brutally honest "autopsy" on why the party lost the 2012 presidential election. The RNC concluded that the party should change such things as the number of primaries,...

GOP strategist Karl Rove says he can imagine a Republican candidate in the next presidential campaign supporting gay marriage. The statement from the former adviser to President George W. Bush appears to acknowledge that opposition to gay marriage has waned in some conservative circles. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, announced last week that he now supports gay marriage after learning one of his sons was gay. Rove's comment was part of a panel discussion on ABC's "This Week." He did not elaborate.

The GOP is working with Silicon Valley investors to digitally target voters and donors in a broader effort by the Republican National Committee to revive the party. The venture, whose mission is still being refined, will create an interactive platform available to any GOP campaign to access the party's vast amount of data on voters. This platform will likely work in conjunction with the RNC's efforts to improve its own database of voter information. The venture is being backed by Karl Rove and fomer Bain & Co. executive and private equity investor Richard Boyce. Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy will...

GOP strategist and fundraiser Karl Rove on Sunday said Democrats needed to “stop scaring people” about gun control if they wanted to pass bipartisan measures to stem gun violence. Rove pointed to the debate over instituting background checks and said that Democrats were overreaching and pushing away gun owners eager for a bipartisan solution. “This was prompted by the Sandy Hook murders. Those guns were legally purchased with a background check. This would not have solved something like that,” said Rove in a panel discussion on ABC’s “This Week.” “Let's be very careful about quickly trampling on the rights of...

On Fox News Sunday this morning, evangelical leader Gary Bauer and Republican strategist Nicole Wallace went head-to-head over the upcoming Supreme Court hearings on overturning Proposition 8, California’s controversial law banning same-sex marriages within the state. “You don’t advance limited government by being an anti-democratic movement that is attempting to take this issue away from the American people,” Bauer said of Wallace and other conservatives who submitted an amicus brief to the court. “What the brief is asking for and what the groups waiting outside the Supreme Court are asking for, is for unelected judges to deny the people of...

Republican strategist Karl Rove told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week that he thinks Republican presidential candidates in 2016 could be supporters of marriage equality. Rove my the comments during a discussion on the Supreme Court’s hearing on a challenge to California’s Proposition 8 schedule for later this week. “Karl Rove, can you imagine the next presidential campaign a Republican candidate saying flat out ‘I am for gay marriage,’” asked Stephanopoulos. “I could,” said Rove, before turning the discussion back to the Supreme Court’s hearing on the issue. Rove said that he thinks some Supreme Court Justices have expressed sentiments...