Free Republic

Is Nikki Haley a true conservative, an establishment politician or something else entirely? That’s the question many conservatives have been asking since Haley officially announced she is running for president in February. Haley served as governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017 and as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Trump. We can’t recall another Republican politician who has garnered such a mixed response from conservatives. Almost everyone in the conservative media and public policy world seems to have an opinion about Haley. But once pressed to explain the reasons behind those opinions, very few seem prepared...

Call them the Ask for Permission Moderates. In a string of candid video clips in recent weeks, the Republican nominees for governor in New Jersey and Virginia made pitches to pro-Trump activists, explaining why they can't win without broadening their appeal beyond the Kool-Aid-besotted base that has hijacked the Republican Party. New Jersey's Jack Ciattarelli asked a crowd at a Hunterdon County gun range for a little more understanding, and a little less orthodoxy, as he hits the hustings. "Give me a little wiggle room to spend time going to places Republicans typically don't go,'' he told his audience, according...

Republican U.S. Sen. James Lankford would seem to have all the conservative credentials he'd need to coast to re-election in deep-red Oklahoma. A devout Baptist, Lankford was the director of the nation’s largest Christian youth camp for more than a decade. He speaks out regularly against abortion and what he describes as excessive government spending. And his voting record in the Senate aligned with former President Donald Trump’s position nearly 90% of the time. But like several other seemingly safe GOP incumbents, Lankford, who didn't even draw a primary opponent in 2016, finds himself under fierce attack by a challenger...

For Wyoming Republicans, booting Representative Liz Cheney from her leadership post isn't enough as internal efforts emerged to get her out of Congress altogether. Several right-leaning polls show a majority of Wyomingites have turned on Cheney, their at-large congresswoman in the U.S. House since 2017, as their support for former President Donald Trump has only grown since he left office. There are already four Republicans registered to run against Cheney for her House seat in 2022 – State Senator Anthony Bouchard, State Representative Chuck Gray, former Pavillion, Wyoming Mayor Marissa Selvig and Bryan Keller. Trump, along with his allies and...

Arkansas Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Wednesday evening that it's a "bad look" for the GOP to move on ousting Rep. Liz Cheney from party leadership amid her continued opposition to former President Donald Trump. "In terms of Liz Cheney, she's a conservative, she did a vote of conscience and she should not be ousted because of one vote of conscience," Hutchinson told CNN's Erin Burnett on "OutFront" of Cheney's vote to impeach Trump after the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. "And regardless of the reasons of what's going to happen in the vote, and it sounds like...

Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney has penned a slashing op-ed where she lays out a stark choice for her party between Donald Trump's crusade to 'delegitimize' Joe Biden's election and her own and fidelity to the U.S. Constitution. Cheney issued the withering attack on elements of her own party as she prepares to confront difficult odds to maintain her elected leadership post. Trump and Trump loyalist in Congress are already coming out against her, and Trump backer Elise Stefanik is already launching a campaign to replace her. But Cheney, the daughter of the former vice president, cast the battle as...

President Joe Biden joined Democrats on Wednesday in defending Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) to keep the Republican Conference chair position. When Biden was asked if he had “any comments on the efforts to oust Liz Cheney from the House Republican leadership post?” Biden replied, “I don’t understand the Republicans.” Biden’s comment comes after several Democrats voiced support for Cheney as current Republican Conference chair after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said Tuesday Cheney’s family-like style of big government politics is incompatible with “carrying out the message.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) praised Cheney on Tuesday for her “courage” and...

Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that if the Republican Party continued to “idolize” former President Donald Trump, they would lose elections. Cassidy said, “We’ve got to win in two years. We’ve got to win in four years. If we do that, we’ll do that by speaking to those issues important to the American people, and there’s a lot of issues important to them right now, not by putting one person on a pedestal and making that one person our focal point. If we speak to those issues, to those families, to those individuals,...

Florida’s Governor kicked off Friday’s proceedings at the Conservative Political Action Conference with a rousing speech that demonstrated that, should the former President not run again in 2024, the activists on the right could rally behind him. -snip- “We cannot, we will not go back to the days of the failed Republican establishment of yesteryear,” DeSantis thundered, to thunderous applause in the hall. “We reject open borders and instead support American sovereignty and the American worker. Building a movement on the foundation of amnesty and cheap foreign labor is like building a house on quicksand,” DeSantis added. “We reject weakness...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis rallied a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) to fight the “failed Republican establishment,” highlighting the ongoing battle over the direction of the GOP in the wake of former President Trump’s electoral defeat. In opening remarks on the second day of CPAC, DeSantis cast himself as an acolyte of Trump and his brand of conservative populism, echoing the former president’s attacks on “open borders,” foreign labor and “military adventurism.” In doing so, DeSantis previewed a fight to prevent the resurgence of the so-called establishment Republicans, who have challenged Trump’s vision for the party. “Florida’s...

House conservatives are renewing their calls for Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) to step down from her leadership post after she split with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) over whether former President Trump should speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). House Freedom Caucus members are going after Cheney, chair of the House Republican Conference, following an awkward moment during a press conference Wednesday with the House GOP leader. Just moments after McCarthy said he thought Trump should speak at the CPAC gathering this weekend in Florida, Cheney reiterated her position that she does not think the former president...

When a handful of potential Republican presidential hopefuls convene on Thursday for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), there will be one notable absence from the speaking lineup: Nikki Haley. Haley, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a potential 2024 White House contender, has found herself isolated from former President Trump and the populist wing of the GOP that he commands after a scathing interview with Politico in which she denounced her former boss and wrote off his future influence in Republican politics. The fallout from Haley’s remarks underscores the risks associated with her strategy of...

Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s Republican leader, has not been invited to this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, two sources familiar with the event’s organizing tell McClatchy. -snip- If McConnell was to show up on the CPAC stage, he would risk being met by a hostile audience, given the group’s loyalty to Trump. While McConnell voted to acquit Trump of inciting the insurrection in his second impeachment trial this month, the Kentuckian said the former president was morally responsible for the rampage and could be held criminally or civilly liable. “There’s always tension between the grassroots and the establishment. That’s part...

Rep. Liz Cheney said Wednesday that former President Donald Trump should have no role in the future of the Republican Party or the country. The No. 3 House Republican denounced Trump after she was asked at a press conference if she thought it was appropriate for Trump to be speaking Sunday at the annual CPAC event. “That’s up to CPAC. I’ve been clear on my views about President Trump and the extent to which following Jan. 6, I don’t believe that he should be playing a role in the future of the party or the country,” she said.

Donald Trump will reportedly deliver a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Florida this weekend in which he will claim the mantle of power in the GOP by saying he is “still in charge.” A longtime adviser to the former President tells Axios that the speech will be a “show of force” in which he will announce, “I may not have Twitter or the Oval Office, but I’m still in charge.” Going a step further, Trump is expected to argue that he is still the man to drain the Washington swamp as the Republican “presumptive 2024 nominee.”...

And then all of a sudden, Perdue says he's not running for Senate again! But he says it's a "personal decision" not "a political one" Bwhahahahahahahahaha Let the word go forth, from this time and place, that if you want to be a pantywaist Republican, you're through! Your days are numbered. So help the Democrats while you can, because you're likely in your final term.

I have already posted on here about Paul Nehlen who is a terrific candidate attempting to Cantor Paul Ryan. Nehlen is gaining some traction, but someone who people have been less focused on primarying (probably because he just announced he is running) is Marco Rubio. As we know, Marco Rubio has "endorsed" Trump while continuing to waver and make negative comments about him to the media. This is no way to get the party behind your nominee. Here is some info about Carlos Berulo: A father, husband and Florida businessman, Carlos Beruff is a proud representation of the American Dream....

Newt Gingrich told Breitbart News that the country is in rebellion against the coastal power centers and that Donald Trump might be the candidate who can "kick down the doors" of the establishment. Former House speaker Gingrich weighed in on Trump's rise. "I think he represents a different era" in the same conservative movement, Gingrich said. "The system has become so incompetent and outrageously buracratic. The centers of power are so, so in New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, that the whole rest of the country is in rebellion. And people are looking for somebody who can kick down...

Paul Ryan has made some pretty steep demands of the House Republican caucus — and particularly the group of adamant conservatives known as the Freedom Caucus — as a condition of becoming the House speaker. The Freedom Caucus voted Wednesday night to support Ryan as speaker, but there remains a chance that Ryan could walk away from the job, just as John Boehner and Kevin McCarthy did. If he is elected speaker, Ryan may still struggle to hold the Republican caucus together, but his voting record suggests that he does have a few things going for him that neither Boehner...

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush appeared on the first episode of Late Show With Stephen Colbert to go face-to-face with a man who spent a decade turning faux-Conservatism into an art form. Over the course of their discussion, Bush and Stephen Colbert talked about the "game of Bloodsport" known as politics, gun control, Donald Trump and Barack Obama. "I'm going to say something that's heretic, I guess: I don't think Barack Obama has bad motives. I just think he's wrong on a lot of issues," Bush said, paying the president the thinnest of compliments. "If you start with the premise...