Free Republic

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid should do the job he was elected to do and quit lecturing Republicans, says former Florida GOP Rep. Joe Scarborough. "Harry Reid should really be quiet and go back and do the job that he was hired to do, and, at least, pass one appropriation bill. And then come out lecturing us," Scarborough, the host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," said on his program Tuesday. "I hear Harry Reid lecturing [House Speaker] John Boehner every day about getting things done. And Harry Reid's Senate that Harry Reid runs, first of all, went four or five years...

Who's to blame for the government shutdown?-- View Results

Obstructionism may play well for House Republicans in safely red districts, but a poll done this week suggests that the government shutdown may actually hurt Representatives in competitive districts. In a poll conducted in 24 House districts over Wednesday, Thursday and Friday by Public Policy Polling, registered voters in 17 of those districts favored a generic Democratic challenger over the incumbent Republican. The Democrats would need to win 17 seats in the 2014 midterm elections to take control of the House. Republicans have felt the brunt of the public’s anger for the standoff over the government shutdown. Polls released last...

Simple and unadulterated hatred for Obama has driven the party to alienate the electorate by shutting the government down over their opposition to Obamacare.As I watched the deadlock over the approval of government expenditure finally lead to a partial shutdown of the US government, I could not help thinking how unfortunate it is that US lawmakers are behaving in ways unbecoming of their great and dynamic democracy. At stake in this incomprehensible showdown between Republicans and Democrats is the much-needed Congressional approval to government expenditure. The Republicans, under the sway of a minority of right-wing diehards, decided to use blackmail...

A striking aspect of the new Pew survey on Jewish Americans is how liberal Jews are. Is it good for the Democrats? You bet.Why do people vote the way to do? For swing voters, the answer is usually the state of the economy. For most, however, voting patterns are surprisingly fixed. People tend to vote for one party consistently over time. For Jewish American voters, the party of choice has been the Democratic party. Conservatives have been trying to crack the code for a number of years on how to get Jewish voters over to their side. Based on the...

Writing from her new home in New York, Louise Mensch argues that Britain needs more politicians like Chris Christie and Arnold Schwarzenegger.It’s strange watching the parallels develop between British and American politics. After the disaster of the 2008 McCain-Palin campaign (think William Hague as Conservative leader), the Republicans were at least respectable under Mitt Romney (think Michael Howard). But they now have no hope of victory, with no light in sight down a long, dark tunnel and a clear need for major reform. The Grand Old Party needs to learn the lessons of Nate Silver and actually read the polls....

Political analyst and Democratic pollster Doug Schoen tells Newsmax that Hillary Clinton is "the front-runner on both sides" if she decides to run for president in 2016. He also opines that Republicans are making a "political mistake" in backing a bill to defund Obamacare. Schoen is the author of the book "Hopelessly Divided: The New Crisis in American Politics and What It Means for 2012 and Beyond."Story continues below video. (VIDEO-AT-LINK)In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York on Monday, Schoen assesses a potential White House run by Clinton. "First, there is legitimate...

In a week that will be dominated by the debt ceiling and Republican efforts to defund Obamacare, there will be an irresistible desire to view the outcome as having real political consequences for 2014 and the next presidential race. Let me offer a different view: nothing that happens this week will have much impact come Election Day next year or beyond. Why? Little of this week’s melodrama is likely to affect the quality of life of most Americans. As Sen. Rand Paul observed, Obamacare is overwhelmingly likely to continue. The debt ceiling will be raised. Some politicians will have a...

My assertion that there’s a 70% chance that the GOP controls White House, Senate, and House in 2017 has attracted a lot of pushback. And it’s certainly possible that I’m wrong! Here’s my thinking, for what it’s worth: Since the Civil War, only two Democratic presidents have been succeeded by another Democrat. Both of them–FDR and JFK–accomplished this by dying in office. Since World War II, only four presidents have been succeeded by a member of their party. As I mentioned above, two of them accomplished this by dying in office. One of them accomplished this by resigning in disgrace...

LET Rand Paul have his epic filibuster and Ted Cruz his scowling threats to shut down the government. Let Chris Christie thunder to a second term as the governor of New Jersey, his hubris flowering as his ultimate designs on the White House take shape. Jeb Bush, lying low in the subtropics of Florida, has something they don’t: the unalloyed affection of many of the Republican Party’s most influential moneymen, who are waiting for word on what he’ll do, hoping that he’ll seek the 2016 presidential nomination and noting with amusement how far he has drifted off fickle pundits’ radar,...

One word, my friends: RINOgeddon. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that Christie earns 21% support when Republican voters are asked whom they would vote for if the party’s primary in their state were held today. Florida Senator Marco Rubio runs a close second with 18% of the GOP vote, followed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush at 16% and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul with 15% of the vote. Congressman Paul Ryan, the unsuccessful Republican vice presidential candidate in 2012, picks up 13% of the Republican vote, with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker dead last at six percent (6%)....

Rent free in their empty heads. There would be no home field advantage in Alaska for Sarah Palin if the former governor made a run for the White House in 2016, according to a new poll released Friday. Hillary Clinton, the front runner for the Democrats in 2016, would beat Palin 49-40 in a hypothetical match-up, according to a survey from Democratic firm Public Policy Polling. Palin is the only potential GOP candidate Clinton topped in poll. Despite it being her home state, only 18 percent of Alaskans think Palin should make a bid for the White House in 2016,...

In a recent poll of Alaska voters, George Zimmerman -- who was recently acquitted in the shooting death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin -- got a surprising 2 percent support as a hypothetical Republican presidential candidate. The newest Alaska survey from Public Policy Polling shows Hillary Clinton's only chance of winning the state in 2016 would be in a matchup against Republican Sarah Palin, where Clinton would lead 49/40 percent. Clinton trails all other Republican candidates in the survey. Out in front, Chris Christie leads her by 8 points at 46/38, Jeb Bush leads at 49/42, Rand Paul is up...

In a wide-ranging interview with The New Republic published Tuesday, Sen John McCain (R-AZ) praised former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, his running mate in the 2008 presidential race, for "exciting" the GOP base in a way the senator couldn't achieve. Asked if it "bothered" him when people said his legacy was choosing Palin as his running mate in 2008, McCain said "no." "We were four points down when I chose her and three points up afterwards," he told the magazine. "She held her own and, some people said, won a debate with the vice president. She did everything I ever...

Gotta figure her lead would be even bigger without Joe Miller in the field here. Her nomination for the taking? Alaska should be a top tier pick up opportunity for Senate Republicans next year…but their top choice of a candidate is Sarah Palin. 36% of GOP primary voters in the state say they’d like Palin to be their standard bearer against Mark Begich to 26% for Mead Treadwell, 15% for Dan Sullivan, and 12% for Joe Miller. Palin leads mostly based on her strength with ‘very conservative’ voters where she gets 43% to 20% for Treadwell, but she also leads...

Fox News just released a nationwide poll in generall in keeping with many others, finding voters are unhappy with the economy and want Obamacare repealed. But what's truly eye-opening are the comparisons of partisan opinions of President Barack Obama and George Zimmerman, who was acquitted July 13 of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges for shooting unarmed Miami Gardens 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, 2012. Republicans have a more-favorable opinion of Zimmerman, a figure of sympathy to a number of conservatives, than Obama. That's right: The Democratic occupant of the White House is held in less favorable regard by Republicans...

A Marist poll released Wednesday indicates that Hillary Clinton is the clear frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in 2016, and that there is a very crowded and tight field among Republicans. Yahoo asked voters: Which candidate are you backing and why? Here's one perspective. COMMENTARY | The latest Marist poll of potential presidential candidates shows a couple of interesting results. First, Hillary Clinton is blowing away other Democrats. Second, the Republicans appear to be bunched up with no clear front runner. Turning one's attention to the Republican field, one looks upon Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas. Hot Air,...

In the latest poll out regarding the Wyoming GOP primary for senate, incumbent Senator Mike Enzi holds a strong lead over challenger Liz Cheney. After announcing she would run for the Republican nomination in the 2014 Wyoming senate race, many Republicans had opinions of the choice. But in the latest poll out of Wyoming, Mike Enzi leads the former VP’s daughter by over 30 points. If the race were held today 55 percent said they would support Senator Enzi, whereas only 21 percent support Cheney’s efforts. Just over three-quarters of the state’s voters view Enzi favorably, compared with just 6...

Since retiring from her position as Secretary of State under the Obama administration, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been out of the public spotlight. Yet most of the political world still wants to know if Clinton will run for President in 2016. I can’t answer that, but I can say if she did, she would win. Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskil recently organized a potential 2016 Clinton presidential campaign. “Regardless of who you supported for president back then, we can all agree today that there is nobody better equipped to be our next president than Hillary Clinton,” said McCaskil. In addition, there...

Back in January and February, Marco Rubio stood at the top of the heap among prospective 2016 Republican presidential contenders. Sen. Marco Rubio Today? Not so much. In the recently released Ipsos – Reuters poll, for example, Rubio has lost one third of the support he had earlier this spring and is now not even in the top three in the latest poll Ipsos conducted for Reuters. Marco now registers below Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Rand Paul and Jeb Bush. Another poll in Iowa, a key early voting state in the Republican presidential sweepstakes (conducted by Illinois-based pollster McKeon &...

Young people are more Democratic and pro-Obama – but they're even more pro-liberty. The GOP should seize this chance.You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that the Republican party has a problem with the millennial generation. Americans born after 1980 voted by some 25pt for President Obama over Mitt Romney, while the rest of the electorate narrowly supported the Republican candidate. It's my view that Republicans can do little to attract most Millennials – but privacy may be the exception. Our Guardian poll conducted by Public Policy Polling indicated that Democrats were more supportive of President Obama's...

Sarah Palin and Hillary Rodham Clinton are not similar people. The people they appeal to, the way they dress, what they believe about politics and policy, could not be further away from one another. But they do have something in common: They're successful female politicians. (Yes, we can debate over how we define the term "successful" here. But at the very least, both were voted by a state's electorate to a prominent role—governor for Palin, senator for Clinton.) But it's not so easy to conjure up an image of a female politician. While male leaders are easily labeled "ambitious," or...

As a new effort at comprehensive immigration reform inches its way forward in the Senate, dissent from many conservatives is revealing their true contempt for, and fear of, the possibility that demographic groups who look different from their base will accrue power. The questions are: Is providing a pathway to citizenship (or at least permanent residency) for the 11 million people in this country illegally an act of humanity and practicality? Or is it an electoral imperative to which opposition ultimately guarantees political suicide? The answer probably is “yes” to both, although many Republicans seem to think the opposite. President...

Back in their day, the tea party folks were riding high, fueling indignation over alleged government-run death panels, a treasonous Federal Reserve and the like. They commandeered sparsely attended Republican primaries, managing to nominate for Senate seats a dabbler in witchcraft in Delaware, holders of strange views on rape in Missouri and Indiana, and in Nevada, a candidate suggesting armed insurrection if her people didn't win elections. All lost -- some in races an old-fashioned Republican would have won. In the interest of party self-preservation, Republican leaders sidelined the more extreme tea partiers, or tried to. Meanwhile, the tea party's...

Conservative activist and political pundit Gary Bauer believes former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin would make a "fantastic" United States senator. A recent Republican survey showed the high-profile former GOP vice-presidential nominee with a two-percent edge (32% to 30%) over Alaska Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell for the right to challenge incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Begich next year. Joe Miller, the tea party-backed nominee in 2010, finished a distant third with 14 percent. The poll was commissioned by the Tea Party Leadership Fund, which is hoping to convince Palin to enter the race. Thus far she has not expressed any public interest...

The top advisor to last year’s Republican nominee predicted Wednesday that if Hillary Clinton runs for president in 2016, she will lose in a Democratic primary. Clinton is widely thought to be the strongest 2016 presidential contender in either party, with high approval ratings and early poll numbers that show her beating top Republicans like Sen. Marco Rubio in their home states. But Stu Stevens, the senior advisor to Mitt Romney’s failed presidential bid, told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by National Review that Clinton wouldn’t survive a Democratic primary. “I would predict that if Hillary Clinton runs, she’ll lose...

My rule of thumb is that a vast majority of alleged political scandals will have less electoral impact than the conventional wisdom initially holds. There are two main reasons for this. First, voters weigh major issues like economic performance and the conduct of foreign wars heavily in making their decisions, leaving relatively little room for everything else. Second, the news media may overplay the lead story, scandalous or otherwise, on any given day, even though it may turn out to be relatively unimportant in the context of a multiyear political cycle. But the recent admission by the Internal Revenue Service...

If you are a Conservative, you may have gotten a few e-mails from a Washington, D.C. based group called the Tea Party Leadership Fund. These letters will be signed by a man named Todd Cefaratti. The letter states they are looking to “Draft Sarah Palin” into making a run at Alaska’s Senate seat in 2014, a seat now held by democrat Mark Begich. This of course has caused quite a stir, and unfortunately many have sent their hard earned money to this crew. Recently, the group commissioned a poll of Alaskans, looking to legitimize their efforts. Harper Polling found these...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You know, folks, on this IRS business, I think the 2010 midterms really shocked the Democrats. I think they might have expected to maybe lose some seats, although, actually, my memory -- no, no, no, no, no, my memory is that they thought with the overwhelming popularity of Obama it might be the first time that a sitting president's party increased seats. Well, it wouldn't be the first time. I think Bush did it. But they were clearly hoping for at least a draw. In the 2010 midterms they got shellacked. It's one of the reasons I...

A new Harper Polling poll shows a plurality of likely Alaskan Republican voters support their former Governor, Sarah Palin, as a U.S. Senate candidate in the 2014 GOP primary over Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell and 2010 Senate candidate Joe Miller. The survey of 379 likely Republican voters found that 32 percent support Palin, whereas 30 percent support Treadwell and 14 percent support Miller. The Harper Polling poll, conducted via telephone on May 6 and May 7 on behalf of the Tea Party Leadership Fund, found that 45 percent of likely GOP voters think Palin would “fight hardest for conservative values,”...

One of the Democrats’ most veteran strategists warns that the party is “in decline” and “at considerable risk” when President Barack Obama is no longer on the scene. “Since Obama was elected President, the Democrats have lost nine governorships, 56 members of the House and two Senate seats,” Doug Sosnik, the political director in Bill Clinton’s White House, writes in a new memo. While Republican branding problems get the lion’s share of attention, the Democratic Party’s favorability rating has declined by 15 points since Obama took power. A Pew Research Center survey this January showed that the Democratic Party was...

On Sunday’s broadcast of ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” former Clinton adviser James Carville said that Sen. Ted Cruz will be a force to be reckoned with should he decide to run for president in 2016. The Canadian-born Cruz, Carville noted, hails from the more ideological wing of the GOP, while the last two Republicans to unsuccessfully run for president, Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, were both inherently moderate and compromise-friendly. “I think he is the most talented and fearless Republican politician I’ve seen in the last 30 years. I further think that he’s...

A new Quinnipiac poll comparing potential Democratic candidates for 2016 comes to a familiar conclusion: Hillary Clinton, if she decides to run, would absolutely dominate the competition. The poll has 65 percent of potential Democratic voters picking Hillary Clinton as their presidential nominee in 2016. That's in line with multiple recent polls — including from Gallup, PPP, and PublicMind — showing Clinton as the overwhelming favorite in a Democratic primary. What's interesting about the Quinnipiac poll is that it conducted a separate survey in which Clinton was removed from the race. Which Democrats come out on top if Clinton decides...

There will almost certainly be an aspect of the National Rifle Association's convention — which opens today in Houston — that feels like a victory celebration. By organizing and agitating its members, the organization was able to kill a Senate compromise on background checks, steamrolling over an ineffectual Organizing For Action. But as discussion of reviving that deal heats up, the NRA may finally face a real roadblock: public opinion. Prior to the April 17th vote — which failed to end a Republican-led filibuster on a bipartisan compromise to expand background checks — there were certainly coordinated organizing efforts. Mayors...

Sarah Palin's supporters are urged to contribute money toward recruiting her to run for the U.S. Senate, the Tea Party Leadership Fund said. "We know that, with Sarah in the Senate, conservatives across America can rest a little easier at night knowing she's at the watch," an email from Todd Cefratti of the Leadership Fund, sent this week to supporters, read in part. She would run against incumbent Mark Begich, D-Alaska, the Los Angeles Times noted....

Can the Tea Party and establishment, moderate-minded conservatives ever reconcile? At The American Prospect, Abby Rapoport cites a new study as evidence it won't happen. [T]he gap between the two groups is huge. In the YouGov survey the study uses, more than two-thirds of Tea Partiers put themselves in the two most conservative categories on economic policy, social policy, and overall policy. Only 23 percent of non-Tea Partiers place themselves in the most conservative categories on all three issues; nearly 40 percent don’t locate themselves in the most conservative categories for any of the three policy areas. Most jarring: On...

Despite assurances by the likes of Nate Silver that these are solid polls showing "Overwhelming majorities of 80 to 90 percent of the public say they favor background checks," I have previously noted my skepticism of these claims. To me, it wasn't too surprising that the Senate voted down the gun control bill about 10 days ago. My concern is that people were really just being asked about whether they wanted to keep criminals from getting guns, not about the particular legislation being voted on by the Senate. Well, now there is another poll by the PEW Research Center that...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would have won the presidency if the white and black turnout rates had stayed at their 2004 levels, according to a new analysis of 2012 election. “The battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida and Colorado would have tipped in favor of Romney, handing him the presidency if the outcome of other states remained the same,” according to The Associated Press’s summary of research by William Frey, an expert at the Brookings Institution. Overall turnout declined from 62 percent in 2008 to 58 percent in 2012, Frey reported. The drop-off reduced the overall turnout by...

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...

Did the senators who voted against a proposal last week to expand background checks on gun buyers take an electoral risk? At first glance, it would seem that they did. Background checks are broadly popular with the public. Overwhelming majorities of 80 to 90 percent of the public say they favor background checks when guns are purchased at gun shows, at gun shops or online. Support for background checks drops when guns are bought through informal channels, or gifts from family members — but the amendment that the Senate voted upon last week, sponsored by the Joe Manchin III, Democrat...

Though currently retired, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is still more popular than President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and her successor John Kerry, a new poll has found. According to the Gallup poll, released Tuesday, a whopping 64 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Clinton, putting her nine percentage points ahead of President Obama (55 percent), 19 percentage points ahead of Biden and 20 percentage points ahead of the current Secretary of State John Kerry. Moreover while 13 percent of respondents said they never heard of John Kerry and nine percent of respondents said the...

LaGrange, IL— This weekend’s epic showdown between movement conservatives and more moderate elements of the Illinois Republican Party ended with a split result. Embattled Party Chairman Pat Brady remains at the helm of the State Central Committee but the committee is beginning the process of lining up a successor in the event Chairman Brady resigns or his detractors can garner enough votes to oust him while simultaneously navigating party rules to make it happen. Brady’s term runs through the 2014 primary season when a new, 18-member central committee, selected under the downsized 2011 congressional map, will organize itself and elect...

PLEASE don’t ask me this anymore. It’s such a silly question. Of course Hillary is running. I’ve never met a man who was told he could be president who didn’t want to be president. So naturally, a woman who’s told she can be the first commandress in chief wants to be. “Running for president is like sex,” James Carville told me. “No one ever did it once and forgot about it.” Joe Biden wants the job. He’s human (very). But he’s a realist. He knows the Democratic Party has a messianic urge to finish what it started so spectacularly with...

Recently reporter Thomas Edsall - who has spent most of the last 30 years covering politics for the Washington Post and the New Republic - had some advice for the GOP. He draws upon some recent polling data to argue that "the Republican Party can afford to marginalize . . . Christian right leaders because evangelical social conservatives . . . are not going to vote Democratic." Thus, he reasons that Republicans can, as he puts it, "concede defeat in the culture war" in the hopes of picking up more socially liberal voters. Mr. Edsall might want to check with...

Has the moment passed for tighter gun restrictions? President Obama himself raised that question Thursday at a White House event aimed at revitalizing the prospects for legislation, 100 days after a Connecticut elementary school massacre that shocked the nation. Flanked by families affected by gun violence, the president made an emotional plea for action and insisted it’s not too late. “The notion that two months or three months after something as horrific as what happened at Newtown happens, and we’ve moved on to other things?” he said. “That’s not who we are.” Next Wednesday, Obama will travel to Colorado to...

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 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...

No matter what Barack Obama does, he cannot escape the shadow of his former political opponent. Hillary Clinton, back from her global travels visiting places and peoples hardly heard of on this continent, is stealing the spotlight without even touching the stage. President Obama visits the Middle East, makes history as he speaks war to Syria and Iran and peace to Israelis and Palestinians, and the talk back home circles The Big Question: Will Hillary run? The former first lady, the former senator and now the former secretary of state is everywhere — and nowhere to be seen. Sent away...

Proponents of gun-control legislation, emboldened by the president’s call for stricter laws and overwhelming support in public polling, have been optimistic that proposals for background checks or a crackdown on weapons trafficking could pass Congress. Gun-control advocates have cited plenty of data to make their case, including surveys that show more than 80 percent of Americans support background checks. Even a ban on assault weapons, which has been a more polarizing issue, still wins majority support in many surveys. But these polls may gloss over some complexities in public opinion on gun control, and explain why Democrats are having so...

In my last column, I argued that for all the undeniable woes of the Republican Party, the unfurling of Obamacare represents a huge vulnerability for Democrats. The Democratic health reform bill is economically nonsensical and politically unpopular. A recent Rasmussen poll found that 54 percent believe the law will damage the U.S. health care system. Even among Democrats, support for the law is ebbing. In February, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that only 57 percent of Democrats (compared with 72 percent in November of 2012) support the law. The battle over health care reform is not over. Yes, the...