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...

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 Congressman Bob Goodlatte, chair of the House Judiciary Committee overseeing immigration, said he expected Congress to pursue reform legislation despite a tight schedule featuring debates over Syria, health care, and the debt limit. Those and other issues “should not deter us from getting to [immigration] as soon as possible,” Goodlatte said in an appearance on WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi Show on Tuesday. Goodlatte said he expected votes soon, perhaps in October, on a series of smaller House bills on border security, internal enforcement, guest workers, and high-tech visas. “Those bills are ready to go to the floor of the House...

Finally the Republicans have someone in charge that is not afraid of his own shadow. Republicans are always cowering to the mainstream press while they mutter about the corrosiveness of it. If he keeps it up, the Republicans might actually win the U.S. Senate in 2014 and the Presidency in 2016. We are referring, of course, to Reince Priebus, Chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC). You probably have heard that two television operations announced they were doing projects about Hillary Clinton. NBC has plans to produce and air a four hour mini-series about Hillary Clinton and CNN has plans...

Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin slammed what she called Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) latest rationale for passing comprehensive immigration reform; that President Barack Obama will enact reforms unilaterally with or without the GOP’s support. She called Rubio’s latest plea to conservatives “craven” and said that he should “go down fighting” against immigration reform rather than conceding that those reforms were already fait accompli. -snip- “To argue to conservatives who believe in limited government that we should pass this massive amnesty monstrosity because Obama is going to do it anyway smacks of the worst kind of political expedience,” she continued. “I think...

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...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on Friday that if House Republicans end up sending their collection of immigration bills to a conference with the Senate, Democrats would win. “If we go to conference, we would win,” Reid told a Nevada radio station.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said Wednesday that comprehensive immigration reform has the support of dozens of members of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Among GOP backers of comprehensive reform he cited Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan, the 2012 Republican candidate for vice president. Gutierrez said 195 of the 201 Democrats in the House would vote for a reform bill similar to the one passed last month by the Senate, meaning that fewer than two dozen Republican votes would be needed to reach the magic number of 218 required to pass it.

Rep. Paul D. Ryan might have just given away the road map for House consideration of immigration reform. “Tentatively, in October, we’re going to vote on a border security bill, an interior enforcement bill, a bill for legal immigration,” the Wisconsin Republican and Budget Committee chairman told constituents at a district town hall event Friday, according to a report by the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel. Ryan also reportedly said negotiations were underway for the chamber to vote on legislation that would provide undocumented immigrants with “probationary” visas while they waited a minimum of 15 years to attain citizenship.

A House panel on immigration on Tuesday took up proposals that carve a pathway to citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants who were brought here at a young age. The Republican-led panel pitched the issue as a key piece of their stepwise approach to immigration reform. “They had no input in their parents’ decision to bring the family to the U.S. illegally. And many of them know no other home that the United States, having grown up as Americans since they were toddlers,” Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican, said at the hearing heavily attended by Hispanic youth. Subcommittee...

Fox News viewers in Florida will see a new commercial in the coming weeks urging them to call Senator Marco Rubio. “Thank him for keeping his promise, and fighting to secure the border,” a narrator says in the ad, which is paid for by the conservative American Action Network. Another group, Americans for a Conservative Direction, led by former Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and other top Republicans, has been running ads in Iowa lately that implore those watching to “stand with Marco Rubio to end de facto amnesty.”

House Speaker John Boehner is not going to bring a comprehensive immigration-reform plan to the floor if a majority of Republicans don't support it, sources familiar with his plans said. "No way in hell," is how several described the chances of the speaker acting on such a proposal without a majority of his majority behind him. Boehner, R-Ohio, does not view immigration in the same vein as the fiscal cliff last December, when he backed a bill that protected most Americans from a tax increase even though less than half of the GOP lawmakers were with him, said multiple sources,...

Making an argument for overhauling the nation's immigration system Friday to a crowd of conservative activists, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush claimed immigrants were "more fertile" and thus a great benefit to American society. His remark appeared to be an inarticulate reference to immigrants' fertility rates, which data show are higher than native-born Americans. "Immigrants create far more businesses than native-born Americans over the last 20 years. Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families, and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population. Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity,"

After signaling earlier in the day that his leadership style could lend itself to passage of immigration overhaul without the votes of a majority of his own party, Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, took some heat from outside conservative groups. The Conservative Action Project on Tuesday afternoon circulated a letter to House Republican lawmakers co-signed by dozens of influential movement leaders, urging them to formally adopt the “Hastert Rule.” Named for Rep. J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., who served as speaker from 1999 to 2007, the rule dictates that no bill come to the floor without assurance that a majority of...

-snip- He said he has allowed the House to work its will “more than any speaker in modern history, to the point where there are some bills that have passed — with a majority of Democrats — in favor, and a minority of Republicans.” He said he doesn’t believe that he’ll have to bring a bill with more support from Democrats than Republicans. Asked if he was “open to it,” Boehner said “we’re going to let the House work its will.” Boehner has gotten into hot water this year about violating the so-called Hastert Rule — that every bill has...

John Boehner said he expects an overhaul of immigration rules to become law by the end of the year, but that the Senate's version "doesn't go far enough" to secure the U.S. border with Mexico or enforce the proposed new system. "I've got real concerns about the Senate bill, especially in the area of border security and internal enforcement of the system. I'm concerned that it doesn't go far enough." Boehner added that reforming the nation's immigration system was his top legislative priority this year.

House Speaker John Boehner is aiming to have various chamber committees finish work on immigration legislation by the Fourth of July, and would like a House vote by August, reported Politico.com.

Phyllis Schlafly, founder and president of the pro-family grassroots organization Eagle Forum blasted New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte, who campaigned on promises to oppose amnesty, for now supporting the fatally flawed Gang of Eight amnesty bill. "As a Senate candidate, Kelly Ayotte had it right when she said that we don't necessarily need to add new immigration laws, we need to start by enforcing the laws already on the books," said Schlafly. "Ayotte even ran ads against her Democrat opponent for supporting amnesty." "Ayotte betrayed every conservative who supported her when she announced her support for this shameful bill," Schlafly...

Crossroads GPS, an advocacy group backed by Karl Rove, former senior adviser to George W. Bush, is launching a $100,000 ad campaign urging conservatives to support an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws. The full-page print ad is signed by 53 business leaders and Republicans, including former Republican National Committee Chairman Edward Gillespie, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Rove. It's the first ad the group has run on immigration this year.

In a dramatic breakthrough on immigration reform, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) is offering up an amendment to break the log jam and address his and other GOP senators’ concerns about border security. Entitled the RESULTS amendment (Requiring Enforcement, Security and safety, & Upgrading Legitimate Trade and travel Simultaneously) the amendment would: • Requires DHS Secretary and GAO Comptroller General to jointly certify that these triggers are met before Registered Provisional Immigrants (RPI) can adjust to Lawful Permanent Resident (“green card”) status: 1. 100% Situational Awareness – monitoring capability at every segment of Southern border 2. Full Operational Control – defined...

President Barack Obama has an important new ally as emboldened Republicans work to derail his agenda: John McCain. The shift is striking: The 2008 rivals never got along throughout Obama’s first term in office. McCain has been Obama’s chief tormentor on issues ranging from the budget to Benghazi, tartly saying in late 2010 that the two men had “no relationship.” Yet during one of Obama’s toughest times as president, there was McCain, sitting down last week with him in the Oval Office for a private strategy session. At the urging of new White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, who...

House of Representatives Committees through June 9th - no hearings on Scandals

Thursday was another busy day for the Gang of 8 immigration reform effort, which has come to mean Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and his staff were everywhere on talk radio, on the Senate floor, at a press conference, manning their new Web site and sending batches of e-mails to the media to debunk attacks. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) (Alex Wong/Getty Images) Rubio announced his delight that a third hearing, this one by the Joint House and Senate Economic Committee had been scheduled. (“We need more transparency and greater scrutiny of this bill as the process continues, and it’s important for...

As his lies are being exposed daily, Marco and his team are losing their heads.- The panic among the amnesty pimps has reached hysterical proportions. As conservatives increasingly discover how the 'Gang of Eight' amnesty bill would be an abject disaster for America, and also realize how Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has lied to them about its provisions, Rubio and his team have reacted with La Raza talking points, and now disgraceful race-baiting. Case in point, Rubio's spokesperson Alex Conant - in a Twitter exchange with Washington Examiner columnist Conn Carroll, R- said, “We haven’t had a cohort of people...

Paul Ryan says the Gang of Eight’s immigration-reform plan is “productive” and “getting us closer to a solution.” Ryan will give a speech on Monday in Chicago on immigration. Representative Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, a Democrat, will appear with him.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Rand Paul is calling for conservatives to embrace the cause of immigration reform, outlining a proposal that would grant some form of legal status to the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants after the federal government has certified that the border is secure. Paul’s proposal, outlined in a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington on Tuesday, carefully avoided the term citizenship. Instead, the Kentucky senator said he sought a middle ground that would include a multi-year process of granting visas to undocumented workers that would hinge on the annual verification of the security of the...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) joined President Obama for his second closed-door dinner with Senate Republicans on Wednesday. Rubio had been invited but had not committed for most of the day of the dinner. The Florida Republican's office said immigration meetings might get in the way of him going to the dinner, but later said he would attend. Besides Rubio, Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), John Boozman (Ark.), Susan Collins (Maine), Mike Crapo (Idaho), Mike Enzi (Wyo.), Deb Fisher (Neb.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), Johnny Isackson (Ga.), Pat Roberts (Kan.), John Thune (S.D.) Roger Wicker (Miss.) dined with Obama. Obama's first meeting with...

President Obama’s second big dinner with Senate Republicans will be at the White House Wednesday night, press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday. Carney declined to say which senators will join Obama but Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), who is organizing the guest list, said Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) will join him at the dinner. Isakson’s office said he would release the full guest list Wednesday. The dinner follows Obama’s initial outreach to Senate Republicans last month. That dinner grew out of discussions Obama had with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). Carney said topics of discussion will include Obama’s...

President Barack Obama is keeping up his congressional charm offensive, with a second dinner with Senate Republicans planned for next month. Obama dined with a dozen GOP senators earlier this month at a hotel near the White House. …

The national Republican Party released a scathing self-analysis Monday that party leaders hope will be the first step toward returning the GOP to a winning track after its election losses of November. The report, issued by a Republican National Committee task force, minces no words. "Public perception of the party is at record lows," the report says. "Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country. When someone rolls their eyes at us, they are not likely to open their...

The Republican National Committee (RNC) has released its long-awaited study on the 2012 elections, with detailed recommendations about how the party can improve its future. The report, entitled the “Growth and Opportunity Project,” was compiled by a special committee consisting of former Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, veteran GOP adviser Sally Bradshaw, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, Puerto Rico committeewoman Zori Fonalledas, and South Carolina committeeman Glenn McCall. For several months, RNC chairman Reince Priebus has referred to the committee’s report on the state of the party as an “autopsy.” It is an apt description, because the 100-page report...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush gave the keynote speech Friday night at the Conservative Political Action Conference 2013 Reagan Dinner and received what was described as a “respectful” standing ovation when introduced, as reported by Twitchy.com. As he laid out what appeared to be the foundation for a future presidential campaign platform, there was a general lack of enthusiasm that brought some to describe it as tepid.

As the GOP struggles to broaden its appeal, the head of the American Conservative Union declared Thursday that the Republican Party is not a home for everyone, as prominent voices in Republican politics gather with thousands of conservatives and tea party activists outside Washington. The Conservative Political Action Conference offers Republican leaders—past and potential presidential contenders among them—a high-profile stage to court their party's most passionate voters. The three-day gathering also shines a spotlight on deep divisions within the Republican Party as it tries to recover from a painful 2012 election season. “I’m a firm believer that if the Republican...

President Obama and Republican senators had a “good exchange of ideas” this evening during their roughly two-hour-long dinner at the posh Jefferson Hotel, just blocks from the White House, according to a senior administration official. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., gave the meeting a thumbs up as he exited the hotel, saying it was “just fine,” “great” and “wonderful.” McCain told reporters gathered across the street that it was a “very enjoyable evening,” but declined to discuss specifics. Obama invited 12 GOP senators to break bread as part of a larger effort to jump start budget negotiations and try to cut...

Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, the former campaign adviser to 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, has repeatedly argued that the Republican Party should be more inclusive — of almost everyone, it seems, except Sarah Palin. On Friday night’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” during its online “Overtime” segment, Schmidt tersely responded to a viewer question about McCain’s selection of Palin to be his running mate: MAHER: Steve Schmidt, ‘Is it possible you picked Sarah Palin the wrong year?’ Oh, my. ‘Could she have swung the women vote in 2012 enough to have put Romney in the White...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican Party's problems with minority voters have preoccupied strategists since November, and it's possible those difficulties will persist or worsen. But an opening for marked improvements in GOP-minority relations may be at hand, or at least close by.Republican leaders would have to make some timely decisions and get a few breaks, which campaign consultants don't rule out.The party desperately needs to draw more support from Latinos, a fast-growing sector that gave President Barack Obama 71 percent of its vote last fall. Two big opportunities now present themselves.If Republican lawmakers allow far-reaching immigration changes to become law,...

Marco Rubio’s softening stance toward immigration reform boils down to his mom, a new profile of the fast-rising Florida senator reveals. “Don’t mess with the immigrants, my son,” Oriales Garcia Rubio told her youngest son during a Dec. 21 phone call, Time magazine reports. Illegal immigrants, she said, are “human beings just like us, and they came for the same reasons we came. To work. To improve their lives.” Rubio took his mother’s words to heart, and says they are shaping his work on immigration. “I have to balance that humanity with reality,” he said. “We have immigration laws. They...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will speak for the first time at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, a clear sign that he is mulling a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. The American Conservative Union, which sponsors the conference, announced Tuesday that Bush will address the group, set for March 14-16 in National Harbor, Md., just outside Washington. Bush has been invited by the group to speak at CPAC several times, but this will be his first appearance. “We are pleased to announce that my friend Gov. Jeb Bush will be a featured speaker at CPAC 2013,”...

He's already being treated like the 2016 GOP presidential front-runner, and now there is another reason Republicans are excitedly buzzing about Florida Sen. Marco Rubio: He alone would reverse the party's slide among Hispanic voters. A new nationwide poll from JZ Analytics found that Rubio would get 48 percent of the Hispanic vote, about twice what Mitt Romney won in 2012. Republican strategist told Secrets that a win among Latino voters that big would assure Rubio the presidency, since he would also likely keep the regular GOP base. "If he does that good, then he's the next president," said a...

Demography isn't destiny—and assuming that it is will likely make liberals overreach again. Many are arguing these days that President Obama has forged a new majority coalition of women, minorities, young people and upscale cultural liberals so large and durable that he can do what no president has done before—pursue a very liberal agenda without serious opposition or defections from his own party. Demography is destiny, this argument holds, and it is irrevocably on the side of Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party. Yes, there will be fewer whites and more minorities in the future, and Republicans will have to...

“I don’t think the party dies immediately,” Gilmore says. “It’s not going to just disappear like the Whigs did, since there is so much law that supports the two-party system. But Republicans will be locked into a permanent minority at the national level unless we seriously rethink our approach.”

Many are arguing these days that President Obama has forged a new majority coalition of women, minorities, young people and upscale cultural liberals so large and durable that he can do what no president has done before—pursue a very liberal agenda without serious opposition or defections from his own party. Demography is destiny, this argument holds, and it is irrevocably on the side of Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party. -snip- Republicans have a perception problem with Hispanics, but the GOP earned 44% of Hispanic votes in 2004 and can do so again with the right policies, many more Hispanic...

As a group of senators unveil their bipartisan proposal for immigration reform today and President Obama heads west this week to rally support for his own ideas, a separate bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives is on the verge of finalizing its own designs for comprehensive immigration reform. The discussions, which top aides close to the talks discussed on the condition that they not be identified, are described as “Washington’s best-kept secret.” Last week, House Speaker John Boehner spilled the beans on the secret group, revealing that the lawmakers had been “meeting for three or four years...

A bipartisan group of senators has agreed on a set of principles for a sweeping overhaul of the immigration system, including a pathway to American citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants that would hinge on progress in securing the borders and ensuring that foreigners leave the country when their visas expire. -snip- “We on the Democratic side have said that we are flexible and we want to get a bill,” Mr. Schumer told reporters in New York on Sunday. “But there’s a bottom line, and that’s a path to citizenship for the 11 or so million people who qualify. We’ve...

Leading Democratic and Republican senators said on Sunday there were encouraging signs in the push to overhaul U.S. immigration laws - a top priority for President Obama's second term - and they would introduce their plan this week. -snip- McCain said the political aspect of immigration reform should sway any Republicans who object to a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. "We are losing dramatically the Hispanic vote, which we think should be ours, for a variety of reasons, and we've got to understand that," he said. McCain said change also was needed because "we can't go on forever with...

A bipartisan group of House members has been quietly meeting and is close to an agreement on changes to propose the nation’s immigration laws, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said last week in a speech to a Republican group.

Rick Perry who just announced his candidacy received more votes than Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. How much longer can Palin just drive around the country not doing much of anything and still expect to run for POTUS? A potential candidate without the organization to even manage 100 write in votes looks really really bad.

Former GOP presidential contender and potential 2012 candidate Mike Huckabee said Wednesday that he does not support a repeal of the 14th Amendment -- a part of the Constitution other Republican leaders have called into question recently because it guarantees citizenship for children born in the United States, regardless of their parents' immigration status. Huckabee said in an interview Wednesday that he does not support a repeal, NPR reports. While the former Arkansas governor said, "I'm not for an amnesty program," he added, "You do not punish a child for something the parent did." (snip) Huckabee told NPR that the...

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Friday said he thinks that Congress can get immigration reform done by March 2011, if not by the end of this year. While speaking at a fundraising event for the Irish Lobby for Immigration reform in New York while on recess, Schumer praised his former negotiating partner Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), noting that Graham took his cues from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). "While Lindsey Graham is a great partner and he loves our bill," Schumer said, he really said his mentor was McCain, according to IrishCentral.com. (snip) In 2007, McCain attempted to push through a...

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) thinks Mitt Romney will win the GOP nomination for president in 2012. Schwarzenegger predicted on the Tonight Show on Thursday night the former Massachusetts governor will emerge from what could be a crowded field. "I think maybe Romney by a hair," he said. Schwarzenegger also lamented that he can't run himself because the Constitution requires the president to be born in the U.S.