Free Republic

Lead story on Drudge The uniparty at work!

WASHINGTON, March 24 -- FreedomWorks issued the following news release: Tonight, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) headquarters is hosting a fundraiser for North Carolina moderate and Senatorial candidate Thom Tillis. Headlining the fundraiser invite was a "who's who" of beltway establishmentarians, including Senator Mitch McConnell, Senator Lamar Alexander, and Senator Richard Burr. Attendees must pay a minimum of $1,000 per PAC or $500 per person to rub elbows with the D.C. elite. According to the Washington Post, (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/03/21/nrsc-chairman-obamacare-has-helped-dramatically-expand-senate-map/) NRSC Chairman Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) explained today that playing in races like this one are a priority because the "map and...

When liberal pro-Obama scholars question the legality of President Barack Obama's actions to implement Obamacare, the issue of illegal presidential use of power moves from partisan to frightening. George Washington Law School's Jonathan Turley is the second most quoted law professor in the nation and a two-time Obama voter. He recently testified before Congress on Obama's extensive use of executive orders and administrative actions to make unilateral changes in Obamacare, immigration policy, minimum wage and the IRS qualifying standards for non-profit status. As to Obamacare, Obama, so far, changed it in at least a dozen major ways, including, but not...

Republicans have voted more than 50 times to repeal or alter Obamacare as the popularity of the legislation continues to be nearly non-existent. In the process, Republicans have been criticized for failing to present an alternative piece of legislation to replace Obamacare. More than a dozen alternative plans have been crafted on the Hill, but Republicans haven't been able to rally around a single plan. Now, that's changing as Republican prepare to present Americans with an official alternative to the Affordable Care Act: The plan includes an expansion of high-risk insurance pools, promotion of health savings accounts and inducements for...

President Obama is planning to break the law, once again, in an effort to protect vulnerable Democrats in the Senate. According to news reports, “the White House will announce a new directive allowing insurers to continue offering health plans that do not meet Obamacare’s minimum coverage requirements.” In the absence of this “directive,” health insurance companies would have to cancel millions of health policies just a few weeks before November’s congressional elections. Obama’s edict would theoretically forestall, until after those crucial midterms, a tsunami of voter outrage that would inevitably drown the reelection prospects of many Democrats. It’s not clear,...

By voting repeatedly to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) over the past 4 years, Republicans have risked being identified as a party without a positive health policy agenda. On January 27, 2014, however, three Republican senators — Orrin Hatch (UT), Tom Coburn (OK), and Richard Burr (NC) — unveiled a proposal that would not only repeal the ACA, but also replace it with comprehensive legislation based on Republican health policy principles.1 Although the proposal recycles long-standing Republican prescriptions, it also offers new ideas. The proposal would not entirely repeal the ACA. Republicans seem to be coming to terms with...

There’s no way around it. America’s political establishment wants Bush vs. Clinton II. Is resistance futile? Every single Romney donor we spoke with this week listed the former Florida governor as their top choice… Also, with solid name recognition and the Bush political machine behind him, Romney donors believe Jeb is the most electable of the potential Republican candidates. For Romney donors, electability is the single most important trait. “If Jeb Bush is in the race, he clears the field,” said one major Romney donor. “You would have someone who has the talent that is equal to Mitt. The natural...

**SNIP** There are a whole bunch of problems with this most recent scramble to save the Senate majority: 1. Democrats have opposed in lock-step every change or delay that Republicans have offered (e.g. repeal or suspension of the individual mandate, prohibition on insurance company bailouts, relief from the medical-device tax). It’s hard to declare Obamacare “the law of the land,” block serious consideration of changes and then concede it needs changing. 2. Why did they vote for the law in its current state? Maybe they were hoodwinked by the president’s promises that it would be a pro-growth, pro-jobs reform, or...

After House Republicans conceded on Tuesday that they would bring a debt ceiling bill to the floor for a vote without attaching policy concessions, the tea party seemed in open revolt, calling for the replacement of Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). Meanwhile, incumbent Republican senators have quietly been working behind the scenes to cut off their funding sources. "I've been told by a number of donors to our 'super PAC' that they've received calls from senior Republican senators," FreedomWorks President and CEO Matt Kibbe told The New York Times. Those donors would then say to FreedomWorks, per Kibbe, that "'I can't...

Sen. Ron Johnson, a tea party Republican from Wisconsin, knows that the politics of Obamacare are changing. “It’s no longer just a piece of paper that you can repeal and it goes away,” he told the New York Times. “There’s something there. We have to recognize that reality. We have to deal with the people that are currently covered under Obamacare.” Jan. 1 isn't likely to be a glitch-free day for Obamacare. There will be people who try to use their insurance and find they can't, or it's not the plan they meant to buy, or it's not a plan...

As the burning wreckage of Obamacare continues to fill the air with its toxicity, an alternative is already working its way through the House, courtesy of the conservative House Study Committee.

DENVER – There are nearly 250,000 Coloradans whose health care policies have been or will be cancelled as a result of the Affordable Care Act, the state’s Dept. of Insurance announced on Wednesday. So far, just 3,408 Coloradans have purchased new insurance plans on the exchange; many more, 34,168 Coloradans, have enrolled in Medicaid since the program expanded under the law. “To have almost a hundred health plan cancellations for every exchange sign up in Colorado under Obamacare is exponentially worse than even the most extreme skeptic could have predicted,” said Kelly Maher, executive director of the group Compass Colorado.

I keep hearing this Democrat talking point being trotted out, accusing the Republicans of harming their constituents by not doing everything in their power to "fix" the Affordable Health Care Act. This one must test well in focus-groups because it keeps getting repeated. I've yet to hear one Republican answer this coherently. Here's my suggestion for a response: "If I saw a friend's house being looted would I do everything in my power to stop the looting, or would I walk over and try to negotiate with the looters? Would I call the police and try to get some neighbors...

With Obamacare shaping up as a public policy disaster that is the equivalent of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the Hindenburg, the Bay of Pigs, and Desert One combined, perhaps we should go back and take in Ronald Reagan’s warning about this back in 1961.  Reagan said that socializing health care would require socializing the patients, and voila, we have Obamacare canceling insurance plans previously agreed to between consenting adults.But Reagan also warned that doctors would come to be regulated, too: Today, the relationship between patient and doctor in this country is something to be envied any place. The privacy, the...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who lost the 2012 election to President Barack Obama, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he believed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie could “easily” become the GOP presidential nominee in 2016 and “save our party.” Christie most recently made national news when he decided to drop a legal challenge to rulings in New Jersey state courts that declared same-sex marriage legal there. And not long before that, he changed his position on the question of whether illegal aliens should get in-state tuition rates at New Jersey state colleges. Now he backs legislation...

Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney returned to the Sunday shows almost exactly one year since he lost the election to Barack Obama, only to attack the President and call his second term into question. The former Republican politician wasted no time attacking the President over his rocky Obamacare roll out during his appearance on NBC's Meet the Press. "The president failed to learn the lessons that came from the experience in Massachusetts," Romney said, repeating that he thinks a state-by-state healthcare plan would work better. Romney then launched into a greater attack on the President's "you can keep your...

Mitt Romney isn’t including tea party favorite Ted Cruz among the Republicans’ most electable potential presidential candidates in 2016. … … Romney says New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie “stands out as one of the very strongest lights.” …

Obama's aides would not speak to the Trib with their names used for this story. The White House emailed transcripts of press conferences to defend the president's position, attributing the remarks to Obama: “The majority of people in the individual market today qualify for discounted or free health coverage when signing up for coverage through the Marketplace. One study found that 48 percent of people who buy insurance through the individual market will get a tax credit that averages at over $5,500. And 1 million in the individual market today will qualify for Medicaid in states that choose to expand...

In an appearance on MCNBC’s Morning Joe, Nicole Wallace (former George W. Bush adviser and McCain/Palin campaign adviser) ruined all of the gang’s orgasmic revelry of false equivalency over Obama’s bad numbers in the latest NBC/WSJ poll by pointing out that Republicans have even worse numbers, and there seems to be no bottom for the party. Wallace then warned Republicans to stop being about nothing but criticism, “So I think the peril in looking at these numbers for President Obama is to continue down the path of railing against his administration’s policies.” (VIDEO-AT-LINK)The Republican Party’s approval ratings are at an...

With his signature health-care law under fire, President Obama flew to Boston Wednesday in an effort to remind the public that ObamaCare is modeled on the plan of his former GOP opponent and Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney. “Your law was the model for the nation’s law,” Obama told supporters in Faneuil Hall on Wednesday.