Free Republic

Among split infinitives, "to actively explore" must surely rival Star Trek's "to boldly go". Though the latest in a long line to use it, Jeb Bush has been roundly mocked for deploying the cliche. The puzzle is why more accurate variations are never put to use. Before Mr Bush's semi-declaration on Facebook, he ranked as one of the longest running passive explorers of US presidential runs in modern history. The next White House election will be the third in a row in which he might have run (to be fair, 2008 would have been too close to George W's tenure)....

Hey, Jeb, Ted, Rand, Marco, Bobby, Chris and the dozen or more others I’m forgetting, here’s something to write on your bathroom mirror in 2015 and beyond: The “P” in POTUS stands for “President,” not “Pundit.” I understand that the Seinfeldian faux-holiday Festivus is behind us, but I want to get at least this one grievance in for next year a bit early. Republicans have a tendency to tell, not show. They feel the need to explain why they are saying something, rather than work at simply saying what they need to say convincingly. I call it “reading your stage...

U.S. Sen. John McCain laughed at the possibility that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin may challenge him in the 2016 election. After dropping hints that he was considering retiring, the 78-year-old Arizona Republican is now expected to announce that he will run for a sixth term — to the dismay of many conservatives. And while he expects to see a primary challenger, the moderate lawmaker is certain it will not be Palin. “Oh, that’s foolish,” McCain told The Arizona Republic. “Sarah and I have maintained a very close and warm relationship. That’s just not in the realm of possibility.” McCain...

A trouncing! A tsunami! A shellacking! That's the conventional wisdom about last month's midterm elections. But it's wrong. Yes, the GOP picked up 12 seats in the House and gained at least seven seats in the Senate, but calling that a shellacking requires closing your eyes to some really big numbers. First, the average pickup for the opposition party in midterm elections that take place in the sixth year of a presidency is 29 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate. Second, 60 percent of voters told exit polls they were either "dissatisfied" with Republican leaders in...

Senator Blunt Joins Cruz, Cornyn On Amicus Brief Against President Obama’s Executive Amnesty WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.) joined an amicus brief led by U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (Texas) and co-signed by U.S. Senator John Cornyn (Texas) in support of a lawsuit brought by the State of Texas against President Barack Obama’s illegal amnesty. The brief is also co-signed by a number of members from the U.S. House of Representatives. Blunt also voted in favor of a constitutional point of order offered by Cruz and U.S. Senator Mike Lee (Utah) against the president’s executive amnesty. “I agree...

The tea party has, to date, been a uniquely Republican movement, with would-be progressive analogs fizzling and fading. “Occupy Wall Street” seemed more interested in drum circles than political engagement. And do you remember the Coffee Party? I didn’t think so. The lack of a tea party left is in part because having the White House helps paper over a lot of intraparty divisions. And it’s also in part a function of the parties’ differing structures, with the GOP’s recent purity pushes abetted by a media-entertainment complex that incentivizes ideological fidelity over electability as well as the conservative movement’s historical...

“Ho, hum, what else is new?” That was my first reaction when I saw a report that Susan Douglas, a professor of communications and department chair at the University of Michigan, had published an article titled “It’s Okay to Hate Republicans,” in which she stated: "I hate Republicans. I can’t stand the thought of having to spend the next two years watching Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Ted Cruz, Darrell Issa or any of the legions of other blowhards denying climate change, thwarting immigration reform or championing fetal ‘personhood.’" According to the professor, Republicans exhibit the following “psychological characteristics”: "[d]ogmatism, rigidity...

After leading a losing and disastrous gambit that shut down the government over Obamacare last year, Sen. Ted Cruz brushed his critics aside. “I’m not serving in office because I desperately needed 99 new friends.” Fair enough — no one would confuse him for a Dale Carnegie groupie. But the fact remains that to be an effective senator, the Texas Republican needs to get other members to work with him. And, at the moment, the collective membership of the world’s greatest deliberative body would rather stick needles in their eyes. Last week, Cruz brought the 113th session of Congress to...

I used to think Rubio embracing amnesty was terrible for Jeb. If Bush ran in 2016, I assumed, he’d run as a loud and proud fan of immigration reform, vowing to give the GOP’s wealthy business class all the cheap, legal labor it could handle. Rubio joining the Gang of Eight suddenly meant that there would be two candidates in the race who could fill that niche — and Rubio was younger, less likely to alienate conservatives, more likely to appeal to Latino voters, and unencumbered by “Bush” baggage. He out-Jebbed Jeb! In hindsight, though, Rubio going all in for...

De Blasio? Sharpton? Nope. The biggest blowback will be against the “reforming” Kentucky senator, because Republicans back cops, period.After New York City Police Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were gunned down in a retaliatory ambush on Saturday afternoon, the collateral damage was immediate. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio relationship with the police went from horrible to horrendous. Rev. Al Sharpton’s campaign to cleanse his race-baiting past grew more difficult, and Sen. Rand Paul—who had gone out of his way to break bread with Sharpton and to criticize police militarization—may now be facing an even more difficult task...

Liberals powerless to stop the Clinton-Wall Street gravy train.Despite her best efforts and most passionate gesticulations, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) failed to shut down the government on Thursday, thus proving her political clout is vastly inferior to that of GOP colleague Ted Cruz. Warren had urged House Democrats to block a controversial spending package, which included a provision to roll back a portion of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill known as the “swaps pushout” rule. Warren, for the record, does not like Wall Street. “It is time for all of us to stand up and fight,” she said on...

National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy vigorously defends the efforts of Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee to draw attention to the unconstitutionality of Obama's amnesty plan. Writes McCarthy: "As long as we’re talking about epic insults to our intelligence, special recognition should go to the GOP establishment claim that, by forcing elected legislators to take an accountable vote, Cruz and Lee enabled Democrats to secure confirmation of objectionable Obama nominees. The story goes like this: By orchestrating a “point of order” vote to question the constitutionality of Obama’s decree, Cruz and Lee broke what Fox News gentlycalled an “informal agreement”...

A clear front-runner for the GOP presidential candidate doesn’t exist right now, but Sen. Ted Cruz’s name is thrown into almost any discussion about who might fill the slot. A recent CNN-Orc International poll found Mitt Romney, who says he’s not going to run, at the top of 2016 candidates, with 20 percent of the responders pointing to him as their preferred candidate. The rest of the field was packed pretty closely, with activist Ben Carson at 10 percent, followed by stair steps down – Jeb Bush, 9 percent; Chris Christie, 8 percent; and Mike Huckabee with 7 percent. Cruz...

An entire nation votes, tens of millions of Americans come out to their local polls to tell Washington it is going in the wrong direction on amnesty and Obama Care, and endless deficits, and cowardice in the face of terrorism…and what do the Republicans leaders do? They give the president everything he could ask for, while turning on one of the few in the Republican ranks that understands we are fighting for the very life of the nation. The Republican Party simply is not up to the task of changing the course of this nation. Too many in the Republican...

Beginning on Thursday night, a fight erupted on line between Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Rand Paul over the new diplomatic opening to Cuba. Rubio slammed Paul for his ignorance, while Paul bizarrely accused Rubio of “isolationism” for opposing Barack Obama’s policies. Before that battle began in earnest, I spoke with incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in a wide-ranging interview about his plans for the 114th Session of Congress. We discussed Cuba, and McConnell made it clear that he was relying on Rubio’s leadership on the issue — which might make for an awkward moment or two between McConnell...

Dan Pfeiffer, White House senior adviser, admitted that he is concerned about a Ted Cruz presidency, which would almost certainly result in an overturn of Barack Obama's unconstitutional executive amnesty action. This indicates that Ted Cruz is likely the biggest threat to the progressive left for the upcoming 2016 presidential race. The executive action game Yesterday, Pfeiffer told the Wall Street Journal that the first 100 days of Obama's presidency was spent attempting undo many of W's policies through executive action, but admitted he hopes he will never be sitting somewhere reading about a President Ted Cruz doing the same...

Noah already wrote a policy rebuttal to Paul’s position, which Paul elaborated on this afternoon in a new op-ed at Time. (The op-ed, unlike his tweets, doesn’t mention Rubio by name. Although it does approvingly cite … George W. Bush?) Anyone want to make the case that the politics of attacking Rubio on this issue were smart, at least? I can’t figure out why Rand would do it. When I tweeted out my surprise a few hours ago, a dozen people tweeted back, “Maybe Paul’s just saying what he really believes.” No doubt. But the thing that distinguishes Rand from...

The word on Elizabeth Warren - the Democratic Massachusetts senator who fomented the opposition last week to a rollback of financial regulations in the bill funding the government - is that she's the left's answer to shut-'em-down Ted Cruz. In a recent Washington Post column, Dana Milbank concluded that Warren is more like former South Carolina senator Jim DeMint, the Republican ideologue who left his elective office to better lead the far right to glory. These assessments miss one crucial difference between Warren and the right-wingers: She has crossover appeal. More importantly, so does Warrenism. Cruz and DeMint can claim...

It’s been a big week for Cuba and a number of Republicans are trying to piggyback on the good news with their own form of discontent. Enter Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, two Batista Republicans if there ever were. The embargo policies of the United States toward Cuba have been a failure. Originally intended to undermine the governing authority and encourage dissidents in the nation to rise against their dictator, they did not achieve their objective. Much the opposite, actually, as Cuba has seen economic growth since the sanctions were implemented in the 1962. Even further, the actions of the...

Jerry Moran of Kansas was one of only 11 Republican senators who teamed up this month with tea party favorite Ted Cruz on three votes intended to stall or defeat the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill — a failed but headline-grabbing maneuver that put him at odds with GOP leadership. Moran’s move raised some eyebrows on Capitol Hill, especially given that he’d spent the past two years as part of that same leadership team and had voted in January in favor of the last trillion-dollar spending bill. So why did Moran buck the party line this time and align himself...