Free Republic

Every time we have a congressional impasse over budgetary issues, we hear from liberals predicting Shutdown-mageddon. Why don't they ever join us in expressing concern over the inevitable financial collapse that will result from their policies? We always seem to hyperventilate over these mini-crises involving the temporary shutdown of small parts of the precious federal government, while we totally ignore the real financial catastrophe we're headed toward unless we begin to move in the direction Sen. Ted Cruz and other congressional Republicans are insisting on in these budgetary battles — defunding Obamacare, reining in spending, and reforming unsustainable entitlements. Indeed,...

Republican strategist Karl Rove says the GOP should quit while it's not as far behind as it could be. Appearing Tuesday on Fox News Channel's "On the Record," Rove said Republicans fighting for concessions on Obamacare and entitlements are weakening their position the longer they hold out. "At some point you have to focus on, as Ronald Reagan said, getting as much of the pie as you possibly can get," Rove said. Republicans aren't even going to be able to get 80 percent of what they want now, he said, because they have been weakened over the last two months...

The Gallup poll that tracks the approval rating of Republicans in Congress looks like the bend of a hockey stick. Whether this is a permanent condition or a temporary one depends on getting Sen. Ted Cruz off the stage and Rep. Paul Ryan on--substituting a bristly champion of an unpopular strategy that divides the party with a congenial representative of the GOP's traditional views on taxing and spending. That's why House Republican leaders are trying to craft a deal with the White House to reopen government and start budget negotiations where House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan will be the key...

In a heated radio interview with Texas-based Matt Patrick of KTRH Wednesday, Senator John Cornyn awkwardly defended himself from charges that he did not support Senators Mike Lee and Ted Cruz in their efforts to defund the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, as nicely laid out by Matthew Boyle of Breitbart. According to Boyle, a "a senior congressional staffer" told Breitbart that "Instead of helping Cruz with their power as Senate GOP leaders, [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell and Cornyn are working against him." Indeed, the staffer did not mince words and said, ““To be clear, nobody is...

<p>“The Republican Party needs to stop talking to itself. We have become expert in how to provide ideological reinforcement to like-minded people, but devastatingly we have lost the ability to be persuasive with, or welcoming to, those who do not agree with us on every issue.”</p>

In an interview on Salem Radio's Hugh Hewitt Show, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) revealed that in a conference meeting of Republican Senators earlier this week, a group of Republicans waged an "all-out attack" on himself and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX): Hewitt: There was, allegedly, a Republican Senate conference earlier this week where your colleague Ted Cruz took a lot of slings and arrows. Were you there, Sen. Lee? Lee: Yes, Yes! I was there and normally I don't comment at all on closed door meetings among Republican Senators. It's a pretty strict rule we follow. The one exception I'll make...

The hard-line stance of Republican House members on the government shutdown is generating increasing anger among senior Republican officials, who say the small bloc of conservatives is undermining the party and helping President Obama just as the American people appeared to be losing confidence in him. “Fighting with the president is one thing,” said Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri. “Fighting with the president and losing is another thing. When you’re in the minority you need to look really hard to find the fights you can win.” And on Wednesday at a private luncheon, several Senate Republicans — Dan Coats...

Republican tensions grew Thursday as Tea Party-aligned senators rejected a bid to speed up the vote on a bill to fund the government while defunding ObamaCare, with one senior lawmaker accusing his colleagues of posturing -- as the chances of a government shutdown increased. The flurry of activity occurred late Thursday afternoon on the Senate floor. With lawmakers facing a Sept. 30 deadline to pass a spending bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to get approval to hold key votes on Thursday, in order to give the House more time to consider the legislation. But Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah,...

The GOP’s anger at Sen. Ted Cruz — expressed mostly in private meetings this week — burst onto the usually collegial Senate floor on Thursday, with Sen. Bob Corker excoriating his Texas Republican colleague for blocking a quick vote to avert a government shutdown next week. In a highly unusual Republican v. Republican exchange, Corker accused Cruz of delaying a Thursday vote simply to create a “show” to cater to his conservative activist supporters at the expense of making good policy. -snip- Cruz shot back. “Why is Majority Leader Harry Reid going to vote the same way you’re proposing to...

A conservative political action committee on Tuesday slammed two of the Senate’s top Republicans as “turncoats” who have “surrendered” on the health care fight. “Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn have surrendered to Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and the Democrats,” charged an email blast from the Senate Conservatives Fund. “More importantly, they have surrendered to Obamacare — the biggest job killer in America.” -snip- “We knew Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn weren’t with us when they voted to fund Obamacare earlier this year,” the email continued. “But then, under pressure from grassroots, they said they supported the effort to defund it....

When Wendy Davis filibustered for abortion in Texas it was inspiring! She was so strong standing there for all of us in her pink running shoes! What a hero for women everywhere! Now when Ted Cruz filibusters to hold up a bill that he can't stop if only to send a message that most of America doesn't want this? Idiot. Wacko bird. Terrorist. Anarchist. Holding America hostage. This is not helpful. GOP: We will not support this. The difference is striking, no? Dems circle the wagons even to protect adulterers, rapists, embezzlers and people with federal drug charges. The GOP...

Republican establishment strategist Mike Murphy, who is close to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Mitt Romney and favors candidates like them, slammed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), saying he would be a disaster in a general election like George McGovern was for Democrats in 1972. Murphy told National Review that though Cruz may win the nomination if he chooses to run because he appeals so strongly to conservatives, but he would not win a general election. In Murphy's eyes, conservatives that support Cruz are not "regular Republicans" like McCain and Romney, both of whom lost general elections. [Snip] During the 2012...

In a recent interview, former Alaska governor and GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin indicated she was open to leaving the GOP and starting a third party. After expressing her enthusiasm for the name “The Freedom Party,” Palin went on to say this: If the GOP continues to back away from the planks in our platform, from the principles that built this party of Lincoln and of Reagan, then yeah, more and more of us are gonna start saying, “You know, what’s wrong with being an independent?” Kind of, with that libertarian streak that much of us have. In other words,...

As if former Vice President Dick Cheney is ever anything but candid. That’s just the media’s way of now swooning over Dick Cheney, a man members of the media demonized for years. Their unhinged hatred of Sarah Palin over-rides all that, you see. [SNIP] When the media swoons over Dick Cheney, you know there is an ulterior motive. You know, like a distraction from Obama’s abysmal record. They are water-carriers to the end!

One week prior to the general election, former Romney spokesman Kevin Madden took to the airwaves (on CNN) and defamed Sarah Palin, setting off a media storm over an alleged fight between Team McCain and Team Palin. They were the very early opening salvos in the battle for the party. Fox News expanded on off-the-record anti-Palin comments tonight. Was traitor Kevin Madden for those comments?

Today, Red State ran an article on the origination of nasty lies from within the McCain/Palin camp. They report, Romney staffers now working on the McPalin campaign have been spreading the stories of Palin’s “ineptitude” to the press. Red State and other reporters accuse Romney staffers, including Kevin Madden (former Romney press-man) of pushing reporters into “Troopergate” stories and other possible negative Palin story angles. Palin provides a threat to Romney for a presidential run, but now is not the time for in-party fighting. American Girl has been very critical of long-time Romney supporter Kathleen Parker (see here and here),...

An article by Michael O'Brien on MSNBC's First Read this morning quotes an "informal" advisor to Mitt Romney's campaign as saying that the presidential candidate is not likely to choose a woman as his running mate because Sarah Palin "poisoned the well" for women, with the possible exception of New Hampshire freshman Sen. Kelly Ayotte.

You have got to be kidding me. This trashing of Newt by Erika Johnsen, who apparently just started blogging at HotAir, is so over the top: "Newt Gingrich’s decision to wait a week to officially drop out of the presidential race was kind of a non sequitur (but then, it fits with Newt’s normally quizzical attitude of 'you need to get on my level' pomposity, so… wash)…." "Here’s what you can do to help the Republican party, Newt: don’t. You overstayed your welcome in the presidential race by a long shot, frequently looked absurd, and constantly undercut the GOP’s credibility....

First, here's the set-your-hair-on-fire clip about which we're all supposed to be enraged, via Rick Santorum on the stump: "I don't care what the unemployment rate's going to be. It doesn't matter to me..." The horror! Rick Santorum doesn't care about the unemployment rate! Except, the former Senator's sentence went on: "...my campaign doesn't hinge on unemployment rates and growth rates. It's something more foundational that's going on." What Santorum was conveying -- albeit terribly ham-handedly -- is that his candidacy is about more than mere economic issues. He's arguing that while Mitt Romney's campaign relies on harnessing and exploiting...

Audio from Marks show this evening perfectly summing up who Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace are. They earn their living, since losing the McCain campaign, trashing Sarah Palin 24/7. Runs about 4 minutes.

On the tail of Game Change‘s premiere on HBO, former McCain/Palin adviser Nicolle Wallace, prominently featured in the film, visited Rachel Maddow tonight to expand upon the lessons of the 2008 campaign, and made clear that she felt fairly guilty about working to make someone “fundamentally unprepared and unsuited for the job” the Vice President of the United States. Wallace noted that she was still in shock as to “how close we came to having somebody a heartbeat away from the presidency so fundamentally unprepared and unsuited for the job,” adding that, while she thought tossing around the term “PTSD”...

I’d like you to take a look at DrudgeReport. There is an all-out war on Newt Gingrich, not merely by the left-wing media, but particularly on the right side of the political divide. Drudge has run as many as nine negative articles about Gingrich simultaneously, but he is running few negative articles about Romney, and those he does run are only half-negative, so it’s becoming clear that Drudge is trying to manipulate the outcome in the direction of a result he prefers. I surely hope conservatives realize that nobody in media is pure, because everybody has biases. In the case...

Of course Herman Cain would rush to the defense of Newt Gingrich in light of an interview by Gingrich’s ex-wife, who claims he wanted their marriage to be an open relationship. Cain himself was the subject of allegations from four separate women that he engaged in sexual misconduct with them, thus leading him to suspend his own presidential campaign in December. “I loved Newt Gingrich’s response because that’s the same crap that they pulled on me, and that’s what’s wrong with politics,” Cain told Fox News on Friday morning. He was commenting on the fiery response Gingrich gave to CNN’s...

Newt Gingrich has told voters in South Carolina not to vote for Rick Santorum because Santorum can’t defeat either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. In particular, Gingrich made an appeal to conservatives: “If you're a conservative, just look at the polls. I am the only candidate capable of stopping a moderate from winning the nomination.” Indeed, Gingrich claimed, “If you vote for Sen. Santorum, in effect you’re voting for Gov. Romney to be the nominee because he's not going to beat him. And the only way you can stop Gov. Romney for all practical purposes is to vote for Gingrich. That's...

The lawyer for a woman who settled a sexual harassment complaint against Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain in the late 1990s says that Cain may have violated the confidentiality terms of the agreement by commenting on its specifics over the past 24 hours. "Herman Cain and others have already disclosed that there was a confidential settlement," says Joel P. Bennett, a Washington-based attorney specializing in employment law, who also represented the woman when she negotiated her settlement. (snip) "I don't know if she'll ever go public," he said Tuesday. (snip) Without having the agreement in hand, Bennett says he doesn't...

Democrats have long enjoyed bashing Karl Rove, former White House adviser and architect of the campaigns that put President George W. Bush in office. But clashing with the longtime Republican operative and Fox News contributor is now catching on for another group: conservatives, especially those affiliated with the tea party movement. Among the most high profile of these recent attackers are former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and, now, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain.

Republican strategist Ed Rollins on Monday downplayed the latest surge in rumors that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will jump into the race for the Republican presidential nomination, and instead argued in favor of another possible candidate. Christie “ought to stay running New Jersey,” Rollins said on Fox News’ “Kilmeade and Friends” radio show. “If I were advising him, I would tell him not to think about [a presidential bid],” Rollins said. “I can’t imagine Gov. Christie spending the next four or five months in the winters of Iowa, traipsing to the places he’s got to go in order to...

[snip beginning of article] ... Ed Rollins, dismissed Palin as “not serious” in a radio interview. He suggested in an interview with POLITICO that Bachmann would profit from the contrast. Bachmann will “be so much more substantive,” Rollins said. “People are going to say, ‘I gotta make a choice and go with the intelligent woman who’s every bit as attractive.’” “I’m not afraid of Palin,” he said, adding the strategy would have been the same for Mike Huckabee. Bachmann has been laying the groundwork for this argument for months, stepping away from some of the more dramatic rhetoric that brought...

FOX News contributor Charles Krauthammer gives his take on what a "Washington establishment elitist" thinks of a potential Sarah Palin run for the presidency. In self-deprecating fashion, Krauthammer says he wears Palin's "hoity-toity" comment as a badge of honor. "She is very smart and adept. Great political instincts and is a star. The problem with her, I think, is that she is not schooled. I don't mean she didn't go to the right schools. I mean when you get into policy, beyond instincts -- I like her political instincts, I like her political overall view of the world -- but...

Palin-Haters of the Theocratic Right * Those on the secular humanist left who are convinced that Sarah Palin is a "theocrat" must have never heard of John Lofton. The former Washington Times columnist has been involved in two presidential campaigns, as an advisor to Pat Buchanan's efforts in the 1990s and as Communications Director for the 2004 run by Michael Peroutka as the nominee of the Constitution Party. In Lofton's view from the extreme religious right, Gov. Palin just isn't Christian enough: "Sarah Palin's assertion that the issue of whether moms with small children should or should not work outside...

(CNN) - Sen. John Cornyn is expected Tuesday to formally make a bid for another two years as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. GOP sources confirm to CNN that the Texas Republican will put his name up for nomination for re-election as NRSC chairman, as the Senate Republican Conference meets behind closed doors. According to the sources, the two-term senator is not expected to face any opposition in his bid to remain as NRSC chairman, and has already secured the support of a number of new Republican Senators, including Marco Rubio of Florida, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Rob...

Sarah Palin, the biggest loser. That seems to be the consensus of the grandees inhabiting Washington and New York and pockets of glitter beyond. There is a variety of interpretations of the midterm Republican wave emanating from the wine bars of upper Manhattan and the salons of Georgetown, but most include the notion that for Sarah Palin, this election was the political equivalent of the hit ABC show "The Biggest Loser." When push came to shove, she stood on...principle? Media and political elites may disagree on the many consequences of what the president called a "shellacking" by the voters, but...

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- Cindy McCain, wife of Republican U.S. Senator John McCain, says she doesn't know if Sarah Palin is capable of running the country should she run for president.

Sarah Palin’s speech to the 2008 Republican convention impressed more than a few doubters, including even some members of Journolist, an online community for liberal journalists. “This speech is gangbusters,” wrote Ari Melber of the Nation. “Her tone is pitch perfect.” Adele Stan of the Media Consortium agreed: “Palin is golden.” The exuberance appeared to unnerve the Guardian’s Michael Tomasky. “People get a hold of yourselves!” Tomasky wrote to his fellow Journolisters. “It’s a very good speech with good lines. But there’s very little substance.” Rebecca Traister of Salon wrote to say she was grateful for Tomasky’s message discipline. (“This...

Mitt Romney tweets: "TIME says unnamed advisors disparaged @SarahPalinUSA. Anonymous numbskulls. She’s proven her smarts; they’ve disproven theirs."

In potentially the first inter-staff dust up of the 2012 presidential race, an aide of Sarah Palin is hitting back at Mitt Romney’s camp for saying the former Alaska governor is “not a serious human being.” Asked about the comments by POLITICO, a longtime Palin aide unloaded on Romney’s staff. “It shocks me that anyone would try to do that,” the aide said. “You’d think we’d all be working together toward a common goal – that being 2010 – and that should be the focus right now. Those who try to claim the mantle of Reagan would be good to...

It didn’t take long for Sarah Palin’s team to respond in kind to insults reported by Time’s Mark Halperin from an unnamed aide to Mitt Romney. After the anonymous adviser sniffed that Palin is “not a serious person,” an anonymous “longtime” adviser to Palin told Politico’s Andy Barr that Romney and his team seem a lot more interested in self-promotion for 2012 than in getting Republicans elected in 2010. Furthermore, the source said, Romney’s “finger in the wind” leadership seems to have led his own team out of control:

The political team that helped Scott Brown stage his improbable victory in the Massachusetts Senate race wants to apply its winning strategy elsewhere this election year. First stop: Rhode Island. The Shawmut Group, led by aides to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, is helping GOP congressional candidate John Loughlin, who's campaigning to replace retiring Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I. The Shawmut Group also is working with New York gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio, Long Island congressional candidate George Demos and Massachusetts state auditor candidate Mary Connaughton.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was the hope of many self-described conservatives during the 2008 presidential race, and was the apparent frontrunner in an early 2012 presidential poll in New Hampshire last week. The question facing most conservatives these days is: Who is going to be the standard bearer for the conservative wing of the Republican Party into the 2010 elections and beyond? The GOP has few genuine conservative voices left who are capable of credible leadership on a national level. While it's too early to start putting former GOP presidential nominee John McCain's face on a milk carton, any...

Postponing his own lucrative summer work on the North Slope oil fields, Todd does the bulk of the childcare for now, while Bristol also hits the gym and tanning. "My dad lets me go tanning quite a bit."

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- During a debate on Thursday between pro-life Princeton University professor Robert George and pro-Obama apologist Douglas Kmiec, Kmiec continued the false notion that abortions increased during the tenure of pro-life President George W. Bush.During the debate, held at the National Press Club, Kmiec went further than those who suggested abortions rose under Bush. He also claimed that abortions rose under the first President Bush.However, as University of Alabama professor Michael New explains in a new op-ed on National Review Online, Kmiec's contention is inaccurate."Data from both the Center for Disease Control and the Alan Guttmacher Institute...

(snip) The latest matchup: Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele vs. Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and a likely frontrunner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Steele cast doubt on Romney's conservative credentials Friday and said the Republican base rejected Romney because "it had issues with Mormonism" and was unsure of Romney's commitment to opposing to abortion rights. Romney's camp took issue with the suggestions that the most reliable Republican voters are intolerant and fired back Tuesday, with spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom saying, "Sometimes when you shoot from the hip, you miss the target." Sen. John McCain, Romney's former rival...

(CNN) — The Republican National Committee Thursday named two veterans of the 2008 presidential campaign to serve in the key posts of press secretary and research director.

For years, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has been excoriated by the GOP for his “unprincipled,” pragmatic decision making. Yet, like President Barack Obama, Specter has always been more attentive to the needs of those who sent him to Washington than to demands that he toe the party line. It’s no surprise that the GOP now says Specter switched to the Democrats just to save his own skin. But it would stand Darwin on his head were senators unmindful of their political survival. No, the real question relates to the GOP’s survival. A party whose domestic policy consists of setting...

(CNN) — John McCain’s general election campaign began as “the strategic equivalent of throwing a football through a tire at 50 yards” – and was doomed weeks before Election Day, his former chief strategist said Thursday. “We were running a campaign under extra difficult circumstances — the state of the Republican Party, the president’s unpopularity, the economy — a lot of issues that were not John McCain’s fault, but were John McCain’s problem in this race,” Schmidt told an audience at the University of Delaware, according to Politico. “When Lehman Brothers collapsed in the fall I knew pretty much right...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Douglas Kmiec essentially voided his Catholic and pro-life credentials during the president election with his steadfast defense of Barack Obama despite his clear pro-abortion views. Now he's given pro-life advocates no reason to take him seriously by explaining away Obama's pro-abortion actions as president.Kmiec is more impressed by Obama's words claiming to want to reduce abortions than his deeds of promoting more abortions at every turn."I am especially pleased that the President deliberately highlighted at the national prayer breakfast the abortion reduction expectations he has for this Office," he told U.S. in an email on...

Here is video of Media Malpractice producer John Ziegler on MSNBC's Morning Joe today, where he talked about his documentary film that focuses on the media's deliberate attempts to discredit Gov. Sarah Palin during the 2008 Campaign. Ziegler forcefully takes on the MSNBC Morning Joe crew, and shows how Palin was "savaged" by the media. At the 5:40 mark of the video above, Pat Buchanan asks Ziegler who were the main culprits in the media attack against Palin, and Joe Scarborough interrupted Ziegler and would not let him answer! Scarborough at the whole set then began to laugh, because they...