Free Republic

After Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz attacked the 2015 spending agreement in the Senate last week from opposite ends of the political spectrum, Washington engaged in a little parlor game: Is Warren the Cruz of the left? Though there are superficial similarities between the Massachusetts Democrat and the Texas Republican, the question is actually easy to answer. Elizabeth Warren is not Ted Cruz. She cannot possibly be Ted Cruz — because she is Jim DeMint. DeMint, the former Republican senator from South Carolina who now runs the conservative Heritage Foundation, is widely seen as the godfather of the tea-party movement....

'It's all about us being the No. 1 enemy of these people' PALM BEACH, Florida – With the announcement Tuesday by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush that he plans to “actively explore” a run for president in 2016, radio host Rush Limbaugh says the real reason Jeb is seeking the White House is to choke the influence of tea-party conservatives out of the Republican Party. “You want to know why Jeb Bush is thinking about running?” Limbaugh asked on his top-rated program Tuesday. “He’s … being looked at as savior by the big-money donor class and the consultant class –...

RUSH: I just got a note. "Hey, you know, this is a good thing that you're talking about here, the loss of honest media, targeting anything conservative. Do you do you take any hope in people seeing what you're talking about more and more?" Yeah, I do. Look at the last two midterm elections. I think the American people see clearly what's happening here and they don't like it. I think the American people are totally -- those voting, anyway -- are very aware of all of this. And they're voting to stop all of this stuff. All of this...

The last-minute vote to approve a long-term spending package cast a bright light on unusual splits in an otherwise unified Democratic congressional caucus. Following the lead of Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), House and Senate Democrats voted against a bill that President Obama was personally advocating. It was similar to the insurgency faced by the Republican establishment last year, as many, many pundits pointed out, only with "no bank bailouts" replacing "no Obamacare" as a rallying cry. At ABC, Rick Klein, presumably with his tongue in his cheek, suggested that there are now "four parties that need to be...

Texan wants to win the presidency by rallying conservatives -- and hoping people forget why they dislike him. Ted Cruz shut down the government; now he wants to preside over it. The junior senator from Texas is apparently moving closer to announcing his presidential candidacy, and National Review’s Eliana Johnson spoke to the people involved in Cruz 2016 who think they’ve figured out a way to propel their boy to the Oval Office: rally the conservative base, ignore independents, and eat into some of the traditionally Democratic constituencies. It’s a strategy that’s very similar to the one embraced by Michele...

What if..... Cruz, Lee, Sessions + 2 more Defections to Independent...... Gang of 3 = 51 votes, Mitch remains Leader...barely Gang of 4 = Biden as Tie Breaker Gang of 5 = Mitchy-Poo and the GOPe are benched The possibilities with the way the math and the power balance would stack up are mind-boggling....in a good way... Ramifications, anyone?

Woman Who Was Arrested and Called “Teagbagger” by Deputy Awarded $1.12 Million For Illegal Arrest A federal jury has awarded Nancy Genovese an amount of $1.12 million for her inappropriate prosecution by Suffolk County law enforcement. It was an innocent enough day for Nancy Genovese of Long Island. After visiting a shooting range, the mother of three stopped to take a photo of a decorative helicopter in front of a National Guard base in the Hamptons for use on a website showing support for the troops. She was on public property the entire time. She was charged with trespassing and...

The National Review reports: To hell with the independents. That’s not usually the animating principle of a presidential campaign, but for Ted Cruz’s, it just might be. His strategists aren’t planning to make a big play for so-called independent voters in the general election if Cruz wins the Republican nomination. Several of the senator’s top advisers said that Cruz sees a path to victory that relies instead on increasing conservative turnout, trying to attract votes from groups that have tended to favor Democrats (Jews, Hispanics and millennials), and, in the words of one Cruz strategist, “not getting killed with independents.”...

Shocking political news this morning! Jeb Bush has announced he is going to “actively explore” running for President. This, no doubt, comes as a huge shock and surprise to everyone. It was only a few days ago that the New York Times got wind of Bush’s super secret meeting with John McCain wherein they discussed how to make irrelevant the conservative base of the Republican Party. Funny how in politics super secret meetings somehow get discovered and splashed all over the New York Times. It’s as if someone planted the story. After McCain and Mitt Romney, party moderates, got trounced...

Republican senators pounded Ted Cruz over the weekend, lashing him for his procedural tactics and ultimately voting in large numbers against his immigration gambit. Now, Cruz’s allies off Capitol Hill are looking for revenge. Conservative outside groups view Saturday’s vote as the first salvo in the GOP v. GOP purity wars that they hope to reignite in the beginning of the new Congress and in the run-up to the 2016 Senate races, when 24 Republican senators will be on the primary ballots. After being pummeled by the party establishment in the 2014 midterms, activist groups are looking at the fight...

..American colonists boarded a British ship and dumped more than 300 chests of tea into Boston Harbor to protest tea taxes.

It is unlikely that any of the protesters clogging the streets of New York, Washington, and other cities this weekend over alleged police abuse would sympathize with Nancy Genovese, but I do. The New York Post reports (hat tips: Instapundit, Breitbart and iOTW Report: A Long Island mother of three arrested for taking pictures of an Air National Guard base in the Hamptons ​– ​while ​armed to the teeth with a licensed assault rifle in her car — has been awarded ​$1.12 million​ by a federal jury over her false prosecution by Suffolk County authorities.  As Breitbart noted, “armed...

A Long Island federal jury rewarded Nancy Genovese, 58, a mother of three, $1.12 million in compensatory damages after being arrested in 2009 for attempting to photograph a helicopter at a Air National Guard base in the Hamptons. Genovese intended to use the photo on a “Support the Troops” website; she was arrested for trespass and insulted as a "Teabagger." From The New York Post: Southhampton cops searched her and found a legally owned rifle that she was transporting from a nearby rifle range. She contends a deputy sheriff arrived on the scene later and said to her, “I bet...

Conservative think tank Americans for Prosperity (AFP), co-founded by principals of Koch Industries, sued in federal court to prevent ultra-liberal California Attorney General Kamala Harris from using her office to disclose the names and addresses of their 90,000 donors. Harris may have a problem with AFP being a major force behind the Tea Party movement and its support of free markets, entrepreneurship, lower taxes, and limited government spending and regulation. As a federally registered 501(c)(4), not-for-profit educational organization, Americans for Prosperity is allowed under federal law to raise and spend money educating the public regarding issues associated with political campaigns...

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has surveyed what he calls “the Obama-Clinton foreign policy,” and he does not like what he sees. Speaking Wednesday at The Heritage Foundation, Cruz condemned current policy as “appeasement and moral equivalency.” Said Cruz: “One of the sad legacies of the last six years” is that “our friends no longer trust us and our enemies no longer fear us,” and that the United States risks going from “the leader of the free world to a dutiful and obedient member of the international community.” Cruz criticized former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s remarks that we should “respect”...

A Long Island mother of three arrested for taking pictures of an Air National Guard base in the Hamptons ​– ​while ​armed to the teeth with a licensed assault rifle in her car — has been awarded ​$1.12 million​ by a federal jury over her false prosecution by Suffolk County authorities.

Sen. Tim Scott gives the Republican Party's Weekly Remarks Hi, I’m Senator Tim Scott from the great state of South Carolina. I’m deeply honored to have been elected by the hardworking people of South Carolina to represent them in the United States Senate. The mid-term elections put the President’s policies on the ballot, and the American people overwhelmingly rejected them by electing Republicans into office all around the country. (Scroll down for video of these remarks.) The new Republican majority in the Senate, alongside the House of Representatives, will present solutions that work for American families, and I truly hope...

Tea partiers shouted obscene, racist chants on Wednesday while gathered outside of the White House to protest President Obama's executive actions on immigration. Right Wing Watch reported that among the shouts, captured on video by one of the activists, protestors could be heard calling for the hanging of Obama. VID: http://youtu.be/-X0cAqfYRMA

When Thursday dawned, the conventional wisdom was that House Speaker John Boehner did not have the votes to pass the $1.1 trillion spending bill that would fund the rest of the government for FY2015. But, thanks to lobbying by the White House, the House scrapped up enough votes to pass the measure 219 to 206, according to a Thursday Washington Examiner story. The passage of the bill was a triumph of the establishment wings of both parties. However, Senate passage is by no means certain. Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Elizabeth Warren could still scupper the bill between them. The...

Unfortunately, the GOP "leadership" will do everything it can behind the scenes to make sure Cruz gets nowhere near the top of the ticket. Also read: Your Weekly ‘MSM Really Wants Mitt Romney to Run’ Post.He’s the darling of the Right, the scourge of the Left and hated equally by both wings of the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party. So what’s not to like? The freshman Texas senator is ramping up for what looks like a presidential campaign in 2016, and while many dismiss him as too abrasive, only a fool would count him out this early. Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin is...