Free Republic

Sen. John McCain is no fan of the tea party – and he’s now doing his best to purge the Arizona Republican Party of its influence. According to Politico, McCain is preparing for his 2016 reelection bid by dismantling Arizona’s tea party apparatus. That includes a massive effort to remove or undermine the many local officials who have influence across state politics and could cause trouble for McCain in a primary. Prior to Aug. 26, when the races for the party offices were held, the vast majority of the 3,925 precinct slots were filled by people McCain’s team considered opponents....

TEXAN LOOKING TO SHORE UP “CONSERVATIVE” SUPPORT IN PALMETTO STATE. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz will attend the 2015 South Carolina Tea Party convention next month, sources close to the event tell FITS. The Texan – who along with U.S. Sen. Rand Paul is seeking to emerge as a leading alternative to the GOP “establishment” – is the third presumptive “Republican” presidential prospect to commit to the event, which is being held in mid-January in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Also attending? Social conservative Rick Santorum – who ran unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination in 2012 – and neurosurgeon/ author Ben Carson, who...

After releasing our report on Monday covering the accounting issues of the PAC and campaign finance reports of the Texas Legislature, the Texas Ethics Commission (TEC) issued a response defending its “important work”. In the two page letter, TEC chairman Paul W. Hobby, a Joe Straus appointee, admitted that we were correct about the TEC’s limited enforcement powers (thanks to the Legislature) and bemoaned the appeals process that hindered prosecution. He defended the commissioners’ diligence, claiming they have “met much more than is required by law.” Unfortunately, the figures the TEC provides only tell half the story. One of the...

Before Jeb Bush announced he was “actively exploring” a presidential bid came news he was just as actively seeking a way to avoid appealing to conservatives. (The Bushies prefer the word “pandering.”) The would-be King Bush III consulted one of the country’s foremost experts on excelling in the Republican Party without being too conservative: Arizona Sen. John McCain. “I just said to him, ‘I think if you look back, despite the far right’s complaints, it is the centrist that wins the nomination,’” McCain told Bush, according to The New York Times. It’s definitely true that the establishment candidate usually wins...

I considered saving this for tomorrow night, just to send you off into 2015 on the most depressing, eeyorishness note possible. But then I reconsidered.For maximum eeyorishness, I should really end the year with a “Romney 2016″ post instead, no? Team McCain’s goal? Unseat conservative activists who hold obscure, but influential, local party offices.Under the byzantine rules of Arizona Republican Party politics, these elected officials, known as precinct committeemen, vote for local party chairmen. The chairmen, in turn, determine how state and local GOP funds are spent, which candidates are promoted in an election year, and which political issues...

Nearly a year ago, tea party agitators in Arizona managed to get John McCain censured by his own state party. Now, he’s getting his revenge. As the longtime Republican senator lays the groundwork for a likely 2016 reelection bid, his political team is engaging in an aggressive and systematic campaign to reshape the state GOP apparatus by ridding it of conservative firebrands and replacing them with steadfast allies.

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...

Some prominent moderate establishment Republicans in Utah are plotting to target conservative icon Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) with a primary challenge in 2016. Lee’s offense? He didn’t drink the Washington Kool-aid and see the D.C. cesspool as a jacuzzi after he ousted incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT), who had supported the TARP bailouts, in 2010. When Lee prevailed over Bennett, he gave other conservatives across the country hope that they could also defeat entrenched incumbents who cared more about preserving the status quo above all else. Once Lee arrived in Washington, he didn’t turn his back on the base, which...

Last week, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush announced his intention to "actively explore" a run for president. That announcement spurred spasms of joy in some segments of the Republican Party who have been itching for an effective counter to the enthusiasm of the grassroots right. Those Republicans -- largely coastal donors who scorn social conservatives as rubes, and shun the supposed fiscal extremism of the tea party -- have been searching for a candidate who will buck the base on immigration, who doesn't mind hand-in-glove corporatism, and who, most of all, feels the same way they do about the grassroots....

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Here's Bob in Nashua, New Hampshire, as we head back to the phones. Great to have you with us, sir. Hello. CALLER: Yeah, thanks, Rush. Yeah, this theme of the GOP establishment that the Tea Party and conservatives are the main enemy not the Dems, it's nothing new. It goes back, really, to the 2008 presidential election when the Republican establishment -- or at least many in the establishment -- sabotaged McCain-Palin. Because, to them, Palin was the bigger threat, the bigger enemy than the Democrats winning. You know, the funny thing is now more than six...

For the past six years, I have been a passionate, active black member of the Tea Party. Unlike the vast majority of black Americans, I did not fall for the radical left's Trojan Horse in the form of a shiny new smooth-talkin' black man back in 2008. When presidential candidate Obama told Joe the Plumber that he planned to spread the wealth around, I knew he was nothing more than another socialist/progressive liberal who hated America as founded.

Top IRS officials specifically targeted tea party groups and misled the public about its secret political targeting program led by ex-official Lois Lerner, according to a bombshell new congressional report. The Daily Caller has obtained an advance copy of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report set to be released Tuesday morning that definitively proves malicious intent by the IRS to improperly block conservative groups that an IRS adviser deemed “icky.” (That’s right. “Icky.”) “The Committee has identified eight senior leaders who were in a position to prevent or to stop the IRS’s targeting of conservative applicants,” the Oversight...

A top IRS official considered going public with the agency’s targeting of conservative groups at a hearing just months before the 2012 presidential election but ultimately decided against revealing the bombshell news, according to a new report from a GOP-led House committee. Then-Deputy Commissioner Steven Miller wrote in an email in June 2012, about a month before a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing, that he was weighing whether to testify to “put a stake” in the “c4” issue -- apparently a reference to allegations about politics playing a role in the agency’s denial of tax-exempt, 501(c)(4) status to conservative-leaning...

It is extremely notable that Manu Raju of the Politico has written that the establishment intends to destroy Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). Raju serves as the court stenographer for the Senate GOP leadership. His pieces are routinely littered with the conventional wisdom and talking points of the Senate GOP leadership. He has more than once anticipated Senate GOP leadership strategy based on their conversations with him. So when Manu Raju says the establishment intends to go on offense against the tea party by beating Sen. Mike Lee in the Utah Republican Primary, we can be sure Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY),...

This phone number has called my home repeatedly for the past week. I have an unlisted phone number and am on the national do not call list, yet the calling continues. They called again right at 9 o’clock this morning to my unlisted, “do not call” number. The “do not call” part apparently does not apply to political and charitable calls. The caller ID says “Tea Party” and calls from (202) 750-2399. I figured I’d answer and see what was going on. A lady announces that she is calling on behalf of the tea party effort to support Sen. Rand...

When Gabby Giffords was shot in Arizona, the left went into a frenzy blaming Sarah Palin. In fact, when I was on CNN, I went on TV with Cornell Belcher and he was livid when I suggested leftwing rhetoric could be as hostile and divisive as rightwing rhetoric, if not more so. John King was apologetic for using war metaphors for politics and promised to stop. Wolf Blitzer, at one point, did a profile of Democratic congress critters who’d had death threats against them. Mind you, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Jim DeMint, and other Republicans had had the same, but...

In the end, making a political issue personal might have done in Assemblywoman Michele Fiore. The Las Vegas Republican was coming off a tumultuous week — she’d been deposed and then quickly restored as majority leader-designate and chairwoman of the Assembly Taxation Committee by Speaker-designate John Hambrick, R-Las Vegas — when she doubled down on allegations that certain Republican forces were targeting her and other conservatives. Speaking on the Alan Stock radio show on KDWN-AM 720 on Tuesday, Fiore not only repeated her rhetoric about a “war on women,” but blamed some of the alleged infantrymen in that conflict: Republican...

Is the tea party a movement or just a mood? That was the question posed by Weekly Standard columnist and Fox News contributor Steven Hayes as he kicked off a panel at the Heritage Foundation celebrating the 5th anniversary of the tea party. Hayes and his co-panelists, Heritage Action for America CEO Michael Needham and University of Virginia professor of politics James Ceaser, all agreed that the tea party is in fact a movement. Moods, as Hayes noted, don’t last for five years. Recent polls regarding national tea party support show the panel’s assessment is correct. An NBC News/Wall Street...

CARSON CITY — Las Vegas Assemblywoman Michele Fiore’s tax liens and problems with the IRS were cited in her second removal from Assembly leadership positions Thursday. Fiore’s removal could clear the way for moderate Republicans to control the Assembly in the 2015 session and eliminate any talk of a GOP-Democratic partnership challenge to the leadership. It could also smooth the way for Gov. Brian Sandoval to win more funding for public education. Assembly Speaker designate John Hambrick reversed course on Fiore for a second time in recent weeks and removed the controversial lawmaker as majority leader. She has also been...

RUSH: I was just asked a question, ladies and gentlemen. Does this mean that you can now go to Canada and buy a Cuban cigar and bring it back home? I don't think it means that yet. We are still here trying to figure out what happened. And, by the way, I need to remind you all of something. This is chump change compared to what's gonna happen the next two years. I have warned all of you people, I have warned you that these last two years of the Obama administration are gonna actually be what he would have...