Free Republic

When the Tea Party began in 2009, even those of us at the heart of the movement couldn’t have predicted how it would permanently alter America’s political landscape. Just six years later, it’s undeniably at the heart of American politics in spite of countless attacks from the political establishment and from the national media. Because of the Tea Party’s strength and influence, candidates who call themselves conservative must prove their bona fides to successfully court any grassroots support at all. Sen. Ted Cruz is a great example. Clearly a Tea Party favorite, Cruz has stood strong in the Senate for...

Good morning Austin: Today’s question. Who is more populist – Bernie Sanders or Ted Cruz? Bernie, right?I mean his campaign is all about – all about – wealth and income inequality and breaking up the incredible concentration of American wealth in the hands of a tiny few. He’s so far left in the Democratic Party that he’s not even actually a member of the Democratic Party. At a time when Democrats are afraid of being called “liberal,” he’s proud to call himself a socialist. He’s running against the Koch Brothers and Cruz is a creature of the Kochs. So, no...

Seasoned conservatives celebrated when Ted Cruz announced his bid for presidency. Mr. Cruz is the Tea Party's favorite candidate and he is despised by liberals. Ted Cruz refuses to set aside his belief in traditional values to appease "moderates" and "swing voters". Ted Cruz knows that we need to look to our freedom loving, Christian past to get this nation back on track. The sad thing is that Rand Paul also announced he will run. Mr. Paul is one of these "libertarians". Even the word itself, "libertarian" sounds too much like liberal. Rand Paul is liberal on social issues such...

If you read anything tonight, read this. Some protestors in Baltimore are receiving a lot of criticism from conservatives for the way that they are expressing themselves. I find it interesting that one of the most conservative & most vocal groups, the Tea Party libertarians, are named after an event where colonists destroyed property in Boston in order to make a point about their rights. I find it very interesting that these same conservatives celebrate our violent succession from the motherland, & throw elaborate celebrations on the 4th of July to mark the day of our independence. I've not once...

A government watchdog says the IRS has taken significant steps to stop agents from targeting political groups based on their names and policy positions. The agency’s inspector general says the IRS is doing a better job processing applications for tax-exempt status. In a report issued Thursday, he says the IRS has eliminated intrusive, unnecessary questions, and is processing applications faster. …

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who is putting a lot of emphasis on Iowa in his presidential campaign, is continuing to notch endorsements from some well-known activists in the state. Former Secretary of State Matt Schultz told the Quad-City Times on Wednesday he is endorsing Cruz for president. "I’m looking for somebody who’s going to stand up and fight for our country, and he gives me hope we can turn things around," said Schultz, who is now the Madison County Attorney. "He's not going to back down from a fight." In a letter to two dozen members of the Cruz...

An inspector general investigating the IRS’s improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups has found thousands of emails from Lois Lerner, the agency official at the center of that controversy, according to committees involved in the probe. Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration (TIGTA) said it found roughly 6,400 emails either to or from Lerner from between 2004 and 2013 that it didn’t think the IRS had turned over to lawmakers, the congressional committees said. The committees have yet to examine the emails, aides on Capitol Hill said. The IRS said last year that Lerner’s computer crashed in 2011, leaving it...

You're invited to join the Tyranny Response Team and other real Tea Party folks at our final FREEP in defense of 2,000 years of real Christian marriage. This will be held in front of the Supreme Court of the United States on Tuesday, April 27, 2015 from 9:00am until 12:00 noon. Media inquiries, call 1-202-288-8011 Simple rules of conduct are: no violence, no racism, no profanity, obey the law and treat uniformed law enforcement officials with respect.

The IRS targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups prior to the 2012 election was an unconscionable abuse of power for which accountability and punishment have been noticeably absent. But this was and is not the only use by the Obama administration of the power to tax to attempt to destroy its political opponents. The IRS is also involved in targeting what President Obama has called “less than loving” Christians through the mandates of ObamaCare and its attack on the free exercise of religion through the attempted coercion of mandated health insurance coverage This administration’s war on religion is...

Oh Lord: An overgrowth of Republican presidential candidate kudzu is blanketing South Carolina these days. The Palmetto state appears to be an imperative stopover for anybody who has even remotely thought about entering the 2016 Republican presidential primary. And there is a bunch of anybody’s. The first big boy appearance in the Upstate was the redoubtable radical, Canadian citizenship renouncing, Ted Cruz. Cruz is so far out there that those attending his speaking engagements are encouraged to show up in full space regalia. Cruz considers himself to be God’s candidate. To that end, he announced his intentions to run at...

The White House today welcomed a Federal advisory panel's recommendation to cut legal immigration by one-third. But the proposals met fierce opposition from Hispanic, Asian-American, Roman Catholic and Jewish groups, as well as from the National Association of Manufacturers. (SNIP) Representative Dick Armey, the Texas Republican who is the House majority leader, said: "The commission fails to tell us why we should so dramatically reduce legal immigration. It is long on recommendations, but short on analysis." He said the proposals were "a misguided attempt to make legal immigrants the scapegoats for America's problems."

A baker's dozen — twelve plus one — is the number of candidates seeking to fill the seat of the late U.S. Rep. Alan Nunnelee who died of brain cancer in February. The special election to fill Nunnelee's seat is May 12, less than a month away and the jockeying has begun to court votes in DeSoto County, Mississippi's fastest growing county and a population that makes up nearly one-fourth or 23 percent of all voters in the First Congressional District. The list of candidates, in alphabetical order, is as follows: Boyce Adams, Sam Adcock, Nancy Collins, Edward Holliday, Starner...

GOP candidates constantly invoke the Constitution. A Yale Law professor reveals what they all fail to understand. With the 2016 election cycle having kicked into first-gear already, any American who hasn’t inured themselves to the monotonous (and often ultimately meaningless) repetition of the word “Constitution” is advised to get to self-desensitizing — and quick. Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have already made a fetishized version of the U.S.’s supreme governing document central to their campaign rhetoric; and even politicians less beloved by the supposedly Constitution-crazy Tea Party, like Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton, are likely to soon follow suit....

With just two of a dozen or more presidential candidates having declared their intention to run for office, South Carolina’s tea partyers are already lining up behind Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. In the latest Winthrop Poll released Wednesday, Walker and Texas Senator Tex Cruz were in a statistical tie among the 1,000 or so likekly GOP voters polled. But poll director Scott Huffmon says support between mainstream republicans and Tea Party backers may be split — at least for now “The Tea Party Likes Scott Walker to the tune of people who approve of the Tea Party picked Scott Walker...

Above all, this irony emerges: Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence—on her capacity, as she liked to put it, to “do the job from Day One.” In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles’ heel. What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency. What follows is...

Audio in link- Sen Cruz talks about a number of important issues, 1:00 Foreign issues- Iran, terror, 8:10 Economic growth and Ted's tax plan to be released.

Ted Cruz remains a conservative favorite in 2016. In 2012, the establishment backed his Senate opponent in Texas, then Lt. Governor David Dewhurst. The conservative grassroots backed Cruz and pushed him over the finish line. Cruz has since remained a favorite of the grassroots with a continually antagonist relationship with the Republican establishment. In 2010, Rand Paul, before Cruz, was a grassroots favorite. The Republican Establishment backed his rival, Trey Grayson. Paul rallied a coalition of conservative grassroots and Ron Paul acolytes to trounce Grayson and win the Kentucky Senate seat. Since then, Paul has wobbled between maintaining grassroots support...

As he did with Rand Paul, Ted Cruz praises the entrance of Marco Rubio into the 2016 race for president: Today U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, released the following statement regarding the announcement that U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., will also seek the Republican nomination for President of the United States:“Marco is a friend and colleague whom I greatly respect. We’re both the sons of immigrants who escaped Cuba to build a better life in the United States, and we share a deep appreciation and understanding of what it means to work hard and achieve the American Dream. Marco is...

Washington (CNN)Rand Paul isn't endorsing same-sex marriage, but said Sunday that "people ought to be treated fairly under the law." The Kentucky Republican senator who launched his 2016 presidential campaign this week talked about the semantics of marriage equality in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union." He said the decision on whether to allow same-sex marriage should be left to the states, and that he believes in "the traditional religious connotation" to marriage -- which religious conservatives believe should be reserved for one man and one woman. "I also believe people ought to be treated...

How long will this country remain free? Probably only as long as the American people value their freedom enough to defend it. But how many people today can stop looking at their electronic devices long enough to even think about such things? Meanwhile, attempts to shut down people whose free speech interferes with other people's political agendas go on, with remarkably little notice, much less outrage. The Internal Revenue Service's targeting the tax-exempt status of conservative groups is just one of these attempts to fight political battles by shutting up the opposition, rather than answering them. Another insidious attempt to...