Free Republic

Texas, for starters. Between his 21-hour non-filibuster to halt Obamacare, his impassioned, hard-line speech at the right-wing Values Voters Summit, and his meeting with House Republicans at the mediocre Mexican joint, Tortilla Coast, it’s clear Ted Cruz has been conducting the shutdown train, even as the country heads into default and his party heads over a cliff. Just about every write-up of the man portrays a smart and opportunistic political mind, eager to be, as The Texas Tribune’s Evan Smith puts it, “the Tea Party’s one true standard-bearer.” But is his strategy just crazy? Pundits in Washington can’t decide what...

Apparently, it’s become fashionable to wonder whether fissures in the GOP might eventually grow into a schism, with tea party candidates mounting independent challenges to the GOP in the 2014 elections. Last night, David Frum went a step farther, writing that a tea party exodus might actually help Republicans by freeing them of Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz, allowing the GOP to slide back to the political center. It's a centrist fantasy. If Republicans think they have a pathway to victory without the tea party, they’re sorely mistaken. The tea party is not some small, fringe element of the Republican...

It’s three years away, but the ongoing government shutdown and debt ceiling debate makes it clear that Democrats need to be thinking now about a candidate able to effectively counter the Tea Party caucus in Congress — which thanks to gerrymandering, isn’t going anywhere until 2020. While the Republican field is already loaded with possible candidates — Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush III and Bobby Jindal – the Democratic field is apparently sealed: Hillary Clinton. RealClearPolitics finds Hillary getting 61 percent of the vote in a Democratic primary against Joe Biden (11), Elizabeth Warren (7),...

Our sense of the force currently paralyzing the government is full of misconceptions -- including what to call it. To judge from the commentary inspired by the shutdown, most progressives and centrists, and even many non-Tea Party conservatives, do not understand the radical force that has captured the Republican Party and paralyzed the federal government. Having grown up in what is rapidly becoming a Tea Party heartland–Texas–I think I do understand it. Allow me to clear away a few misconceptions about what really should be called, not the Tea Party Right, but the Newest Right. The first misconception that is...

The tea party senator and his allies campaigned on the promise to revolutionize Washington — so why is everyone so surprised they’re trying to do it? And on the third day, Ted Cruz looked upon his creation, and he saw that it was good. Yes, Congressional negotiations had devolved into a manic game of finger-pointing that centered on cancer-patient gaffes and pitched battles over war memorials; hundreds of thousands of federal workers had been sent home without paychecks; and Republicans were continuing to cling stubbornly to a list of extraordinary demands that Democrats flatly refuse to entertain. With the country...

Is a new, young left really on the rise? A few weeks ago, Peter Beinart wrote a long online essay which argued strongly in the affirmative. It drew a lot of attention—20,000 “Likes” and almost 5,000 tweets, at last count. And it made a lot of the progressives who read it feel better about politics than at any time since Mitt Romney learned 47 percent was actually the percentage of his popular vote. Beinart cobbled together an impressive set of poll results to show that Millennials (Americans under 30) swing left on a broad range of issues—from such obvious ones...

On Friday, MSNBC host Ed Schultz insisted that Republicans threatening to pass a budget which defuneds Obamacare, which could possibly result in a government shutdown, is motivated by the fact that President Barack Obama is “other.” Schultz said that the GOP is moved by “hate” and that an “element of serious racism” was clearly evident. “This is all about one thing: obstructing this president,” Schultz said. “To come to the conclusion and to have a big summary to the American people that this president is not legitimate. He is other. We’re not going to let him succeed.” Schultz said that...

Sen. Rand Paul conceded Saturday that congressional Republicans have little chance of stopping Obamacare. “We probably can’t defeat or get rid of Obamacare,” the Kentucky senator told reporters at a gathering of Michigan Republicans, according to the Associated Press. Paul acknowledged that time is running out for Congress to pass a government funding bill, however he said House Republicans’ efforts to defund Obamacare in its government funding bill could lead to a compromise. ~~snip~~ Reid has said any bill defunding Obamacare would be dead on arrival, and Sen. John McCain said Thursday that it was “not rational” to think the...

WASHINGTON — Ted Cruz and Mike Lee stand as the Senate’s dynamic duo for conservatives, crusading against President Barack Obama’s health care law while infuriating many congressional Republicans with a tactic they consider futile, self-serving and detrimental to the party’s political hopes in 2014. Cruz, the Texan who’s been anything but a wait-your-turn freshman, and Lee, the tea party-backed giant slayer from Utah’s 2010 election, spent months this summer pressuring Republicans to link any stopgap spending bill to keep the government running with permanently starving President Barack Obama’s health overhaul of money. The two former Supreme Court clerks are determined...

You're watching... Sen. Cruz: Vote in House to defund ObamaCare is 'historic' Health care law fight heating up in Senate

Great first step today by the House! Now the bill goes to the Senate and there's no doubt they'll change it to fund ObamaCare. And then the House must hold the line! Reject the Senate's changes! Defund/kill ObamaCommieCare before it kills us!! If Obama/Reid follow through with their threats to shutdown the government, then the adults in the House, with the full backing of the people, will have an opportunity to pass appropriation bills to fund the essential departments of government department by department. The first appropriations bill to pass should be social security and medicare. This will set the...

WASHINGTON — If there was any question who’s setting the agenda and direction of the Republican Party in the House it was answered Wednesday when, after forcing Speaker John Boehner to agree to once again attempt to defund Obamacare, Rep. Steve Stockman thanked fellow Tea Partier Rep. Tom Graves — and not the man ostensibly sitting atop the GOP’s top perch. “[Americans] want to defund ObamaCare and keep the government open. Thank you to Tom Graves and others who worked to make this happen,” Stockman said in a press release blasted out to national media. “Republicans should listen to the...

Congressional Republicans have battled each other of late over which tack to take in handling the next showdown over the budget. The Tea Party wing of the party has refused to support any budget bill unless it kills ObamaCare, while the more moderate leadership, wary of the political fallout from such an all-or-nothing gamble, has resisted the plan. It looks like the Tea Party just won round one. House Republicans will soon stage a vote on a budget bill — known as a continuing resolution (CR) — that both funds the government and defunds the Affordable Care Act, according to...

Grassroots conservatives who want to stop ObamaCare are making their voices heard. There is evidence that their elected representatives are starting to listen, and it is good. When Congress left Washington for its August recess, the voices demanding action to prevent American taxpayers from paying for ObamaCare – described by its chief Senate author, Democrat Senator Max Baucus as a ‘train wreck’ – were faint and few. Senator Mike Lee drafted a letter calling on the Senate to fund everything in the upcoming Continuing Resolution (CR), except ObamaCare. Every Republican in the Senate is on the record calling for defunding,...

New York Times columnist David Brooks argued on PBS' "NewsHour" Friday night that "Sen. Ted Cruz and similar legislators" are obstructionists who care more about undermining the Republican establishment than advancing legislation. Note that I didn't use "conservative" to modify "columnist" or "David Brooks," though the Times and other mainstream media outlets routinely bill Brooks as conservative. Featuring a left-leaning moderate and depicting him as a conservative is a clever technique the liberal media employ to discredit conservative ideas. Not to mention any names, but we see this technique in practice daily on NBC's deranged stepchild, MSNBC, where a former...

First things first, let’s stipulate that if there’s a government shutdown at the end of the month — and I continue to doubt there will be — it will happen because House Speaker John Boehner chooses to precipitate one. He can always partner with Democrats to pass a temporary, uncontroversial government spending bill if he wants to, because almost all Democrats will vote for it, and there are still a few dozen Republicans in the House who are both sane and unintimidated by the threat of a primary challenge from the right. Whatever happens is his decision. The latest doomed-to-fail...

For the last few weeks, House Speaker John Boehner has been trying to find a way to convince his caucus to vote for a bill that keeps the government open after Sept. 30 without picking a fight over Obamacare. But a minority of his caucus has been insisting on defunding Obamacare, egged on by outside conservative groups and a handful of far-right Republican Senators, most importantly Ted Cruz (Texas). This has been pretty annoying for a lot of House Republican members and staff. Jonathan Strong and Andrew Stiles of National Review got an anecdote out of a closed Republican Study...

Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA) made his bid to stop the ObamaCare train wreck by introducing the Stability, Security, and Fairness Resolution, which essentially funds every part of the government except ObamaCare for the coming year. The gigantic federal government is now funded by an endless string of emergency spending resolutions, a stack of fiscal Band-Aids high enough to reach the Moon. Rep. Graves is simply proposing to leave ObamaCare out of this year’s check-writing frenzy, which seems only fair, since President Obama already broke the law to delay the crucial employer mandate past the 2014 elections. Why not put the...

In just two weeks, millions of Americans will become eligible to sign up for the Obamacare exchanges. It will mark the first time millions of voters will have the opportunity to opt into Obamacare, and they will do so with the expectation of receiving benefits in a few short months. Opponents of President Obama’s health care regime can argue about the quality and cost of that care, but entitlement programs are notoriously difficult to unravel once the money starts flowing. To date, there is just one legislative strategy on the table that is geared toward stopping Obamacare before the exchanges...

Writers detail shocking civil war resulting from 'Tea Party militia' taking over South Carolina town - and the U.S. military's response They prophesize that unrest will result from the the economy's failure to improve from 'Great Recession' Commenters quick to fire back at the writers, as one brands Col Benson a 'traitor in waiting'A duo of writers have ignited an uproar with their foretelling of an insurrection that will plunge America into a new civil war, courtesy of a 'Tea Party militia.' Written in disturbing detail by a retired colonel and the academic, the article describes events leading up to...