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The government shutdown has made it abundantly obvious that the anti-conservative news media and the anti-conservative Republican establishment have joined together to the point where it's almost impossible to see where one ends and the other begins. Some might say they merge every day on the set of "Morning Joe." The media have designated as Public Enemy No. 1 a recalcitrant bloc of tea party stalwarts who have declared their intention to stop Barack Obama's statist juggernaut from imposing the Obamacare monstrosity, running up trillion-dollar deficits year after year and in so doing destroying the private sector. Amazingly, liberal Republicans...

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) - One lawmaker in the eye of the storm that is the government shutdown offered his encouragement to residents in the Tennessee Valley Tuesday night. Texas Senator Ted Cruz spoke at a dinner held by the Huntsville Republican Women. He gave a speech and then took questions from the crowd, via a video link from Washington. Cruz had been scheduled to appear in person but the turmoil in Washington kept him there. During the event, Cruz took the opportunity to blast the Obama administration on a wide range of issues. "We're seeing the constitutional rights of law-abiding...

Barney Frank spent 32 years in the U.S. House before retiring in January. In recent years, he helmed the House Financial Services Committee during the 2008 financial crisis, became the first member of Congress to marry a same-sex partner while in office and helped lead the charge for a ban on anti-gay firings (so far stymied) and post-crash financial reform (that law now bears his name). He’s currently writing a book. In a Monday afternoon interview, Frank predicted the endgame of the debt-ceiling showdown and defended his push in Congress for an Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would have left out...

Question: If Ted Cruz and John Boehner were both on a sinking ship, who would be saved? Answer: America. Harsh? Look around you at what is happening to America and you will see harsh. I am not talking about closed parks and monuments. I am talking about the funds cut to nearly 9 million mothers and young children for food, breastfeeding support and infant formula. That is harsh. Making a war against babies is harsh. And for what? Because Cruz, Republican senator from Texas, has grown so drunk on the sound of his own voice and so besotted with illusions...

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,...

Nothing says “patriot” like waving around the Battle Flag of the Confederacy in front of the White House.I’m still trying to wrap my head around this scene: Yesterday, in Washington, a group of angry white people—it was billed as the “Million Vet March” but numbered in the hundreds, maybe the thousands, and who knows how many were actual veterans—led by Tea Party-aligned Texas senator Ted Cruz and former half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin, marched on the Lincoln and World War II memorials, tearing down the barricades and demanding that President Obama reopen these sites, which, of course, are closed because...

On his radio show Monday morning, Bill Press took on this weekend’s Million Vet March by denouncing the participants as “idiots” who’ve been used by “right-wing organizations” to protest against their own best interests. Ultimately, he said, they shouldn’t be following people like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), they should be expressing public odium towards him. “Absolutely drives me crazy,” Press said of Sunday’s protest activities. “Here’s what wrong with it,” he continued, “Those three idiots leading the protests, but they’re not the dumbest ones. The dumbest ones there are the idiots that are protesting. These are people, they call them...

Sen. Ted Cruz met with roughly 15 to 20 House Republicans for roughly two hours late Monday night at the Capitol Hill watering hole Tortilla Coast. The group appeared to be talking strategy about how they should respond to a tentative Senate deal to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling without addressing Obamacare in a substantive way, according to sources who witnessed the gathering. The Texas Republican senator and many of House Republicans in attendance had insisted on including amendments aimed at dismantling Obamacare in the continuing resolution that was intended to avert the current shutdown. Sources said...

I saw a recent poll suggesting that former first lady, United States senator and secretary of State Hillary Clinton would beat Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a hypothetic presidential campaign, even in the reddest states. This made me think of a happy thought for Democrats: it is within the realm of possibility that Clinton would win all 50 states in an epic, historic and realigning mega-landslide against the party that threatens a Republican default, a Republican economic crash and a Republican government shutdown. Here's why: Republicans have been accused of waging a war against women, a war against workers and...

And as John Boehner is up at the White House negotiating the unconditional surrender of House Republicans, I unexpectedly ran into Senator Ted Cruz outside of Washington’s Omni Shoreham Hotel. Cruz was smiling and said he was invigorated by the outpouring of support for his campaign against Obamacare. Of course, you may be wondering why Cruz is happy while the Republican leaders around him are groping for a

HANNITY: I don't blame the media. I don't blame Harry Reid. I don't blame Obama. If every Republican would have stood by their promise like Ted Cruz, we wouldn't be in this position today. If they held together, we wouldn't have a problem today. You know, what is different here is, you know, every time the establishment wins, they want the tea party conservative base to go along with them. Now when the tea party stands up and fights for what they promise their voters, somehow they're evil, somehow what they did is wrong. When yet, all I see is...

Go to, now ...

NBC News Chief White House Correspondent and MSNBC host Chuck Todd reported on Monday that tea party figures like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin helped scuttle a potential deal to raise the debt ceiling over the weekend when they led World War II veterans to march on the White House. Todd reported that the tea party Republicans are “doing everything they can” to keep the shutdown and debt ceiling standoff “alive.” “While the non-tea party Republicans are desperately trying to end this standoff, the tea party Republicans are doing everything they can to keep it...

Liberals have the Democrat Party, Establishment Republicans have the GOP and conservatives have no party that represents them in Washington. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of Republicans who say they’re conservative. There are even plenty of Republicans who will vote like conservatives when it doesn’t matter. But, how many conservatives are actually willing to fight for conservative principles the way Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi fight for liberal principles? In the House and Senate combined, there are a few dozen, tops and the establishment Republicans are incessantly bemoaning the fact that anyone stands up for conservatism. So when...

Did you really have to be a pluperfect political prognosticator to have foreseen that none of Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann or Donald Trump was going to be the 2012 Republican presidential nominee? Yet on today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough—by way of establishing his fortune-telling street cred—boasted of having made those predictions, before proceeding to claim that: 1. Ted Cruz will not be the 2016 Republican nominee; and 2. there's a "very real chance" that Cruz will break from the GOP and run as an independent. View the video Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2013/10/14/scarborough-very-real-chance-cruz-will-run-president-independent-2#ixzz2hhcVlMnX

After Republicans drifted for years without a pilot, Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have taken the helm of the GOP, steering their party and its grassroots into a much-needed, head-on battle with the Democrats. On the campaign trail on the way to his win in November 2012, President Barack Obama promised to finish the work he’d gone to Washington to do: “fundamentally transforming the United States.” Things look tough for the right in Washington today, but the reality is these three conservative Republicans, aided by friends in the Senate and the House, have dragged the president’s ambitious agenda to...

The news from Washington is all about President Obama’s impending triumph in the government shutdown/debt ceiling standoff. “Boehner Blinks,” declared a recent headline in The Washington Post. “Republicans,” explained ABC’s Jonathan Karl, “are working out the terms of their surrender.” If this is Republican surrender, I hope I never see Republican victory. To understand how upside down the current media analysis is, you need to go back a couple of years. In 2011, with Republicans threatening to provoke a debt default, President Obama signed the Budget Control Act of 2011, which cut government spending by $917 billion over 10 years....

WASHINGTON (CBS DC) – The Senate has taken the lead from the House in attempting to devise a plan to reopen the government and avoid a potential default in the coming week. Speaking with Bob Schieffer on Sunday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said he is “cautiously hopeful” that the Senate can pick up where House negotiations have become deadlocked, and hopefully avoid the continued government shutdown through bipartisan Senate discussion. “I’m cautiously hopeful, optimistic that we can come to an agreement and open up the government and avoid default based on the bipartisan meetings that are going on,” Schumer said...

The Republican Party is at war with itself. It's divided over how best to shrink the federal budget and how to undo President Obama's healthcare law. Behind the GOP crackup over the government shutdown lies a much bigger battle for control of the party. And the most important actors aren't Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and the tea party members of the House who brought us the government shutdown. The party rift's chief driver is a constellation of hard-line conservative fundraising groups, led in part by a former senator most Americans couldn't pick out of a lineup, Jim DeMint of South...

The White House and the Senate are working to squeeze House Republicans into accepting a bipartisan compromise from the upper chamber to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. Any emerging deal, however, will leave ObamaCare largely intact, angering conservatives who have demanded defunding or delaying President Obama’s signature achievement. House Republicans are fuming over the prospect that Senate Democrats and Republicans are working on a plan to jam them with a last-minute deal they would have to accept or risk triggering a federal default. “They are trying to jam us with the Senate and we are not going...

<p>Need evidence of Cruz's gains of late? He won the 2016 straw poll at the Values Voter Summit on Saturday with 42 percent of the vote and his speech at that gathering of social conservatives was received very warmly. He has become the center of gravity for a certain not-insignificant element of the Republican party. Cruz has proven that he will be “the Tea Party’s one true standard-bearer in the Republican presidential primary,” according to Evan Smith,the CEO and editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune,a independent media outlet covering the Long Star State.</p>

The architects behind the iPhone never described it as a “train wreck.” #ObamacareIsNotAniPhone— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) October 12, 2013 The media doesn’t have to send out a national search party to find someone who has bought an iPhone. #ObamacareIsNotAniPhone— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) October 12, 2013 Apple can ship the iPhone to your doorstep faster than it takes to log in to http://t.co/B4wfKR71RO #ObamacareIsNotAniPhone— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) October 12, 2013 The iPhone wasn’t rendered inoperable for “maintenance” the first week it was on the market. #ObamacareIsNotAniPhone— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) October 12, 2013

Veterans from every branch of the military have a message for our government. The message will be delivered in person at 9 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 13, in Washington, D.C. and at war memorials all across the nation. The Million Vet March on the Memorials is a grassroots movement started by five military brats, a term used to describe children of military members, to honor the nation's veterans.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced that she will travel to Washington, D.C. on Sunday to support and honor the veterans who will be arriving for the "Million Vet March" on the memorials. Speaking at a rally for New Jersey Republican Senate candidate Steve Lonegan along with Mark Levin on Saturday, Palin denounced the Obama administration for dishonoring veterans by barricading the World War II Memorial during the federal government shutdown. She said it was "heart-wrenching," "atrocious," and "not right."

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),...

Sen. Ted Cruz seized the opportunity afforded by a White House invitation to confront President Barack Obama over his healthcare plan. Cruz said he appreciated the chance to go see the president — but then presented him with "substantial" changes for Obamacare. In the meeting, also attended by dozens of other Republican senators, Cruz refrained from using the word "defund," reports Politico. Instead he told Obama that all sides need to "provide substantial relief to the millions of people who are hurting because of Obamacare, who are losing their jobs, being forced into part-time work and losing their health insurance."...

Via RCP. Wait, wait, wait — before you start shaking your first at him, isn’t his point here oddly simpatico with what tea partiers say every day about Beltway squishes like King himself? It all depends on what benchmark you use to define “Republican.” The Republican establishment of the past 10 years has been fiercely interventionist, willing to bend on civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism, and happy to back new entitlement programs like Medicare Part D so long as their guy’s in the White House. Rand Paul, by contrast, tilts towards isolationism, wants to sue the NSA...

Jonathan Bernstein considers what the pointless shutdown fight has done to Ted Cruz’s political prospects: It’s one thing to have a reputation as a loudmouth; it’s quite another to have a reputation as a loser. That’s what the shutdown fight has done to Cruz. Among true believers he’ll be the one who was a leader in a fight that surely would have won if the squishes hadn’t sold them out. But for most party actors, including many sympathetic to Tea Partyism, he’s going to be the guy who ran up the wrong hill. It would have been different if Cruz’s...

On Friday, after blaming conservatives like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for the Obama administration's mishandling of military death benefits, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said Cruz simply did not represent the GOP. Fox News host Martha MacCallum mentioned that Cruz would be visiting President Barack Obama along with other Republican senators like Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Marco Rubio (R-FL) at the White House on Friday. She asked McCain, "How do you feel about him representing you there?" In response, McCain smirked before saying, "First of of all, Martha, please, he's not representing us there." Also in the interview,...

Talks between House Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama over the government shutdown and looming debt limit deadline have hit a brick wall. Boehner relayed the news to his Republican caucus during a Saturday morning meeting after a night of work where little progress was made. Republican Rep. Paul Labrador of Idaho emerged from the meeting, telling CNN that "the President rejected our deal." The standstill has decreased the possibility that the House would vote to reopen the government this weekend and while leadership would remain in Washington to work on a proposal, rank-and-file members might return to their...

Tensions between Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and other potential 2016 presidential contenders over the government shutdown were visible just beneath the surface at Friday's Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. Cruz fired up the conservative crowd with a demand that they double down in their fight against ObamaCare, ripping establishment Republicans as well as Democrats for opposing him in his quest. But even in the aftermath of Cruz's fiery speech, others shied away from any discussion of the high-profile confrontation. The shutdown went unmentioned by Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), both early champions of the defunding battle....

Appearing on MSNBC on Friday, Congressman Peter King continued his epic verbal assault on Ted Cruz — and, to a lesser extent, Rand Paul — by describing the Texas Senator as a “RINO” (Republican in name only) and a “fraud.” Speaking with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, King called the ongoing government shutdown “the strategy of Ted Cruz” and wondered aloud “why more Republicans around the country didn’t join me in denouncing Ted Cruz” before the shutdown began. “We cannot allow our party to be taken over by the likes of Ted Cruz and Rand Paul,” King continued, describing Cruz and Paul...

You gotta love it. The one Republican who has the courage to tell it like it is. Ted Cruz lectured the president on the negative effects of Obamacare today at the White House. Earlier in the day Senator Cruz joked that Obama might abduct him when he attends the White House meeting. (VIDEO-AT-LINK)The Politico reported: Sen. Ted Cruz confronted President Barack Obama over his health care law during a meeting at the White House Friday attended by dozens of GOP senators. Cruz told Obama that any deal to reopen the government must also provide relief for those negatively affected by...

Sen. Ted Cruz confronted President Barack Obama over his health care law during a meeting at the White House Friday attended by dozens of GOP senators. Cruz told Obama that any deal to reopen the government must also provide relief for those negatively affected by Obamacare. In a long gaggle with reporters, Cruz did not use the word “defund” to describe his aspirations for changes to the health care law, but said he wants “substantial” changes. “I told the president exactly the same thing I have told you here today: That we need to work together and fund the government...

<p>REP. PETER KING (R-NY): Andrea, this is the strategy of Ted Cruz and going back to mid-September, I said that Ted Cruz was a fraud, that there was a dead-end to this policy and it made no sense to follow it. John Boehner also told us in early September that it would be the wrong thing to do to shut down the government in an attempt to defund Obamacare. Unfortunately, we have three or four dozen Republicans in the House, Cruz Republicans, who basically threatened to bring the House down if John Boehner did not pursue this policy. John knew it was not doing to work, but he felt he had no choice. I understand his position.</p>

... Here’s How He Turned the Tables on His Haters Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was forced to stop speaking multiple times while delivering a speech at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., Friday morning. Rather than cowering, he repeatedly shot back at his hecklers and accused them of being ”President Obama’s paid political operatives.” Cruz was first interrupted by a man in the audience who demanded to know why he wouldn’t “support a pathway to citizenship for immigrant families.” Later in the speech, the disruptions became more pointed, leading Cruz to more fervently address the outbursts. Based on muffled...

Illegal immigrant advocates interrupted Sen. Ted Cruz’s speech to the Values Voters Summit on Friday more than a dozen times on, calling on the Texas Republican and potential presidential candidate to support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. But the Texas Republican repeatedly deflected the criticism, turning it into an attack against President Obama. “How scared is the president?” Mr. Cruz said. “Oh, they don’t want the truth to be heard. They definitely don’t want the truth to be heard.” The crowd also tried to drown out the protestors with chants of “USA! USA!” The protesters were dragged out...

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz rallied conservatives to keep up the fight to unravel ObamaCare, ahead of a White House meeting where his colleagues are expected to dial back their demands for changes to the health law as part of a possible deal to end the partial government shutdown. Cruz and his Tea Party-aligned colleagues spoke at the annual Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., Friday morning. The Texas senator, who along with Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, helped drive the showdown with the White House over ObamaCare, joked that he'll be heading next to the meeting with his colleagues at the...

The Democratic National Committee is launching Spanish-language online ads and robocalls targeting Republicans on the government shutdown, it announced Thursday. The effort is the third phase of a broader campaign this week that has been hitting Republicans in their home states, including House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), as well as early voting states Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. The Spanish-language calls and Twitter, Facebook and Google ads launching Thursday will target Latino voters in...

Just as Republican leaders were exiting their meeting with President Obama at the White House Thursday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was entering CNN's Crossfire, where he had to contend with Van Jones and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), without too much help from Newt Gingrich. Now that House Republicans are prepared to move forward with a short-term debt deal that doesn't touch the Affordable Care Act, Jones asked Cruz, "Do you feel like you owe your party an apology?" Jones noted that the Republican Party has become incredibly unpopular under Cruz's "leadership," saying that since the Texas senator entered office in...

Long ago, Ted Cruz earned the hatred of every elected Democrat in Washington. Now, he’s on his way to doing the same with nearly every Republican. He is, to paraphrase Winston Churchill’s quip about Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, a bull who carries a china shop with him. He had barely begun his 21-hour filibuster -- or, to be strictly precise, 21-hour-long speech -- when he compared his doubters to appeasers of Adolf Hitler, and he ended it roughly a day later with a prickly exchange with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The Cruz eye-rollers had plenty of occasions...

The pressure is on, the stakes are extremely high, and the clock is ticking towards the hour of reckoning. With the nation’s borrowing limit about to be reached only ten days from now, the country and the financial markets are starting to freak out about the week-long deadlock over funding the federal government. Very soon, the Tea Party and Main Street U.S.A. will prevail over Hyde Park/Haight-Ashbury socialism in this standoff over paying for Obamacare and for federal operations. Obama and his allies will blink. First of all, our cause is just. Obamacare is not even a legitimate piece of...

A Johnson County Republican and second cousin of President Barack Obama is expected to move ahead Tuesday with planning for a primary challenge to U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, of Kansas. Milton Wolf, who advocates for a divinely inspired return to limited government and individual liberty, invited supporters to a "major announcement" regarding the 2014 Senate campaign at an Overland Park hotel. The event will feature a performance by “American Idol” singer Krista Branch. Wolf, a 42-year-old physician and a political novice, could highlight in Kansas the division playing out nationally among tea party conservatives and others in the Republican Party....

Maybe the rest of the world, the part that keeps loaning us money will see Republicans standing firm as a good thing! I sure do!Senator Obama had no trouble voting against raising the debt limit! He called the rising deficit a failure in presidential leadership! What's happened since he became president? Our national debt is more than two times what it was when he took office! Is that a failure in leadership? The Democrats are like spoiled kids. If they don't get their way they throw tantrums, yell and scream, threaten, and call you names! Sounds like a first grader!...

Kelly Ayotte was furious. One media account after another (as here) has the Republican and theoretically conservative New Hampshire senator angrily attacking Senator Ted Cruz in a recent closed-door Senate GOP Caucus. Behaving as follows, this much cited and notably un-refuted coming from the New York Times, bold print supplied here for emphasis: And on Wednesday at a private luncheon, several Senate Republicans — Dan Coats of Indiana, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Kelly Ayotte of... --snip-- NR was spot on here about Ayotte, and there’s one more thing to add about that Ayotte comment of seeking a “thoughtful, bipartisan...

"We apologize for the inconvenience. The marketplace is currently undergoing regularly scheduled maintenance andf will be back up Monday, 10/7/3013." That's the message New Yorkers received this weekened when they attempted to sign up for health insurance via the new online health exchange or marketplace, a key componenet of ObamaCare. ...

If the nation is lucky, this October will mark the beginning of the end of the tea party. The movement is suffering from extreme miscalculation and a foolish misreading of its opponents’ intentions. This, in turn, has created a moment of enlightenment, an opening to see things that were once missed. Many Republicans, of course, saw the disaster coming in advance of the shutdown. But they were terrified to take on a movement that is fortified by money, energy and the backing of a bloviating brigade of talk-show hosts. The assumption was that the tea party had become invincible inside...

The fabric of our entire nation is being torn to bits by what I call the "fringers," the small groups that have taken over as the mouthpieces of their organizations. They march to their own drums and drown out any dissenting voices. The most notable one is the Republican Party which is being held captive by the tea partiers, one of the most destructive entities that has ever bollixed up our democracy that has endured for so many years since its exciting creation. There have been roadblocks in the past, most notably the Civil War, but at no time has...

What if they gave a shutdown and no one cared? The only people terrified, horrified and mortified by the so-called “government shutdown” seem to be hack politicians and whiny little trolls writing in the Beltway-Manhattan pinkosphere. D.C. is scared, and that’s good. It’s about time that the regulatory Boomtown felt the same boom lowered upon it as its tyranny has lowered upon the rest of the country. I wish I could say that the Republicans were completely united because they know that we need to turn this Titanic around before it slams into another iceberg and defeat the guy on...

I’m no longer sure how much faith I can put in the computer systems. It looks like there are still people visiting Hot Gas and reading the articles here, but it could be a ploy by the undead. I’m not going outside to verify this for myself because, well… who would feed the dog? But for those of you who have somehow survived five days without the federal government running and not yet been consumed by the hoards of aliens and plague infested miscreants roaming the streets, we’ll try to bring you up to date. Does all of that sound...