Free Republic

'Bush's Brain' says CPAC straw poll would be 'completely meaningless.' More evidence is emerging that Karl Rove is a big fan of Ron DeSantis as the 2024 GOP Presidential Primary field shakes out. In comments on the Fox News Channel’s America’s Newsroom, the former George W. Bush adviser lauded DeSantis for his decision to skip the Conservative Political Action Conference later this week and to “very smartly” take a “measured” approach toward a 2024 rollout. “Take, for example, this weekend. Rather than going to CPAC — which is a completely pro-Donald Trump crowd and having a number at the end...

The Politico is reporting (read: let’s wait for a second source to confirm it) that the RNC, well, “[t]he Republican National Committee has chosen a Karl Rove-linked voter data project called Liberty Works to help it compete with Democrats in the digital arena. Liberty Works will team up with Data Trust, whose chairman of the board is former RNC Chairman Mike Duncan, committee spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski confirmed to Politico.” This is deeply troubling, if accurate, because I maintain the GOP must distance itself from the Bush administration players to start being successful again. Further, for all of Karl Rove’s fine...

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio went on seven Sunday talk shows to pitch a bipartisan immigration reform deal, while a handful of Republican lawmakers famous for their wacky cable news interviews can’t get any attention. An anti-immigration “gang of six” in the House is trying to stop the pro-immigration “gang of eight” in the Senate, The National Review’s Robert Costa reports, but hardly anyone’s listening. The six are cable TV favorites: Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann, Iowa’s Steve King, Texas’ Louie Gohmert, Alabama’s Mo Brooks, Pennsylvania’s Lou Barletta, and California’s Dana Rohrabacher. There were zero “anti-amnesty” Sunday show guests the week before Rubio’s...

Yesterday, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., spokesman Alex Conant caused a bit of a stir when he argued against granting permanent legal residence to illegal immigrants by claiming, “We haven’t had a cohort of people living permanently in US without full rights of citizenship since slavery.” Leaving the merits of this argument aside for a second, it is important to recognize that this is a very common argument on the left. For example:

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., produced a press release today claiming that his new “Border Security, Economic Opportunity & Immigration Modernization Act” creates “six security trigger steps that must be met before any currently illegal immigrant is given access to a green card.” And it is true. His bill does create six such triggers. But it also creates a huge loophole that makes them entirely irrelevant. From the bill: (B) EXCEPTION.—The Secretary shall permit registered provisional immigrants to apply for an adjustment to lawful permanent resident status if — (i)(I) litigation or a force majeure has prevented one or more of...