Free Republic

(RTTNews) - A prominent Tea Party group sent a message to members on Monday identifying five current Republican Senators that they intend to target in 2012. Tea Party Nation named Sens. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, Scott Brown, R-Mass., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., as Republicans that need to be sent into retirement, accusing them of being Republicans In Name Only, or RINOs. The message cited Lugar's vote against a ban on earmarks as well as a his votes in favor of the DREAM Act and the START Treaty. Hatch was also criticized for being a "pork...

When a runaway hot-air balloon reported to be carrying a six-year-old boy made headlines last week, many were surprised to find out it had all been a hoax. Admitted the six-year-old boy on live television, “We did this for a show.” Another hot-air balloon by the name of Lindsey Graham also made headlines last week by putting on a show of his own, as the South Carolina Senator held court at a town hall meeting, touting his conservative credentials before an angry crowd that wasn’t buying it. “They’re a political fringe group” Graham said of his critics, “I’m the conservative...

Can this political marriage be saved? BY GARY BAUER Psychologists have discovered that the most important factor in predicting whether a marriage will succeed or fail is the existence of contempt. When one or both partners display contempt -- the intense feeling or attitude of regarding someone or something as inferior -- the union, ultimately and almost inevitably, will fail. Psychologist John Gottman has even developed a methodology that enables him to predict divorce with an astonishingly high degree of accuracy, up to 90 percent. While watching a couple interact, Mr. Gottman looks for the subtle signs -- microexpressions such...

Link only, per FR copyright rules (Gannett publication)

The Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group, is considering running ads in the Republican Party's Senate primary race against Florida Gov. Charlie Crist for supporting higher state taxes and President Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus spending package. Mr. Crist's opponent for the Republican Party's nomination next year is former state Speaker of the House Marco Rubio, a young conservative running on cutting government spending and taxes who recently met here with the Club for Growth, which has a strong reputation for defeating liberal and moderate Republicans in party primaries with its aggressive ad campaigns. "We recently interviewed Marco Rubio...

Sure, the New Hampshire primary for 2012 is still nearly thirty months away, but it makes no difference, since we’re ready to make this prediction: The GOP nominee for president in 2012 will be one of these five would-be candidates: Newt Gingrich, Haley Barbour, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush or Michael Huckabee. Consider Gingrich vs. Huckabee the ultimate flip of a coin in this sense: if one jumps into the primary race, the other will remain on the sidelines. Both are trying their best to charm the same interest groups and both sound similar on the talk show circuit. Still, Huckabee...

House GOP leaders who unveiled their “vision” for healthcare reform made clear that a major provision endorsed by 2008 GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) was not included. Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), chairman of the Health Care Solutions Group that spent months writing a "comprehensive" reform plan, said that McCain's proposal to tax employer-based benefits was "certainly not part of our plan."

Expect to start hearing something like this very soon on the campaign trail: “I’m a conservative Republican — emphasis on the ‘conservative’!” While the label “Republican” is polling about as low as it’s ever polled, its part-time synonym — “conservative” — is the most popular ideological descriptor in politics. A Gallup poll this week found that the number of Americans defining themselves as conservative is at its highest point in 20 years, at 40 percent. That compared to 35 percent saying they are moderate and 21 percent saying they are liberal. The results track closely with another Gallup poll, from...

When Republican Sen. Arlen Specter defected to the Democratic Party recently, politicians and pundits everywhere heralded the move as another sign that the GOP was "too conservative." Said liberal Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, "If the Republican Party fully intends to become a majority party in the future, it must move from the far right back toward the middle." Presumably "the middle," a pasture that so many Democrats, liberal Republicans, and others believe the GOP should now graze, is a place free of "reckless" government-slashing rhetoric. These critics believe Obama is president, the Democrats are in power, and Republicans who refuse...

Powell to Rush, Cheney: Room For Me Among 'Emerging' Republican Party Posted by David Beard, Boston.com Staff May 20, 2009 06:27 AM Colin Powell issued a sharp rebuke last night to Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney for trying to exclude him from the backbiting Republican Party. Before some 1,500 business leaders in Boston, as well as Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and wife Gisele Bundchen, the retired general and former secretary of state spoke openly of the dispute roiling the Grand Old Party after election setbacks and polls putting its popularity at roughly one of five Americans. "Rush Limbaugh says, 'Get...

The Republican Party certainly does require a "Big Tent" -- the kind of tent we sometimes see covering a house infested with termites. Unless conservatives can rid the GOP of Democrats hiding out in their midst, the Republican Party can never recover. Liberals are sapping the GOP's strength from within. It now seems that a looming divorce within the GOP has grown inevitable. Unless the Republican Party returns to its conservative principles, a number of conservatives will go on strike. They feel it is no longer acceptable for conservatives to do most of the hard work of winning elections, while...

Contrary to popular reports by Democrats and members of the chattering class, the Republican Party is not dead — not yet. In the aftermath of the 2008 elections, however, the GOP is hemorrhaging badly. It is dazed and confused. It is moribund, but it is not dead yet. Whether the Party of Lincoln will recover remains to be seen. Its prognosis is, at best, guarded. Having had their heads handed to them in the last election, and finding it difficult to take on a popular president, Republicans are casting about trying to find a new direction. But news of their...

Hoping to recapture the grassroots energy of last month’s “tea parties,” Republican Govs. Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Rick Perry of Texas will host a tele-town hall Thursday that’s being dubbed “Tea Party 2.0.” The Republican Governors Association said it is expecting 30,000 people to participate in the town hall, which will take place roughly one month after the much-publicized anti-tax tea party rallies held in hundreds of locations across the country on April 15, the tax filing deadline. Sanford and Perry will each speak for several minutes before opening up the town hall to up to an hour-long...

At TEA Parties across the country, hundreds of thousands of citizens declared that our taxes are too high, our federal government is too big, and our states' rights are being trampled upon. We were there and we want to keep the movement growing. Join a free telephone call with Governors Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Rick Perry of Texas to collaborate on our plan to fight for freedom and win America back.

The expected announcement Tuesday by Florida Gov. Charlie Crist that he’s running for the Senate would seem to be a rare bit of good news for beleaguered Republicans. But while Crist is a brand-name recruit with sky-high approval ratings and bipartisan appeal, his path to keeping the seat of retiring Sen. Mel Martinez in GOP hands has at least one significant roadblock: Sunshine State conservatives. Despite Crist’s widespread popularity, he faces a primary in which he will have to make his case to a restless GOP base dissatisfied with his high-profile advocacy for President Barack Obama’s stimulus and his handling...

. . . . . Elected Republicans should govern by the principles they profess in campaign rallies and advertisements. Those principles were once the difference between the parties. . . . . . The Republican Party, at its best, is a party of broad ideas and principles. For example, those who tend to vote Republican believe in limiting the size and scope of government and respect the guarantees of individual freedom and liberty of our Constitution. They respect life and its diversity; and they understand that free market capitalism, the glue that holds the Republican Party, and our nation, together,...

The return of Sen. Arlen Specter to the Democratic Party (he flipped in 1965 from “Kennedy Democrat” to Republican) is something that should be celebrated by Republicans, at least those who are proud to call themselves conservatives. Specter is a career politician whose first priority is himself. Specter, whose predictable lament that the GOP is not the “big tent” he had been led to believe it was, now embraces a Democratic Party that is an even smaller tent. How many pro-life Democrats exercise any influence in that party? How many opponents to same-sex marriage are in the Democratic leadership? Smaller...

After losing Arlen Specter to the Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell moved quickly to gauge the level of discontent of one of his caucus’ few remaining moderates. McConnell sat down privately with Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine on Wednesday and let her vent about what she thinks is going wrong with the Grand Old Party. It was a one-on-one follow-up to a New York Times essay in which Snowe contended the party didn’t need to lose Specter. After the meeting, Snowe had nothing but good things to say about McConnell, R-Ky., and focused her criticism on other wings...