Republican Party missing: Feared dead
- Thread starter Greed
- Start date
This is the typical negrocoon defense of blatant conservative republican racism. "Both sides," as you insist on calling them are not equally intransigent.
I still have no idea why any thinking person would want to be part of today's republican party.
Christie Denounces Political Shift Toward Libertarianism
Christie Denounces Political Shift Toward Libertarianism
By Jennifer Oldham & Elise Young
Jul 26, 2013 12:57 PM CT
Choosing a side in his party’s ideological battle, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie attacked libertarian ideas on national security exemplified by U.S. Senator Rand Paul, a possible opponent in the 2016 presidential primary.
“I just want us to be really cautious of this strain of libertarianism that is going through both parties right now and making big headlines,” Christie, 50, said at a Republican governor’s roundtable yesterday in Aspen, Colorado. “I think it is a very dangerous thought.”
The comments gave an early glimpse of how Christie might position himself in what’s likely to be a crowded Republican primary in three years. The governor, who is enjoying high approval ratings from his response to Hurricane Sandy as he seeks a second term, has drawn criticism from some national Republicans for praising President Barack Obama’s help after the storm and scolding party members in Congress for aid delays.
“Sometimes there’s a mixture between the governor’s politics and his gut reaction,” said Patrick Murray, director of the West Long Branch, New Jersey-based Monmouth University Polling Institute. “In that response you saw both,” he added. “We saw the same thing with his embrace of President Obama after Hurricane Sandy.”
Christie’s comments come as lawmakers in Washington from both parties champion civil liberties and privacy in a debate over anti-terrorism policies. Libertarianism is a political philosophy whose proponents advocate for little or no government involvement in peoples’ lives.
Senator Responds
U.S. lawmakers angry about domestic telephone record-collection this week lost an effort to curtail funding for the intelligence-gathering tools revealed by fugitive U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden. On a 205-217 vote, the House rejected an amendment by Representative Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican, that would have limited the National Security Agency’s ability to collect phone records.
When asked yesterday if he was referring to Paul, Christie said: “You can name any number of people who engage in” the libertarian debates and “and he’s one of them.”
Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has accused the Obama administration of trampling civil liberties, responded to Christie on his Twitter account: “Christie worries about the dangers of freedom,” the senator wrote. “I worry about the danger of losing that freedom. Spying without warrants is unconstitutional.”
‘Esoteric Debates’
Christie, on stage in Aspen with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Indiana Governor Mike Pence, denounced what he called “esoteric debates” about national security.
“We as a country need to decide, do we have amnesia?” he said, adding that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama put in place stringent security policies after Sept. 11, 2001, and didn’t change it because “it works.”
As a former U.S. prosecutor appointed by Bush on Sept. 10, 2001, Christie said he was particularly close to New Jersey families affected by the terrorist attacks, with the state claiming the second-highest total death toll.
“I love all these esoteric debates people are getting in,” he said. “I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation and they won’t, that’s a tough conversation to have.”
Jersey Angle
Christie seized on Paul as “a serious symbol,” rather than a looming 2016 challenger, representing a party faction whose views on national security run counter to Christie’s experience as a metropolitan New York City resident and federal prosecutor after the 2001 attacks, said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.
“Part of his portfolio is he’s a Republican willing to take on the Republican establishment,” Zelizer said by phone. “Because he’s from the tri-state area, he also sent a clear message that he is not going with the libertarian wing of the Republican party on security, and hands-off government. He’s going to be a hawk.”
Christie, who lives in the New York City suburb of Mendham Township, has spoken about friends of his four children who lost parents in the World Trade Center attack. He’s also recounted his anxiety over the whereabouts that morning of his wife, Mary Pat Christie, a Wall Street bond trader who was two blocks from where the hijacked aircraft struck, and who couldn’t contact her family to tell them she was safe until many hours later.
Charlie Cook, founder of the Cook Political Report, a Washington-based nonpartisan newsletter on national personalities and issues, said it was “extremely cynical” to believe that Christie’s words in Aspen were driven purely by ambition for national office.
“There is no doubt in my mind that as a tough former U.S. attorney, particularly one becoming a prosecutor in New Jersey immediately after 9/11, Christie strongly believes what he says, and sees this as a dangerous turn on the part of many in his party,” Cook said in an e-mail. “At the same time, it’s not necessarily bad politics, either.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...es-political-shift-toward-libertarianism.html
Christie Denounces Political Shift Toward Libertarianism
By Jennifer Oldham & Elise Young
Jul 26, 2013 12:57 PM CT
Choosing a side in his party’s ideological battle, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie attacked libertarian ideas on national security exemplified by U.S. Senator Rand Paul, a possible opponent in the 2016 presidential primary.
“I just want us to be really cautious of this strain of libertarianism that is going through both parties right now and making big headlines,” Christie, 50, said at a Republican governor’s roundtable yesterday in Aspen, Colorado. “I think it is a very dangerous thought.”
The comments gave an early glimpse of how Christie might position himself in what’s likely to be a crowded Republican primary in three years. The governor, who is enjoying high approval ratings from his response to Hurricane Sandy as he seeks a second term, has drawn criticism from some national Republicans for praising President Barack Obama’s help after the storm and scolding party members in Congress for aid delays.
“Sometimes there’s a mixture between the governor’s politics and his gut reaction,” said Patrick Murray, director of the West Long Branch, New Jersey-based Monmouth University Polling Institute. “In that response you saw both,” he added. “We saw the same thing with his embrace of President Obama after Hurricane Sandy.”
Christie’s comments come as lawmakers in Washington from both parties champion civil liberties and privacy in a debate over anti-terrorism policies. Libertarianism is a political philosophy whose proponents advocate for little or no government involvement in peoples’ lives.
Senator Responds
U.S. lawmakers angry about domestic telephone record-collection this week lost an effort to curtail funding for the intelligence-gathering tools revealed by fugitive U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden. On a 205-217 vote, the House rejected an amendment by Representative Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican, that would have limited the National Security Agency’s ability to collect phone records.
When asked yesterday if he was referring to Paul, Christie said: “You can name any number of people who engage in” the libertarian debates and “and he’s one of them.”
Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has accused the Obama administration of trampling civil liberties, responded to Christie on his Twitter account: “Christie worries about the dangers of freedom,” the senator wrote. “I worry about the danger of losing that freedom. Spying without warrants is unconstitutional.”
‘Esoteric Debates’
Christie, on stage in Aspen with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Indiana Governor Mike Pence, denounced what he called “esoteric debates” about national security.
“We as a country need to decide, do we have amnesia?” he said, adding that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama put in place stringent security policies after Sept. 11, 2001, and didn’t change it because “it works.”
As a former U.S. prosecutor appointed by Bush on Sept. 10, 2001, Christie said he was particularly close to New Jersey families affected by the terrorist attacks, with the state claiming the second-highest total death toll.
“I love all these esoteric debates people are getting in,” he said. “I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation and they won’t, that’s a tough conversation to have.”
Jersey Angle
Christie seized on Paul as “a serious symbol,” rather than a looming 2016 challenger, representing a party faction whose views on national security run counter to Christie’s experience as a metropolitan New York City resident and federal prosecutor after the 2001 attacks, said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.
“Part of his portfolio is he’s a Republican willing to take on the Republican establishment,” Zelizer said by phone. “Because he’s from the tri-state area, he also sent a clear message that he is not going with the libertarian wing of the Republican party on security, and hands-off government. He’s going to be a hawk.”
Christie, who lives in the New York City suburb of Mendham Township, has spoken about friends of his four children who lost parents in the World Trade Center attack. He’s also recounted his anxiety over the whereabouts that morning of his wife, Mary Pat Christie, a Wall Street bond trader who was two blocks from where the hijacked aircraft struck, and who couldn’t contact her family to tell them she was safe until many hours later.
Charlie Cook, founder of the Cook Political Report, a Washington-based nonpartisan newsletter on national personalities and issues, said it was “extremely cynical” to believe that Christie’s words in Aspen were driven purely by ambition for national office.
“There is no doubt in my mind that as a tough former U.S. attorney, particularly one becoming a prosecutor in New Jersey immediately after 9/11, Christie strongly believes what he says, and sees this as a dangerous turn on the part of many in his party,” Cook said in an e-mail. “At the same time, it’s not necessarily bad politics, either.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...es-political-shift-toward-libertarianism.html
Poll: On National Security, Will the GOP Side With Chris Christie or Rand Paul?
Poll: On National Security, Will the GOP Side With Chris Christie or Rand Paul?
By Michael Catalini, Alex Roarty and Peter Bell | National Journal
7 hrs ago
Whose approach to national security is likely to win the internal debate in the GOP?
DEMOCRATS (88 VOTES)
Chris Christie's: 68%
Rand Paul's: 32%
Chris Christie's
"Ted Cruz is at war with Tom Coburn on Obamacare. Christie and Paul are going at each other like they're only a month out from the 2014 Iowa caucuses. As a Democrat, I love it."
"Paul's strategy would lose the GOP more votes in the long term."
"This isn't like abortion—the elites control the security debate, and the elites are not isolationists."
"In GOP-land, Big Military always trumps civil liberties."
"As a Democrat, it is going to be great theater and fun to watch the meltdown."
"Rand Paul's views represent an intense group of activists who are more ideological than partisan. Christie's views represent the core Republican brand."
"Rand Paul's America First credo will be no more successful than it was when Pat Buchanan pursued it. It is not premised on reality, and that is a fatal flaw."
Rand Paul's
"The GOP is currently incapable of saying no to the tea party."
"The trend line is libertarian."
"Neo-isolationists have replaced the neocons, especially when it comes to [the National Security Agency]."
"Republican primary voters do not like pragmatism."
"Passion beats rational analysis."
"Chris Christie isn't the GOP. He's an outlier. He needs to come to grips with that."
"The so-called grown-ups seem to be losing to the pseudo-libertarians, along with the GOP's many other exotic factions these days."
Whose approach to national security is likely to win the internal debate in the GOP?
REPUBLICANS (90 VOTES)
Chris Christie's: 81%
Rand Paul's: 19%
Chris Christie's
"The Republican Party is first and foremost the national security party. Sounding like a Democrat, as Paul does, is a great way to undermine our credibility."
"Paul is right, but the Defense Industrial Fear Complex will invest and win."
"The isolationist wing of the GOP died with Pearl Harbor. Rand Paul aligning himself with the discredited thoughts of Pat Buchanan is not the path to success. It's the path to irrelevance."
"That's where the money is."
"Rand Paul is a slightly less crazy version of his father, which includes his positions on foreign policy."
"In the pre-Snowden-leak days, this would have been a no-brainer, but the NSA's dramatic overreach troubles even mainstream Republicans."
"The world is a dangerous place. When the next attack comes, and it will, do you really think we'll be having this argument?"
"Unfortunately, my party is populated with defense-spending hawks who are more interested in Fortress America than civil liberties."
"As a former DOJ official, Chris Christie is being pragmatic, while Rand Paul is pandering to the black-helicopter and right-wing nuts in the GOP."
Rand Paul's
"Unless there is another terrorist attack against the U.S., rising mistrust of government will trump old-school national security concerns among GOP primary voters in 2016."
"Invoking the widows of 9/11 has run its course, especially when there's no evidence mass data collection on me and my neighbors has stopped a plot of any relevance."
"Which means the GOP will give up national security as an advantage for the first time since Ike."
http://news.yahoo.com/poll-national-security-gop-side-chris-christie-rand-060713520.html
Poll: On National Security, Will the GOP Side With Chris Christie or Rand Paul?
By Michael Catalini, Alex Roarty and Peter Bell | National Journal
7 hrs ago
Whose approach to national security is likely to win the internal debate in the GOP?
DEMOCRATS (88 VOTES)
Chris Christie's: 68%
Rand Paul's: 32%
Chris Christie's
"Ted Cruz is at war with Tom Coburn on Obamacare. Christie and Paul are going at each other like they're only a month out from the 2014 Iowa caucuses. As a Democrat, I love it."
"Paul's strategy would lose the GOP more votes in the long term."
"This isn't like abortion—the elites control the security debate, and the elites are not isolationists."
"In GOP-land, Big Military always trumps civil liberties."
"As a Democrat, it is going to be great theater and fun to watch the meltdown."
"Rand Paul's views represent an intense group of activists who are more ideological than partisan. Christie's views represent the core Republican brand."
"Rand Paul's America First credo will be no more successful than it was when Pat Buchanan pursued it. It is not premised on reality, and that is a fatal flaw."
Rand Paul's
"The GOP is currently incapable of saying no to the tea party."
"The trend line is libertarian."
"Neo-isolationists have replaced the neocons, especially when it comes to [the National Security Agency]."
"Republican primary voters do not like pragmatism."
"Passion beats rational analysis."
"Chris Christie isn't the GOP. He's an outlier. He needs to come to grips with that."
"The so-called grown-ups seem to be losing to the pseudo-libertarians, along with the GOP's many other exotic factions these days."
Whose approach to national security is likely to win the internal debate in the GOP?
REPUBLICANS (90 VOTES)
Chris Christie's: 81%
Rand Paul's: 19%
Chris Christie's
"The Republican Party is first and foremost the national security party. Sounding like a Democrat, as Paul does, is a great way to undermine our credibility."
"Paul is right, but the Defense Industrial Fear Complex will invest and win."
"The isolationist wing of the GOP died with Pearl Harbor. Rand Paul aligning himself with the discredited thoughts of Pat Buchanan is not the path to success. It's the path to irrelevance."
"That's where the money is."
"Rand Paul is a slightly less crazy version of his father, which includes his positions on foreign policy."
"In the pre-Snowden-leak days, this would have been a no-brainer, but the NSA's dramatic overreach troubles even mainstream Republicans."
"The world is a dangerous place. When the next attack comes, and it will, do you really think we'll be having this argument?"
"Unfortunately, my party is populated with defense-spending hawks who are more interested in Fortress America than civil liberties."
"As a former DOJ official, Chris Christie is being pragmatic, while Rand Paul is pandering to the black-helicopter and right-wing nuts in the GOP."
Rand Paul's
"Unless there is another terrorist attack against the U.S., rising mistrust of government will trump old-school national security concerns among GOP primary voters in 2016."
"Invoking the widows of 9/11 has run its course, especially when there's no evidence mass data collection on me and my neighbors has stopped a plot of any relevance."
"Which means the GOP will give up national security as an advantage for the first time since Ike."
http://news.yahoo.com/poll-national-security-gop-side-chris-christie-rand-060713520.html
Republican Divide Shows Moderates Scarce in Echo of 1964
Republican Divide Shows Moderates Scarce in Echo of 1964
By Michael Tackett -
Aug 8, 2013 11:00 PM CT
Republicans have decided now is a good time for a fight. Among themselves.
Arguments like the one between New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and U.S. Senator Rand Paul over national security are showdowns that Steve LaTourette, a former Ohio congressman, is glad are happening three years before the presidential election.
Otherwise, LaTourette said, “you could be heading toward a 1964 cliff if you are not careful.”
As Republicans continue to sort through their future, having lost the popular vote for president in five of the last six elections, they are having intramural battles with echoes of 1964, when Barry Goldwater won the nomination at a convention rife with division over the role of the U.S. in the world and civil rights at home. Derided as an extremist, he went on to lose to President Lyndon Johnson in a landslide.
Now, Republicans are squabbling over the National Security Agency surveillance program, immigration and gay marriage. The Christie-Paul rift last week highlighted the divide, with the governor calling the senator’s criticism of the NSA program “dangerous” and the Kentuckian responding that his critic must have forgotten the Bill of Rights.
“It’s always healthy to have discussions from different wings of the party as the party works on its identity going into the midterms,” said LaTourette, who chose not to seek re-election to Congress in 2012 citing the extreme positions among some of his Republican colleagues. “It wouldn’t be so healthy if this was next year or 2015 and the focus is on who the presidential nominee will be.”
Paul-Christie Wings
Still, there’s no indication that the internal feuding will stop, with Paul representing a more libertarian strain of conservatism that favors minimum government at home and abroad, and Christie and others who offer a more traditional view of limited government domestically with more robust engagement internationally.
Republicans are favored to retain control of the U.S. House and are within reach of winning the Senate, according to the most recent ratings by the Washington-based Rothenberg Political Report, a non-partisan political newsletter that tracks congressional elections. The danger the divisions present to the party is in appealing to a national electorate, and both Paul and Christie are considered potential candidates for the 2016 presidential race.
More Inclusive
For his part, Paul says he was trying to broaden his party’s base. In an interview in the Aug. 12 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, Paul said he was “very serious about making the party more inclusive, making it a party where every ethnic group is welcome.”
Paul said there is “an emergence of a new wing of the Republican Party that’s concerned not only with economic liberty but with personal liberty and with having a less-aggressive foreign policy. So it’s providing people with an avenue to support a wing of the Republican Party that didn’t really, frankly, have much representation before 2010.”
The party’s divide is on display in Congress, where House Republicans are pushing for legislation that would limit abortions after 20 weeks and opposing the Senate version of an immigration bill that passed the upper chamber with 68 votes, including 14 Republicans. And Senator John McCain of Arizona has labeled some fellow Republicans “wacko birds” for their non-interventionist positions.
Two-thirds of Republicans and voters who lean that way in a Pew Research Center poll released July 31 said that the party “needs to address major problems,” while six in ten said the party needs to consider changing some of its positions and not simply improve its messaging.
Tea Party Sentiment
Yet the poll also found that, by 54 to 40 percent, these voters wanted the party to move further to the right, including an overwhelming number of those who identify with the anti-tax Tea Party wing of the party that helped elect Paul.
“You have obviously the Rand Pauls,” Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas, “they are trying to stake out territory and make the case that Mitt Romney lost because he was not conservative enough, said LaTourette, president of the Republican Main Street Partnership, a Washington based group that describes itself as the ‘‘governing wing of the Republican Party.’’
‘‘Chris Christie and the wing of the party I belong to is the place where conservatives connect with people who live outside the South,’’ he said.
‘White Guys’
‘‘You can’t go into an election saying we have all the 50-year-old, angry, white guys voting for us and they have all the African Americans, Asian Americans, Jewish Americans and women,’’ he said.
Mike Murphy, who has served as an adviser to several Republican presidential, Senate and gubernatorial campaigns, said that ‘‘an intellectual debate like this is good because, the bigger the party is, the more debate, and if we all agreed it would be a small party.’’
‘‘In the House, they all agree and it’s a smaller wing of the party,’’ Murphy said. ‘‘So it is not necessarily a sign of weakness. My guess is that in a year or two the Christie wing has more numbers and the Paul wing has more passion.’’
In 1964, passion eventually won out. Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York and Governor William Scranton of Pennsylvania, who represented more established and moderate elements of the party, mounted challenges to Goldwater, who was backed by conservative insurgents. Goldwater routed his opponents in a convention that one of his biographers called the ‘‘Woodstock of the right.’’ Even as he suffered the later loss to Johnson, Goldwater laid the foundation for the modern conservative movement.
Conservative Definition
Today, moderate Republicans are a rarity, and few serious candidates for president have tried to claim that mantle since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina, knows both sides of the divide. Inglis was once considered part of the firebrand wing of the party that came to power when Newt Gingrich became House speaker after the 1994 elections, only to be later driven from office by a challenge from a Tea Party-backed candidate in a primary in 2010.
‘‘It’s a search for definition of what the conservative movement is about,’’ said Inglis, who identified his efforts to combat global warming as a contributor to his loss.
‘‘The real concern for my party should be that in the last election we lost college-educated white folks, the first time that has happened,’’ said Inglis, executive director of the Energy and Enterprise Initiative based at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. ‘‘That’s a very precarious position for the Republican Party to be in.’’
Not Moderates
Republicans, Inglis said, are not likely to move toward the center on issues as a strategic way to regain the White House. ‘‘I don’t see it was a mushing out toward the center,’’ Inglis said. ‘‘That’s not what I would counsel. What I would counsel is real passion about what we believe. We are not moderates.’’
‘‘Rather we should be coming to the competition of ideas with really good ideas and deliver solutions that actually work based on free enterprise and free markets, and boldly, not in a mushy kind of way. What the country needs is deliverables from conservatives that actually work.’’
Too often, he said, voters, especially younger adults, see the party’s opposition to gay marriage and legislation to combat climate change, and distill it to ‘‘mean people suck. I think young people are looking at the conservative movement and saying, ‘Is this who you are? Does that sum you up?’ If it does, then we are out of here.’’
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...e-shows-moderates-scarce-in-echo-of-1964.html
Republican Divide Shows Moderates Scarce in Echo of 1964
By Michael Tackett -
Aug 8, 2013 11:00 PM CT
Republicans have decided now is a good time for a fight. Among themselves.
Arguments like the one between New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and U.S. Senator Rand Paul over national security are showdowns that Steve LaTourette, a former Ohio congressman, is glad are happening three years before the presidential election.
Otherwise, LaTourette said, “you could be heading toward a 1964 cliff if you are not careful.”
As Republicans continue to sort through their future, having lost the popular vote for president in five of the last six elections, they are having intramural battles with echoes of 1964, when Barry Goldwater won the nomination at a convention rife with division over the role of the U.S. in the world and civil rights at home. Derided as an extremist, he went on to lose to President Lyndon Johnson in a landslide.
Now, Republicans are squabbling over the National Security Agency surveillance program, immigration and gay marriage. The Christie-Paul rift last week highlighted the divide, with the governor calling the senator’s criticism of the NSA program “dangerous” and the Kentuckian responding that his critic must have forgotten the Bill of Rights.
“It’s always healthy to have discussions from different wings of the party as the party works on its identity going into the midterms,” said LaTourette, who chose not to seek re-election to Congress in 2012 citing the extreme positions among some of his Republican colleagues. “It wouldn’t be so healthy if this was next year or 2015 and the focus is on who the presidential nominee will be.”
Paul-Christie Wings
Still, there’s no indication that the internal feuding will stop, with Paul representing a more libertarian strain of conservatism that favors minimum government at home and abroad, and Christie and others who offer a more traditional view of limited government domestically with more robust engagement internationally.
Republicans are favored to retain control of the U.S. House and are within reach of winning the Senate, according to the most recent ratings by the Washington-based Rothenberg Political Report, a non-partisan political newsletter that tracks congressional elections. The danger the divisions present to the party is in appealing to a national electorate, and both Paul and Christie are considered potential candidates for the 2016 presidential race.
More Inclusive
For his part, Paul says he was trying to broaden his party’s base. In an interview in the Aug. 12 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, Paul said he was “very serious about making the party more inclusive, making it a party where every ethnic group is welcome.”
Paul said there is “an emergence of a new wing of the Republican Party that’s concerned not only with economic liberty but with personal liberty and with having a less-aggressive foreign policy. So it’s providing people with an avenue to support a wing of the Republican Party that didn’t really, frankly, have much representation before 2010.”
The party’s divide is on display in Congress, where House Republicans are pushing for legislation that would limit abortions after 20 weeks and opposing the Senate version of an immigration bill that passed the upper chamber with 68 votes, including 14 Republicans. And Senator John McCain of Arizona has labeled some fellow Republicans “wacko birds” for their non-interventionist positions.
Two-thirds of Republicans and voters who lean that way in a Pew Research Center poll released July 31 said that the party “needs to address major problems,” while six in ten said the party needs to consider changing some of its positions and not simply improve its messaging.
Tea Party Sentiment
Yet the poll also found that, by 54 to 40 percent, these voters wanted the party to move further to the right, including an overwhelming number of those who identify with the anti-tax Tea Party wing of the party that helped elect Paul.
“You have obviously the Rand Pauls,” Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas, “they are trying to stake out territory and make the case that Mitt Romney lost because he was not conservative enough, said LaTourette, president of the Republican Main Street Partnership, a Washington based group that describes itself as the ‘‘governing wing of the Republican Party.’’
‘‘Chris Christie and the wing of the party I belong to is the place where conservatives connect with people who live outside the South,’’ he said.
‘White Guys’
‘‘You can’t go into an election saying we have all the 50-year-old, angry, white guys voting for us and they have all the African Americans, Asian Americans, Jewish Americans and women,’’ he said.
Mike Murphy, who has served as an adviser to several Republican presidential, Senate and gubernatorial campaigns, said that ‘‘an intellectual debate like this is good because, the bigger the party is, the more debate, and if we all agreed it would be a small party.’’
‘‘In the House, they all agree and it’s a smaller wing of the party,’’ Murphy said. ‘‘So it is not necessarily a sign of weakness. My guess is that in a year or two the Christie wing has more numbers and the Paul wing has more passion.’’
In 1964, passion eventually won out. Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York and Governor William Scranton of Pennsylvania, who represented more established and moderate elements of the party, mounted challenges to Goldwater, who was backed by conservative insurgents. Goldwater routed his opponents in a convention that one of his biographers called the ‘‘Woodstock of the right.’’ Even as he suffered the later loss to Johnson, Goldwater laid the foundation for the modern conservative movement.
Conservative Definition
Today, moderate Republicans are a rarity, and few serious candidates for president have tried to claim that mantle since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina, knows both sides of the divide. Inglis was once considered part of the firebrand wing of the party that came to power when Newt Gingrich became House speaker after the 1994 elections, only to be later driven from office by a challenge from a Tea Party-backed candidate in a primary in 2010.
‘‘It’s a search for definition of what the conservative movement is about,’’ said Inglis, who identified his efforts to combat global warming as a contributor to his loss.
‘‘The real concern for my party should be that in the last election we lost college-educated white folks, the first time that has happened,’’ said Inglis, executive director of the Energy and Enterprise Initiative based at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. ‘‘That’s a very precarious position for the Republican Party to be in.’’
Not Moderates
Republicans, Inglis said, are not likely to move toward the center on issues as a strategic way to regain the White House. ‘‘I don’t see it was a mushing out toward the center,’’ Inglis said. ‘‘That’s not what I would counsel. What I would counsel is real passion about what we believe. We are not moderates.’’
‘‘Rather we should be coming to the competition of ideas with really good ideas and deliver solutions that actually work based on free enterprise and free markets, and boldly, not in a mushy kind of way. What the country needs is deliverables from conservatives that actually work.’’
Too often, he said, voters, especially younger adults, see the party’s opposition to gay marriage and legislation to combat climate change, and distill it to ‘‘mean people suck. I think young people are looking at the conservative movement and saying, ‘Is this who you are? Does that sum you up?’ If it does, then we are out of here.’’
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...e-shows-moderates-scarce-in-echo-of-1964.html
The GOP Goes in Search of Non-White Faces
The GOP Goes in Search of Non-White Faces
By Kristen Hinman
August 15, 2013
Make nice with blacks, Hispanics, and women. That’s been the Republican party’s mantra ever since Mitt Romney’s loss last November, and today at the Republican National Committee’s summer meeting, leaders unveiled one way they’ll make it seem as if they’re following through.
The GOP is launching a “Rising Stars” program, a slate of new spokespeople who have young or non-white or female faces that look nothing like those who make up the party’s current base. Marilinda Garcia is a 30-year-old Hispanic state representative in New Hampshire. T.W. Shannon is the first African American speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives and an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation. Karin Agness is the founder and president of the Network of enlightened Women (NeW), a conservative organization she launched while in college a decade ago. (OK, there is one white guy, Scott G. Erickson—a San Jose police officer who writes a blog for the Heritage Foundation.)
The Associated Press reports that the four made their official media debut today at the RNC gathering, “the first of many high-profile appearances designed to help the party shed the image that it is too old and white. Republican officials have long fought that stereotype, but RNC communications director Sean Spicer says this time will be different. ‘We have the resources and the bandwidth to be able to actually promote these people,’ Spicer said.”
The program is part of a bigger switch in PR tactics—the party wants to encourage stories in the press that focus “on demographic groups instead of geographic regions,” the AP says. To do that the RNC will keep an online database of real people its flacks can tap any time a reporter is looking for a quick quote. “For example, an RNC spokesman said the tool could quickly locate a female Hispanic mom from New Jersey for a relevant media interview.”
Clearly party leaders are doing everything they can to seem more inclusive and attract a wider group of voters. Less clear: how Republican voters will respond to the effort.
Senator Marco Rubio, the Cuban American Florida Republican who put his conservative credentials on the line by leading the Senate’s immigration reform proposal with New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, is getting shunned by his base over the issue, according to Michael C. Bender at Bloomberg News. “It’s like he went out and committed adultery on us,” one of Rubio’s supporters told Bender. “He’s got to earn our trust again.”
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-15/the-gop-goes-in-search-of-non-white-faces#r=rss
The GOP Goes in Search of Non-White Faces
By Kristen Hinman
August 15, 2013
Make nice with blacks, Hispanics, and women. That’s been the Republican party’s mantra ever since Mitt Romney’s loss last November, and today at the Republican National Committee’s summer meeting, leaders unveiled one way they’ll make it seem as if they’re following through.
The GOP is launching a “Rising Stars” program, a slate of new spokespeople who have young or non-white or female faces that look nothing like those who make up the party’s current base. Marilinda Garcia is a 30-year-old Hispanic state representative in New Hampshire. T.W. Shannon is the first African American speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives and an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation. Karin Agness is the founder and president of the Network of enlightened Women (NeW), a conservative organization she launched while in college a decade ago. (OK, there is one white guy, Scott G. Erickson—a San Jose police officer who writes a blog for the Heritage Foundation.)
The Associated Press reports that the four made their official media debut today at the RNC gathering, “the first of many high-profile appearances designed to help the party shed the image that it is too old and white. Republican officials have long fought that stereotype, but RNC communications director Sean Spicer says this time will be different. ‘We have the resources and the bandwidth to be able to actually promote these people,’ Spicer said.”
The program is part of a bigger switch in PR tactics—the party wants to encourage stories in the press that focus “on demographic groups instead of geographic regions,” the AP says. To do that the RNC will keep an online database of real people its flacks can tap any time a reporter is looking for a quick quote. “For example, an RNC spokesman said the tool could quickly locate a female Hispanic mom from New Jersey for a relevant media interview.”
Clearly party leaders are doing everything they can to seem more inclusive and attract a wider group of voters. Less clear: how Republican voters will respond to the effort.
Senator Marco Rubio, the Cuban American Florida Republican who put his conservative credentials on the line by leading the Senate’s immigration reform proposal with New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, is getting shunned by his base over the issue, according to Michael C. Bender at Bloomberg News. “It’s like he went out and committed adultery on us,” one of Rubio’s supporters told Bender. “He’s got to earn our trust again.”
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-15/the-gop-goes-in-search-of-non-white-faces#r=rss
Re: The GOP Goes in Search of Non-White Faces
The RNC’s Losing Battle Against its Racists
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus sounded like he really meant business when he frontally assailed racism from one of the GOP party faithful. He lambasted GOP Iowa congressman Steve King for his silly, vicious and relentless trash of immigration reform and undocumented immigrants. Priebus used the “R” word, racism, to describe King’s rants and sounded even more indignant by calling his attacks “horrific” to boot.
By GOP standards, Priebus has been on somewhat of a public crusade to speak out and even take quiet action on the racist antics of some party officials. A few weeks back he urged and got the ouster of an Illinois Republican county official for the vile attack on Erika Harold, an African-American, and GOP Illinois congressional candidate. Priebus called the verbal bash of Harold “inexcusable” and vowed that that kind of behavior would not be tolerated.
This is Priebus and the RNC’s effort to bolster its public vow some months back to recast the GOP as a party that welcomes minorities. The 100 page manifesto that Priebus rammed through in March presumably pledged to back immigration reform, aggressively ramp up efforts to woo blacks, Latinos, Asians, and gays, and spend millions on a national campaign to convince minorities that the party really does care about them and, of course, wants their votes. The key though is persuading Hispanics that the RNC speaks for a majority of Republicans when it claims to back comprehensive immigration reform and that it will loudly condemn naked, old fashioned immigrant bashing by party officials or regulars, thus the outburst against King.
Priebus could save his breath. A few choice and timely words against a loose cannon congressman, and a wayward local GOP official, are not even the proverbial finger in the dike against the steady torrent of racial baiting that routinely pours from the lips and actions of legions of GOP rank and filers, whether their target is President Obama. Or Priebus’s thinly disguised campaign to stop Hillary Clinton by saber rattling the networks to dump their Clinton on air projects. But even that almost paled beside Priebus’s declaration on the Christian Broadcast Network in July that he didn’t much like the word diversity personally and that the RNC would stay the course in representing “christian” beliefs. This was a wink and nod assurance to those Republicans having nervous fits about his diversity manifesto.
The other problem with Priebus’s minority outreach public relations charade is that even if he really meant to crack down on his party bigots he couldn’t. There are millions of GOP backers in the South and Heartland, and the gaggle of right-wing webs, blogs, and talk radio jocks that think the GOP's only flub is that it's not truly conservative enough. They have hammered the GOP that any retreat from its core beliefs and message will perpetually doom it to political extinction in national politics. They warn that if the GOP suddenly started pandering to minorities and gays it could kiss millions of their fervent supporter's goodbye. Indeed many who didn't think Republican presidential contenders John McCain and Mitt Romney were authentically conservative enough for their tastes did stay home in 2008 and to an extent in 2012. It was evident even in the backwash of the 2012 defeat, when a parade of GOP hardliners jumped all over Romney and wailed that he and GOP candidates lost because they weren't conservative enough, or their self-inflicted gaffe wounds did them in. They denounced and sloughed off any talk from the GOP party leaders of re-messaging, mounting an aggressive outreach to minorities, even Hispanics, and do a reversal on immigration, and they won't let up on that.
The demonstrations that dogged Obama in Orlando, Phoenix, and the loud cheers from hundreds at the Missouri state fair for a rodeo clown that mocked Obama and wished him harm was not just simply the tortured and sad outbursts from a few kooks, cranks, and misfits. It is the open sore that represents the ugly rot of racism that courses through the party’s base, which if anything, has gotten even more uneasy, angry, and frustrated, with every passing day of the Obama administration, and now with the looming prospect of a Clinton presidential bid with no credible GOP candidate to make it a contest against her.
In the end, it’s always action not rhetoric that telsl whether a party leader really means what he or she says about making change. From time to time, Priebus will feign outrage at the idiotic ravings that comes out of a GOP mouth. That’s his job. But many millions still back the GOP precisely because they like the party just the way it’s always been and shudder at the thought that it could change. That’s more than enough to guarantee that Priebus will fight a losing battle against his party’s racists.
SOURCE
The RNC’s Losing Battle Against its Racists
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus sounded like he really meant business when he frontally assailed racism from one of the GOP party faithful. He lambasted GOP Iowa congressman Steve King for his silly, vicious and relentless trash of immigration reform and undocumented immigrants. Priebus used the “R” word, racism, to describe King’s rants and sounded even more indignant by calling his attacks “horrific” to boot.
By GOP standards, Priebus has been on somewhat of a public crusade to speak out and even take quiet action on the racist antics of some party officials. A few weeks back he urged and got the ouster of an Illinois Republican county official for the vile attack on Erika Harold, an African-American, and GOP Illinois congressional candidate. Priebus called the verbal bash of Harold “inexcusable” and vowed that that kind of behavior would not be tolerated.
This is Priebus and the RNC’s effort to bolster its public vow some months back to recast the GOP as a party that welcomes minorities. The 100 page manifesto that Priebus rammed through in March presumably pledged to back immigration reform, aggressively ramp up efforts to woo blacks, Latinos, Asians, and gays, and spend millions on a national campaign to convince minorities that the party really does care about them and, of course, wants their votes. The key though is persuading Hispanics that the RNC speaks for a majority of Republicans when it claims to back comprehensive immigration reform and that it will loudly condemn naked, old fashioned immigrant bashing by party officials or regulars, thus the outburst against King.
Priebus could save his breath. A few choice and timely words against a loose cannon congressman, and a wayward local GOP official, are not even the proverbial finger in the dike against the steady torrent of racial baiting that routinely pours from the lips and actions of legions of GOP rank and filers, whether their target is President Obama. Or Priebus’s thinly disguised campaign to stop Hillary Clinton by saber rattling the networks to dump their Clinton on air projects. But even that almost paled beside Priebus’s declaration on the Christian Broadcast Network in July that he didn’t much like the word diversity personally and that the RNC would stay the course in representing “christian” beliefs. This was a wink and nod assurance to those Republicans having nervous fits about his diversity manifesto.
The other problem with Priebus’s minority outreach public relations charade is that even if he really meant to crack down on his party bigots he couldn’t. There are millions of GOP backers in the South and Heartland, and the gaggle of right-wing webs, blogs, and talk radio jocks that think the GOP's only flub is that it's not truly conservative enough. They have hammered the GOP that any retreat from its core beliefs and message will perpetually doom it to political extinction in national politics. They warn that if the GOP suddenly started pandering to minorities and gays it could kiss millions of their fervent supporter's goodbye. Indeed many who didn't think Republican presidential contenders John McCain and Mitt Romney were authentically conservative enough for their tastes did stay home in 2008 and to an extent in 2012. It was evident even in the backwash of the 2012 defeat, when a parade of GOP hardliners jumped all over Romney and wailed that he and GOP candidates lost because they weren't conservative enough, or their self-inflicted gaffe wounds did them in. They denounced and sloughed off any talk from the GOP party leaders of re-messaging, mounting an aggressive outreach to minorities, even Hispanics, and do a reversal on immigration, and they won't let up on that.
The demonstrations that dogged Obama in Orlando, Phoenix, and the loud cheers from hundreds at the Missouri state fair for a rodeo clown that mocked Obama and wished him harm was not just simply the tortured and sad outbursts from a few kooks, cranks, and misfits. It is the open sore that represents the ugly rot of racism that courses through the party’s base, which if anything, has gotten even more uneasy, angry, and frustrated, with every passing day of the Obama administration, and now with the looming prospect of a Clinton presidential bid with no credible GOP candidate to make it a contest against her.
In the end, it’s always action not rhetoric that telsl whether a party leader really means what he or she says about making change. From time to time, Priebus will feign outrage at the idiotic ravings that comes out of a GOP mouth. That’s his job. But many millions still back the GOP precisely because they like the party just the way it’s always been and shudder at the thought that it could change. That’s more than enough to guarantee that Priebus will fight a losing battle against his party’s racists.
SOURCE
RepubliKlan Leaders Asked To Speak At March On Washington 50th Anniversary -All Declined
August 28, 2013
Not a single Republican elected official stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Wednesday with activists, actors, lawmakers and former presidents invited to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington — a notable absence for a party seeking to attract the support of minority voters.
Event organizers said Wednesday that they invited top Republicans, all of whom declined to attend...........
http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...b807ac-1010-11e3-8cdd-bcdc09410972_story.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/...k-at-March-on-Washington-anniversary-declined
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpoli...sing-from-the-march-on-washington-anniversary
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Analysis: Anti-Obamacare strategy stirs U.S. Republican backlash
Analysis: Anti-Obamacare strategy stirs U.S. Republican backlash
By Caren Bohan | Reuters
16 hrs ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There are signs that the conservative Tea Party movement has pushed other Republicans in the U.S. Congress too far and that a counter-revolt may be brewing.
The clearest signal came on Monday evening, when more pragmatic Republicans moved to crush efforts by a trio of Tea Party-backed Senators - Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Marco Rubio - to paralyze the Senate unless they get their way on the government funding bill that scuttles Obamacare, President Barack Obama's healthcare law.
The tactic of using the threat of a government shutdown to defund Obamacare had already come under a barrage of public criticism from Republican voices. They include more than a dozen Republican senators, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, strategists Karl Rove and Steve Schmidt, who advised Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign against Obama.
"For the last couple of years," Schmidt said on MSNBC on Monday, "we've had this wing of the party running roughshod over the rest of the party" saying "'we're going to purge, you know, the moderates out of the party.'"
Schmidt called on Republicans to "stand up against a lot of this asininity."
Whether the pushback represents the start of something lasting remains to be seen.
At the moment, some Republicans say the reaction is the result of a specific situation that could lead to a shutdown- and a catastrophe for Republicans in next year's congressional elections.
A BRIDGE TOO FAR
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called it a "bridge too far" to shut down the government if Obamacare is not defunded and said it could dash any hopes the party has of wresting control of the Senate from Democrats next year.
"There's a belief that getting the majority (in the Senate) in 2014 is possible and we don't want to go down roads that make it harder," Graham said. "Defunding Obamacare is a goal all Republicans share but the tactics we employ in achieving that goal can have a backlash."
Graham and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were among the Republicans who have made it clear that they would join with Democrats to collect the 60 votes necessary prevent a paralyzing Senate filibuster by Cruz, Lee and Rubio that would have led to a shutdown.
A big test will come in a few days in the House of Representatives, the hotbed of Tea Party support and an unruly place these days, with the formal leadership structure no longer in control.
The House is the source of the bill now in the Senate to condition the funding of the government on defunding Obamacare, a move initially discouraged by House Speaker John Boehner, who ultimately yielded under pressure.
When the Senate strips the funding bill of the Obamacare provision, as expected, Republicans in the House will be called on to agree or disagree with the Senate.
If Congress avoids a government shutdown, a more serious battle looms during the next six weeks over whether to raise the U.S. debt ceiling. House of Representatives Republican leaders want to use the debt limit as leverage to push for a delay in Obamacare. They believe the strategy could unify the party.
TEA PARTY INFLUENCE
The Tea Party - which is not a political party but rather a conservative movement that demands a reduction in the U.S. national debt and the budget deficit, by reducing government spending and taxes - has no more than 50-80 adherents in the U.S. Congress, four or five of them in the Senate.
In fact, pressure to defund Obamacare now is coming from groups besides the Tea Party. The Club for Growth, an influential fiscally conservative advocacy group founded in 1999, is also pushing hard, threatening challenges against members who vote what they see as the wrong way on Obamacare.
The Tea Party's influence comes from the fact that mainstream Republicans and Democrats in Congress rarely work together anymore. If they teamed up occasionally, they could crush it, as they did last January when Democrats and Republicans resolved a standoff over the so-called fiscal cliff of tax hikes and across-the-board budget cuts.
That is what is likely to happen in the U.S. Senate this week as it completes its work, and it is the way the House may go if it manages to avoid a shutdown: Democrats voting with some Republicans, leaving those worried about a conservative backlash to dissent.
Numerous Republicans have called the effort to cancel funding for Obamacare futile, because neither the Democratic-controlled Senate nor Obama would ever agree to block funding of the president's signature healthcare law.
Many Republicans worry that a government shutdown would anger voters, harming the party in a repeat of what happened after the government shut in the mid-1990s.
Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer said Republicans would end up like sushi - cut up into little pieces - if they followed the strategy.
Other conservatives say the tactic will wind up helping Obama get back on his feet after a rocky few months.
"What could possibly rescue Barack Obama from all these political problems and create a distraction that takes all his scandals off the front page?" conservative writer Thomas Sowell wrote in the National Review Tuesday. "Only one thing: the Republicans."
"By making a futile and foredoomed attempt to defund Obamacare, congressional Republicans have created the distraction that Obama so much needs."
CRUZ FATIGUE
Capitol Hill aides and Republican strategists say the criticisms are part of a backlash against Cruz, leader of an effort called "Defund Obamacare," who has worked with the conservative group Heritage Action for America to push the strategy.
Republicans said there is rising anger at Cruz for putting lawmakers in a difficult position: they strongly dislike Obamacare but don't want to back a strategy they see as doomed.
"It's impossible to understate the level of frustration right now, both in the House and the Senate," said a Senate Republican aide, who requested anonymity to discuss the mood among Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Another Republican aide said "Cruz fatigue" was settling in among Senate Republicans.
A website called "DontFundIt," run by Cruz and Heritage, is targeting other Republicans by name for not going along with the defunding move.
Republican strategist Charlie Black said Cruz was putting Republicans in an "awkward position" as he uses the Senate as a platform to speak to conservative activists outside Washington.
Cruz is reveling in the criticism. His rebellion against Washington's ways has made him an even bigger hero to Tea Party Republicans. He has become a constant presence on conservative television and radio shows in the past few months.
Every day now, Cruz said Tuesday as he began a marathon speech on Obamacare before a largely empty chamber, "I pick up the newspaper to learn what a scoundrel I am."
"....The chattering class is quick to discipline anyone who refuses to blindly fall in line," he said. That's "the way Washington plays. There are rules. You are not supposed to speak for the people."
http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-anti...-republican-backlash-212640273--business.html
Analysis: Anti-Obamacare strategy stirs U.S. Republican backlash
By Caren Bohan | Reuters
16 hrs ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There are signs that the conservative Tea Party movement has pushed other Republicans in the U.S. Congress too far and that a counter-revolt may be brewing.
The clearest signal came on Monday evening, when more pragmatic Republicans moved to crush efforts by a trio of Tea Party-backed Senators - Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Marco Rubio - to paralyze the Senate unless they get their way on the government funding bill that scuttles Obamacare, President Barack Obama's healthcare law.
The tactic of using the threat of a government shutdown to defund Obamacare had already come under a barrage of public criticism from Republican voices. They include more than a dozen Republican senators, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, strategists Karl Rove and Steve Schmidt, who advised Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign against Obama.
"For the last couple of years," Schmidt said on MSNBC on Monday, "we've had this wing of the party running roughshod over the rest of the party" saying "'we're going to purge, you know, the moderates out of the party.'"
Schmidt called on Republicans to "stand up against a lot of this asininity."
Whether the pushback represents the start of something lasting remains to be seen.
At the moment, some Republicans say the reaction is the result of a specific situation that could lead to a shutdown- and a catastrophe for Republicans in next year's congressional elections.
A BRIDGE TOO FAR
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called it a "bridge too far" to shut down the government if Obamacare is not defunded and said it could dash any hopes the party has of wresting control of the Senate from Democrats next year.
"There's a belief that getting the majority (in the Senate) in 2014 is possible and we don't want to go down roads that make it harder," Graham said. "Defunding Obamacare is a goal all Republicans share but the tactics we employ in achieving that goal can have a backlash."
Graham and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were among the Republicans who have made it clear that they would join with Democrats to collect the 60 votes necessary prevent a paralyzing Senate filibuster by Cruz, Lee and Rubio that would have led to a shutdown.
A big test will come in a few days in the House of Representatives, the hotbed of Tea Party support and an unruly place these days, with the formal leadership structure no longer in control.
The House is the source of the bill now in the Senate to condition the funding of the government on defunding Obamacare, a move initially discouraged by House Speaker John Boehner, who ultimately yielded under pressure.
When the Senate strips the funding bill of the Obamacare provision, as expected, Republicans in the House will be called on to agree or disagree with the Senate.
If Congress avoids a government shutdown, a more serious battle looms during the next six weeks over whether to raise the U.S. debt ceiling. House of Representatives Republican leaders want to use the debt limit as leverage to push for a delay in Obamacare. They believe the strategy could unify the party.
TEA PARTY INFLUENCE
The Tea Party - which is not a political party but rather a conservative movement that demands a reduction in the U.S. national debt and the budget deficit, by reducing government spending and taxes - has no more than 50-80 adherents in the U.S. Congress, four or five of them in the Senate.
In fact, pressure to defund Obamacare now is coming from groups besides the Tea Party. The Club for Growth, an influential fiscally conservative advocacy group founded in 1999, is also pushing hard, threatening challenges against members who vote what they see as the wrong way on Obamacare.
The Tea Party's influence comes from the fact that mainstream Republicans and Democrats in Congress rarely work together anymore. If they teamed up occasionally, they could crush it, as they did last January when Democrats and Republicans resolved a standoff over the so-called fiscal cliff of tax hikes and across-the-board budget cuts.
That is what is likely to happen in the U.S. Senate this week as it completes its work, and it is the way the House may go if it manages to avoid a shutdown: Democrats voting with some Republicans, leaving those worried about a conservative backlash to dissent.
Numerous Republicans have called the effort to cancel funding for Obamacare futile, because neither the Democratic-controlled Senate nor Obama would ever agree to block funding of the president's signature healthcare law.
Many Republicans worry that a government shutdown would anger voters, harming the party in a repeat of what happened after the government shut in the mid-1990s.
Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer said Republicans would end up like sushi - cut up into little pieces - if they followed the strategy.
Other conservatives say the tactic will wind up helping Obama get back on his feet after a rocky few months.
"What could possibly rescue Barack Obama from all these political problems and create a distraction that takes all his scandals off the front page?" conservative writer Thomas Sowell wrote in the National Review Tuesday. "Only one thing: the Republicans."
"By making a futile and foredoomed attempt to defund Obamacare, congressional Republicans have created the distraction that Obama so much needs."
CRUZ FATIGUE
Capitol Hill aides and Republican strategists say the criticisms are part of a backlash against Cruz, leader of an effort called "Defund Obamacare," who has worked with the conservative group Heritage Action for America to push the strategy.
Republicans said there is rising anger at Cruz for putting lawmakers in a difficult position: they strongly dislike Obamacare but don't want to back a strategy they see as doomed.
"It's impossible to understate the level of frustration right now, both in the House and the Senate," said a Senate Republican aide, who requested anonymity to discuss the mood among Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Another Republican aide said "Cruz fatigue" was settling in among Senate Republicans.
A website called "DontFundIt," run by Cruz and Heritage, is targeting other Republicans by name for not going along with the defunding move.
Republican strategist Charlie Black said Cruz was putting Republicans in an "awkward position" as he uses the Senate as a platform to speak to conservative activists outside Washington.
Cruz is reveling in the criticism. His rebellion against Washington's ways has made him an even bigger hero to Tea Party Republicans. He has become a constant presence on conservative television and radio shows in the past few months.
Every day now, Cruz said Tuesday as he began a marathon speech on Obamacare before a largely empty chamber, "I pick up the newspaper to learn what a scoundrel I am."
"....The chattering class is quick to discipline anyone who refuses to blindly fall in line," he said. That's "the way Washington plays. There are rules. You are not supposed to speak for the people."
http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-anti...-republican-backlash-212640273--business.html
Republican Civil War Erupts: Business Groups v. Tea Party
Republican Civil War Erupts: Business Groups v. Tea Party
By Michael C. Bender & Kathleen Hunter
Oct 18, 2013 9:51 AM CT
A battle for control of the Republican Party has erupted as an emboldened Tea Party moved to oust senators who voted to reopen the government while business groups mobilized to defeat allies of the small-government movement.
“We are going to get engaged,” said Scott Reed, senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “The need is now more than ever to elect people who understand the free market and not silliness.” The chamber spent $35.7 million on federal elections in 2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based group that tracks campaign spending.
Meanwhile, two Washington-based groups that finance Tea Party-backed candidates said yesterday they’re supporting efforts to defeat Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, who voted this week for the measure ending the 16-day shutdown and avoiding a government debt default. Cochran, a Republican seeking a seventh term next year, faces a challenge in his party’s primary from Chris McDaniel, a state senator.
McDaniel, who announced his candidacy yesterday, “is not part of the Washington establishment and he has the courage to stand up to the big spenders in both parties,” Matt Hoskins, executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund, said in a statement supporting him.
Controlling Congress
Cochran is at least the seventh Republican senator to face a primary in the 2014 midterms. The intra-party contests come as Republicans seek a net pickup of six seats to regain control of the 100-member chamber that they lost in the 2006 elections. Party leaders are also working to protect their majority in the U.S. House, where they have 232 members to the Democrats’ 200.
Those goals became more difficult after the Tea Party-aligned House and Senate Republicans embraced a plan tying government spending to defunding Obamacare. President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats rejected the proposal and had the power to stop it, and their partisan adversaries took the lion’s share of the blame for the impasse leading to the government shutdown that began Oct. 1.
The Republican Party’s favorability was at a record low of 28 percent in a Gallup Poll conducted Oct. 3-6. That was down 10 percentage points from the previous month and 15 points below Democrats. The Tea Party is less popular now than ever, according to a poll released Oct. 15 by the Pew Research Center. Forty-nine percent of U.S. adults have an unfavorable opinion of the movement, while 30 percent have a favorable one.
Revised Ratings
The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan Washington-based group that tracks races, changed the ratings of 15 U.S. House seats yesterday, all but one in favor of the prospects for Democrats. After three vacancies are filled in the 435-member House, Democrats are expected to need a net pickup of 17 seats to win back the majority they lost in the 2010 elections.
Both sides are using the Oct. 16 vote on a bipartisan agreement to reopen the government and lift the nation’s $16.7 trillion debt ceiling as a barometer for choosing their targets in next year’s elections.
In the Senate, 18 of 46 Republicans voted against the final deal. The opponents included Senators Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Pat Roberts of Kansas and John Cornyn of Texas, each of whom face primary contests. In the House, Republicans cast all the 144 votes opposing the accord.
Hurting Brand
“They voted ‘no’ because they understand this is a rallying cry” and that backing the agreement could be used against them, Tom Davis, a former National Republican Congressional Committee chairman and now director of federal government affairs for Deloitte Consulting, said in an interview. “This has not helped Republicans. It’s hurt the Republican brand.”
To improve their odds, Tea Party leaders are fine-tuning their strategy by targeting incumbents in states where Democrats have little or no chance of winning in the general election. In 2012 and 2010, the movement nominated weak or flawed Senate candidates in Indiana, Missouri, Delaware and Nevada who were defeated in the November general elections, dashing Republicans’ chances for taking over the chamber.
That’s part of the calculation in challenging Republican Senator Lamar Alexander in Tennessee, where no Democrats hold statewide office, said Michael Leahy, a Republican activist. State Representative Joe Carr announced in August he would run against Alexander in next year’s primary.
Volunteer Effort
Leahy is helping to organize volunteers to knock on doors tomorrow in the state and urge voters to protest Alexander’s support for ending the Washington impasse by backing Carr.
“Whoever wins the primary in Tennessee is going to sail to victory,” Leahy said in an interview. “Democrats are anemic here.”
In addition to Cochran and Alexander, Republican senators who supported the agreement to re-open the government and face primary challenges include Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
“The strategy of primarying people like Thad Cochran is more of the same and it means more Senate minorities in the future,” said David French, the top lobbyist in Washington for the National Retail Federation. “I question the judgment there.”
French said the federation would back candidates in Republican primaries. Neither he nor Reed would specify which incumbents they’d support.
Dropping Support
“There are incumbent Republicans who are on the wrong side of some of these issues,” said French, whose organization spent more than $300,000 on races in 2012. “There are definitely some incumbent Republicans we’re not going to support again.”
The chamber has challenged the Tea Party before and Reed said they will follow a similar strategy next year.
Leading up to the 2012 Republican primary, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Michigan Chamber of Commerce paid for television ads backing Representative Fred Upton, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Upton was fending off a challenge from Jack Hoogendyk, a former state representative backed by the Tea Party-aligned FreedomWorks, which posted online a “Down with Upton” petition. Upton won by a double-digit margin.
Campaign Spending
Joining the Senate Conservatives Fund in backing McDaniel’s primary challenge of Cochran is the Club for Growth, another Tea Party ally. The group’s super political action committee, Club for Growth Action, spent $17.9 million on federal races in 2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Senate Conservatives Fund spent $15.9 million in 2012 and $3.9 million so far on 2014 campaigns. The group, a political action committee founded by former South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint, backed Republicans Rand Paul in Kentucky in 2010 and Ted Cruz in Texas in 2012 as each won Senate bids.
McDaniel is the group’s first endorsement in the 2014 elections, and today it pledged its backing to Louisville investor Matt Bevin, who is challenging McConnell.
It’s too soon to know whether the boost the Tea Party-backed Senate candidates are anticipating will materialize, said Jennifer Duffy, who tracks Senate races for the Cook Report.
Not ‘Serious’
With the exception of Bevin, who is spending his own money in his primary race, “none of these other candidates are really serious yet,” Duffy said.
“It’s going to take a week or so to figure out how Tea Party voters feel about it,” Duffy said. “If they are angry, that could give some of these candidates momentum.”
Democrats are also looking to use the government shutdown battle to their political advantage.
Rickey Cole, the Democratic chairman in Mississippi, said a Republican civil war presents an opportunity. Cole is pitching party leaders in Washington to help in recruiting a candidate for the state’s Senate contest.
“Folks are returning my call, but everybody’s got to do a poll to decide which side of the bed to get out of,” Cole said in an interview. “This race could be a replay of what happened to Senator Lugar in Indiana.”
After 36 years in the Senate, Richard Lugar lost the Republican primary in Indiana last year to state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who had Tea Party support. Mourdock went on to lose to Democrat Joe Donnelly in the general election.
Targeting Republicans
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which assists candidates, is attacking the Republican House members who are running for the Senate, saying they’re partly to blame for the unpopular shutdown.
Montana, West Virginia and Georgia Senate contests all feature Republican House members running for seats where incumbents are retiring. In Arkansas and Louisiana, Democratic senators are squaring off against House Republicans.
“Republicans are immeasurably damaged by this,” said the Democratic committee’s spokesman, Justin Barasky. “They repeatedly voted to keep the government shutdown. It highlights a recklessness and irresponsibility that all those candidates have.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...l-war-erupts-business-groups-v-tea-party.html
Republican Civil War Erupts: Business Groups v. Tea Party
By Michael C. Bender & Kathleen Hunter
Oct 18, 2013 9:51 AM CT
A battle for control of the Republican Party has erupted as an emboldened Tea Party moved to oust senators who voted to reopen the government while business groups mobilized to defeat allies of the small-government movement.
“We are going to get engaged,” said Scott Reed, senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “The need is now more than ever to elect people who understand the free market and not silliness.” The chamber spent $35.7 million on federal elections in 2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based group that tracks campaign spending.
Meanwhile, two Washington-based groups that finance Tea Party-backed candidates said yesterday they’re supporting efforts to defeat Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, who voted this week for the measure ending the 16-day shutdown and avoiding a government debt default. Cochran, a Republican seeking a seventh term next year, faces a challenge in his party’s primary from Chris McDaniel, a state senator.
McDaniel, who announced his candidacy yesterday, “is not part of the Washington establishment and he has the courage to stand up to the big spenders in both parties,” Matt Hoskins, executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund, said in a statement supporting him.
Controlling Congress
Cochran is at least the seventh Republican senator to face a primary in the 2014 midterms. The intra-party contests come as Republicans seek a net pickup of six seats to regain control of the 100-member chamber that they lost in the 2006 elections. Party leaders are also working to protect their majority in the U.S. House, where they have 232 members to the Democrats’ 200.
Those goals became more difficult after the Tea Party-aligned House and Senate Republicans embraced a plan tying government spending to defunding Obamacare. President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats rejected the proposal and had the power to stop it, and their partisan adversaries took the lion’s share of the blame for the impasse leading to the government shutdown that began Oct. 1.
The Republican Party’s favorability was at a record low of 28 percent in a Gallup Poll conducted Oct. 3-6. That was down 10 percentage points from the previous month and 15 points below Democrats. The Tea Party is less popular now than ever, according to a poll released Oct. 15 by the Pew Research Center. Forty-nine percent of U.S. adults have an unfavorable opinion of the movement, while 30 percent have a favorable one.
Revised Ratings
The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan Washington-based group that tracks races, changed the ratings of 15 U.S. House seats yesterday, all but one in favor of the prospects for Democrats. After three vacancies are filled in the 435-member House, Democrats are expected to need a net pickup of 17 seats to win back the majority they lost in the 2010 elections.
Both sides are using the Oct. 16 vote on a bipartisan agreement to reopen the government and lift the nation’s $16.7 trillion debt ceiling as a barometer for choosing their targets in next year’s elections.
In the Senate, 18 of 46 Republicans voted against the final deal. The opponents included Senators Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Pat Roberts of Kansas and John Cornyn of Texas, each of whom face primary contests. In the House, Republicans cast all the 144 votes opposing the accord.
Hurting Brand
“They voted ‘no’ because they understand this is a rallying cry” and that backing the agreement could be used against them, Tom Davis, a former National Republican Congressional Committee chairman and now director of federal government affairs for Deloitte Consulting, said in an interview. “This has not helped Republicans. It’s hurt the Republican brand.”
To improve their odds, Tea Party leaders are fine-tuning their strategy by targeting incumbents in states where Democrats have little or no chance of winning in the general election. In 2012 and 2010, the movement nominated weak or flawed Senate candidates in Indiana, Missouri, Delaware and Nevada who were defeated in the November general elections, dashing Republicans’ chances for taking over the chamber.
That’s part of the calculation in challenging Republican Senator Lamar Alexander in Tennessee, where no Democrats hold statewide office, said Michael Leahy, a Republican activist. State Representative Joe Carr announced in August he would run against Alexander in next year’s primary.
Volunteer Effort
Leahy is helping to organize volunteers to knock on doors tomorrow in the state and urge voters to protest Alexander’s support for ending the Washington impasse by backing Carr.
“Whoever wins the primary in Tennessee is going to sail to victory,” Leahy said in an interview. “Democrats are anemic here.”
In addition to Cochran and Alexander, Republican senators who supported the agreement to re-open the government and face primary challenges include Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
“The strategy of primarying people like Thad Cochran is more of the same and it means more Senate minorities in the future,” said David French, the top lobbyist in Washington for the National Retail Federation. “I question the judgment there.”
French said the federation would back candidates in Republican primaries. Neither he nor Reed would specify which incumbents they’d support.
Dropping Support
“There are incumbent Republicans who are on the wrong side of some of these issues,” said French, whose organization spent more than $300,000 on races in 2012. “There are definitely some incumbent Republicans we’re not going to support again.”
The chamber has challenged the Tea Party before and Reed said they will follow a similar strategy next year.
Leading up to the 2012 Republican primary, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Michigan Chamber of Commerce paid for television ads backing Representative Fred Upton, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Upton was fending off a challenge from Jack Hoogendyk, a former state representative backed by the Tea Party-aligned FreedomWorks, which posted online a “Down with Upton” petition. Upton won by a double-digit margin.
Campaign Spending
Joining the Senate Conservatives Fund in backing McDaniel’s primary challenge of Cochran is the Club for Growth, another Tea Party ally. The group’s super political action committee, Club for Growth Action, spent $17.9 million on federal races in 2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Senate Conservatives Fund spent $15.9 million in 2012 and $3.9 million so far on 2014 campaigns. The group, a political action committee founded by former South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint, backed Republicans Rand Paul in Kentucky in 2010 and Ted Cruz in Texas in 2012 as each won Senate bids.
McDaniel is the group’s first endorsement in the 2014 elections, and today it pledged its backing to Louisville investor Matt Bevin, who is challenging McConnell.
It’s too soon to know whether the boost the Tea Party-backed Senate candidates are anticipating will materialize, said Jennifer Duffy, who tracks Senate races for the Cook Report.
Not ‘Serious’
With the exception of Bevin, who is spending his own money in his primary race, “none of these other candidates are really serious yet,” Duffy said.
“It’s going to take a week or so to figure out how Tea Party voters feel about it,” Duffy said. “If they are angry, that could give some of these candidates momentum.”
Democrats are also looking to use the government shutdown battle to their political advantage.
Rickey Cole, the Democratic chairman in Mississippi, said a Republican civil war presents an opportunity. Cole is pitching party leaders in Washington to help in recruiting a candidate for the state’s Senate contest.
“Folks are returning my call, but everybody’s got to do a poll to decide which side of the bed to get out of,” Cole said in an interview. “This race could be a replay of what happened to Senator Lugar in Indiana.”
After 36 years in the Senate, Richard Lugar lost the Republican primary in Indiana last year to state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who had Tea Party support. Mourdock went on to lose to Democrat Joe Donnelly in the general election.
Targeting Republicans
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which assists candidates, is attacking the Republican House members who are running for the Senate, saying they’re partly to blame for the unpopular shutdown.
Montana, West Virginia and Georgia Senate contests all feature Republican House members running for seats where incumbents are retiring. In Arkansas and Louisiana, Democratic senators are squaring off against House Republicans.
“Republicans are immeasurably damaged by this,” said the Democratic committee’s spokesman, Justin Barasky. “They repeatedly voted to keep the government shutdown. It highlights a recklessness and irresponsibility that all those candidates have.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...l-war-erupts-business-groups-v-tea-party.html
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Last edited:
LOL
what a fuckin retard...
they NEVER left their old roots, thats why they are fading away..
reagan era was their last dance...
reagan was a big joke, who thought it was cute to say he didnt recall the cia puttin crack in the hood to fund the contras.
he got away with that memory loss shit, and the gop thought they were sooo fuckin smart...
check it tho...
about ten years later, that muthafucka reagan couldnt RECALL anything, LITERALLY....
he really forgot shit...
it got so bad they kept him out the media and wouldnt even show him,
then he died... KARMA what a BEAUTIFUL LAW...
these fuckin morons want to go back to THAT...
yeah dem redneck republican niggrs R DEAD!!!
what a fuckin retard...
they NEVER left their old roots, thats why they are fading away..
reagan era was their last dance...
reagan was a big joke, who thought it was cute to say he didnt recall the cia puttin crack in the hood to fund the contras.
he got away with that memory loss shit, and the gop thought they were sooo fuckin smart...
check it tho...
about ten years later, that muthafucka reagan couldnt RECALL anything, LITERALLY....
he really forgot shit...
it got so bad they kept him out the media and wouldnt even show him,
then he died... KARMA what a BEAUTIFUL LAW...
these fuckin morons want to go back to THAT...
yeah dem redneck republican niggrs R DEAD!!!
Or, maybe they've just been true to form since they adopted
the "Southern Strategy" and the massive exodus of many of
the racist, especially southern, elements of the Democratic
Party to the Republican Party following Reagan's win in 1980.
In fact, some might argue that the rise of the Tea Party is
just a natural progression and an expected consequence of
the Southern Strategy.
Their "Older Roots" appeared to have been a bit different.
They need to hire a the money team.
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Boehner Lashes Out at Anti-Spending Groups Fighting Deal
Boehner Lashes Out at Anti-Spending Groups Fighting Deal
By Derek Wallbank
Dec 11, 2013 5:39 PM CT
U.S. House Speaker John Boehner lashed out at groups that ally with Republicans on spending cuts for mounting a campaign against a budget agreement.
“They’re using our members, and they’re using the American people for their own goals, this is ridiculous,” Boehner said today at the Capitol as he backed the deal that would remove the risk of a government shutdown. “If you’re for more deficit reduction, you’re for this agreement.”
Boehner has been willing to let Republicans follow the lead of organizations including Heritage Action for America and the Club for Growth, which urge deeper cuts than Democrats and some Republicans endorse. Such groups egged on Republicans to defund the health-care law, creating an impasse that helped lead to a government shutdown in October.
The groups’ complaints about last night’s budget agreement mark the latest round of Republican divisions that have made it difficult for Boehner to hold his caucus together on fiscal issues as both parties look ahead to next year’s midterm elections.
The budget plan worked out by a special committee would set U.S. discretionary spending at about $1.01 trillion for this fiscal year, higher than the $967 billion required in a 2011 budget plan.
The accord would ease automatic spending cuts known as sequestration by $40 billion in 2014 and $20 billion in 2015.
The plan raises fees including on airline passengers, and is projected to cut the federal deficit by $23 billion over 10 years. The deal repeals a separate airport security fee, imposed after the 2001 attacks, that has been paid by airlines.
Donation Competition
Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, said outside groups are in competition for donations, devolving into a contest over who can be silliest.
“These groups exist on trying to create dissension within the party,” he said in an interview. “They’re a very destructive force.”
Former Representative Steve LaTourette, an Ohio Republican and Boehner ally now president of the centrist group Main Street Partnership, said the speaker’s remarks reflect “sheer frustration with these groups.”
“There’s nothing that could be crafted and signed into law that these outside groups would support,” LaTourette said in a phone interview.
10,000 Calls
Boehner and Republican leaders are establishing a pattern where they push spending cuts into the future, Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, said in a telephone interview.
“I don’t think that John Boehner’s problem is with FreedomWorks or Heritage Action,” Kibbe said. “His problem is with the very voters that were told that Republicans were fiscally responsible.”
Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit group co-founded by industrial billionaires Charles and David Koch, top executives at Koch Industries Inc., rallied opposition to the emerging budget deal between House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee, and Senate Budget Chairman Patty Murray before it was formally announced.
The group said its members placed about 10,000 calls to lawmakers’ offices yesterday alone, and another 30,000 e-mails. The idea those callers and e-mails are being used by AFP is “a pretty silly notion,” spokesman Levi Russell said.
Keeping Score
Heritage Action, which is tied to the Heritage Foundation run by former South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint, said it would include lawmaker votes on the budget deal as part of its legislative scorecard for 2014. Such scores are used in primary elections to back candidates deemed to be conservative and embarrass those who aren’t.
“Over the next few days, lawmakers will have to explain to their constituents, many of whom are our members, what they’ve achieved by increasing spending, increasing taxes and offering up another round of promises waiting to be broken,” Dan Holler, a Heritage Action spokesman, said in an e-mail. “That will be a really tough sell back home.”
Club for Growth, which has stepped into Republican primaries to back candidates who support less government spending, is siding with Republican senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul “and every other fiscal conservative who opposes” the deal, the group’s president, Chris Chocola, said.
‘Pro-Growth Proposals’
“After carefully reviewing the budget deal, on which we never commented until it was complete, we determined that it would increase the size of government,” Chocola said in a statement. “We support pro-growth proposals when they are considered by Congress. In our evaluation, this isn’t one of those.”
FreedomWorks pointed to Boehner in its comments on the deal.
“I suppose it’s new to hear the speaker talk this way, but these are hardly new talking points,” FreedomWorks’ Kibbe said. “I guess he’s trying to change the subject, because the deal they’re trying to cut is just plain bad. You can’t spin this.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...ut-at-anti-spending-groups-fighting-deal.html
Boehner Lashes Out at Anti-Spending Groups Fighting Deal
By Derek Wallbank
Dec 11, 2013 5:39 PM CT
U.S. House Speaker John Boehner lashed out at groups that ally with Republicans on spending cuts for mounting a campaign against a budget agreement.
“They’re using our members, and they’re using the American people for their own goals, this is ridiculous,” Boehner said today at the Capitol as he backed the deal that would remove the risk of a government shutdown. “If you’re for more deficit reduction, you’re for this agreement.”
Boehner has been willing to let Republicans follow the lead of organizations including Heritage Action for America and the Club for Growth, which urge deeper cuts than Democrats and some Republicans endorse. Such groups egged on Republicans to defund the health-care law, creating an impasse that helped lead to a government shutdown in October.
The groups’ complaints about last night’s budget agreement mark the latest round of Republican divisions that have made it difficult for Boehner to hold his caucus together on fiscal issues as both parties look ahead to next year’s midterm elections.
The budget plan worked out by a special committee would set U.S. discretionary spending at about $1.01 trillion for this fiscal year, higher than the $967 billion required in a 2011 budget plan.
The accord would ease automatic spending cuts known as sequestration by $40 billion in 2014 and $20 billion in 2015.
The plan raises fees including on airline passengers, and is projected to cut the federal deficit by $23 billion over 10 years. The deal repeals a separate airport security fee, imposed after the 2001 attacks, that has been paid by airlines.
Donation Competition
Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, said outside groups are in competition for donations, devolving into a contest over who can be silliest.
“These groups exist on trying to create dissension within the party,” he said in an interview. “They’re a very destructive force.”
Former Representative Steve LaTourette, an Ohio Republican and Boehner ally now president of the centrist group Main Street Partnership, said the speaker’s remarks reflect “sheer frustration with these groups.”
“There’s nothing that could be crafted and signed into law that these outside groups would support,” LaTourette said in a phone interview.
10,000 Calls
Boehner and Republican leaders are establishing a pattern where they push spending cuts into the future, Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, said in a telephone interview.
“I don’t think that John Boehner’s problem is with FreedomWorks or Heritage Action,” Kibbe said. “His problem is with the very voters that were told that Republicans were fiscally responsible.”
Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit group co-founded by industrial billionaires Charles and David Koch, top executives at Koch Industries Inc., rallied opposition to the emerging budget deal between House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee, and Senate Budget Chairman Patty Murray before it was formally announced.
The group said its members placed about 10,000 calls to lawmakers’ offices yesterday alone, and another 30,000 e-mails. The idea those callers and e-mails are being used by AFP is “a pretty silly notion,” spokesman Levi Russell said.
Keeping Score
Heritage Action, which is tied to the Heritage Foundation run by former South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint, said it would include lawmaker votes on the budget deal as part of its legislative scorecard for 2014. Such scores are used in primary elections to back candidates deemed to be conservative and embarrass those who aren’t.
“Over the next few days, lawmakers will have to explain to their constituents, many of whom are our members, what they’ve achieved by increasing spending, increasing taxes and offering up another round of promises waiting to be broken,” Dan Holler, a Heritage Action spokesman, said in an e-mail. “That will be a really tough sell back home.”
Club for Growth, which has stepped into Republican primaries to back candidates who support less government spending, is siding with Republican senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul “and every other fiscal conservative who opposes” the deal, the group’s president, Chris Chocola, said.
‘Pro-Growth Proposals’
“After carefully reviewing the budget deal, on which we never commented until it was complete, we determined that it would increase the size of government,” Chocola said in a statement. “We support pro-growth proposals when they are considered by Congress. In our evaluation, this isn’t one of those.”
FreedomWorks pointed to Boehner in its comments on the deal.
“I suppose it’s new to hear the speaker talk this way, but these are hardly new talking points,” FreedomWorks’ Kibbe said. “I guess he’s trying to change the subject, because the deal they’re trying to cut is just plain bad. You can’t spin this.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...ut-at-anti-spending-groups-fighting-deal.html
Watch John Boehner’s epic rant against tea party groups
Watch John Boehner’s epic rant against tea party groups
Health care divides some Republican Senate rivals
Health care divides some Republican Senate rivals
By BILL BARROW | Associated Press
Wed, Dec 25, 2013
ATLANTA (AP) — Republicans see the 2014 midterm elections as a chance to capitalize on voter frustration with the problem-plagued health care overhaul, but the GOP first must settle a slate of Senate primaries where conservatives are arguing over the best way to oppose President Barack Obama's signature law.
In intraparty skirmishes from Georgia to Nebraska, the GOP's most strident candidates and activists are insisting on a no-holds-barred approach. They accuse fellow Republicans — including several incumbent senators — of being too soft in their opposition to the Affordable Care Act and to the president in general.
The outcomes will help determine just how conservative the Senate Republican caucus will be during Obama's final two years. And they could influence which party controls the chamber, with Democrats hoping that the most uncompromising Republican standard-bearers will emerge from the primaries and fare as poorly in general elections as their counterparts did in several 2012 Senate races. Republicans need to gain six seats for a majority.
Republican Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, who wants to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss, stepped into the rift recently when he seemed to scold much of his party during an interview on a conservative talk radio show.
"A lot of conservatives say, 'Nah, just step back and let this thing fall to pieces on its own," Kingston said. "Well, I don't think that's always the responsible thing to do."
Rep. Paul Broun, one of Kingston's rivals in a crowded primary field, pounced immediately, declaring in an Internet ad, "I don't want to fix Obamacare, I want to get rid of it." Conservative commentators hammered Kingston with headlines like "Kingston has surrendered on Obamacare."
In Tennessee, state Rep. Joe Carr blasted Sen. Lamar Alexander for serving as a key GOP negotiator in the deal to end the partial government shutdown that resulted from House Republicans' efforts to deny funding for the health care law. Alexander subsequently described himself as a "conservative problem solver," a characterization that Carr says "typifies how out of touch he is."
Kentucky businessman Matt Bevin is using a similar line of attack in trying to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, as is Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel in his primary challenge to Sen. Thad Cochran. Carr, Bevin and McDaniel all say they'd be more like freshmen Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas, tea party favorites who pushed the defunding strategy and vexed their longer-serving colleagues.
In Nebraska and Louisiana, Republican candidates who say they oppose the health care law have had to defend their past positions on health care.
National Republicans settled on Rep. Bill Cassidy as their best shot to beat Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. But retired Air Force Colonel Rob Maness notes that Cassidy, as a state senator and a physician in the state's public hospital system, pushed health care policies similar to those in the Affordable Care Act.
"He has to defend his entire record, regardless of how he's voted in Washington," said Maness, a GOP candidate who hopes to unseat Landrieu with tea party support.
Midland University President Ben Sasse, one of several Republicans running in Nebraska for retiring Sen. Mike Johanns' seat, says he opposes the health care law but has had to explain previous speeches and writings in which he was less absolute, at one point calling the act "an important first step" in overhauling American health care.
"This goes right to the bigger fight between the ideologues and the pragmatists," said Republican strategist Todd Rehm of Georgia, who isn't affiliated with any of the eight GOP candidates for Chambliss' seat. Candidates who want to capture the divided Republican electorate, he said, "see that you can't compromise on any of it. ... The moment you start to sound like you're open to any compromise, you've sold out the ideologues."
Indeed, Alexander, McConnell, Kingston and Cassidy all voted against the Affordable Care Act in 2010 and for symbolic repeal proposals since then. Some in the GOP leadership say the intraparty struggle is only about tactics, not the bottom line. Carr insists that's exactly the point.
"Their presumption is that tactics don't matter because the outcome would be the same," he said. "But it wouldn't. There wasn't a single Republican vote that passed the Affordable Care Act, whether we're talking establishment, tea party, moderate, conservative, whatever. ... So if it's so bad — and it is — the question is why did establishment Republicans not fight to defund it?"
Leaders of national conservative groups, which have been key players in recent Senate elections, say the distinction is an important consideration as they decide endorsements.
"I would say that any candidate who is a vocal opponent of that (defunding) strategy would certainly cause us hesitation," said Easton Randall of FreedomWorks political action committee. "The burden is on them to explain what they would do differently to achieve a goal we all claim to share."
So far, FreedomWorks has endorsed McDaniel over Cochran in Mississippi and Nebraska state Treasurer Shane Osborn over Sasse. The group is watching several other races.
The Senate Conservatives Fund, founded by former Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, split with FreedomWorks in Nebraska, siding with Sasse. But the fund endorsed Maness in Louisiana, Bevin in Kentucky and McDaniel in Mississippi, among others. DeMint now runs the Heritage Foundation, whose political arm also is monitoring several other races.
Those groups' recent record is mixed. Democrats are hoping for a repeat of 2010 and 2012 races where the far right groups backed less-viable candidates who lost general elections in Colorado, Nevada, Delaware and Indiana. But the same groups also helped elect Lee, Cruz and Marco Rubio in the presidential swing state of Florida.
At FreedomWorks, PAC treasurer and policy chief Dean Clancy dismissed any notion that his efforts would hurt the party.
"Republicans make a mistake when they try to waffle on these issues or sound like Democrat-lite," he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/health-care-divides-republican-senate-rivals-152131025--election.html
Health care divides some Republican Senate rivals
By BILL BARROW | Associated Press
Wed, Dec 25, 2013
ATLANTA (AP) — Republicans see the 2014 midterm elections as a chance to capitalize on voter frustration with the problem-plagued health care overhaul, but the GOP first must settle a slate of Senate primaries where conservatives are arguing over the best way to oppose President Barack Obama's signature law.
In intraparty skirmishes from Georgia to Nebraska, the GOP's most strident candidates and activists are insisting on a no-holds-barred approach. They accuse fellow Republicans — including several incumbent senators — of being too soft in their opposition to the Affordable Care Act and to the president in general.
The outcomes will help determine just how conservative the Senate Republican caucus will be during Obama's final two years. And they could influence which party controls the chamber, with Democrats hoping that the most uncompromising Republican standard-bearers will emerge from the primaries and fare as poorly in general elections as their counterparts did in several 2012 Senate races. Republicans need to gain six seats for a majority.
Republican Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, who wants to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss, stepped into the rift recently when he seemed to scold much of his party during an interview on a conservative talk radio show.
"A lot of conservatives say, 'Nah, just step back and let this thing fall to pieces on its own," Kingston said. "Well, I don't think that's always the responsible thing to do."
Rep. Paul Broun, one of Kingston's rivals in a crowded primary field, pounced immediately, declaring in an Internet ad, "I don't want to fix Obamacare, I want to get rid of it." Conservative commentators hammered Kingston with headlines like "Kingston has surrendered on Obamacare."
In Tennessee, state Rep. Joe Carr blasted Sen. Lamar Alexander for serving as a key GOP negotiator in the deal to end the partial government shutdown that resulted from House Republicans' efforts to deny funding for the health care law. Alexander subsequently described himself as a "conservative problem solver," a characterization that Carr says "typifies how out of touch he is."
Kentucky businessman Matt Bevin is using a similar line of attack in trying to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, as is Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel in his primary challenge to Sen. Thad Cochran. Carr, Bevin and McDaniel all say they'd be more like freshmen Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas, tea party favorites who pushed the defunding strategy and vexed their longer-serving colleagues.
In Nebraska and Louisiana, Republican candidates who say they oppose the health care law have had to defend their past positions on health care.
National Republicans settled on Rep. Bill Cassidy as their best shot to beat Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. But retired Air Force Colonel Rob Maness notes that Cassidy, as a state senator and a physician in the state's public hospital system, pushed health care policies similar to those in the Affordable Care Act.
"He has to defend his entire record, regardless of how he's voted in Washington," said Maness, a GOP candidate who hopes to unseat Landrieu with tea party support.
Midland University President Ben Sasse, one of several Republicans running in Nebraska for retiring Sen. Mike Johanns' seat, says he opposes the health care law but has had to explain previous speeches and writings in which he was less absolute, at one point calling the act "an important first step" in overhauling American health care.
"This goes right to the bigger fight between the ideologues and the pragmatists," said Republican strategist Todd Rehm of Georgia, who isn't affiliated with any of the eight GOP candidates for Chambliss' seat. Candidates who want to capture the divided Republican electorate, he said, "see that you can't compromise on any of it. ... The moment you start to sound like you're open to any compromise, you've sold out the ideologues."
Indeed, Alexander, McConnell, Kingston and Cassidy all voted against the Affordable Care Act in 2010 and for symbolic repeal proposals since then. Some in the GOP leadership say the intraparty struggle is only about tactics, not the bottom line. Carr insists that's exactly the point.
"Their presumption is that tactics don't matter because the outcome would be the same," he said. "But it wouldn't. There wasn't a single Republican vote that passed the Affordable Care Act, whether we're talking establishment, tea party, moderate, conservative, whatever. ... So if it's so bad — and it is — the question is why did establishment Republicans not fight to defund it?"
Leaders of national conservative groups, which have been key players in recent Senate elections, say the distinction is an important consideration as they decide endorsements.
"I would say that any candidate who is a vocal opponent of that (defunding) strategy would certainly cause us hesitation," said Easton Randall of FreedomWorks political action committee. "The burden is on them to explain what they would do differently to achieve a goal we all claim to share."
So far, FreedomWorks has endorsed McDaniel over Cochran in Mississippi and Nebraska state Treasurer Shane Osborn over Sasse. The group is watching several other races.
The Senate Conservatives Fund, founded by former Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, split with FreedomWorks in Nebraska, siding with Sasse. But the fund endorsed Maness in Louisiana, Bevin in Kentucky and McDaniel in Mississippi, among others. DeMint now runs the Heritage Foundation, whose political arm also is monitoring several other races.
Those groups' recent record is mixed. Democrats are hoping for a repeat of 2010 and 2012 races where the far right groups backed less-viable candidates who lost general elections in Colorado, Nevada, Delaware and Indiana. But the same groups also helped elect Lee, Cruz and Marco Rubio in the presidential swing state of Florida.
At FreedomWorks, PAC treasurer and policy chief Dean Clancy dismissed any notion that his efforts would hurt the party.
"Republicans make a mistake when they try to waffle on these issues or sound like Democrat-lite," he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/health-care-divides-republican-senate-rivals-152131025--election.html
Peter King: If We Listened To Rand Paul, "Hundreds Of New Yorkers Would Be Dead Today
Peter King: If We Listened To Rand Paul, "Hundreds Of New Yorkers Would Be Dead Today"
Peter King: If We Listened To Rand Paul, "Hundreds Of New Yorkers Would Be Dead Today"
Leading Republicans Move to Stamp Out Challenges From Right
Led by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Republicans are attempting to diminish conservative activist
groups as a future force in party politics. Credit Drew Angerer for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — As conservative activist groups stirred up trouble for establishment Republican Senate candidates in 2010 and 2012, party leaders in Washington first tried to ignore the insurgents, then tried to reason with them, and ultimately left it to primary voters to settle the matter.
But after several of those conservatives — in Nevada, Colorado and Delaware in 2010 and in Indiana and Missouri in 2012 — managed to win their primaries but lose in the general election, party leaders felt stung by what they saw as avoidable defeats.
But after several of those conservatives — in Nevada, Colorado and Delaware in 2010 and in Indiana and Missouri in 2012 — managed to win their primaries but lose in the general election, party leaders felt stung by what they saw as avoidable defeats.
This election season, Republicans led by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are taking a much harder line as they sense the majority within reach. Top congressional Republicans and their allies are challenging the advocacy groups head on in an aggressive effort to undermine their credibility. The goal is to deny them any Senate primary victories, cut into their fund-raising and diminish them as a future force in Republican politics.
“I think we are going to crush them everywhere,” Mr. McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said in an interview, referring to the network of activist organizations working against him and two Republican incumbents in Kansas and Mississippi while engaging in a handful of other contests. “I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country.”
Speaker John A. Boehner and other Republicans have claimed that conservative
activist groups are fund-raising entities more than political operations.
Elevating the nasty intramural brawl to a new level, Mr. McConnell on Friday began airing a radio ad in Kentucky that attacked both Matt Bevin, the businessman challenging him in the Republican primary, and the Senate Conservatives Fund, one of the groups trying to oust Mr. McConnell and a political action committee that has been a particular thorn in his side.
Mr. McConnell’s ad, his first singling out the Senate Conservatives Fund, raises a criticism that Speaker John A. Boehner and other Republicans have leveled at the activists — that they are fund-raising and business enterprises more than political operations. The ad refers to unnamed news media reports that assert that the PAC “solicits money under the guise of advocating for conservative principles but then spends it on a $1.4 million luxury townhouse with a wine cellar and hot tub in Washington, D.C.”
Matt Hoskins, the head of the Senate Conservatives Fund, dismissed the criticism as exaggerated, saying the organization simply rents a Capitol Hill townhouse rather than expensive downtown office space. He interpreted the new attack from one of the most powerful Republicans in the country as a sure sign that his group’s campaign against Mr. McConnell was gaining traction.
“Mitch McConnell is clearly in trouble in this primary or he wouldn’t be attacking Matt Bevin and declaring war on conservatives,” said Mr. Hoskins, a California-based operative and former aide to Jim DeMint, who founded the group while serving in the Senate. “Mitch McConnell isn’t upset because S.C.F. rents a townhouse for office space; he’s upset because we’re spending money on radio and TV ads that expose his record of voting for bailouts, more debt, higher taxes and Obamacare funding.”
<SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">The escalating tension between party leaders and Tea Party-aligned activists</span> in groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund, the Madison Project and FreedomWorks arises from the activists’ view that some top elected Republicans are major obstacles to enacting conservative policies and need to be replaced.
The <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">conservative activists say they are dedicated to deposing the lawmakers at the risk of losing seats</span>. Their fervor has only grown after some played a role in the elections of Republican Senate mavericks like Rand Paul of Kentucky, Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas over the opposition of party establishment leaders such as Mr. McConnell.
“When you look at the direction Washington, D.C., as a whole is going, when you look at the state of the Republican Party and its decided lack of will to fight, you have to begin looking at the leadership itself,” said Drew Ryun, political director of the Madison Project. The chairman is his father, Jim Ryun, the former Republican congressman and track star from Kansas. “Mitch McConnell is, to me, the essence of the problem in D.C.”
Drew Ryun, who expects the Madison Project to get involved in 14 races in 2014, acknowledged that there were probably easier targets than the Senate Republican leader and two veteran incumbents. “You have to go big or go home,” said Mr. Ryun, who is based in Texas.
The groups do not all jump into the same races. They also have different strategies, with the Senate Conservatives Fund reporting that it has already spent nearly $400,000 on TV and radio advertising in Kentucky. The Madison Project, which has bought fewer ads, is helping with grass-roots organization. FreedomWorks has opened anti-McConnell field offices in Louisville and Lexington.
Republican strategists who have run up against the groups say one of their real strengths is influencing the political dialogue and climate through social media and talk radio, fueling the perception that their targets are in trouble and generating more discussion and news media coverage of their efforts.
The anti-tax Club for Growth, one of the first organizations to take aim at Republican incumbents in an effort to move the party to the right, is not opposing Mr. McConnell. But it has joined the Senate Conservatives Fund, the Madison Project, FreedomWorks and other groups working on Mississippi’s Senate race. They are backing a state lawmaker, Chris McDaniel, in the Republican primary against Senator Thad Cochran, a six-term incumbent and former Appropriations Committee chairman who has showered federal dollars on his state over the years.
The Senate Conservatives Fund and the Madison Project are also supporting Milton Wolf, a physician, in the Republican Senate primary in Kansas against Senator Pat Roberts, who has been in the Senate since 1997 after first being elected to the House in 1980.
In contrast to 2010 and 2012, it seems improbable that in 2014 either the Mississippi or the Kansas Senate seat could fall into Democratic hands, no matter who the Republican nominee is. But Senate Republicans are mounting strong efforts on behalf of Mr. Cochran and Mr. Roberts to see them re-elected and to send a message to the activist groups.
“I know this: Politics doesn’t like losers,” said Mr. McConnell, who suggested that a high-profile series of defeats would deflate the groups. “If you don’t have anything to point to, it is kind of hard to keep it going.”
Even if they are shut out in attempts to oust incumbents, leaders of these organizations do not show signs of quitting. They say they are in the early stages of a long-term effort to build a movement, no matter what their scorecard looks like after the primaries and the general election. And they have not given up on this year yet.
“It is game on,” said Matt Kibbe, the head of FreedomWorks. “I think we are going to win one of these races.”
“I think we are going to crush them everywhere,” Mr. McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said in an interview, referring to the network of activist organizations working against him and two Republican incumbents in Kansas and Mississippi while engaging in a handful of other contests. “I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country.”
Speaker John A. Boehner and other Republicans have claimed that conservative
activist groups are fund-raising entities more than political operations.
Elevating the nasty intramural brawl to a new level, Mr. McConnell on Friday began airing a radio ad in Kentucky that attacked both Matt Bevin, the businessman challenging him in the Republican primary, and the Senate Conservatives Fund, one of the groups trying to oust Mr. McConnell and a political action committee that has been a particular thorn in his side.
Mr. McConnell’s ad, his first singling out the Senate Conservatives Fund, raises a criticism that Speaker John A. Boehner and other Republicans have leveled at the activists — that they are fund-raising and business enterprises more than political operations. The ad refers to unnamed news media reports that assert that the PAC “solicits money under the guise of advocating for conservative principles but then spends it on a $1.4 million luxury townhouse with a wine cellar and hot tub in Washington, D.C.”
Matt Hoskins, the head of the Senate Conservatives Fund, dismissed the criticism as exaggerated, saying the organization simply rents a Capitol Hill townhouse rather than expensive downtown office space. He interpreted the new attack from one of the most powerful Republicans in the country as a sure sign that his group’s campaign against Mr. McConnell was gaining traction.
“Mitch McConnell is clearly in trouble in this primary or he wouldn’t be attacking Matt Bevin and declaring war on conservatives,” said Mr. Hoskins, a California-based operative and former aide to Jim DeMint, who founded the group while serving in the Senate. “Mitch McConnell isn’t upset because S.C.F. rents a townhouse for office space; he’s upset because we’re spending money on radio and TV ads that expose his record of voting for bailouts, more debt, higher taxes and Obamacare funding.”
<SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">The escalating tension between party leaders and Tea Party-aligned activists</span> in groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund, the Madison Project and FreedomWorks arises from the activists’ view that some top elected Republicans are major obstacles to enacting conservative policies and need to be replaced.
The <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">conservative activists say they are dedicated to deposing the lawmakers at the risk of losing seats</span>. Their fervor has only grown after some played a role in the elections of Republican Senate mavericks like Rand Paul of Kentucky, Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas over the opposition of party establishment leaders such as Mr. McConnell.
“When you look at the direction Washington, D.C., as a whole is going, when you look at the state of the Republican Party and its decided lack of will to fight, you have to begin looking at the leadership itself,” said Drew Ryun, political director of the Madison Project. The chairman is his father, Jim Ryun, the former Republican congressman and track star from Kansas. “Mitch McConnell is, to me, the essence of the problem in D.C.”
Drew Ryun, who expects the Madison Project to get involved in 14 races in 2014, acknowledged that there were probably easier targets than the Senate Republican leader and two veteran incumbents. “You have to go big or go home,” said Mr. Ryun, who is based in Texas.
The groups do not all jump into the same races. They also have different strategies, with the Senate Conservatives Fund reporting that it has already spent nearly $400,000 on TV and radio advertising in Kentucky. The Madison Project, which has bought fewer ads, is helping with grass-roots organization. FreedomWorks has opened anti-McConnell field offices in Louisville and Lexington.
Republican strategists who have run up against the groups say one of their real strengths is influencing the political dialogue and climate through social media and talk radio, fueling the perception that their targets are in trouble and generating more discussion and news media coverage of their efforts.
The anti-tax Club for Growth, one of the first organizations to take aim at Republican incumbents in an effort to move the party to the right, is not opposing Mr. McConnell. But it has joined the Senate Conservatives Fund, the Madison Project, FreedomWorks and other groups working on Mississippi’s Senate race. They are backing a state lawmaker, Chris McDaniel, in the Republican primary against Senator Thad Cochran, a six-term incumbent and former Appropriations Committee chairman who has showered federal dollars on his state over the years.
The Senate Conservatives Fund and the Madison Project are also supporting Milton Wolf, a physician, in the Republican Senate primary in Kansas against Senator Pat Roberts, who has been in the Senate since 1997 after first being elected to the House in 1980.
In contrast to 2010 and 2012, it seems improbable that in 2014 either the Mississippi or the Kansas Senate seat could fall into Democratic hands, no matter who the Republican nominee is. But Senate Republicans are mounting strong efforts on behalf of Mr. Cochran and Mr. Roberts to see them re-elected and to send a message to the activist groups.
“I know this: Politics doesn’t like losers,” said Mr. McConnell, who suggested that a high-profile series of defeats would deflate the groups. “If you don’t have anything to point to, it is kind of hard to keep it going.”
Even if they are shut out in attempts to oust incumbents, leaders of these organizations do not show signs of quitting. They say they are in the early stages of a long-term effort to build a movement, no matter what their scorecard looks like after the primaries and the general election. And they have not given up on this year yet.
“It is game on,” said Matt Kibbe, the head of FreedomWorks. “I think we are going to win one of these races.”
SOURCE
Boehner mocks GOP for inaction on immigration
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/pHSWe81f3yw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Boehner Mocks House Republicans for Stalling Immigration Bill
By LAURA MECKLER
9:27 am ET
Apr 25, 2014
In an appearance in his home district in Ohio, House Speaker John Boehner vented his frustration with his fellow House Republicans’ unwillingness to overhaul immigration laws and said he still wants to tackle the issue this year, local media reported.
He dramatically mocked his colleagues who fear political backlash from dealing with immigration, an issue that divides Republicans but that Mr. Boehner and others think must be dealt with.
“Here’s the attitude. `Ohhhh. Don’t make me do this. Ohhhh. This is too hard,’” Mr. Boehner told the Middletown Rotary Club in a whining voice as he scrunched up his eyes like he was about to cry. A video clip of the remarks is here.
“We get elected to make choices. We get elected to solve problems and it’s remarkable to me how many of my colleagues just don’t want to … They’ll take the path of least resistance,” he said, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. “I’ve had every brick and bat and arrow shot at me over this issue just because I wanted to deal with it. I didn’t say it was going to be easy.”
The Senate passed a sweeping immigration bill last summer, but the issue has stalled in the House. Early this year, Mr. Boehner succeeded in winning a measure of consensus around a set of principles for an overhaul. But Republicans balked at taking it up in an election year, fearful that a divisive debate would hurt the party’s chances in November.
But Mr. Boehner appears to be still pushing. At a recent fundraiser in Las Vegas, he told donors he was “hellbent” on dealing with the issue this year, as The Wall Street Journal reported last week. Allies say there is a window for possible action in June and July.
The latest remarks by Mr. Boehner, who has a history of tangling with conservatives in his conference, are striking because they could offer fodder for those who oppose him. It is also notable that the speaker blamed Republicans for inaction on immigration when the official GOP line is that it’s President Barack Obama‘s fault.
Democrats are united in favor of an overhaul, including additional enforcement of immigration law, more visas for high- and low-skilled workers as well legal status and the opportunity for citizenship for many of the 11.4 million people in the U.S. illegally.
Many Republicans agree, and others in the party think it’s necessary to act in order for the party to become more attractive to the growing bloc of Latino voters. But other Republicans remain fiercely opposed, arguing it is wrong to reward people who broke the law with legal status, and saying more legal visas will only hurt American workers.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/...se-republicans-for-stalling-immigration-bill/
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/pHSWe81f3yw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Boehner Mocks House Republicans for Stalling Immigration Bill
By LAURA MECKLER
9:27 am ET
Apr 25, 2014
In an appearance in his home district in Ohio, House Speaker John Boehner vented his frustration with his fellow House Republicans’ unwillingness to overhaul immigration laws and said he still wants to tackle the issue this year, local media reported.
He dramatically mocked his colleagues who fear political backlash from dealing with immigration, an issue that divides Republicans but that Mr. Boehner and others think must be dealt with.
“Here’s the attitude. `Ohhhh. Don’t make me do this. Ohhhh. This is too hard,’” Mr. Boehner told the Middletown Rotary Club in a whining voice as he scrunched up his eyes like he was about to cry. A video clip of the remarks is here.
“We get elected to make choices. We get elected to solve problems and it’s remarkable to me how many of my colleagues just don’t want to … They’ll take the path of least resistance,” he said, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. “I’ve had every brick and bat and arrow shot at me over this issue just because I wanted to deal with it. I didn’t say it was going to be easy.”
The Senate passed a sweeping immigration bill last summer, but the issue has stalled in the House. Early this year, Mr. Boehner succeeded in winning a measure of consensus around a set of principles for an overhaul. But Republicans balked at taking it up in an election year, fearful that a divisive debate would hurt the party’s chances in November.
But Mr. Boehner appears to be still pushing. At a recent fundraiser in Las Vegas, he told donors he was “hellbent” on dealing with the issue this year, as The Wall Street Journal reported last week. Allies say there is a window for possible action in June and July.
The latest remarks by Mr. Boehner, who has a history of tangling with conservatives in his conference, are striking because they could offer fodder for those who oppose him. It is also notable that the speaker blamed Republicans for inaction on immigration when the official GOP line is that it’s President Barack Obama‘s fault.
Democrats are united in favor of an overhaul, including additional enforcement of immigration law, more visas for high- and low-skilled workers as well legal status and the opportunity for citizenship for many of the 11.4 million people in the U.S. illegally.
Many Republicans agree, and others in the party think it’s necessary to act in order for the party to become more attractive to the growing bloc of Latino voters. But other Republicans remain fiercely opposed, arguing it is wrong to reward people who broke the law with legal status, and saying more legal visas will only hurt American workers.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/...se-republicans-for-stalling-immigration-bill/
Businesses Turn Out Workers’ Votes to Stomp Tea Party
Businesses Turn Out Workers’ Votes to Stomp Tea Party
By John McCormick and Annie Linskey
May 19, 2014 11:30 PM CT
Ben Tarbutton has never worked so hard in a primary election to urge his company’s employees to vote early or educate them on a candidate’s record.
He’s doing both with gusto this year as part of a national effort by the business community to block the nominations of Tea Party-aligned contenders in Republican primaries.
Tarbutton, vice president at a railroad company in Sandersville, Georgia, is encouraging his company’s 30 workers to cast ballots, and informing them that he supports U.S. Representative Jack Kingston, one of seven Republican candidates competing in today’s U.S. Senate primary.
“If you don’t have the right candidate out of the primary, that’s going to hamper your efforts in the general,” he said, in a reference to the November election.
Tarbutton’s get-out-the-vote push in Georgia is being mirrored inside companies in Kentucky, Idaho, Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Oregon, all states with congressional primaries tonight. Today’s contests are widely viewed as the pinnacle of an intraparty power struggle between groups aligned with the limited-government Tea Party and a business coalition led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The aim of the corporate coalition is to avoid the nomination of untested candidates who could hurt Republican chances of taking control of the Senate away from the Democrats in November, as happened in the 2010 and 2012 elections. Republicans need a net gain of six seats to retake the chamber.
It’s also a mission to boost candidates who are better steeped in and more supportive of the business community’s agenda, including ensuring that the nation doesn’t default on its debt.
Construction Companies
From Kentucky construction companies helping employees take on volunteer campaign jobs to company-branded websites in Idaho that allow workers to look at side-by-side comparisons of candidates on issues important to their employers, businesses are introducing a variety of political programs to engage their workers in typically low-turnout primary races.
“Employers can be the most credible source of information for their employees,” said Greg Casey, president and chief executive officer of the Business-Industry Political Action Committee, a Washington-based advocacy group whose members include a majority of Fortune 100 companies. “We grind this down to granular detail and provide the tools and the calendar of the messages to be sent.”
Commonly known as BIPAC, Casey’s group has already held training sessions for employers in states with some of this year’s highest-profile Senate races, including North Carolina, Arkansas, Iowa and Alaska.
Idaho Businesses
The group’s work could pay dividends today for U.S. Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho, an Appropriations subcommittee chairman who faces a primary challenge from Bryan Smith, a lawyer backed by the Tea Party movement.
The threat to Simpson, an ally of House Speaker John Boehner, awoke local business groups and Idaho companies with little or no history of getting involved in primaries. The U.S. Chamber, the nation’s largest business trade group, also listed his protection as one of its top 2014 election goals.
In mid-January, BIPAC held a meeting in Idaho for employers interested in engaging in Simpson’s primary race. An informal survey of the room determined that employers in attendance had access to 94,000 potential voters, or probably about 62,000 Republicans, said Jason Langsner, a BIPAC spokesman.
Issues Matter
BIPAC then helped develop customized, industry-specific issue alerts and candidate comparisons and create voter registration reminders. It also worked with companies to create co-branded websites for employees with the Idaho Association of Commerce & Industry.
“You never tell them how to vote, but you tell them where the candidates are on the issues that matter to their employer,” Casey said.
The Nashville-based National Federation of Independent Business is blasting e-mails out to members in states with primaries today. The group, the largest advocate for small businesses, has 350,000 members.
“A lot of these elections are won or lost in the primary,” said Lisa Goeas, the NFIB’s vice president of political and grassroots activity. “A lot of our members, being small business owners, are busy and don’t follow politics. It’s our goal to be sure they know who the candidates are and where they stand.”
NFIB Endorsements
The NFIB endorsed in some primaries, including the Kentucky Senate race and Idaho House contest, and hosted candidate forums in states where multiple pro-business candidate are running. Video from the Georgia Senate primary forum were to be e-mailed to NFIB’s 7,300 members in the state ahead of today’s voting.
The Washington-based National Association of Manufacturers, the nation’s largest manufacturing trade group, sent staff members to states with key races to train employers on mobilizing workers.
“The best way to provide support is to provide additional ground support,” said Ned Monroe, the senior vice president for external relations at the manufacturers association. “You can’t just help the individual candidate financially. We have to have an education component.”
The association’s staff members meet with member companies to share information about the candidates’ voting records and public statements.
McConnell Race
In Kentucky, where the group has about 2,500 member-company facilities, three representatives huddled with as many as 10 businesses a day over the course of a week to highlight U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell’s 94 percent voting record with NAM.
McConnell, the senate’s Republican leader, is expected to win his primary today before facing a stronger challenge in November from Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes.
The communications are heavily regulated, Monroe said, adding that the resources his trade group provides include “legally approved” information about candidates.
Ron Wolf, director of external relations at the Kentucky chapter of the Associated General Contractors of America, said he’s been fielding several calls a day from members who want to help with McConnell’s re-election effort.
“There’s been more focus on this this year,” Wolf said.
Wolf’s group, which represents roughly 700 Kentucky contractors, doesn’t have a federal political action committee that makes donations to candidates. Even so, individual members have hosted fundraisers and volunteered to do get-out-the-vote drives with the campaign, Wolf said.
“McConnell has been good for our industry, and our folks like to say thank you,” he said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-...out-out-workers-votes-to-stomp-tea-party.html
Businesses Turn Out Workers’ Votes to Stomp Tea Party
By John McCormick and Annie Linskey
May 19, 2014 11:30 PM CT
Ben Tarbutton has never worked so hard in a primary election to urge his company’s employees to vote early or educate them on a candidate’s record.
He’s doing both with gusto this year as part of a national effort by the business community to block the nominations of Tea Party-aligned contenders in Republican primaries.
Tarbutton, vice president at a railroad company in Sandersville, Georgia, is encouraging his company’s 30 workers to cast ballots, and informing them that he supports U.S. Representative Jack Kingston, one of seven Republican candidates competing in today’s U.S. Senate primary.
“If you don’t have the right candidate out of the primary, that’s going to hamper your efforts in the general,” he said, in a reference to the November election.
Tarbutton’s get-out-the-vote push in Georgia is being mirrored inside companies in Kentucky, Idaho, Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Oregon, all states with congressional primaries tonight. Today’s contests are widely viewed as the pinnacle of an intraparty power struggle between groups aligned with the limited-government Tea Party and a business coalition led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The aim of the corporate coalition is to avoid the nomination of untested candidates who could hurt Republican chances of taking control of the Senate away from the Democrats in November, as happened in the 2010 and 2012 elections. Republicans need a net gain of six seats to retake the chamber.
It’s also a mission to boost candidates who are better steeped in and more supportive of the business community’s agenda, including ensuring that the nation doesn’t default on its debt.
Construction Companies
From Kentucky construction companies helping employees take on volunteer campaign jobs to company-branded websites in Idaho that allow workers to look at side-by-side comparisons of candidates on issues important to their employers, businesses are introducing a variety of political programs to engage their workers in typically low-turnout primary races.
“Employers can be the most credible source of information for their employees,” said Greg Casey, president and chief executive officer of the Business-Industry Political Action Committee, a Washington-based advocacy group whose members include a majority of Fortune 100 companies. “We grind this down to granular detail and provide the tools and the calendar of the messages to be sent.”
Commonly known as BIPAC, Casey’s group has already held training sessions for employers in states with some of this year’s highest-profile Senate races, including North Carolina, Arkansas, Iowa and Alaska.
Idaho Businesses
The group’s work could pay dividends today for U.S. Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho, an Appropriations subcommittee chairman who faces a primary challenge from Bryan Smith, a lawyer backed by the Tea Party movement.
The threat to Simpson, an ally of House Speaker John Boehner, awoke local business groups and Idaho companies with little or no history of getting involved in primaries. The U.S. Chamber, the nation’s largest business trade group, also listed his protection as one of its top 2014 election goals.
In mid-January, BIPAC held a meeting in Idaho for employers interested in engaging in Simpson’s primary race. An informal survey of the room determined that employers in attendance had access to 94,000 potential voters, or probably about 62,000 Republicans, said Jason Langsner, a BIPAC spokesman.
Issues Matter
BIPAC then helped develop customized, industry-specific issue alerts and candidate comparisons and create voter registration reminders. It also worked with companies to create co-branded websites for employees with the Idaho Association of Commerce & Industry.
“You never tell them how to vote, but you tell them where the candidates are on the issues that matter to their employer,” Casey said.
The Nashville-based National Federation of Independent Business is blasting e-mails out to members in states with primaries today. The group, the largest advocate for small businesses, has 350,000 members.
“A lot of these elections are won or lost in the primary,” said Lisa Goeas, the NFIB’s vice president of political and grassroots activity. “A lot of our members, being small business owners, are busy and don’t follow politics. It’s our goal to be sure they know who the candidates are and where they stand.”
NFIB Endorsements
The NFIB endorsed in some primaries, including the Kentucky Senate race and Idaho House contest, and hosted candidate forums in states where multiple pro-business candidate are running. Video from the Georgia Senate primary forum were to be e-mailed to NFIB’s 7,300 members in the state ahead of today’s voting.
The Washington-based National Association of Manufacturers, the nation’s largest manufacturing trade group, sent staff members to states with key races to train employers on mobilizing workers.
“The best way to provide support is to provide additional ground support,” said Ned Monroe, the senior vice president for external relations at the manufacturers association. “You can’t just help the individual candidate financially. We have to have an education component.”
The association’s staff members meet with member companies to share information about the candidates’ voting records and public statements.
McConnell Race
In Kentucky, where the group has about 2,500 member-company facilities, three representatives huddled with as many as 10 businesses a day over the course of a week to highlight U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell’s 94 percent voting record with NAM.
McConnell, the senate’s Republican leader, is expected to win his primary today before facing a stronger challenge in November from Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes.
The communications are heavily regulated, Monroe said, adding that the resources his trade group provides include “legally approved” information about candidates.
Ron Wolf, director of external relations at the Kentucky chapter of the Associated General Contractors of America, said he’s been fielding several calls a day from members who want to help with McConnell’s re-election effort.
“There’s been more focus on this this year,” Wolf said.
Wolf’s group, which represents roughly 700 Kentucky contractors, doesn’t have a federal political action committee that makes donations to candidates. Even so, individual members have hosted fundraisers and volunteered to do get-out-the-vote drives with the campaign, Wolf said.
“McConnell has been good for our industry, and our folks like to say thank you,” he said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-...out-out-workers-votes-to-stomp-tea-party.html
Republican Party missing: Feared dead - - Maybe Not
"Clueless" Actress Stacey Dash Joins Fox News
Stacey Dash has a new gig!
The "Clueless" alum has signed a deal to with Fox News to offer cultural analysis
and commentary across daytime and primetime.
"Stacey is an engaging conversationalist whose distinctive viewpoints among her Holly-
wood peers have spawned national debates – we’re pleased to have her join Fox News,"
said Bill Shine, Executive Vice President of Programming of FOX News.
Dash is no stranger to politics!
The 47-year-old actress endorsed then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney
on Twitter in 2012, a move that sparked some controversy and backlash. Since the
election, she has continued to take to the media to offer her opinion on pop culture,
national news and politics.
Do you think Stacey is a good fit for Fox News? Tell toofab in the comment section below,
and click "Launch Gallery" above to see more of your favorite ladies of the 80's and 90's,
then and now!
http://www.toofab.com/2014/05/28/clueless-actress-stacey-dash-joins-fox-news/
SAYS: The GOP Supports Gay Marriage ... Who Said We Didn't?
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results<div align="right"><!-- MSTableType="layout" --><img src="http://i.min.us/iW6E1Tob.jpg" align="right"></div>
- Albert Einstein -
RepubliKlan policies going into 2014 & 2016 are unchanged since 2000. If anything their policies have become even more intransigently, macro-economically illiterate. Paul Ryan the Republiklans go-to-guy for economic policy continues to issue a economic "roadmap", every year, based on the fantasy childish unreal fiction of novelist Ayn Rand. The substance of Ryan's yearly budget document is laughable accounting fiction which calls for drastic cuts in government safety net programs, coupled with huge tax cuts for the .05% including capital gains cuts, the privatization of Medicare, the turnover of Social Security to Wall street, and a HUGE increase in military spending. This fantasy 'budget'?? - is quickly debunked by any high school student who has taken advanced placement courses in accounting or math. In Ryan's bizarre world $500 Billion plus $400 Billion equals $300 Billion. It's not coincidental that the tea bagger that beat Eric Cantor suffers from the same economic mental disease as Ryan, David Brat vanquisher of Eric Cantor describes himself as Fundamentalist Christian Ayn Rand Economist ; - another whack job nut case. But these are the politicos who are ascendant in the RepubliKlan carcass.
The RepubliKlan Party <img src="http://www.jmgads.com/kkk2.jpg" width="100"> of 2014 is:
• Unapologetically Racist
• Homophobic
• Anti-Sex Education
• Anti-Birth Control
• Anti- Immigrant
• Anti- Minimum Wage
• Anti- Student Loans (big cuts in Pell grants; blocked interest rate cut on loans)
• Anti-Abortion Rights (republiklans were silent when Dr. George Tiller was murdered)
• Anti-Consumer Protection (pro-tort reform)
• Anti- Climate Change Science Reality
• Anti- Environmental Clean-Up (Piyush Jindal of LA blocked law mandating oil corp. clean up of gulf coast)
• Anti- Infrastructure $$$$ Replacement (U.S. bridges & roads are old & crumbling)
• Anti-Regulating The Banksters (want to repeal Dodd-Frank)
• Anti-Social Security Insurance (want to end it & send the existing money to Wall street)
• Anti-Medicare (want to send Grandma into the clutches of the "Health Care Mafia" with a coupon)
• Anti-Unemployment Insurance
• Anti- Healthy School Lunch for kids
• Anti-Education Standards (republiklans want to close the Dept. of Education)
• Anti-W.I.C. (republiklan congress recently cut money for Women Infants & Children program)
• Anti- Environmental Conservation Laws (want to close the EPA)
• Anti-Food Saftey Inspections (republiklan congress recently cut US food saftey budget)
• Anti-Progressive Taxation (raising the 15% tax Billionaires pay)
• Anti-Banning the Death Penalty (273 innocent people released from Death Row since 1989)
• Anti- Restoring Habeas corpus
• Anti-Separation Of Church & State (republiklans want to mandate Christian prayer in schools)
• Anti- Government Funding of Scientific Research (stem cell research)
• Anti-Feminism (woman should be submissive to men; it's in the bible)
• Anti-Affirmative Action
• Anti-Department of Labor (republiklans believe overtime pay should be abolished)
• Anti-Small Business Administration (want to abolish it)
• Anti-Substantially Increasing Foreign Aid (republiklan congress just cut food aid to Africa)
• Anti-Government Student College Tuition Grants (republiklans want to dramatically cut PELL grants)
• Anti-ANY Gun Control
• Anti- Non-Christian Religion Tolerance
• Anti- Universal Health Care
• Anti- Unemployment Insurance
• Anti- Ban Against Torture
• Anti- ANY Cut In Military Spending
• Anti- Pay Increase For US Soldiers
• Anti- Increase in Veterans Benefits (republiklans want to convert military pensions into 401K's)
• Anti- Equalizing Penalty for Crack/ Powder Cocaine Conviction
2012 Republiklan Vice-Presidential candidate PAUL RYAN
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Charles Murray's most famous — and notorious — and scientifically debunked book, which PAUL RYAN used as his "reference" source, The Bell Curve (1994), promoted racial eugenics theories claiming that whites and Asians are genetically superior in intelligence to Blacks and Latinos. Like his previous book, The Bell Curve was also made possible by the generous support of ultra-reichwing foundations, including the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation which dished out $100,000 per year as Murray worked on his book at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Murray's home since the early 1990s.</td>
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