Rep. Diane Black: The Possibilities of a “Governing Party”

This week on “Meet the Press,” host David Gregory asked guests their thoughts on a Republican-controlled Senate. Rep. Diane Black (R-TN) responded in “The Hill” by  pointing out the work House Republicans have accomplished, often in bipartisan fashion, compared to the Democratic-controlled Senate.

“On a recent edition of Meet the Press, host David Gregory asked his guest whether Republicans have given voters a reason to vote for them in the fall. He asked whether Republicans have demonstrated that they should control both Chambers of Congress and be “a governing party.”

“When it comes to addressing the most pressing issues facing the American people, the Republican-led House of Representatives has led the charge.

“For instance, while President Obama has recently boasted of a ‘booming’ economy under his watch, Americans continue to feel great anxiety. In fact, 6 in 10 Americans say they are dissatisfied with the state of the economy and 7 in 10 believe our country is headed in the wrong direction.

“Unlike President Obama, House Republicans have not lost touch with these very real economic concerns. That is why we have acted to pass dozens of sensible and bipartisan measures to help our economy grow and help Americans get back to work. In fact, there are currently 43 House passed jobs bills – most of which enjoy bipartisan support — sitting in the Democrat-led Senate just waiting for Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to schedule a vote.

“These include measures that would create jobs, lower energy prices for hard working Americans, and give relief to the predominantly female and lower income workers hurt by Obamacare, among other measures.

“Our national debt is now over $17.6 trillion – that’s over $55,000 for each American man, woman and child. Yet Obama and Democrats in Washington refuse to get serious about our nation’s fiscal outlook. This year, Obama once again submitted a budget plan over a month late that failed to ever balance even though it called for massive tax increases on the American people. Senate Democrats fared even worse by failing to even introduce a budget plan, let alone pass one with a simple majority vote as required by law.

“On the contrary, I was proud to help once again advance a responsible budget plan with Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and my colleagues on the House Budget Committee. The plan we introduced would bring our books to balance without needlessly harming our economy with painful tax increases like the ones Obama called for. House Republicans responsibly passed this budget plan this past April.

“Most recently, and to answer David Gregory’s question on Meet the Press, only one party in Washington has acted to address the influx of tens of thousands of unaccompanied Central American children who have illegally crossed our southern border. While the Democrat-led Senate recessed for the summer without passing legislation to address this humanitarian crisis, the Republican controlled House of Representatives stayed in Washington and worked until a supplemental border appropriations bill was passed.

“This contrast has been consistent throughout the year, as House Republicans have worked to pass seven different bipartisan appropriations bills to fund government operations for the next year while Senate Democrats have passed none. This behavior by Senate Democrats is not how a governing majority should behave and virtually guarantees unnecessary brinksmanship when lawmakers return to work in September with just weeks before the current appropriations lapse.

“The only party in Washington that is working to govern is the Republican Party, but unfortunately we only control one chamber of one branch of government.”

Read Rep. Black’s column in its entirety at The Hill.

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For Republican Party to survive, it will have to ostracize 'tea party' wing

(PNI) A major consideration that has become increasingly obvious in this total fiasco being waged in Washington, D.C., over the debt ceiling and government closure is that of party principle, platform and agenda.

What has been brought to the political forefront is the disharmony and political differences being displayed by a group of men and women grabbing the shirttails of the GOP and hijacking the entire Republican Party.

There are superficial similarities shared by the Republican Party base and "tea party" members. However, there are deep differences in core values and, most importantly, a national agenda regarding the future of our country.

If the GOP is to survive as a major political party in this country, it is going to have to rise up to defend its principles, platform and national agenda and dismiss these members from its caucus to stand alone in their political beliefs as the tea party.

--Robert Lake, Buckeye

'Tea party' unfairly demonized

The demonization of the "tea party" by the president, the Democrats and the media has achieved its purpose. A great many Americans are buying the caricature that the tea party is a negative force.

I would suggest viewing tapes of some of the larger demonstrations that would show respectful, largely older, multiracial Americans who want only less government, thriving capitalism and the return of freedoms we have had for much of our existence.

Amazing how the virtual world has trumped reality!

--Gary Yohe, Phoenix

Ariz. GOP's delegates a problem

All of you on The Republic editorial staff deserve our appreciation for your handling of the manufactured crisis in Washington. But you continue to ignore one local fact: The entire Republican wing of Arizona's congressional delegation has been part of this insanity.

When news reports described the 40 to 50 Republican extremists who have created the crisis, they are talking about our Republican members of Congress.

More complete local reporting and comment need to include that fact, don't you think?

--Bob Grossfeld, Mesa

Calling them leaders flat wrong

Regarding "Leaders closing in on a deal"(Republic, Tuesday):

Really?

You're calling those idiots in Washington, D.C., "leaders"?

--Corinne Crebassa, Phoenix

Medicare act, health law differ

Regarding "'Obamacare' hatred hypocritical" (Opinions, Tuesday):

The letter writer compares the Medicare Prescription Drug Act with Obamacare. While I agree "any" unfunded bill shouldn't pass Congress, I'd like to point out some major differences.

First, the prescription Medicare bill was passed with bipartisan support.

Second, it was not 2,000 pages that nobody read.

Third, you are not forced to use it.

Fourth, you're not penalized for not using it.

Fifth, even though it is expensive, it does not appear to be anywhere near the long-term cost of Obamacare.

--Mike Fisher, Peoria

Lake Powell is a beautiful place

Regarding The Republic's series this week on Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam:

I'm always amazed with the logic of people who want to drain Lake Powell. Don't they consider the millions of people who have and will enjoy one of the most beautiful places on Earth?

Up until Glen Canyon Dam was built, only a handful of people had seen Rainbow Bridge and other marvelous scenery of Glen Canyon.

My family and I have been enjoying Lake Powell for the past 40 years. We are grateful to the people who made Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell possible.

--Bob Wright, Mesa

Copyright 2013 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Gun Control: A Republican Lashes Out at His Party

My heart is broken. The Senate killed even the most modest gun legislation, something that is desired by the majority of the American people (front page, April 18).

Additionally, the National Rifle Association gave up all semblance of moral authority.

Only the Republican senators Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, John McCain of Arizona, Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois and Susan Collins of Maine acquitted themselves well by voting yes to expand background checks.

There is no doubt in my mind that Republicans, under political pressure from Wayne LaPierre of the N.R.A., will be marginalized to the point of irrelevancy, as the American people move inexorably to force the adoption of reasonable gun legislation.

I just wish that our Republican leadership had done the right thing. We just handed President Obama the perfect way to defeat many Republicans in the next election.

ALFRED HOFFMAN Jr.
North Palm Beach, Fla., April 19, 2013

The writer is a Republican fund-raiser and a former Republican National Committee finance chairman.

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Midterm Elections Unlikely to Alter Party Balance

Well, get used to the combination of a Republican House with a Democratic Senate and White House. It’s likely to remain that way for the next four years, not just two.

And oddly enough, that might just help Washington lower the partisan temperature and strike a few compromises for a change.

The campaign for midterm elections in 2014 has begun. Late Wednesday, President Obama travels to California to raise cash for the Democratic National Committee and his party’s House campaign arm.

But chances that Democrats can gain the 17 seats needed to recapture control of the House appear remote. Republicans have better prospects of picking up the six seats they need to regain the Senate – but not drastically better.

After midterm “wave elections” in 2006 and 2010, the calmer outlook this time reduces the stakes of electoral competition next year. That, in turn, may expand opportunities for bipartisan action on such issues as immigration, modest gun control measures and deficit reduction.

“We’re going to maintain our majority,” Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, said in an interview. But with Mr. Obama not going anywhere either, he added, “I’m committed to seeing ways we can work with this White House, knowing full well we have big differences.”

“I think what you’re seeing emerge now is an appetite for achievement,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip, who is a solid favorite to win re-election next year. “We want to do some things – or at least try – on a bipartisan basis.”

The ideological and political gap between the parties remains wide in any event. But the lure of seizing control of the House or Senate, and winning the presidency, has widened that gap in recent years by injecting all-or-nothing electoral drama into virtually every high-profile dispute.

In 2006, Democrats used unhappiness over the Iraq war, the Bush administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and other Republican setbacks to recapture House and Senate majorities. When the financial crisis hit two years later, they captured the presidency.

In 2010, House Republicans used continued economic weakness and a backlash against Obama administration policies to create their own comeback wave. Last year Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, set his sights on winning control of the Senate and ensuring Mr. Obama’s defeat.

As it turned out, voters last November preserved the existing balance of power. Odds favor their doing the same next time.

As this week’s fund-raising jaunt suggests, Mr. Obama is lending his energies to Congressional Democrats now that he no longer has to campaign for himself. But history and circumstance argue strongly against Democrats retaking the House.

Since voters tend to blame the White House incumbent for their discontents, the president’s party has lost House seats in all but three midterm elections in the past century. The number of times the president’s party has gained 17 seats in a midterm election: zero.

Democratic campaign operatives say they will defy history and gain at least a few seats. Among other factors, they point to strong fund-raising and the Republican Party’s national image problems.

But district lines drawn after the 2010 census circumscribe their opportunities. Charlie Cook, a political handicapper, estimates that fewer than 30 Republican-held seats are even at risk, and Democrats themselves have slightly more in jeopardy.

The midterm electorate tends to be heavier than in presidential years with older voters and whites – both important Republican constituencies. In Senate races, Republicans once again boast an auspicious map of possibilities.

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'Tea party' cheering rejection of 'Plan B'

BOSTON — BOSTON In the city where a protest over tax policy sparked a revolution, modern day "tea party" activists are cheering the recent Republican revolt in Washington that embarrassed House Speaker John Boehner and pushed the country closer to a "fiscal cliff" that forces tax increases and massive spending cuts on virtually every American.

"I want conservatives to stay strong," says Christine Morabito, president of the Greater Boston Tea Party. "Sometimes things have to get a lot worse before they get better."

Anti-tax conservatives from every corner of the nation echo her sentiment. Activists said they would rather fall off the cliff than agree to a compromise that includes tax increases for any Americans, no matter how high their income.

They dismiss economists' warnings that the automatic tax increases and deep spending cuts set to take effect Jan. 1 could trigger a fresh recession, and they overlook the fact that most people would see their taxes increase if President Barack Obama and Boehner, R-Ohio, fail to reach a year-end agreement.

Republican Party split

The strong opposition among tea party activists and Republican leaders from New Hampshire to Wyoming and South Carolina highlights divisions within the GOP as well as the challenge that Obama and Boehner face in trying to get a deal done.

On Capitol Hill, some Republicans worry about the practical and political implications should the GOP block a compromise designed to avoid tax increases for most Americans and cut the nation's deficit.

"It weakens the entire Republican Party, the Republican majority," Rep. Steven LaTourette, R-Ohio, said Thursday just after rank-and-file Republicans rejected Boehner's "Plan B" -- a measure that would have prevented tax increases on all Americans but million-dollar earners.

"I mean it's the continuing dumbing down of the Republican Party and we are going to be seen more and more as a bunch of extremists that can't even get a majority of our own people to support policies that we're putting forward," LaTourette said. "If you're not a governing majority, you're not going to be a majority very long."

Day of reckoning

It's a concern that does not seem to resonate with conservatives such as tea party activist Frank Smith of Cheyenne, Wyo. He cheered Boehner's failure as a victory for anti-tax conservatives and a setback for Obama, just six weeks after the president won re-election on a promise to cut the deficit in part by raising taxes on incomes exceeding $250,000.

Smith said his "hat's off" to those Republicans in Congress who rejected their own leader's plan.

"Let's go over the cliff and see what's on the other side," the blacksmith said. "On the other side" are tax increases for most Americans, not just the top earners, though that point seemed lost on Smith, who added: "We have a day of reckoning coming, whether it's next week or next year. Sooner or later the chickens are coming home to roost. Let's let them roost next week."

It's not just tea party activists who want Republicans in Washington to stand firm.

In conservative states such as South Carolina and Louisiana, party leaders are encouraging members of their congressional delegations to oppose any deal that includes tax increases. Elected officials from those states have little political incentive to cooperate with the Democratic president, given that most of their constituents voted for Obama's Republican opponent, Mitt Romney.

"If it takes us going off a cliff to convince people we're in a mess, then so be it," South Carolina GOP Chairman Chad Connelly said. "We have a president who is a whiner. He has done nothing but blame President Bush. It's time to make President Obama own this economy."

In Louisiana, state GOP Chairman Roger Villere said that "people are frustrated with Speaker Boehner. They hear people run as conservatives, run against tax hikes. They want them to keep their word."

Jack Kimball, a former New Hampshire GOP chairman, said he was "elated" that conservatives thwarted Boehner. He called the looming deadline a political creation.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Mitt Romney Loses: What it Means for the Republican Party - Forbes

Mitt Romney. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

If Nate Silver can put his reputation on calling the race 90% for Obama, why can’t I? In any case, on the small chance Romney has won tomorrow and this is my Dewey Defeats Truman moment, let’s just pretend this headline was a joke and I what I really meant was what Romney’s loss would mean for the Republican party, were it to occur, which it will.

My point here really is to point to an excellent piece of disillusionment from James Poulos. Here he is on the Republican party of today:

Most importantly, I believe Mitt Romney’s willingness to say anything this campaign season is far more illustrative of a problem with today’s Republican Party than it is of a problem with Mitt Romney. Consider that Romney has simply done whatever it takes to get his party’s nomination and maintain its voters’ full support, and that the path he must tread to do so is paradoxically very narrow. His scattershot remarks, his willingness to commit alternately to a policy, to its opposite, and to nothing at all — rather than terrifying indications of a man with no rudder, I see them as frightening proof that Romney would be simply rejected by his party if he delivered a Huntsman-style campaign where what you see is what you get.

I think the admitted etch-a-sketch campaign that Romney has had to run has to do both with what he had to do to win his party’s nomination and support, and the relationship that a campaign that could achieve that has to the median voter in this country. America has a conservative streak, but not a severely conservative streak.

In Pictures: Election Day 2012, Voting Across America

One important factor I think we will observe over the next four years is that the economy is going to gain a lot of jobs no matter who wins. With an Obama win, what many republicans will learn from this is that most of the problem with our jobs market has not been Obama holding it back. This will provide the GOP with an important lesson that Democrats, with their head full of idealism and hope and change, have learned over the past four years: the limited ability of the President to control the economy.

Eight years of the Bush administration gave Democrats a long time to fantasize about what a liberal president could do to this country. A similar, if opposite, fantasy about what a liberal president can do has developed in the minds of republicans in the last four years. It’s time for them to be disillusioned.

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WHAT NOW FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY? - Sky Valley Chronicle

(NATIONAL) -- Four years ago when Senator John McCain, a war hero and veteran Beltway player was running for President against the first black contender from the Democratic Party, GOP leaders thought they had the most electable candidate in the land backed by mounds of money and jet fuel and the one candidate they thought had the best ideas and ideology for the America of 2008.

Fast-forward four years. In Mitt Romney, the GOP also felt it had the most electable candidate in the land backed by even bigger mounds of money than backed McCain and the one candidate they thought had the best ideas and ideology for the America of 2012.

Both McCain and Romney were defeated by a man they accused of being a socialist, an apologist for America, a man who may not even have been born in the country, a Muslim, a man who they claim wants bigger government and more people depending on government, a leader who wants more taxes on the rich, bigger government spending, a man who is driving the country to hell in a hand basket and on top of all that is a leader that is soft on terrorism even though Osama Bin Laden was hunted down and killed on his watch.

So what does all of that mean for the Republican Party?

Does it mean, since Barack Obama has now been elected twice, that Americans are telling the Republican Party they just love having as the leader of the free world a Muslim socialist who was not even born in America and who has presided over four years of a rough economy and high unemployment because he is inept, an apologist for America, a man who wants bigger government and more people dependent upon government, a leader who’ll tax the hell out of us and on top of all that a leader that is soft on terrorism?

Is that what they are saying by electing Barack Obama twice?

Or is the message really that the Republican Party, at least as a national party, has become woefully out of touch with mainstream Americans?

OF MUSLIMS, FRIGHT NIGHT LINES AND BOOGEYMEN

Meaning Americans who are no longer buying the tired old fright-night lines about socialists and Muslims and big government lovers any more than they buy lines about the boogeyman coming into their bedrooms at night when the lights are out.

What would happen today if the GOP brought back to use with a Senate or House candidate the old line about “death panels” in health care reform? And exactly where are the death panels today since the Affordable Care Act passed?

Has anyone lost a Grandpa Lou or Grandma Emma to a death panel recently? Does anyone know where the office of the government death panel is located?

Is the GOP of 2012 simply talking to itself, engaging in latherous foamy layers of feel good self-stroking psycho babble targeted to the hard right conservative choir and disconnecting more and more with what the vast majority of Americans are thinking?

Has the party gone overboard to appease the Tea Party crowd and well off older white males?

“Mitt Romney’s loss to a Democratic president wounded by a weak economy is certain to spur an internecine struggle over the future of the Republican Party, but the strength of the party’s conservatives in Congress and the rightward tilt of the next generation of party leaders could limit any course correction,” says a new Op-Ed piece in the New York Times which notes that having now lost the popular presidential vote for the fifth time in six elections, “Republicans across the political spectrum anticipate a prolonged and probably divisive period of self-examination.”

OF HIGH PRIESTS AND ANTI GOVERNMENT WARRIORS

The piece predicts the coming internal GOP debate will be centered on whether the party should keep pursuing the “antigovernment focus” that grew out of resistance to the health care law and won them the House in 2010, or whether it should focus on a strategy that recognizes the demographic tide is running strong against the party.

The piece here quotes Mike Murphy, a longtime Republican Party consultant, as suggesting the internal duke fest would pit “mathematicians” like him, who argue that the party cannot keep surrendering the votes of Hispanics, blacks, younger voters and college-educated women, against the party purists, or “priests,” as he puts it, who believe that basic conservative principles can ultimately triumph without much deviation.

So far, it appears the high priests are on the losing end of that equation because the GOP continues to depend heavily on “older working-class white voters in rural and suburban America — a shrinking percentage of the overall electorate — while Democrats rack up huge majorities among urban voters including blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.”

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GOP Grabs 30 Governor Seats, Highest for Either Party in Over a Decade - ABC News

North Carolina elected its first Republican governor in more than two decades, securing 30 gubernatorial seats for the GOP.

Republican Pat McCrory, a former Charlotte mayor who had been leading in the polls in the final days leading up to the election, defeated Democratic candidate Walter Dalton, the state's lieutenant governor, with 55 percent to 43 percent of the vote, according to ABC News projections.

It was a major milestone for the Republican party. Not only was it the first time North Carolina had elected a Republican governor since 1988, it also gave the GOP 30 statehouse seats, the highest number for either party in 12 years. The Democrats now have 19 governor seats. One state, Rhode Island, has an independent governor.

Jennifer Duffy, a political analyst for Cook Political Report, a non-partisan election analyst group, said the significance of Republicans winning the majority of statehouse seats is that it gives them "bragging rights," especially after President Obama clinched his re-election.

"If Romney loses [today], one of their talking points will be governors," Duffy said. "If you have two-thirds of the nation's governors on the same policy and that share similarities, then you have something that has a combined larger effect... [Republicans] would argue they have all these governors implementing the same kinds of policy, that's only good for Republicans."

North Carolina's governor's race was a big target for the Republican party. Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue, who narrowly beat McCrory in 2008, served one term but was not seeking re-election.

The Republican Governors Association spent nearly $6 million in advertising buys to support McCrory and link Dalton to Perdue after a grand jury indicted one of Perdue's top aides for allegedly scheming to pay a staff member off the books in violation of state election laws.

Duffy said state Democrats made a mistake putting up Dalton against McCrory.

"Beverly Perdue was so unpopular she couldn't run for a second term," Duffy said. "It's easy to tag [Dalton] with everything she did, so Democrats kind of gave up on that one two or three weeks ago."

ABC News projected that the GOP also celebrated a gubernatorial win in Indiana when Republican Mike Pence defeated Democrat John Gregg. The Indiana governor's race was expected to be a lock for Pence, a six-term congressman, in a state that is traditionally deep red. But Gregg, a former Indiana House speaker, held him off for a few hours after the polls closed. Gregg had gained some last minute traction after painting Pence as an extremist, similar to Indiana's Tea Party-backed Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who created a controversy last month by saying pregnancy resulting from rape is something "God intended to happen."

Current Republican Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is term-limited and not eligible for re-election.

The Democrats scored a big gubernatorial win tonight in New Hampshire, one of three statehouse races that were considered toss-ups in the final days leading up to the election.

Democratic candidate Maggie Hassan, a former state Senate majority leader who had kept a slight lead in a tight race over the past few days, beat Republican challenger Ovide Lamontagne, despite the Republican Governors Association dumping a reportedly $6 million advertising buy into Lamontagne's campaign over the weekend.

Current New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat who has been in office for eight years, is retiring after his term.

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Chuck Todd: Republican Party 'Has Some Serious Soul-Searching To Do' (VIDEO) - Huffington Post

Chuck Todd advised the Republican party to take a good look at itself on Tuesday night.

The NBC News correspondent was reporting the election results on MSNBC. Some pundits have said that Hurricane Sandy will be the decisive factor in an Obama victory. Todd, however, dismissed that idea, arguing that it was the growth of the Latino population in swing states that would prevent a GOP win.

"The story of this election ... is demographics," Todd said. "The Republican Party has not kept up with the changing face of America. That explains what's going on in Florida. That explains what's going on in Colorado. That explains, frankly, what's going on in Virginia and North Carolina. ... The Obama campaign was right. They built a campaign for 21st century America. The Republican Party has some serious soul-searching to do when you look at these numbers ... they are getting clobbered among non-white voters."

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YOUR VIEW: The Republican Party has failed Alabama - The Birmingham News - al.com (blog)

By holding a victory party at a gun range, The Alabama Republican Party is finally giving Scott Beason an opportunity to empty the barrel; the Republican Party has failed Alabama.

By passing voter ID laws to disenfranchise poor and elderly voters, the Republican controlled State Legislature has failed to protect the rights and privileges of all Alabamians

In allowing a strip mine to open in Shepard Bend on the Warrior River, just above an intake for the Birmingham Water Works, Governor Bentley and The Alabama Republican Party has failed Alabama

By passing an anti immigration bill that was destined to fail in the courts and cost Alabama taxpayers millions of dollars in lawyer fees and government waste, the Republican controlled State Legislature has failed the citizens of Alabama in its promise to reduce the size of government.

With the entire Alabama Republican delegation to the US Congress voting against the Lilly Ledbetter law, the Republican Party of Alabama failed the women in the State of Alabama.

When U.S. Representative Spencer Bachus decided to short sell stocks as the economy faltered, he bet against America and put his own personal worth ahead of his oath to the citizens of Alabama. Spencer Bachus and the Republican Party have failed the State of Alabama.

By making political appointments to the Alabama Public Television Commission that have their own private agenda, Governor Bentley and the Alabama Republican Party has failed Alabama.

With Richard Shelby pushing for 4.7 billion in funding for the northern beltline, instead of trying to fix existing infrastructure, the Alabama Republican Party has failed Alabama.

By forcing the Alabama public to help balance the State budget, the Republican Party of Alabama has failed the State.

With several members of the State Republican Party calling conserving Alabama wildlife a luxury, the Alabama Republican Party has failed Alabama.

"Doctor" Bentley was not the Republican Party's first choice two years ago. They have held every state wide position except for Lucy Baxley at the Public Service Commission, and yet the unemployment rate in Alabama remains among the highest in the country. The Alabama Republican Party has failed the State of Alabama.

Roy Moore for Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. The Alabama Republican Party has failed the State of Alabama.

I could keep this list going on for several more pages, but I think you get the point. From our senior member in Congress to the our junior members like Slade Blackwell, the Alabama Republican Party has failed the State of Alabama in so many ways.

Mark Chambers

Birmingham

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Where does the Republican Party go from here? - Fox News

By Christian Whiton

Published November 07, 2012

FoxNews.com

President Barack Obama calls Wisconsin volunteers as he visits a campaign office call center the morning of the 2012 election, Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2012, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)AP2012

Republicans lost and they lost big on Tuesday, November 6. The White House remains in the hands of perhaps the most liberal president in our history and GOP dreams of taking control of the Senate were dashed.

There is some good news and one consolation. Republicans have kept their majority in the House of Representatives, sustaining the rebuke voters gave to the Obama and Pelosi Democrats when they passed ObamaCare without a single Republican vote.  Furthermore, Obama ran on no real second-term agenda and therefore has no mandate.

The consolation is that in the United States and almost every other English-speaking democracy, when executive power switches to a different party, as it did in 2008 when Obama was first elected, that party almost always gets two terms in power.  We have had plenty of one-term presidents, but they usually follow predecessors of the same party.

The key now will be for Republicans not to form a circular firing squad, but to grasp important lessons as to why we lost.

-

The sole exception in the last century was Jimmy Carter.  Amid his “malaise,” voters gave Democrats only four years in power.  Unfortunately, Mitt Romney was unable to convince voters that the economic and national security dangers brought forth by Obama were of a similar scale.

The key now will be for Republicans not to form a circular firing squad, but to grasp important lessons as to why we lost.

I wrote on these pages two years ago that Mitt Romney would lose if nominated for president based on the experience of Meg Whitman in California.  She was a rich, successful, businesswoman with few core political convictions, but who was able to pour money into the race.  Her claim was that she understood business and created jobs in the private sector, so could surely do the same as governor.

Voters knew better that business and government are inherently different. Furthermore, bedrock conservatives were unimpressed with a candidate who seemed to have no real fight in her to cut taxes and spending and take on the unions.  So it was Tuesday night with Romney, who took conservatives for granted—as did the Washington GOP establishment.

The two most successful conservatives of the last century were Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich.  Only they among their peers halted the growth of government and enacted real reform.  They did this not by pulling punches or papering over the differences between left and right, but by explaining conservatism in simple language. Reagan used stories. Gingrich used history.

As Mark Twain said, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. The next successful conservatives will differ from these men, but will follow the basic model of explaining plainly and confidently why a society that wants to survive must not punish those who play by the rules or are successful.  

They need to show how a private market allocates resources better than even smart Ivy Leaguers working for a government bureaucracy.  

They need to say that the American century only ends when we decide we’re no longer exceptional in mankind’s history, and choose the European model of decadent decline over a destiny of freedom and self-reliance.

In the end, the Republican establishment thought they had this election in the bag.  They decided to play it safe with a moderate.  They stuffed a candidate down the party’s throat who opportunistically had been on both sides of most issues and told people what he thought they wanted to hear, rather than what he believed.

Recovery begins with saying goodbye to this Beltway GOP establishment.  No more Romneys.  No more Bushes.  No more McCains.

There is a new generation of Reagans and Gingriches out there somewhere.  There are probably even more than a few of them who are Latino.  The task of conservatives and Republicans is to find them, cultivate them, and get behind them.

Christian Whiton was a State Department senior adviser from 2003-09 during the administration George W. Bush administration.  He is principal at DC International Advisory. Follow him on Twitter@ChristianWhiton.

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How the G.O.P. Became the Anti-Urban Party

“Wade into the crowd, wade into the fray, hold a hell of a rally in an American city — don’t they count anymore?” Peggy Noonan lamented in The Wall Street Journal. “A big, dense city with skyscrapers like canyons, crowds and placards, and yelling. All of our campaigning now is in bland suburbs and tired hustings.”

But the fact is that cities don’t count anymore — at least not in national Republican politics.

The very word “city” went all but unheard at the Republican convention, held in the rudimentary city of Tampa, Fla. The party platform ratified there is over 31,000 words long. It includes subsections on myriad pressing topics, like “Restructuring the U.S. Postal Service for the Twenty-First Century” and “American Sovereignty in U.S. Courts,” which features a full-throated denunciation of the “unreasonable extension” of the Lacey Act of 1900 (please don’t ask). There are also passages specifying what our national policy should be all over the world — but not in one American city.

Actually, that’s not quite true. Right after “Honoring Our Relationship With American Indians” and shortly before “Honoring and Supporting Americans in the Territories,” the Republican platform addresses another enclave of benighted quasi-citizens: the District of Columbia. Most of what it has to say is about forcing the district to accept school vouchers, lax gun laws and the fact that it will never be a state. It also scolds the district for corruption and “decades of inept one-party rule.” Only a city would get yelled at.

The very few sections that address urban concerns contain similar complaints about cities’ current priorities — not to mention the very idea of city life. The Republican platform bitterly denounces the Democrats for diverting some highway fund money to Amtrak and harrumphs that it is “long past time for the federal government to get out of the way and allow private ventures to provide passenger service to the Northeast corridor. The same holds true with regard to high-speed and intercity rail across the country.”

The Obama administration, the Republicans conclude damningly, is “replacing civil engineering with social engineering as it pursues an exclusively urban vision of dense housing and government transit.”

Unsurprisingly, the chairman of the Republican platform committee, Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, is from a state that has no city with a population of 500,000 or more. One of his two “co-chairmen” was Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota, which ranks 47th among the states in population density. The other was Marsha Blackburn, who represents a largely suburban district of Tennessee.

IT could hardly be otherwise. The Republican Party is, more than ever before in its history, an anti-urban party, its support gleaned overwhelmingly from suburban and rural districts — especially in presidential elections.

This wasn’t always the case. During the heyday of the urban political machines, from the Civil War to the Great Depression, Republicans used to hold their own in our nation’s great cities. Philadelphia was dominated for decades by a Republican machine. In Chicago — naturally — both parties had highly competitive, wildly corrupt machines, with a buffoonish Republican mayor, “Big Bill” Thompson, presiding over the city during the ascent of Al Capone. In the 1928 presidential election, the Republican Herbert Hoover swept to victory while carrying cities all across the country: Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; Chicago; Detroit; Atlanta; Birmingham, Ala.; Houston; Dallas; Omaha and Los Angeles.

With the possible exception of Houston or maybe Omaha, it’s all but inconceivable that Mr. Romney will carry any of those cities. And that’s due in good part to the man Hoover defeated, more than 80 years ago.

The rise of Alfred E. Smith to the top of the Democratic Party confirmed a sea change in American life. Smith was not simply the first Catholic to lead a major-party ticket. He was also a quintessentially urban candidate, like no one who has ever seriously contended for the presidency before or since.

Kevin Baker is the author of the “City of Fire” series of historical novels: “Dreamland,” “Paradise Alley” and “Strivers Row.”

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It Could Be His Party

Not so in the United States. Here, parties in their out-of-power years tend to slip into low-grade civil wars, with rival camps inside Washington and various warlords — er, governors — squabbling on the periphery. Not coincidentally, the parties tend to look their worst during these periods: fractious and solipsistic, intellectually confused or ideologically extreme, with opportunists grabbing for the megaphone at every opportunity.

The Republican Party has been effectively leaderless for almost six years, ever since the 2006 midterm elections made George W. Bush’s lame-duck status official. John McCain was so mistrusted by conservatives that he probably would have felt like an interim figure even if he hadn’t gone down to defeat in 2008, and after the general Republican rout that year, the party’s public image was suddenly defined more by media personalities — from Rush Limbaugh to Glenn Beck — than by any of its elected officials.

The Limbaugh-Beck moment passed, but the vacuum remained — and for most of his two years of campaigning, as a primary candidate and then as the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney conspicuously failed to fill it. He seemed content to take his party as he found it, and to conform rather than to lead: in the primaries because conformity was the safest way to reassure his critics, and in the general election because his campaign apparently believed that a generic Mr. Republican would be able to glide to victory in the fall.

That finally changed in the first presidential debate. In 90 prime-time minutes, the country had a glimpse of what our politics might look like if the Republican Party actually had a leader again.

What Romney executed on Wednesday night was not just a simple pivot to the center, as much of the post-debate analysis suggested. Pivot he certainly did — stressing bipartisanship and touting his record as the moderate governor of a liberal state, backing away from the more implausible spending cuts implied by his budget promises, explicitly breaking with the idea that upper-bracket tax cuts can be a self-financing free lunch.

But this wasn’t some sort of Sister Souljah moment, where Romney called out his fellow conservatives in order to curry favor with the center. Rather, what he did was clarify, elevate and translate. He clarified what kind of tax reformer he would be, by promising that revenue neutrality would take priority over sweeping cuts for the rich — a premise that plenty of Republicans are already happy to accept. He elevated an argument that’s increasingly popular among conservative wonks — that the Dodd-Frank financial reform perpetuates “too big to fail” — and used it to make a populist case against the president. And he translated the basic free-market vision to a nonideological audience, by talking more about decent jobs than heroic job creators, and more about the struggling middle class than about the supposedly persecuted John Galts.

This is the role that an effective party leader ought to play. Media fantasies notwithstanding, you can’t lead a party by repudiating its base or campaigning against its reigning ideology. But you can lead by channeling the base’s passions in a constructive direction, and by reinterpreting the party’s ideology to meet the challenges of the present day.

One debate does not such a leader make. But at the very least, the fact that Romney’s strategy worked so effectively last Wednesday — that it made him seem mainstream and appealing while also winning him plaudits from almost every sort of conservative — suggests that the Republican Party can actually be led, and that its politicians don’t have to be prisoners of talking points and groupthink.

Indeed, the party may actually be ripe for such leadership. Cut through the Kabuki narratives on the contemporary right — the grass roots versus the establishment, the True Conservatives versus the RINOs — and you’ll find that what conservatism actually stands for, issue by issue and policy by policy, is more up for grabs than at any point since the Reagan revolution.

The Reagan nostalgia, the fears of looming socialism, the paranoia about a shiftless 47 percent: They are all symptomatic of a party on the brink of transition rather than one incapable of change. Republicans seem to be clinging to the past mostly because their leaders haven’t shown them what they should stand for in the present.

The only question, as we head into the final four weeks of the campaign, is whether Mitt Romney has realized this a little bit too late.

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Not invited to the party

The ranks of Arizona's independent voters have surged 185 percent in the past two decades. They have surpassed the number of registered Democrats and are on a pace to eclipse Republicans.

The ever-growing bloc of voters is increasingly courted by candidates, who often need their swing votes to win.

But the political muscle of the 1 million-plus independent voters hasn't led to an increase in the number of independent candidates. There are only four independents on the statewide ballot this fall.

This disconnect traces back to Arizona's election laws, which were written by Republicans and Democrats and designed to tilt the political playing field to the major parties' advantage. They include higher hurdles for independents to qualify for the ballot, less public financing, and a rule that puts independents at the bottom of the ballot.

Independent candidate Brent Fine got a taste of that when he learned he could get only 70 percent of the public campaign-finance dollars available to his partisan colleagues. When he asked officials at the Citizens Clean Elections Commission why, the answer highlighted the circular nature of the barriers facing independents.

"They said, 'If you want to change it, you need to go to the Legislature,'" said Fine, who is running for the state House of Representatives in the Ahwatukee Foothills-Chandler area.

Fine's chances of making that change as lawmaker, however, are slim precisely because he's running as an independent. Arizona has never elected an independent to the Legislature, Congress or statewide office. Only 33 independents have even attempted to run in the past two decades, according to an Arizona Republic analysis.

"There's a growing sense that the parties are an institution that operate for their own self-preservation," said Jackie Salit, founder of IndependentVoting.org and director of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's independent campaign. And although the major parties are shrinking in Arizona, "they control the political process in very authoritarian ways," she said.

Legal roadblocks

Tom Rawles, an independent running for state Senate, said he's more interested in trying to spotlight what he calls a dysfunctional political system than in winning his race.

"I'm running because I think the system is broken," said Rawles, who faces Senate President Steve Pierce, a Republican. "The two parties are more interested in acquiring power than in getting things done."

No newcomer to the political game -- he served on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and then on the Mesa City Council -- Rawles was a Republican and a Libertarian before frustration drove him to become an independent three years ago.

Since launching a campaign as an independent, he's joined the elite fraternity of candidates who have been there, done that and have the loss to show for it.

Despite the odds, Rawles and other independent candidates say they press on because they don't feel they fit with the major parties. They disdain the gridlock that results from what often is a two-party standoff, and feel they offer an alternative to voters fed up with the status quo.

Their biggest obstacle to getting elected is the state's signature requirements to qualify for the ballot. All candidates must submit a minimum number of signatures on nominating petitions, but independents have to gather many more.

In Rawles' case, he needed at least 1,247 signatures, compared with 606 for Republicans and 251 for Democrats. A Libertarian who wanted to run in the central Arizona district would need only nine signatures.

The counts are based on a percentage of voter registration numbers. Established party candidates need 1 percent of their party's registered voters in the district in which they are running. In 1993, the Legislature amended the law and required independents to get 3 percent of the independent voters in their district -- a higher hurdle that is viewed as a barrier to nonpartisan candidates.

If they meet that hurdle, independents then face other challenges. They include:

Access to the voter-registration rolls. A decades-old law makes the list free for the political parties. Everyone else, including independent candidates, must pay. The cost can exceed $1,000. The data is a trove of voter information, from addresses to voting records.

Limited exposure during the primary-election season. Since independents have no partisan primary, their names are not on the sample ballots mailed to all voters. But the law requires all partisan candidates to be listed, even if he or she is unopposed.

The same no-independents-allowed rule holds true for the pamphlet the Clean Elections Commission mails to all voters; unchallenged partisan candidates still get to make a 200-word statement and have their photo published, valuable exposure for the coming general election.

Higher postage rates. State political parties can qualify for the non-profit bulk-mail rate, a 40 percent savings over the rate charged to commercial customers.

A smaller share of public campaign-finance dollars. Independents get 70 percent of the Clean Elections money allotted to partisan candidates in either legislative or statewide races. The rationale is independents don't face a primary race and thus need less money. Yet partisan candidates who face no opposition still get a nominal amount of public campaign financing.

Last place on the ballot. A law that rotates candidate names to ensure equal exposure on the ballot was amended 12 years ago to stipulate that independents must always be listed last.

The price of going it alone

There are other obstacles, consequences for candidates who decide to run outside an established party structure.

For example, independents walk away from the built-in support of a party. That means they lose out on a corps of volunteers ready to collect signatures, knock on doors and contribute to campaign coffers. It also sets them up for attacks from both the left and the right.

"They come at you from both sides," said Doug Quelland, a former Republican lawmaker now running for the state Senate as an independent. "And they're organized. There are no organized independent (parties) out there."

Quelland returned to the independent ranks (he ran for Congress in 1998 as an independent) after he was forced to resign his House seat in 2010 due to campaign-finance violations.

Mike Stauffer, an independent running against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a Republican, and Democratic challenger Paul Penzone, has felt the one-two punch of the major par-ties.

Democrats went after his nomination petitions, questioning the validity of the voter signatures. But they ultimately dropped their challenge.

Republicans also balked when he filed to run as a Republican because they didn't want Arpaio to have a primary contest.

In addition to the other obstacles, fundraising is a major challenge without the party support.

"Who's going to give me money?" asked Quelland. "It's a two-party dictatorship."

Money matters. The voter-registration list is a gold mine, containing voter addresses and voting records that help candidates target their message. By law, it's free to the political parties.

For independents, this gold mine costs a penny a name if they get the list electronically, a nickel a name on paper.

"As an independent, you have to pay for it," said Rawles. In his race, which straddles two counties, the cost for a digital file would be $1,231.

The political parties add their own data to the list they get for free, then sell it to individual campaigns. But they keep it in the family.

Pam Durbin realized it was easier to switch than fight. The Lake Havasu businesswoman filed to run as an independent, eyeing a state Senate seat in western Arizona.

Today, she is a Democratic candidate for the House.

Intimidated by the need to get at least 1,294 valid voter signatures, Durbin found the pitch from the Democratic Party too attractive to pass up. As a Democrat, she needed only 267 signatures to qualify, and there were people eager to help her collect them.

A game changer?

Some believe independents' electoral fortunes could change if Proposition 121 prevails on the November ballot. It would scrap partisan primaries in favor of an all-in primary with the top two finishers advancing to the general election, regardless of their party.

Ted Downing is a former state Democratic lawmaker who has thrown himself fully into the independent camp. He formed the Arizona Independent Candidate Coalition to share ideas. But being independents, the coalition fizzled as candidates went their own ways.

He got involved in the early efforts to draft the ballot initiative, convinced the system has to change. He chafes at the cost taxpayers shoulder for partisan elections.

He likes to note George Washington warned of the danger of putting party before country, and said that's a compelling reason for Proposition 121.

Rules 'are totally stacked'

Paul Johnson, chairman of the Open Government Committee which wrote Prop. 121, said the disadvantages independent candidates face was a driving force behind the measure.

"Everybody should be on a level playing field," he said. "The rules today are totally stacked against independents in every possible way."

He believes a revamped system would give independent candidates -- and independent voters -- a greater voice in the system by driving debate away from the extremes that he believes dominate the two-party system.

Others argue the system doesn't need to be blown up to make the process more amenable to independents.

"This idea of upsetting the entire system to get the top-two primary -- there's no evidence it works," said Randy Pullen, the former chairman of the state Republican Party.

He argued that lawmakers could simply roll back the laws that hinder independents.

But even with such changes, Pullen said, he doubts much would change. People align with parties for ideological reasons, so it probably would only marginally improve an independent candidate's chances, he said.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Once a Rebel, McCain Now Walks the Party Line

Only there is a new iteration of the Republican lawmaker and defeated presidential candidate who has been a constant in the capital even as he regularly transforms himself. Absent is the maverick who bucked his party on the environment and campaign finance, and verbally towel-snapped Republicans and Democrats alike on the Senate floor.

Gone, too, is the far-right leaning Mr. McCain of 2010, who found himself in a primary fight back home that caused him to retreat from his stances on immigration and global warming.

Mr. McCain instead appears to have entered Version 3 of his long and multipronged Senate career — partisan warrior and party stalwart. He takes to the Sunday TV talk shows, the Senate floor and the Capitol hallways that are filled with more reporters than mosquitoes at a garden party to press his party’s agenda on taxes, military spending and national security.

He walks largely in step with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader with whom he previously had an adversarial relationship that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

“Senator McCain is a tremendous leader in the Republican conference as well as a trusted adviser to me on a number of critical matters, including national security and fiscal issues,” Mr. McConnell said. “Being on the same side of these recent battles has not only strengthened our friendship, but it’s helped clarify the broader debate.”

This latest John McCain has emerged in the aftermath of a stinging loss in the 2008 presidential campaign to a man he considered to have a very thin résumé compared with his decades of military and public service, a loss that left him bitter about politics and the news media — a group he once jokingly referred to as his political base.

Now, after nearly three years of sniping from the sidelines, Mr. McCain is a polestar on nearly every major issue consuming the Senate, from a cybersecurity bill to the debate over Syria to an investigation into national security leaks and the fight to head off $500 billion in Pentagon cuts. He is arguably the most active senator in a frequently sleepy chamber.

Often these days, he actually smiles.

“It took me three years of feeling sorry for myself,” Mr. McCain said to a group of reporters this week as he held court outside the polished doors of a waiting senators-only elevator, taking questions as he does daily on the major topics of the day, be it the budget, the Arab Spring, postal reform or the reshuffling of Marines in Okinawa and Guam.

Mr. McCain was in all of his McCain-ness recently on the Senate floor, where he derided a group of House Republicans for suggesting that a top aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton, Huma Abedin, was connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Next week, he will roll through a series of East Coast cities, holding town-hall-style meetings to speak out against planned cuts to the Pentagon that resulted from last year’s debt-ceiling deal, another core fight in which he is front and center.

In some ways it seems as if Mr. McCain remains unable to reconcile the rightward lurch he took two years ago with his clear desire to continue to put his stamp on myriad issues — at times bridging partisan divides — to burnish his legacy.

For instance, on campaign finance — an issue he was so personally associated with that his name was tied to the legislation that Mr. McConnell fought at the Supreme Court — Mr. McCain has been unwilling to work with Democrats on new bills to force more disclosure of the names of wealthy donors.

“I’ve been disappointed,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat. “I was hoping John would carry that forward, but so far with the Disclosure Act and other things we’ve got on the floor he has not joined us. I just hope he goes back to his roots.”

Many of Mr. McCain’s other interests align neatly with the big issues of the day, particularly the debate over the role of the United States in conflicts in the Middle East — in which he has largely been a staunch critic of the Obama administration — and the planned Pentagon cuts.

The pattern is similar to that of other unsuccessful presidential candidates, like Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who publicly sulked for a few years before becoming a major player on Afghanistan and other issues.

“I just think a lot of it has to do with the agenda,” Mr. McCain said of his re-emergence, in an impromptu interview with several reporters. “After I lost, I knew that the best way to get over it was to get active.” (Mr. McCain, who disputed some coverage of him by The New York Times during the 2008 campaign, has a policy of not speaking directly to reporters from The Times.)

Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat and Armed Services Committee chairman who is working with Mr. McCain on a way to avoid Pentagon cuts, said that Mr. McCain was a “key spokesman” on the issue.

“It’s all relative around here in terms of partisanship,” Mr. Levin said. “Inside his party he stands shoulders above in terms of being willing to deviate from the grip of an antitax pledge.”

Mr. McCain is also a very useful advocate for his party in an election year. He provides credibility on military issues and can employ his rhetorical gifts on the Sunday talk shows (where he has appeared more than any other member of Congress this year, according to a tally by the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call) to promote the party view in a way that Mr. McConnell and others cannot.

“He loves his job,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a longtime friend and ally of Mr. McCain’s. “He’s the template for someone in the future who runs for president and falls short. He didn’t take his ball and go home. I am just very proud of him. He’s very, very involved in all the things that really matter around here.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 28, 2012

An article on Friday about Senator John McCain’s transformation from a political maverick to being a leading Republican who walks the party line misspelled the given name of a Republican from South Carolina who is a longtime friend and ally of the Arizona senator. He is Senator Lindsey Graham, not Lindsay.

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After Paul Falters, Backers Push Agenda in Party and Other Races

More than $560,000 later, Mr. Ramsey’s chosen standard-bearer, Thomas H. Massie, a Republican, cruised to victory Tuesday in the race to select a successor to Representative Geoff Davis, a Republican who is retiring.

The saturation advertising campaign waged by Mr. Ramsey’s “super PAC,” Liberty for All, may be the most visible manifestation of a phenomenon catching the attention of Republicans from Maine to Nevada.

With their favorite having lost the nomination for president, Mr. Paul’s dedicated band of youthful supporters is looking down-ballot and swarming lightly guarded Republican redoubts like state party conventions in an attempt to infiltrate the top echelons of the party.

“Karl Rove’s fear-and-smear-style Republicans are going to wake up at the end of the year and realize we are now in control of the Republican Party,” said Preston Bates, a Democrat-turned-Paulite who is running Liberty for All for Mr. Ramsey.

In Minnesota, Paulites stormed the Republican gathering in St. Cloud last weekend, bumping aside two conventional Republican candidates to choose one of their own, Kurt P. Bills, a high school economics teacher, to challenge Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, this fall.

Backers of Mr. Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas, crashed Republican conventions in Iowa, Maine, Minnesota and Nevada in recent weeks, snatching up the lion’s share of delegate slots for the Republican National Convention in Tampa this August, a potential headache for the national party and its presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney.

And Paulite candidates for Congress are sprouting up from Florida to Virginia to Colorado, challenging sitting Republicans and preaching the gospel of radically smaller government, an end to the Federal Reserve, restraints on Bush-era antiterrorism laws and a pullback from foreign military adventures.

“I’d call it a strict constitutional approach,” said Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky and Ron Paul’s son. “And I think it’s spreading.”

Republican Party officials say they are in daily contact with Representative Paul, in a delicate effort to harness the energy around him without inciting his supporters. “We have had open dialogue with Dr. Paul and his campaign to ensure we are all focused on winning in November,” said Sean Spicer, the Republican National Committee’s communications director.

Mr. Ramsey said that other Paul supporters had brought the Kentucky race to his attention and that he would spend whatever it takes “to get this country moving in a freer direction.” “How much money would you spend for freedom?” he asked Tuesday, after buying airtime from Lexington to Louisville with money he inherited from his grandfather in 2010 as he was being pulled into the libertarian orbit of Mr. Paul.

He met Mr. Bates on the Paul campaign, and in March they incorporated Liberty for All with nearly $1 million of Mr. Ramsey’s money. More than half of it went into Kentucky’s Fourth District in a whoosh of advertising. The impact has been significant.

Mr. Massie, the Lewis County judge executive and an engineer trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he opened the seven-way Republican primary with a lead. But he lost it after Mr. Davis and former Senator Jim Bunning backed one of his rivals, Alecia Webb-Edgington. Then small advertising buys from two other candidates pummeled him with negative accusations.

The sprawling Fourth District of Kentucky presents competitors with a challenge. To reach all its voters, a candidate must advertise in four media markets in Kentucky and Ohio. Mr. Massie acknowledged that he could not do that, but that Liberty for All could. Soon, the advertising for his rivals was drowned out by attacks on his behalf.

“They owned the airwaves, everything from the Food Channel to Court TV,” he said of the PAC.

The Ramsey money does not have a clear path from Kentucky, but Liberty for All appears to have a taste for the obscure. Its next candidate is Michael D. Cargill, a gay, black gun store owner running for constable in Travis County, Tex.

But the political action committee will have money to spend. Mr. Ramsey said that between his wallet and a fund-raising push, the PAC expected to have $10 million this summer.

As they were nominating Mr. Bills at the Minnesota Republican Convention, the Paul forces also seized 12 of the state’s 13 Republican National Convention delegate slots. In Maine, they took 21 of the 24 slots. In Nevada, they grabbed 22 of the 28.

The strategy of crashing state conventions has secured Mr. Paul large slates of delegates in Alaska, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana and Missouri, as well.

Such delegates are not considered a threat to the Romney nomination. But they could be vocal advocates for Mr. Paul’s libertarian views on issues like the war in Afghanistan, the Patriot Act and terrorist detainee policies, which overlap some with Tea Party views but do not mirror them.

And lightly regarded Paulites running for Congress could become forces with the right amount of money. Tisha Casida, an independent in Colorado, is running against Representative Scott Tipton. Calen Fretts is chipping away at Representative Jeff Miller in Florida’s Panhandle, and Karen Kwiatkowski is challenging Representative Robert W. Goodlatte in Virginia.

“I think there’s a great movement going on in this country,” said Ms. Casida, who said she was pulled into politics by Mr. Paul’s message and the red tape she faced trying to open a local farmer’s market.

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'Tea party' hero may upset GOP veteran

INDIANAPOLIS — INDIANAPOLIS For roughly two decades, Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock toiled in the trenches of the state Republican Party, losing more races than he won. But along the way he made a name for himself among GOP loyalists, tirelessly working the fundraising circuit and building a strong network of ground-level support.

Now Mourdock, a 60-year-old geologist, is on the brink of handing the "tea party" its biggest victory of the 2012 elections: Sen. Richard Lugar's seat.

Mourdock "is the real deal. He didn't arrive in 2012 and try to develop a platform that would attract conservative voters to him. He attracts conservative voters to him because he's a conservative," said Mike Fichter, president of Indiana Right to Life, who cut his teeth in politics working on Mourdock's first unsuccessful run for Congress in 1988 and has repaid the favor by endorsing him over Lugar, a six-term senator.

It was unthinkable just month ago that anyone could topple Lugar, let alone a little-known state treasurer. But like the marathon runner he is, Mourdock has steadily chipped away at Lugar's base with a successful campaign questioning the senator's residency and conservative credentials.

With the primary election on Tuesday, Mourdock appears to have evened the odds in what began as a David vs. Goliath battle. Recent polls show momentum on Mourdock's side, and that has emboldened conservatives eager to shake up Washington.

"If we win here, we are going to win the election," said Josh Eboch, campaign manager for the tea-party umbrella group FreedomWorks, as he rallied Mourdock supporters in a heavily Republican Indianapolis suburb on a recent afternoon.

At first blush, Mourdock seems an unlikely dragon slayer. A two-term state treasurer, he lacks the dashing presence of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and the fiery rhetoric of tea-party standard-bearers like Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh and Florida Rep. Allen West. Before his 2006 election as state treasurer, an office that carries little name recognition, Mourdock's only political experience consisted of two terms as a commissioner in the southern Indiana county that includes Evansville.

But the anti-incumbent sentiment that fueled the tea party's growth in 2010 and an unexpected court fight that thrust Mourdock into the national spotlight may change all that in Indiana, home to one of the nation's most organized tea-party movements.

Mourdock, a former coal-mining executive who enjoys tinkering with motorcycles and building race cars, has built a reputation as a GOP loyalist since that first run for Congress in 1988. He's a regular at party events ranging from large annual Lincoln Day dinners that are the staple of fundraising to picnics with as few as two people. He's so accustomed to delivering speeches about Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan that he seldom needs notes.

"The first time we had him speak there was very, very little applause, and it was a speech about Abraham Lincoln, and we wondered: 'Did it bomb or what?' And then we realized that everyone was so reverent and spellbound that when it was over, it took a while for it to sink in," said Morgan County Republican Party Chairman Marty Weaver.

That helps illustrate the differences between Mourdock and Lugar, whom many county leaders say has ignored their fundraising dinners for years.

But while Mourdock's loyalty has kept him on the party's A-list, it was his role as the keeper of Indiana's bottom line that pushed him to the forefront.

In 2009, Mourdock launched what some saw as a quixotic bid to block the federal bailout of Chrysler, saying it violated bankruptcy law by giving unsecured creditors more than secured creditors, including some Indiana employee pension funds. He lost when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule on his objections, but won national recognition from conservatives looking for someone willing to challenge the status quo.

"I would just be another guy from Indianapolis coming to events like this, if it hadn't been for Chrysler," Mourdock told the party faithful during the Morgan County dinner. "Chrysler defined me as the guy from Indianapolis who will take a stand, the guy who will fight for something."

Yet his opposition to the Chrysler bailout is also his biggest weakness with voters who question the $2.8million tab for legal fees in the case, as well as the threat the challenge posed to the auto industry, a backbone of Indiana's manufacturing-dependent economy.

"The guy was trying to take our jobs away," said Richie Boruff, president of the United Autoworkers Local 685 representing Chrysler workers in Kokomo, Ind. He's asking members to vote for Lugar, whether they're Republican or Democrat.

Even so, there's a sense that Mourdock is on the brink of something big. Even some longtime Lugar supporters are signaling it's time for a change.

"I think sometimes if you're in office too long, you think you become bigger than the office and you no longer represent Indiana. And in that regard, maybe Dick Lugar is an anachronism," said Lawrence County Republican Party Chairman Sam Bond, who first volunteered for Lugar as a student in 1976. Bond said he still respects the senator, but believes Lugar has become engulfed by a system that shuns change.

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Republicans bringing party leaders to state - Montgomery Advertiser

Several prominent Republicans will visit Alabama in coming weeks to help raise the party?s profile and help raise money for coming elections. And the chairman of the Alabama Republican Party hopes to use some of the funds raised at events to help win seats at the county level.

The Republicans who will be visiting Alabama include Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, U.S. Rep. Allen West, and Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for President George W. Bush.

Bill Armistead, chairman of the Alabama Republican Party, said when he became chairman he committed to bring rising stars in the party to different parts of the state.

Scott, who was elected in 2010, and Gov. Robert Bentley will be at the Grand in Dothan at 5:30 p.m. Monday.

Jindal, who took office in 2008 and who also served in Congress, will be in Mobile on May 10. He will attend events at the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park. Jindal is often discussed as a rising star in the party.

Fleischer, who was the face of the Bush administration from 2001 to 2003 when he served as press secretary and who is now a CNN contributor, will be in Birmingham for a reception May 21.

West, who was elected in 2010 to represent south Florida in Congress and who retired as a colonel from the U.S. Army, is the keynote speaker for the state party?s annual summer dinner on June 22 at the Renaissance Montgomery Hotel & Spa at the Convention Center. There will be a reception at 6 p.m. and a dinner at 7 p.m. General admission is $150.

West, even though he is in his first term, is no stranger to controversy.

Mark Kennedy, chairman of the Alabama Democratic Party, criticized West and Alabama Republicans for bringing him to the state. In a post on the Alabama Democratic Party?s website, Kennedy criticized West for his recent comments that he knew 81 members of Congress who are communists.

?Like his Republican brethren, Rep. West continually uses the politics of fear and rage to forward his own radical agenda,? Kennedy wrote.

He also wrote that ?Rep. West?s comments are an outrageous, but all too common, attempt by the Republican Party to pit a nation against itself.?

Primarily, Armistead said, the money raised at the events will be used for upcoming elections. He said some of the events are not fundraisers.

Armistead said they are also working to try to get former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican nominee for president, back to the state.

With a plan that includes ?candidate school? and with the money raised at events and from donors, Armistead said they are targeting county races. He said, across the state, probate judges and circuit clerks are on the ballot this year. The chairman said the party is running a full slate of candidates, even in some areas that are still controlled by Democrats.

?We?re going to take this down to the street level,? Armistead said.

Armistead said about two-thirds of county courthouses are still controlled by Democrats, which he said is not acceptable. He hopes, in November, to pick up about 20 more courthouses.

That, Armistead said, is a ?pretty challenging goal,? but he believes it is manageable.

He said the party has recruited candidates over the last year and some of them have never run for office, but are respected in their communities. He said 750 Republicans qualified to run for office in the state this year.

?We?re going to have a real good year of celebrating our Republican victories,? he said.

People can call 205-212-5900 for more information about the events.

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Republican Party of Armenia checks voters' lists - Information-Analytic Agency NEWS.am

April 28, 2012 | 15:38

YEREVAN. – Rules of holding civilized elections do not suppose legal or civil responsibility, Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) executive body member David Harutyunyan said at a press conference on Saturday.

“We have held nine meetings. Statements were voiced that voters’ lists have ‘grown’ is concerning,” Harutyunyan said adding the RPA checked the lists and erased names of 68,000 voters.

No one has applied for violations or double registration. Besides, personal data of many people simply coincides, he added.

The Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) is a ruling conservative party in Armenia founded on 2 April, 1990, and registered on 14 May, 1991, being the first officially registered socio-political organization in the independent Republic of Armenia.

Since 2003, the Republican Party is a core member of the ruling coalition along with the Prosperous Armenia and Orinats Yerkir parties. RPA has majority of seats in the Armenian parliament since 2003.

The Republican Party of Armenia will run in the parliamentary elections under its new slogan: “Let us believe to change!” The Party’s proportional list includes 253 names.

RPA has also nominated MP candidates with the majority election system in 33 electoral districts.

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Conservative NY congresswoman in redistricting danger — from her own party

New York Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle, ranked by the Club for Growth as the most conservative woman in the House, may have a difficult road to re-election this fall as a result of a redistricting — not because Democrats are trying to get rid of her, but because her own party is.

The redistricting map submitted by the New York Republican state Senate would all but ensure that Buerkle doesn’t win reelection in New York’s 25th District, which she currently represents. The district drawn by the Democratic State Assembly would offer her no better chance. A third compromise map drawn by a judge suits Buerkle much better.

Sources near Buerkle’s campaign suggested that the arrangement of the map was political on the part of state Senate Republicans.

“It’s hardly surprising that Albany politicians and lobbyists have allowed cheap politics to dominate this process,” said a source close to her campaign. “But the voters of New York have grown tired of shady backroom deals, and they will see right through this.”

Buerkle wrote an open letter to the judge in which she made clear just how displeased she was with the map put forward by her own party. She urged that both the Republican and Democratic maps be rejected.

But “when she expressed concerns that the process was unfair [to New York Republican leadership], several folks in the leadership in Albany dismissed her concerns as irrelevant and indicated to the campaign that she didn’t factor in their outcome,” said another source familiar with the situation.

Scott Reif, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, called the allegations of political motives “absolutely not true,” in a statement provided to The Daily Caller. “The district lines that we proposed were based on population shifts that occurred since the last census,” Skelos wrote.

But displeasure at Buerkle on the part of the leadership would not be entirely surprising, other sources say.

“Rep. Buerkle has upset the Republican leadership in Washington and Albany on several occasions and doesn’t seem to care much about what they think,” said Republican strategist Michael Caputo. “Not a team player, fiercely independent — call it whatever you want, but she’s not popular among leaders.”

Tom Dadey, Chairman of the Onondaga Republican Party and a Buerkle supporter said that he was calling Republican legislators and urging them to support the judge’s version of the map. He said that if one of the other maps were passed, Buerkle ought to keep her options open and consider running in a different district.

“Obviously I want her to run and get elected in Onondaga county and represent us,” Dadey said, “but on the other hand if she’s going to get railroaded,” he went on, she should consider other possibilities.

Dadey pointed out that unlike other state representatives, Buerkle did not hire lobbyists to plead her case to the state legislature on redistricting, nor did she donate to the campaigns of Republican state legislators, while other members of the New York delegation “contributed heavily.”

Buerkle is ranked by the Club for Growth as the most conservative woman in the U.S. House of Representatives, and by the Heritage Foundation as the most conservative member of the New York delegation. Conservative Party Chairman Mike Long said he would support Buerkle no matter what, even if she primaried another Republican in a nearby district.

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Conservative NY congresswoman in redistricting danger -- from her own party

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