Confederate Flag Sets off Debate in GOP 2016 Class

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney called for the immediate removal of the Confederate battle flag from outside the South Carolina Statehouse, scrambling the 2016 Republican presidential contenders into staking a position on a contentious cultural issue.
Some still steered clear from the sensitive debate, even after the shooting deaths of nine people in a historic African-American church in Charleston further exposed the raw emotions about the flying the flag.

Many see the Confederate flag as "a symbol of racial hatred," the GOP's 2012 presidential nominee tweeted on Saturday. "Remove it now to honor #Charleston victims."

Romney joins President Barack Obama and civil rights leaders in calling for the flag to come down as the nation grapples with Wednesday's murders. The man charged with the crimes, Dylann Storm Roof, held the Confederate flag in a photograph on a website and displayed the flags of defeated white-supremacist governments in Africa on his Facebook page.

So far, most of the Republican Party's leading 2016 presidential contenders have been silent on flying the Stars and Bars.

South Carolina was the last state to fly the Confederate battle flag from its Capitol dome. A compromise in 2000 moved the flag to a 30-foot flagpole elsewhere on Statehouse grounds, where it has been flying at full staff.

The debate holds political risks for Republicans eager to win over South Carolina conservatives who support the display of the battle flag on public grounds. The state will host the nation's third presidential primary contest in February, a critical step in the 2016 race.

Via: Newsmax

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GOP Calls on AG to Prosecute Lois Lerner in IRS Scandal

(Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images)

Republican lawmakers are petitioning the new attorney general, Loretta Lynch, to criminally prosecute former IRS official Lois Lerner over the agency's targeting scandal, having failed to convince her predecessor to do so.

According to The Hill, 24 Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee sent a letter to Lynch asking for her to take up the panel's 2014 request to charge Lerner for possible crimes. 

Special: Ted Cruz Discloses the Key to Winning in 2016 – Click Here

The allegations include using her position at the agency to pursue heightened scrutiny of conservative groups; obstructing investigations by giving misleading information; and disclosing confidential taxpayer information, The Hill said.

Before former Attorney General Eric Holder stepped down from his post, House Speaker John Boehner was informed by the department that Lerner would not be prosecuted for refusing to testify at a congressional hearing.

The letter, which was circulated by the committee's chairman, Paul Ryan, also prompted statements of support from Boehner and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

"The American people deserve the truth as to how the IRS was used as a political tool to target and harass Americans for their beliefs. … It is outrageous that despite having evidence right at their fingertips, the DOJ has refused to investigate potential criminal acts taken by Lois Lerner at the IRS," Boehner said in a stat

Via: Newsmax

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Ted Cruz Closing in on Marco Rubio in Florida

On Wednesday night, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (TX-R) essentially tied Senator Marco Rubio in Florida Family Policy Council’s GOP Presidential Straw Poll in Orlando, Fl.

Marco Rubio got 30.7% of the vote whereas Ted Cruz came in a close second with 30.3%.

Jeb Bush and Scott Walker both came in third-place with 8.9% each, Rick Santorum 6.7%, Rand Paul 4.5%, Ben Carson 3.4%, Mike Huckabee 2.2% and Rick Perry 1.1%.

The other 2016 GOP candidates: Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal and John Kasich didn’t get any votes.

Political analysts have since viewed this poll as a victory for Ted Cruz. They say he is reinforcing the idea that America’s Conservative voters are deciding early who to rally behind.

The Florida Family Policy Council event was moderated by attorney John Stemberger. He provided an examination of individual candidate strengths and weaknesses prior to the straw poll vote. Decision leads included Carl Stevens, Florida Senator Alan Hayes, Sara Johnson, Byran Empric, Karin Hoffman and Pastor Kurt Kelly.

During the event, Senator Alan Hayes was also recognized for his accomplishments and dedication to successfully passing legislation protecting unborn children in the state.

Via: Shark Tank

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Carly Fiorina Just May Be the Surprise Dark Horse of 2016

I’m a Ted Cruz fan. At the same time, I find myself increasingly intrigued by Carly Fiorina.
She speaks like no one else in the field. Perhaps, in part, because she’s not a politician.
At the outset of many of her speeches, she tells a personal story about being a little girl in Sunday school when her mother said: “What you are, is God’s gift to you. What you make of yourself, is your gift to God.”

After that, she often shares the following:

I started my career as a secretary in a little nine person real estate firm. And ultimately I would become the Chief Executive Officer of the largest technology company in the world and run for president of the United States. That’s only possible in the United States of America…because our founders knew what my mother taught me. Our founders knew that everyone has God given gifts. Our founders built a nation on the visionary, and at the time radical idea, that every life has potential. And that everyone has the right -- the right -- to fulfill their potential. That is what our founders meant when they talked about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And they believed that right to fulfill our potential came from God and should not be taken away by man or government.

In just a few short minutes, Fiorina manages to interweave personal stories with core values that include faith in God, limitless human potential, and the greatness of America.
Her speeches don’t sound like they have built-in applause lines. She simply speaks. If people clap, that’s fine. She doesn’t appear to expect it or revel in it.
She is articulate as she speaks on a wide array of topics with impressive mastery, from the economy to national security and everything in between.There is a sense of urgency and passion behind what she has to say. And she says it in a way that is crystal clear.

For the first time in U.S. history we are destroying more businesses than we’re creating. And while we celebrate in the world of technology people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, the truth is the heroes of the American economy have always been the person who opens up the 9-person real estate firm, the person who opens up the family-owned autobody shop, the nail salon, the restaurant, the lawn service company. These are the heroes of the America economy because small businesses and family-owned businesses create two-thirds of the new jobs in this country and employ half the people. And so when we crush small and family-owned businesses, we are crushing the potential of this nation.

Fiorina gives concrete examples of how she would put that vision into practice. And she integrates just enough personal stories to make what she has to say, well, personal. And relatable.

Via: American Thinker

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[VIDEO] Ted Cruz - Free Speech Under Assault May 11, 2015

Via: You Tube

EXCLUSIVE — TED CRUZ: NYT ‘HIT PIECES’ AGAINST ME SUGGEST THEY’RE ‘DISMAYED’ I’M GAINING TRACTION

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, tells Breitbart News exclusively why he thinks the New York Times is coming after him.

“The New York Times has done a series of three hit pieces in a little over a week, all directed at me, which may suggest that the Times is dismayed to see a strong conservative such as me getting real momentum with grassroots across the country,” Cruz said.

The first thing the Times attacked him with was an editorial from editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal, in which he called Cruz’s support for the Second Amendment “strange” in a headline. Cruz fired back in an op-ed for National Review, laying out how the liberals at the newspaper don’t “get” the Second Amendment.

From there, the Times unleashed Jason Horowitz—a reporter who wrote a series of pieces digging into Cruz’s college days and questioning whether he is in fact a great debater. The pieces quoted people who didn’t like Cruz in college.

And the most recent hit piece was about Cruz attending a dinner with openly gay people who support Cruz’s positions on the economy and foreign policy. The piece, as Breitbart News already detailed, found it odd that Cruz would unconditionally love his daughters. It also argues that the conservative firebrand was ambivalent about his opposition to gay marriage. Cruz told Breitbart News that the Times is just flat wrong.

“The latest hit piece they wrote focused on a pro-Israel fundraiser we had in New York—that some of the attendees were gay,” Cruz explained when asked about it by Breitbart News.

Via: Breitbart

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Cruz: If Terrorists Attacked A Golf Course ‘That Would Get The White House’s Attention’

NASHUA, N.H. — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican presidential candidate, took a jab at President Barack Obama Saturday for not attending the march in France against radical Islamic terrorism when he gave remarks at the First in the Nation Republican Leadership Summit.

“And we all remember just a few months ago seeing over 40 world leaders walking arm and arm in solidarity with France against radical Islamic terrorism and where oh where oh where was the United States of America? You know, if only the terrorists attacked a golf course. That might actually get the White House’s attention. ‘Holy cow! This is serious!'” Cruz said.

The march in France happened after two masked gunmen opened fire and killed 12 people and injured 11 others at the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

Via: Daily Caller

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Sen. Ted Cruz GRILLS FBI Director on IRS investigation

Sen. Ted Cruz went after FBI Director James Comey, who promised a year ago that the IRS investigation would be a very high priority. Yet today, as Comey sits before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he won’t answer whether a single person has been interviewed or, really, much else about the investigation, hiding behind the fact that it’s an ‘ongoing investigation’.

What I like about this clip is the passion with which Cruz questions the FBI Director.

He also hits back at Leahy, the committee chair, when he’s basically told to accept the witness’ non-answer. Cruz pretty much tells Leahy that he can accept the FBI Director’s answer if he wants, and he understand the non-answer might be good enough for them because many Democrats don’t really care about getting answers in the IRS investigation. Leahy noted that his motives had nothing to do with it, but that the non-answer given by Comey was appropriate. Cruz fired back, to make his point, that when he sought to criminalize the targeting of anyone by the IRS based on their political views, Democrats on that committee voted it down.

Via: The Right Scoop

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Wasserman Schultz Welcomes Ted Cruz To Florida With A Big "Extremist" Hug

Florida Democrat Congresswoman and head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is once again showing America how much fun it is for Democrats to sound divisive, as she has once again pulled out her “extremist” card in describing conservative elected officials, specifically Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who was in Florida for a few events.

In an interview with the Sun-Sentinel, Wasserman Schultz took issue with the Republican Party of Sarasota naming Cruz their “Statesman of the Year.” “We’re talking about a guy who just in his brief time in Washington – he hasn’t even been there but a year and a half – and he orchestrated the government shutdown that cost our economy $24 billion.

He opposed common-sense immigration reform, and that’s obviously important to many voters in Florida, and across the country.

 He supported the House Republicans’ goal of refusing to even take a vote on the legislation. Last week he voted not to pay our nation’s bills and forced a filibuster, more gridlock more obstructionism in the Senate and potentially brought us to the brink of default. He even voted against the Violence Against Women Act.-Rep. Wasserman Schultz (D) Wasserman Schultz

Here is the Sun Sentinel Q & A with Wasserman Schultz:

Q: There are plenty of conservative Republicans in our area, but it seems as if he might be out of touch with Republicans in southeast Florida?

Wasserman Schultz: Apparently not out of touch with Marco Rubio, our senator, our tea party senator. If you remember he told Politico last year that he thinks Cruz is going to be a superstar.

Marco Rubio himself has a tough time figuring out exactly where he is. He’s been pretty much a weather vane when he runs into controversy in his own party, on immigration reform especially. The Republican Party continues clearly to be engaged in a civil war.

They can’t future out who they are, where they are, how they want to define themselves. There’s a ton of finger pointing. I think that they’ve lost a bunch of races as a result, and I think that going into the 2014 election, that’s going to cause them more problems, particularly as they highlight a guy like Ted Cruz and allow Ted Cruz to be their leader who already forced a government shutdown and was willing to default and refused to pay our nation’s bills again just last week. I mean this is the person that they are lifting up as the statesman of the year.

Q: Do you think he’s the kind of Republican that voters in southeast Florida could cotton up to, warm up to?

Wasserman Schultz: The most extreme tea-partiers certainly could. And that seems to be who is dominating and leading the Republican Party of today…. Florida is a purple state … and they’ve repeatedly rejected extremism.

The Republicans keep lifting up leaders like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio who embrace that extremism, so I think as voters take a look at the choices they have leading into the 2014 election, it’s going to bode well for our Democratic candidates.

Via: Brietbart

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Ted Cruz: The Imperial Presidency of Barack Obama

Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the president's persistent pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat. On Monday, Mr. Obama acted unilaterally to raise the minimum wage paid by federal contracts, the first of many executive actions the White House promised would be a theme of his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

The president's taste for unilateral action to circumvent Congress should concern every citizen, regardless of party or ideology. The great 18th-century political philosopher Montesquieu observed: "There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates." America's Founding Fathers took this warning to heart, and we should too.

Rule of law doesn't simply mean that society has laws; dictatorships are often characterized by an abundance of laws. Rather, rule of law means that we are a nation ruled by laws, not men. That no one—and especially not the president—is above the law. For that reason, the U.S. Constitution imposes on every president the express duty to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."

Yet rather than honor this duty, President Obama has openly defied it by repeatedly suspending, delaying and waiving portions of the laws he is charged to enforce. When Mr. Obama disagreed with federal immigration laws, he instructed the Justice Department to cease enforcing the laws. He did the same thing with federal welfare law, drug laws and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

On many of those policy issues, reasonable minds can disagree. Mr. Obama may be right that some of those laws should be changed. But the typical way to voice that policy disagreement, for the preceding 43 presidents, has been to work with Congress to change the law. If the president cannot persuade Congress, then the next step is to take the case to the American people. As President Reagan put it: "If you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat" of electoral accountability.

President Obama has a different approach. As he said recently, describing his executive powers: "I've got a pen, and I've got a phone." Under the Constitution, that is not the way federal law is supposed to work.

Via: WSJ

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Ben Carson in His Own Words

After five years of President Obama, we want a dynamic conservative candidate who we can believe in to take us to 2016. With names on the horizon like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, and Nikki Haley, we have some promising politicians; and another name has risen to the top: Dr. Ben Carson.

Ben Carson is the latest potential presidential candidate to be anointed by conservatives. Less than a year after his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, the 61-year old neurosurgeon, known for his deeply held religious beliefs as well as his determination to live the American Dream, has gained support from many conservative organizations like the Tea Party, right-to-life groups, Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Works, and David Horowitz's Freedom Center .

Carson's post-election entrance onto the national stage at the 2013 Prayer Breakfast gave despondent conservatives new hope. The famous surgeon criticized the President's signature health law and mocked political correctness while the President sat stone faced. Carson's boldness made headlines from MSNBC to far-right alternative blogs.

The decidedly political speech, different from his 1997 Prayer Breakfast address, was a triumph and made him an instant hit with stalwarts on the right. Glenn Beck actually said "I love you" during an interview when Carson told him his favorite person in history was George Washington. Rush Limbaugh thinks Carson "has everybody in the Democrat Party scared to death." Mark Levin and Sarah Palin have lauded Carson on their sites.

Via: American Thinker

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Dems try going on offense: It’s Obamacare versus ‘Cruz Care’

I

n 2012, the meta-pundit narrative turned on whether the election would be a choice between two visions for the future (as Dems hoped) or a referendum on the anemic Obama status quo (as Republicans predicted). The outcome surprised observers who thought the weight of the bad economy made the latter inevitable.

Now Democrats are going to attempt a repeat performance around Obamacare, at a time when the law’s travails have triggered widespread predictions that it, too, will serve as the focus of a referendum, just as the Obama economy was supposed to last year.

I’m told the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is set to launch a new campaign designed to refocus the debate on the Republican position on health care, which Dems will widely label as ”Cruz Care.”

With Ted Cruz set to roll out his own health plan — one that will probably look like the usual grab bag of GOP reform ideas, which just aren’t a reform alternative to Obamacare – Dems plan to tar GOP Senate candidates across the country with it, by hitting them as proponents of “Cruz Care.” Many GOP candidates also embraced Cruz’s Obamacare-driven government shutdown.

Via: Washington Post

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MSNBC’s Dyson Accuses Matt Lewis of Exerting ‘White Privilege’ in Explosive Exchange

Daily Caller and The Week columnist Matt Lewis appeared on MSNBC with Martin Bashir on Wednesday to discuss the Affordable Care Act’s roll-out and the lack of Republican alternative proposals to replace that law. Within minutes, the debate exploded as Lewis was accused of appealing to “white privilege” by Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson.

Bashir began by playing a clip of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) being grilled over a lack of an alternative GOP plan to replace the ACA. Lewis defended Cruz, saying that he was effectively representing his base and playing a smart political game by not taking the media’s focus off of the presently failing ACA roll-out.

Lewis conceded, though, that Republicans need to coalesce around a single ACA alternative in the coming days. “It’s not enough to say ‘Obamacare’s bad,’” he insisted. “You have to have a solution.”

Bashir insisted that it is not just health care reform, but that the GOP routinely has no alternative to Democratic proposals on a host of issues.

Dyson insisted that this reflexive opposition from Republicans to President Barack Obama’s initiatives was, as Oprah Winfrey recently suggested, due to his skin color.

“It took ten minutes – ten minutes to get to the race issue,” Lewis interjected. The pair exploded over Lewis’ suggestion that race was an inappropriate topic of debate on this issue.

“Don’t deploy the very principles of white privilege to silence a black man on the panel because you don’t want to talk about race,” Dyson shot back.

Chaos ensued. “You can’t talk about policy,” Lewis declared. “The only thing you have to talk about is race.”

Lewis blew up at Bashir when he was asked to let Dyson finish his tonight. “Please allow him to speak,” Bashir insisted.

“The vast majority of Republicans are mindless and incapable of articulating a solid, serious, intellectual conception, or a political fix or remedy to the problem we have here,” Dyson insisted.

“This is a joke,” Lewis concluded.

[VIDEO] Ted Cruz remembers Gettysburg…

Ted Cruz isn’t opting out of the Gettysburg anniversary like some presidents we know. Instead, he created this tribute:

Via: The Right Scoop

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Ted Cruz: Nation Divided Between Washington and Rest

The beleaguered Obamacare program is the best example of the huge rift between entrenched Washington politicians and the American people, Sen. Ted Cruz tells Newsmax.

The biggest rift in the country is not between Democrats and Republicans, he says, but between Washington and the rest of the country.

"There are a lot of politicians in Washington who just aren't listening to the American people — and people are frustrated," the Texas Republican said in an exclusive interview at the annual Restoration Weekend conference in Palm Beach, Fla.

Urgent: Do You Approve Or Disapprove of President Obama's Job Performance? Vote Now in Urgent Poll 

"You take something like Obamacare," he began. "Millions of Americans have been speaking up, saying: 'This is a train wreck. This is a disaster. This is killing jobs. This is forcing people into part-time work.' We've been seeing in the last few weeks that this is taking away the healthcare of millions of Americans

"Yet, Washington hasn't been listening to them. That's the frustration people feel all across this country. That's something I hope will change."


Cruz, 42, a first-term senator backed by the tea party, has been mentioned as a Republican presidential candidate in 2016. He has long opposed Obamacare. In September, he spoke for more than 21 hours on the Senate floor against President Barack Obama's signature domestic policy achievement. 

Via: Newsmax

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MILLER: Ted Cruz targeted by Politifact over gun crime facts cited to Jay Leno

Left-leaning Politifact twisted itself in knots to declare Sen. Ted Cruz’s data on gun prosecutions declining under President Obama as “mostly false.” 

In fact, the Republican senator correctly stated on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on Nov. 8 that “Under President Bush, prosecution of gun crimes was 30 percent higher than it is under President Obama.”

Politifact first accused Mr. Cruz of “cherry picking” by comparing the year with the highest number of prosecutions under President George W. Bush, which was 11,015 in 2004, to the 7,774 under Mr. Obama in 2012. 

To make his point, the senator can take the highest number in the Bush administration. But there is no debating that if Mr. Cruz selected any year from 2002 to 2008, it would have shown more prosecutions than 2012. 

“The point of this data is that more can be done to target violent criminals, and this administration has not made that a priority,” Mr. Cruz’s spokesman, Catherine Frazier, told me Friday. “The senator believes that our focus must be on prosecuting those who commit gun crimes, not taking away the Second Amendment rights of those who follow the laws.”

Second, Politifact found fault in the source of the correct data. Mr. Cruz cited the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse from Syracuse University, which tracks crimes in which the lead charge is firearms-related. 

However, Politifact didn’t like these numbers, so instead used the Justice Department figures in which gun charges were included in all the charges. By looking at all charges, it benefits Mr. Obama because the 2004 number (12,962) was the lowest in Mr. Bush’s presidency. But still, that number is higher than the 11,728 prosecutions in 2012. 

Via: Washington Times

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