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DeMint to GOP Elders: Game Over, Conservatives Must Drive Agenda

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Sporting his new hat as the head of the Heritage Foundation, former Sen. Jim DeMint said Saturday said that conservatives should not rely on the GOP establishment to deliver the movement’s message. He said it is time to take matters into their own hands.

Addressing the National Review Institute’s “Future of Conservatism” summit, Mr. DeMint said that conservatives must take charge of the way the movement is perceived.

“Conservatives have given the sole distribution rights of our ideas, our beliefs and our values – at least in the political sphere – to the Republican party,” the South Carolina Republican said. “We are on the outside looking in hoping they will take some of our ideas and adopt them. It is time to flip that around.”

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DeMint Urges Face-Off Over Debt Ceiling

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With weeks to go before the U.S. reaches its statutory debt limit, some conservatives inside and outside of Congress have been getting cold feet about refusing permission to authorize new borrowings to pay the country’s bills.

But Jim DeMint, who quit the Senate late last year to become the next president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think-tank, is urging Republicans in Congress to hold their nerve in the upcoming confrontation with the White House.

Mr DeMint, a Tea Party favourite in the Senate, said Republicans should use the debt ceiling to force the budget on to a sustainable path. He dismissed claims that a refusal to back new borrowings threatened sovereign default.

“The government itself is not going to shut down. In fact, I don’t think people are even going to notice it,” Mr DeMint told the Financial Times.

The U.S. Treasury has warned the country would run out of money to pay its creditors some time between mid-February and early March unless Congress acted to increase the $16.4 trillion borrowing authority.

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Gov. Haley Picks Tim Scott to Replace DeMint

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photo credit: North Charleston

Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) will be appointed the first African-American senator from South Carolina next year, Gov. Nikki Haley (R) announced Monday.

Haley’s selection of Scott, a Tea Party favorite, delighted conservative groups that had sought a strong conservative replacement for Sen. Jim DeMint (R), who is resigning in January to lead the Heritage Foundation.

“It is with great pleasure that I am announcing that I am appointing our next U.S. senator-to-be, Congressman Tim Scott,” Haley said at a press conference in Columbia, S.C.

Scott has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the GOP since being elected to the House in 2010, and was DeMint’s preferred choice to fill his seat, according to sources in South Carolina.

“I can walk away from the Senate knowing that someone is in this seat that is better than I am, that will carry that voice-of-opportunity conservatism to the whole country in a way that I couldn’t do,” DeMint said at the press conference.

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DeMint: Republican Messaging ‘Amatuerish,’ Heritage to Audit Campaign

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Breitbart News sat down with Sen. Jim DeMint, in advance of his exit from the Senate to take the reigns at the Heritage Foundation. Our conversation primarily focused on the future of the conservative movement and the immediate talks surrounding the “fiscal cliff.” But, one particular exchange was unexpected.

Breitbart News asked Sen. DeMint about the newly announced 5-member panel to examine or “audit” the recent campaign and the Republican Party’s outreach and messaging. His answer was a surprise:

“I’ll see what they do, but we’re going to do that [auditing the campaign] at Heritage and we’re not just going to do an analysis of other pols. We’re going to go out and do our own research. I know you can’t just ask people what they think, unless you give them cues. Like, what do you think of the word conservative. You can ask them if they call themselves conservative or not. 40% call themselves conservative, but you don’t know what the other 60% think about it. They may not like the word, but they may be conservatives.

I just see, looking at the political handling from the Republican side is so amateurish compared to even what I was doing in marketing fifteen years ago, before I came to Congress. And the ability is there to be so much more sophisticated in targeting markets, segmenting and communicating with them individually.”

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DeMint On Prospect of Jenny Sanford Replacing Him: ‘She’s Great’

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WASHINGTON — Sen. Jim DeMint suggested in a brief interview with The Daily Caller on Thursday that he would approve if former South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford is tapped to take over the Senate seat he is vacating next month.

“She’s great,” DeMint said Thursday afternoon, as he walked off the Senate floor after a vote.

DeMint, a Republican, announced last week that he’s resigning from the U.S. Senate to take over as head of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington D.C.-based conservative think tank.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will appoint DeMint’s successor. Haley is thought to be considering at least five people for the seat, including Sanford, whose ex-husband, Mark Sanford, was governor of the state.

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DeMint to Sit Out 2014 Elections at Heritage

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photo credit: gage skidmore

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), the tea party leader who raised his profile taking on his party establishment in Senate primaries, will sit on the sidelines during the 2014 midterms when he becomes head of the Heritage Foundation.

“I am anxious to get away from the political angles, the partisan angles and focus on just the ideas,” DeMint told POLITICO on Tuesday. “Hopefully candidates will embrace these ideas. But part of what we have to do is convince Americans that the ideas are right.”

Asked if he would endorse candidates in primaries, DeMint flatly said: “No.”

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DeMint Move Ignites Talk of 2016 Presidential Run

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photo credit: gage skidmore

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint’s surprise announcement that he will leave the U.S. Senate in January to take over leadership of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank has ignited speculation among grass-roots conservatives that DeMint may use the new post as a launching pad for a presidential bid in 2016.

“Jim DeMint will have a bigger microphone than before,” conservative direct-marketing pioneer Richard Viguerie tells Newsmax. “If he wants to, this opens up a lot more opportunities for him. I think there’s a decent chance that he’ll be a serious presidential candidate in four years.”

Viguerie called the move to Heritage “an intermediate step.”

“It’s going to be a boon to the cause, to Heritage,” he said. “And it gives [DeMint] a major opportunity to run for president in four years. And if so, he would be the instant front-runner among most conservatives.”

DeMint already had effectively term-limited himself by announcing he would not seek another six years in the Senate. When GOP hopes of seizing control of the Senate were dashed in November, he was looking at four more years of life as a back-bencher, with relatively little influence over legislation passed by the upper chamber.

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DeMint Takes Parting Shot at Boehner (+video)

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Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who shocked Washington on Thursday with the announcement that he would resign his Senate seat in January to become president of the the Heritage Foundation, sent a parting shot at Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) over the “fiscal cliff” negotiations.

“I’m not with Boehner,” DeMint said on CNN’s “The Situation Room.” “This government doesn’t need any more money, this country needs less government.”

House Republican leaders on Monday proposed a counteroffer to President Obama in the “fiscal cliff” negotiations. The proposal would reduce spending by $2.2 trillion through a combination of spending cuts and entitlement reforms, and would produce $800 billion in new revenue without raising tax rates, although the plan doesn’t specify how.

Two high-profile conservative groups lashed out at the GOP offer, one of which was the Heritage Action for America, a sister organization to the Heritage Foundation.

“Republicans were reelected in the House to stop Pres. Obama’s agenda, not figure out creative ways to fund it,” Heritage Action for America communications director Dan Holler told The Hill in an email.

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Conservatives Ready For ‘Sneaky Treaties’

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Back in September, 36 Republicans in the Senate signed on to a letter requesting that no treaties be brought up for consideration during the precious few days of the lame duck session.

“The writers of the Constitution clearly believed that all treaties presented to the Senate should undergo the most thorough scrutiny before being agreed upon,” they wrote in a Sept. 20 letter to Senate majority and minority leaders Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

“The American people will be electing representatives and senators in November, and new representatives carrying the election mandate should be afforded the opportunity to review and consider any international agreements that are outstanding at the time of their election.”

The signatories promised to oppose efforts to consider any treaty brought for consideration.

Fast-forward two months, and the Senate has begun consideration of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a United Nations treaty that faces heavy opposition from conservative groups and received only one committee hearing, back in July.

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DeMint and Inhofe: U.N. treaties mean LOST U.S. sovereignty, Liberals intent on imposing backdoor globalism

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For years, liberals and misguided State Department officials have pushed for the U.S. Senate to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). This treaty would convey ownership of the oceans to a United Nations agency and give international bureaucrats veto authority over U.S. naval operations and could force the United States to comply with international carbon emissions caps.

Last week, we defeated LOST by securing commitments to ensure it cannot gain the 67 votes needed for ratification.

However, no sooner had the 34th Republican senator signed a letter opposing LOST than the surrender of American sovereignty was put back on the table by foreign diplomats and their internationalist allies in the federal government.

With LOST dead, the new treaties being promoted to take its place include the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Disabled, which calls for government agents to supersede the authority of parents of disabled children and even covers abortion. Also, the Obama administration has begun negotiations on a new U.N. treaty to create international gun control rules that could slowly erode our Second Amendment.

The globalist ideologues behind these treaties are either ignorant of or hostile to the universal human experience that problems are best solved by the people and institutions closest to them. So assured are these masters of their mandate to direct the lives and wealth of other people that they see their routine failures to do so efficiently at the local, state and national level merely as reason to ascend to new heights of international command and control.

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