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Rep. Steve King: GOP Leadership Should Stop Trying to 'Out Democrat the Democrats'

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Photo Credit: Carolyn Kaster

GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa is having none of his party’s talk about rebranding.

In a fundraising pitch to supporters, the potential Senate candidate says the Republican establishment can change tactics, message and try to “out Democrat the Democrats” but “they will never, ever rebrand conservatives.”

“I’m living proof conservatives don’t have to sacrifice everything we believe in to win elections,” King said in an e-mail obtained by the Des Moines Register.

The Republican Party is undergoing a makeover, after a post-election “autopsy” found that Republicans need to be improve their tone and outreach if it wants to take back the Senate and White House.

Read more from this story HERE.

State Grants Secret Service Vast New Powers to Circumvent Sheriffs

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Photo Credit: WND

A bill is heading to Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper’s desk that Republican lawmakers say would give members of the Secret Service broad arrest powers in the state and could provide a framework for federal agents eventually to enforce gun restrictions.

“This is absolutely insane,” Rep. Lori Saine, R-Dacono, said. “In theory if a Secret Service agent is in a county where the sheriff has refused to enforce some of the recent unenforceable gun laws, the agent could arrest an individual if he believes the law has been broken.”

The idea actually aligns with an Obama agenda to create vast new restrictions and regulations on guns. WND has reported that hundreds of sheriffs nationwide, including many in Colorado, have said they cannot enforce federal restrictions that would violate the Second Amendment.

In Colorado, Weld County Sheriff John Cooke said he and many other county sheriffs “won’t bother” with several laws poised to go into effect in Colorado because they would be impossible to enforce.

One of the laws would require private sellers to do a background check on purchasers in private gun transaction, but the sheriffs wonder how to keep track of whether gun owners are meeting the new requirements.

Read more from this story HERE.

Senators: ‘Far-Left’ Group Pushes EPA To Implement Cap-And-Trade Without Congressional Approval

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Republican senators urged the Environmental Protection Agency not to participate in a “sue-and-settle” arrangement with a law school policy institute that is trying to require the agency to develop rules implementing cap-and-trade, even though Congress refused to pass the law.

“In a recent rulemaking petition, the Institute for Policy Integrity (the Institute) seeks to compel EPA rules under three separate sections of the Clean Air Act,” Marten Law’s Dustin Till explains in a post. “The Institute first argues that Section 115 of the Clean Air Act, a never-before-used provision addressing international air pollution, requires EPA to order all 50 states to modify their state-level implementation plans to address greenhouse gas emissions.”

Four senators attacked the idea today in a letter to EPA assistant administrator Gina McCarthy, President Obama’s nominee to lead the agency.

“The potential negative impact in this case is that it threatens to expand environmental regulation beyond original intent of the law and could have detrimental effects on the livelihoods of our fellow Americans that are not always understood by academia,” wrote Sen. David Vitter, R-La., Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Wyo., and Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., in a letter today.

“When the price of transportation fuels increases for any reason, it is those with limited resources and fixed incomes whose livelihoods are most impacted by this added financial burden,” they added. “In recent years, we have consistently heard the term “environmental justice” as a reason for promulgating certain agency actions. We believe there also needs to be a measure of “economic justice” to ensure that Agency actions are not overly regressive and lack consideration for economic harm visited upon the very citizens these environmental laws are intended to protect.”

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Rush Limbaugh: Amnesty A “Death Sentence” For GOP

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On his March 19th show Rush Limbaugh declared that amnesty for illegal aliens would be “a death sentence for the Republicans.”

That’s because amnesty includes the ability to legally vote, Limbaugh reasoned. Citing poll data, Limbaugh said that 70 percent of Hispanics “say that they believe that government should be the primary source of prosperity.” Therefore, Rush says, “Let’s say you have ten million illegals, seven million of them are automatically gonna vote Democrat. Republican Party’s finished.”

“It’s a mathematics conclusion. It’s not any more complicated than that. And there’s nothing that the Republicans can do,” Rush continued.

Rush went on to point out a blatant contradiction in the arguments of those in the Republican Party who push for full amnesty:

“If you listen to the Republican proponents for immigration reform, amnesty, what have you, whatever you’re gonna call it, they always say that Hispanics are Republicans-in-waiting. That these are big family value, churchgoing, largely Catholic, I mean, they are Republicans-in-waiting, okay? Accept that.

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RINO Fundraisers See Big Cash Opportunity In Gay Marriage Shift

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Photo Credit: AP

Republican fundraisers say the changing views of gay marriage in their party could unlock big money from GOP donors in places like New York, California and Florida — where some Republicans have kept their checkbooks closed over what they saw as misplaced priorities, at best, or intolerance, at worst, at the highest ranks of the party.

Several Republicans pointed to Sen. Rob Portman’s switch in support of gay marriage as a watershed moment for the party. And more than two dozen high-profile GOP-ers asked the Supreme Court to back gay rights. And even Foster Friess, Rick Santorum’s top benefactor, has softened his stance on domestic partnership.

“Republicans’ intolerance to marriage equality has been detrimental to winning,” said Aaron McLear, a California Republican strategist. “Big donors understand that they don’t want to invest in campaigns focused on a losing issue, and I think certainly the fiscal issues for Republicans are much more marketable.”

Republican fundraiser Jim McCray agreed. “I think it will open up donors across the board, because it demonstrates Republicans are trying to recreate the big tent they were known for,” McCray said.

It’s not clear how much money could come from donors supportive of the party’s move toward new thoughts on gay marriage. Pro gay-rights donors have long been an important source of campaign cash for Democrats, including after President Barack Obama pushed through a repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which barred openly gay people from serving in the military.

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Senate Republicans Willfully And Knowingly Lie To Their Constituents

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Photo Credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Last night, having noted the list of Republicans in the Senate who voted to fund Obamacare in yesterday’s Morning Briefing, I went through a series of emails from readers.

Readers from Texas, Kentucky, Utah, South Dakota, and Georgia all had the same story. They’d called the offices of Senators Chambliss, Cornyn, Hatch, Thune, McConnell, and Isakson to object to those senators funding Obamacare. They were all told by these Senate offices that these Senators had voted to defund Obamacare or, in the case of Senator Cornyn’s office, that there had been no vote on defunding Obamacare.

These Senators and their staffs are lying. They voted to fund Obamacare. More troubling, they know they did it.

Yesterday, on the floor of the Senate, Mitch McConnell again said, “Obamacare is a colossal mistake for our country. . . . We need to start all over. This bill needs to be repealed and it needs to be replaced. . . . And anyone who thinks we’ve given up this fight is dead wrong.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Americans ‘Will Rise Up’ Against Amnesty

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Photo Credit: Elvert Barnes

In the wake of President Obama’s re-election and other Democratic successes in 2012, more and more Republicans in elected office and party leadership are concluding that embracing comprehensive immigration reform is vital to winning elections and attracting a higher percentage of the nation’s fastest-growing demographic.

Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., joined the so-called Gang of Eight pushing the latest Senate version of reform. Rising GOP star Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has embraced ways to make illegal residents legal, while stopping short of endorsing a pathway to citizenship. Just days ago, an official Republican National Committee report on the party’s 2012 failures specifically urged support for comprehensive reform.

So with support from Democrats, the media and a growing number of Republicans, is it inevitable that this legislation will pass in the near term? “No it’s not, because they left out one major group of people that has to part of the equation. It’s called the American people,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., told WND. “The American people fully understand when you’re talking about comprehensive immigration reform, all you’re really talking about is legalizing the status of probably 15-20 million illegals that are in this country.”

Rohrabacher is one of the leading opponents of placing illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship or any legal status because he says it will only encourage more illegal behavior.

“The American people know that will do nothing but bring in millions more and all the problems of crime, of consuming very scarce education and health care dollars, etc., that this will be a disaster for them. So although there are a few Republican ‘leaders’ who are giving into this onslaught of propaganda trying to convince them that this is going to help the Republican Party, the average people out there are against it. Republicans will understand that when it starts coming to a vote because the people will rise up against it,” he said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Five Reasons Why You Should Take Rand Paul Seriously (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

A few weeks ago, Rand Paul was far down the list of 2016 GOP presidential prospects — a freshman senator with a devoted but mostly marginal following of young libertarians. Now he’s being mentioned in the same breath as Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush.

With his filibuster against the Obama administration’s drone policy, a first-place finish in the Conservative Political Action Conference presidential straw poll — and on Tuesday, a speech pressing for immigration reform — the Kentuckian is on a roll.

The Iowa Republican Party announced Tuesday that Paul will headline their Lincoln Day Dinner on May 10, a coveted invitation for any GOP presidential hopeful.

But is Paul the Republican flavor of the month or someone who could realistically contend for the nomination? Party elites scoff at the idea that Ron Paul’s son would ever become the GOP standard-bearer.

Yet the ophthalmologist is a better politician than his father, and he continues to defy expectations.

Watch video here:

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Sessions, GOP Allies Ask For Hearings On Super-Secret Immigration Bill

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions and five other Republican senators are trying to stop the Senate’s Democratic leaders from rushing a huge business-backed amnesty and guest-worker bill through the Senate before it can be debated by the public.

On March 19, Sessions and the other senators sent a letter asking Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, to schedule hearings on the complex bill.

“We respectfully request that the public be given adequate time, consistent with past practice in handling complex comprehensive immigration legislation, to read and analyze the contents of the any such bill” before it is approved by the majority-Democratic panel, said the letter.

The letter was signed by six GOP committee members: Sessions, plus Sens. Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Mike Lee, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. It was not signed by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake, two committee members who are helping to write the controversial measure.

So far, the draft bill is being kept hidden until the Spring recess ends in the first week of April. Major media outlets have given little coverage of the bill’s contents and likely impact on Americans.

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP Road Map: Immigration Reform and Fewer Debates

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Photo Credit: Chris Usher

Republican leaders spent three months studying their 2012 election defeat and on Monday announced they were beat on nearly every aspect of politicking, from money to message to manpower, and said one immediate change should be to embrace immigration reform — a lightning-rod issue that nearly tore the party apart under the George W. Bush administration.

Unveiling a 98-page election post-mortem, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus promised a kinder, gentler GOP that will not write off any voters. That begins, the party said, with Hispanic voters and immigration reform.

“By 2050, we’ll be a majority-minority country, and in both 2008 and 2012, President Obama won a combined 80 percent of the votes of all minority groups,” Mr. Priebus said Monday. “The RNC cannot and will not write off any demographic, community, or region of this country.”

The plan calls for the GOP to become a party that voters believe cares about them, beginning with a $10 million image makeover to attract minorities. The plan also includes nuts-and-bolts suggestions, such as shortening the presidential primary process and trying to take control of the debates, which are currently run by television networks.

Mr. Priebus‘ review shies away from blaming any specific people for the 2012 election, which saw GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney lose a race many in his party thought winnable.

Read more from this story HERE.