The Republican Party (also called the GOP, or "Grand Old Party") is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, the other being the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery activists in 1854, it dominated politics nationally for most of the period from 1860 to 1932. There have been 18 Republican presidents, the first being Abraham Lincoln, serving from 1861-1865, and the most recent being George W. Bush, serving from 2001-2009. - Source: Wikipedia
Those who recall the Air Force's Strategic Air Command and the intense days of the Cold War will be pleased to know that "peace through strength," the motto of the aforementioned command, is still alive and well, adopted as the philosophy behind the Center for Security Policy. "SAC" was home to a host of formidable bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles from 1946 to 1992.
"These are the tactics of the Third World." — Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican,on the combined effects of the Benghazi matter, the Justice Department seizure of Associated Press phone records and the IRS probe of conservative groups, before the Senate.
Fifteen senators have a message for President Obama: The Defense Department spends $150 million a year on athletic shoes for our armed forces. Please makes sure that footwear is made in America, huh?
A poll this week in The Washington Post reveals that 70 percent to 75 percent of Americans, including independent voters, think the Republican Party is not "in touch with the concerns of most people in the United States today."
The persistent, noisy refrain that the Republican Party is "out of touch" with mainstream America continues. The phrase and its many variants have been repeated in public opinion polls and throughout the liberal media from the moment Mitt Romney solemnly waved goodbye from the presidential campaign trail. The Grand Old Party has taken the insults, but gotten the message.
America still loves the 1980s and Ronald Reagan, say producers of an upcoming National Geographic Channel miniseries on the decade. And Americans would still vote for Reagan.
The old hippies would be pleased. A new Pew Research Center survey heralds this headline: "For the first time in more than four decades of polling on the issue, a majority of Americans favor legalizing the use of marijuana. A new national survey finds that 52 percent say that the use of marijuana should be made legal." And as the old hippies would say, "groovy."
"As Republican leaders openly scrutinize their party after a 2012 election that was disappointing for them, rank-and-file Republicans, independents and Democrats voice the same primary criticism of the GOP: it is 'too inflexible' or 'unwilling to compromise,'" says Gallup analyst Lydia Saad.
A spate of Democratic lawmakers are using March Madness to raise some campaign funds as the NCAA men's basketball tournament arrives in the nation's capital.
Alas, the Grand Old Party needs grand old changing. So says Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who is convinced the weary GOP needs a fancy new identity, as outlined in the "Growth and Opportunity Project" study released with much ado Monday.
After back-to-back drubbings in presidential elections, the Grand Old Party is deep in contemplation — navel-gazing, really — over what went wrong and, more, what to do about what went wrong.
The surest and quickest way for a Republican officeholder to kill his future is to dream up a tax increase. Once a rising star in the Grand Old Party, a shortlist contender as Mitt Romney's running mate and a twinkle in the eye of the Great Mentioner for 2016, Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia has disappeared from the speakers' lists at key conservative events, such as the Conservative Political Action Conference, which begins Thursday in Washington.
It's pile-on time. "Republican party implodes" has been a popular headline with news organizations and pundits since November, and they continue to use it -- with zest. Critics are also fond of these phrases: Republican failure, Republican disgrace, Republican suicide, Republican-assisted suicide and Republican misery, among other dire descriptions in recent coverage.
Hispanic voters soon may wonder whether the Democratic Party is friend or foe if the treatment of Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas is any gauge. "Rubio-ridicule, Cruz-hatred" reads the headline at Powerline, where analyst Paul Mirengoff notes that Democrats have made Mr. Rubio "the butt of bottle jokes," and just plain vilified Mr. Cruz. The party is getting jittery about the pair, the analyst says, and now seeks to slow their political momentum.
In his column "Coming in 2016 -- a third way for the GOP," Joseph Curl makes it very clear that many in the Republican Party don't have a clue about how to win the next election. Unfortunately, he seems to be committed to a losing philosophy himself.
