The Left may not wish to admit it, but the fortunes of a once moribund Donald Trump of January 2021 have now largely recovered—even before the stunning gubernatorial victory of Republican Glenn Youngkin in Virginia.
How and why?
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I was the speaker at a large Republican event recently and, inevitably, the grievance was aired in the Q&A portion: “Where’s the Republican Party? They are worthless. They won’t do anything.”
This is one of the most common refrains on talk radio. Glenn Beck does it almost daily. Steve Deace and his team never stop. Rush used to do it regularly. And therefore, a lot of conservatives and traditionalist Americans think it is true. But is it?
Exhibit number one in this case is always the failure to repeal Obamacare. That’s where the line of accusation really kicked in.
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Senator Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) was challenged recently by a caller on the “Jay Thomas Show.” The caller asked Cramer to reveal the identity of the Capitol Police officer who shot and killed unarmed Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, on January 6. Cramer claimed he did not know the name of the officer, nor did he believe the public had any right to know that officer’s name because he had not been found guilty of any wrongdoing.
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Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has so many problems to solve right now. A crime wave leaves hundreds of Americans dead and has turned our cities into war zones. A border crisis allows hundreds of thousands of illegals to enter our country. A domestic war on terror threatens basic civil liberties.
But none of these crises have persuaded Graham to go to war. No, the civilizational question that demands his full zeal has to do with . . . a fast-food chain.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio to weigh in on left-wing historian Jon Meacham’s claim that Republican’s more dangerous to democracy than CCP.
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People think of Trump Derangement Syndrome as mostly a phenomenon of the Left, and mostly unprecedented. It’s easy to get the impression that Donald Trump has taught the Left to hate as they have never hated, and that all previous Republican presidents were moderate by comparison and much more broadly acceptable to America.
But the Left was just as vicious about George W. Bush in his day, and they hated him just as much. He was called a threat to world peace, a devotedly evil man, a stupid man, or all of these: To quote a 2004 Slate article, “he chose stupidity. Bush may look like a well-meaning dolt. On consideration, he’s something far more dangerous: a dedicated fool.”
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Clint Brewer in studio to discuss the removal of Liz Cheney as House conference chair and the future of the Republican Party.
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It’s about time.
U.S. Representative Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) prompted outrage this week following his remarks during a congressional hearing on the events of January 6, 2021.
Clyde, along with several Republican House members, is finally pushing back on the Democrats’ allegedly unassailable narrative about what happened that day. The roughly four-hour disturbance at the Capitol, as I’ve covered for months, is being weaponized not only against Donald Trump but also hundreds of nonviolent Americans who traveled to their nation’s capital to protest the final certification of a fraudulent presidential election.
Big Tech used the so-called “attack” on the Capitol as an excuse to achieve its long-sought-after goal to deplatform the former president; NeverTrumpers such as Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) insist the chaos of the day was fueled by the “Big Lie”—in other words, the belief held by tens of millions of Republicans—and a good share of independents—that Joe Biden didn’t legitimately earn enough votes to win the White House. The Biden regime vows to use the “whole of government” to purge the country of “domestic violent extremists,” which is code for Trump supporters.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio to discuss the future of the Republican Party.
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State-level officials within the Georgia Republican Party recently used — or, depending upon whom you ask, abused — their authority to select members of the Chatham County Executive Board. Chatham County GOP members had an unsuccessful convention last month in Savannah. Witnesses described a rift between pro-Trumpers and the party establishment that provoked a shouting match that ended business prematurely before anyone could elect Executive Board members.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio to discuss the replacement of Liz Cheney with Trump supporter Elise Stefanik and the need for Republicans to put more pressure on Democrats to further their agenda.
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Many Republicans in Congress have reignited their calls to break up the big tech companies after Facebook announced last week they would maintain the suspension of former President Donald Trump’s account.
A new poll released by Rasmussen Friday found that 59% of likely voters “believe operators of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are politically biased in the decisions they make” with only 26% disagreeing. The rest are unsure.
The poll results went on to say that “a majority of voters now favor ending legal protections for social media companies.” The reported public opinion against the tech giants comes the same week Facebook announced they would keep Trump suspended from their platform, citing his alleged role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
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Republican leaders are salivating over their prospects for retaking Congress in 2022. Populists need to be even more fired up about the primaries. Getting involved now is the only way to ensure an America-first victory. Some quality candidates are already in the fight.
There’s a reason Democrats in Congress and even Joe Biden immediately glommed onto hyperpartisan issues from the get-go. They saw the red wave in down-ballot races in 2020, and they know another tide is coming in 2022.
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For two fleeting years after Trump was elected president, the GOP controlled the White House and both houses of the U.S. Congress. This level of one-party control for the GOP was almost without precedent. Apart from 2003-2007—the end of George W. Bush’s first term in office and the beginning of his second—you have to go back all the way to 1953, the first half of Dwight Eisenhower’s first term, to find a GOP president and a GOP-controlled Congress.
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Georgia Republicans want to make their elections work better after the 2020 disaster. They’ve proposed sensible measures to eliminate no-excuse absentee ballots, remove dubious ballot drop-off boxes, and reform early voting times. This effort would restore trust in the election process and ensure every ballot is legitimate. But, for some strange reason, this legislation has drawn the ire of the state’s business community.
The Georgia Chamber of Commerce last week expressed its “concern and opposition” to these measures in an official statement endorsed by Home Depot and Coca-Cola, two major corporations based in the Peach State. Black Lives Matter, Stacey Abrams, and other left-wing activists are pressuring these corporations and others to do more to oppose these election reform laws. They’re running TV and newspaper ads to strongarm companies into doing their bidding, and there’s a good chance the corporations eventually will bend the knee. Few corporations nowadays can resist the woke mobs.
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Matt Schlapp’s decision to move the Conservative Political Action Conference from Washington, D.C. to Orlando, Fla. was brilliant. No one knew how good this decision would ultimately be for the conservative movement.
Washington is the heart of the swamp. Its news media is toxic and focused only on propaganda. The lobbying firms, bureaucracies, and the social life are all dominated by Democrats.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to discuss the Democrats cancel culture, the bogus stimulus package, and Trump’s resurgence as leader of the Republican Party.
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Mainstream voters in both parties feel that neither major party represents them, and that their opinions and wishes hold little sway over government policy.
Establishment Republicans failed the average American by becoming captive to extreme Libertarian ideology that is divorced from the reality of most people’s lives.
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Ever since Ronald Reagan’s 70’s and 80’s campaigns we’ve heard a lot about “Reagan Democrats”. More recently, with the rapid rise of the inimitable Donald J. Trump, the term“Trump Democrats” has also been a common refrain, even among charter members of the establishment media.
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Listen online at iHeart Radio. Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed former Trump national security advisor and author KT McFarland to the newsmakers line to talk about the Trump Revolution and her new book Revolution: Trump, Washington, and ‘We the People’.
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For years we have heard from Democrats about the obligation of Republicans to “stand up to Trump.” These lamentations have taken on new ferver since the GOP denied Democrats their latest wish, by voting to acquit Donald Trump of inciting “insurrection.”
Democrats tell us this acquittal was merely the latest attack on democracy by the Republican Party which, we are to believe, has totally devolved into QAnon-inspired “domestic extremism.”
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Former President Donald Trump issued a scathing statement on Tuesday in which he excoriated Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political ‘leaders’ like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm,” Trump said in the fiery statement. “McConnell’s dedication to business as usual, status quo policies, together with his lack of political insight, wisdom, skill, and personality, has rapidly driven him from Majority Leader to Minority Leader, and it will only get worse. The Democrats and Chuck Schumer play McConnell like a fiddle—they’ve never had it so good—and they want to keep it that way! We know our America First agenda is a winner, not McConnell’s Beltway First agenda or Biden’s America Last.”
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In what CNN’s Chris Cillizza accurately described as a “gut punch” to the GOP’s Trumpian faction, the House Republican Conference decided against removing Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) for her vote to impeach former President Donald Trump. Republicans voted 145-61 on a secret ballot in Cheney’s favor.
Cillizza zeroed in on Florida Republican Matt Gaetz, an ardent defender of the former president. “Make no mistake,” he wrote, “Gaetz, Trump, and the rest of that crowd wanted to make an example of Cheney. They, rightly, viewed her impeachment vote—and the ensuing controversy—as the first major battle for control of the post-Trump Republican Party.” He also notes that “Trump had released a poll last month purporting to show Cheney in trouble in Wyoming for her impeachment vote.” And according to The Dispatch’s Stephen Hayes, Trump was “calling R House members to encourage them to sack Cheney.”
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to weigh in on how the Sedition Act of 1798 compares to the censorship in the mainstream media today against the so-called right.
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Various leftwing writers (some of them nominally Republican) have been salivating over the prospects of a GOP civil war.
Nothing would make them happier than the Republicans tearing themselves apart in a fight over President Donald Trump and the future of the GOP.
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Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who currently holds what I suppose we now call the Office of the Outgoing Senate Majority Leader, has to go. He’s a man unsuited for the times. The results prove it.
It is McConnell who has been the architect of Republican defeat in the Senate. Heading into the 2016 election, there were 54 Republican senators. After the election there were 52. Then, in 2018, McConnell backed the disastrous candidacy of Martha McSally for an open seat in Arizona. It was McConnell who picked her and crowded out other viable candidates. That year McSally lost by 2.4 percentage points to Kyrsten Sinema while, at the same time, Republican Doug Ducey cruised to a nearly 15-point win as Arizona’s governor.
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ow that Democrats are poised to control the White House, Senate and House, the traditional game of finger-pointing and recrimination will begin inside the GOP.
The first instinct for politicians will be to assign blame, call names and jockey for position. But the 2020 election wasn’t just an election, it was a political watershed in which the rules and strategy for winning were rewritten.
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Carrie Delrosso, a Republican, won her campaign in Pennsylvania’s 33rd House District by defeating House Minority Leader Frank Dermody, a Democrat, to capture the seat.
In Ohio’s 75th House District, Gail Pavliga won her election, flipping the seat to the GOP after running a campaign on solving the opioid crisis in the district.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Senior Political Columnist for The Epoch Times Roger Simon in studio to discuss the weak and lack of Republican leadership in Georgia.
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In his splendid little book American Exceptionalism, Charles Murray reminds us it was foreigners who took the lead in claiming Americans are different:
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to weigh in on the ongoing Upstate New York House race and how the Republican Party will be very different.
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President Donald Trump did not ask Michigan Republican lawmakers to “break the law” or “interfere” with the election during a meeting at the White House, a legislative leader said Sunday, a day before canvassers plan to meet about whether to certify Joe Biden’s 154,000-vote victory in the battleground state.
House Speaker Lee Chatfield was among seven GOP legislators who met with Trump for about an hour on Friday, amid his longshot efforts to block Biden’s win.
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We knew we would win and that the Democrats would attempt to steal the election by large-scale voter fraud. President Trump foresaw this danger and began fundraising and hiring a team of litigators months ago, preparing for a legal battle royale. I spent almost an hour on the phone with the head of the GOP litigation team this fall—the Trump team had already raised a huge war chest, and were positioning themselves legally for victory by pre-emptive strikes in the courts.
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If you are a conservative who has been waking up angry, upset, and frustrated with your representation in Congress in the week since the presidential election, you are not alone.
Many of us are wondering why the Republican Party seems to have been reactive and defensive rather than aggressive in support of President Trump and the America First agenda.
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The masses turned in for the night during the early hours on Wednesday with President Donald Trump ahead of Democratic candidate Joe Biden by around 5 points. By sunrise, Biden had gained nearly 139,000 votes due to an alleged data error.
As Wednesday morning’s counts added to the early morning influx of votes, the race had slimmed down to less than one percentage point – a slightly larger margin than Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
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Tuesday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host John Fredericks welcomed Founder and President of Legacy Republicans Alliance Corrin Rankin to the show to discuss the increase of Black voters moving to the Republican Party.
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Gov. Bill Lee signed an executive order Friday granting the mayors of 89 counties the authority to issue local face mask mandates.
Six Tennessee counties – Sullivan, Knox, Hamilton, Davidson, Madison, and Shelby – have local health departments, and therefore already have the authority to issue mask requirements as needed, Lee’s office explained.
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In his famous Gettysburg Address, President Abraham Lincoln reminded us that we live in a country founded on the proposition that we are all created equal. Although our nation has made remarkable strides since that 1863 speech and we remain the envy of the world, the party of Lincoln still remains less diverse than it did during reconstruction – the period immediately following the Civil War when we sought to redress the inequities of slavery.
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A new group called Conservative Clergy of Color believes the only “systemic racism” that exists in America today is found in the Democratic Party itself.
“Democrats and their foot soldiers on the left insist there is a rot in our country, but the only rot I see is the rot that has festered in the very foundations of the Democratic Party, a party that was built from the ground up on the backs of oppressed blacks,” said Bishop Aubrey Shines, one of four founding members of the group.
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Minnesota Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan called on Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to resign for their “failed” leadership during last week’s riots.
“Gov. Walz and Mayor Frey have been largely silent, other than a handful of unhelpful tweets and press conferences blaming everyone but themselves. Minneapolis is decimated. Minneapolis is damaged to a level we never could have imagined. The destruction caused this past week will unfortunately live in our memories forever. It’s a dark stain on our state,” Carnahan said in a statement released over the weekend.
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On Wednesday’s Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Michael Patrick Leahy spoke with special guest former Breitbart colleague and Washington journalist Neil McCabe.
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As we contemplate a possible end to the ongoing pandemic shutdown, several questions lie ahead for us.
First – and foremost on everyone’s minds – is when will the lockdown end? And when it ends, what will be left of our economy?
One thing is certain now: The national lockdown is crushing small businesses.
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The Jacksonville Sheriff’s department announced Gregory Timm was arrested after allegedly driving a van into a Republican voter registration tent in a Jacksonville area parking lot.
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A man driving a Chevrolet van plowed through a Republican group’s voter registration tent outside of a Walmart in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday, the local sheriff’s office said.
Florida Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott suggested it was a politically motivated attack.
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Just two months in, former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford announced he suspended his 2020 presidential primary challenge to President Donald Trump. “I am suspending my race for the presidency because impeachment has made my goal of making the debt, deficit and spending issue a part of this presidential debate impossible right now,” Sanford said in a statement posted on Facebook Tuesday. “From Day 1, I was fully aware of how hard it would be to elevate these issues with a sitting president of my own party ignoring them. Impeachment noise has moved what was hard to hurulean [sic] as nearly everything in Republican Party politics is currently viewed through the prism of impeachment.” At his press conference announcing his decision, Sanford noted that “all the oxygen is leaving the room in meaningful debate” and politics has turned into a “red versus blue team.” Sanford emerged as a critic of Trump and his policies when he became president. His campaign focused on returning to “traditional” conservative values and focusing on America’s debt problem. “The purpose of this campaign is to spark a needed conversation as Republicans on what it means to be a Republican, and a larger national debate…
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by Evie Fordham If the last few years in politics have felt disruptive, that’s because they were — and more disruption is on the way, predicted Republican strategist Bruce Mehlman of lobbying firm Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas. Mehlman spoke to The Daily Caller News Foundation this week about the trends he foresees in the decade to follow 2020, an era he is already dubbing “The Roaring 2020s.” “People roar at the world when they don’t feel that they’re being noticed or heard or accommodated,” Mehlman said. “In my mind, the voices of concern will continue to grow louder until everyone is roaring in the 2020s about the changes they think are necessary to make them and their families better dealt into the modern world.” Mehlman pointed out that while the real U.S. GDP has increased 112 percent since the late 1980s, real median family income has climbed less than 19 percent. That leaves many voters feeling left behind, with candidates on both the right and left attempting to capitalize on their attitudes. “That was part of [President] Donald Trump’s populist message, as well as many progressive candidates’ message. … You’re seeing the beginnings of a bumper sticker battle in…
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On Tuesday’s Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Gill and Leahy talked to One America News Networks Neil McCabe about the Democrat’s push of a unified agenda and the lack of a Republican direction. Further on in the discussion, the men touched upon the frustration that voters feel about the Republican candidates who are self-funded and who don’t have any interest in helping the little people as much as they do about getting power and staying in power. Gill: Neil McCabe with One America News is with us this morning as he is each Tuesday to bring us a little insight on the news around the country and around the world. And Neil good to have you back with us. McCabe: Hey, good morning good to be with ya. Gill: When is your brother Andrew going to go to jail by the way? (Laughter) McCabe: You know, I interviewed Robin Gritts who is the FBI sort of whistleblower who Andrew McCabe ran out of the FBI and she told me that you know the guy is behaving like…
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by Julie Kelly Just as the Republican Party is purging itself of hackneyed lawmakers, bitter neoconservative commentators, and insatiable interventionists, along comes Mitt Romney to remind us of what we definitely are not missing. In a late New Year’s Day sermon published in the Washington Post, the incoming senator expressed his disappointment in the president and, by extension, in all of us. It was filled with the sort of juvenile platitudes that at one time mollified Republican voters, but now either amuse or enrage them. “A president should unite us and inspire us to follow ‘our better angels.’ A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse,” the twice-losing presidential candidate warned. “To reassume our leadership in world politics, we must repair failings in our politics at home. It includes political parties promoting policies that strengthen us rather than promote tribalism by exploiting fear and resentment.” Romney then proceeded—oddly—to lament Trump’s unpopularity in the world (sorry to disappoint you, Sweden!) and called for a unified Europe. We must defend the press and labor unions, Romney insisted, despite their failings. And he essentially called Trump a racist, sexist, immigrant-hater. Real original. The reaction…
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Both Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN-03) and Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN-02) voted for Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-12) as the next speaker of the house Thursday in one of their first official acts as members of Congress. Craig and Phillips both indicated on the campaign trail that they would like to see new leadership in the Democratic Party, but started to show signs of supporting Pelosi shortly after their respective election wins. Phillips was much more vocal on the issue, and in one interview stated “no” in response to questions from KSTP’s Tom Hauser on whether or not he would back Pelosi. He, like many freshmen members of Congress, said he would like to see “a new generation of leadership,” while Craig said she’d like for more members from the Midwest to move into leadership roles. But both of them skipped out on opportunities to oppose Pelosi, and Craig even spoke in favor of electing Pelosi during a November Democratic Caucus vote. After that vote, Phillips declined to answer questions from reporters on where he stood, as The Minnesota Sun reported. Both of them also neglected to sign their names to a letter issued by 16 Democrats in November calling for “new…
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by Richard A Viguerie George H. W. Bush’s relationship with conservatives may be best illustrated by his response to a CBS television interview Howard Phillips and I had with Dan Rather at the 1984 Republican National Convention. We pounded Bush for his lack of commitment to conservative principles and what we saw as his “inside the White House” fifth column against Reaganism. The following evening, Rather interviewed Bush and said in so many words, “Mr. Vice President, last night I had Richard Viguerie and Howard Phillips on the show, and they say you’re not a conservative. Mr. Vice President, are you a conservative?” Bush replied, “Yes, Dan, I’m a conservative, but I’m not a nut about it.” I’m proud to say that I was then and am now a “nut” about liberty. It was later shown that what George H. W. Bush was a nut about was growing government, and driving all conservatives out of the White House, the executive branch of the federal government, and the Republican Party. Mr. Bush’s lengthy resume was accumulated largely by being selected for posts by his establishment friends and those with whom he allied himself – he was never an agent of conservative…
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