Papantonio: Cowboy Bundy -- The New Face of the Republican Party
Ring of Fire #39;s Mike Papantonio appears on MSNBC #39;s The Ed Show to discuss how Cliven Bundy -- the man behind the outrageous armed ranch standoff in Nevada -- ...
By: Ring of Fire Radio
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Papantonio: Cowboy Bundy -- The New Face of the Republican Party - Video
As bans against gay marriage crumble and public opinion on the issue shifts rapidly, some Republicans are pushing the party to drop its opposition to same-sex unions, part of a broader campaign to get the GOP to appeal to younger voters by de-emphasizing social issues.
This month, the Nevada Republican party dropped statements on marriage from its party platform, making it the second state party in the nation to do so after Indiana's GOP quietly jettisoned its plank in 2012. A gay-rights group last week launched a $1 million campaign to get the national party to remove from its platform a definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, while a group of major Republican donors is pushing for the GOP to become more supportive of gay rights across the board.
"There are people with sincerely held beliefs on both sides of the marriage issue, and that seems to be where the party is heading," said Jeff Cook-McCormac, an adviser to the American Unity Fund, which has been financed by wealthy donors such as hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer to push the GOP to back gay rights. "The Republican Party in Nevada is doing something that I think we're going to see a lot more of, which is appealing to the things that unite Republican voters across the country bread and butter issues."
But social conservatives warn that if the GOP abandons its core moral principles, it may also lose loyal voters.
"It is very much a mistake for the GOP to step away from marriage. The rank-and-file Republicans, mainstream Republicans, very much believe marriage is between a man and a woman," said Chris Plante, spokesman for the National Organization for Marriage. "For the GOP to give in to elites, to promises of money, and to progressives within the party is the wrong thing. It's bad politics. Marriage is a winning issue."
The greatest test will come in Nevada, a swing state where the state party also dropped its opposition to abortion during its biannual convention on April 12. The push arose from Clark County, home to libertine Las Vegas and three-quarters of the state's population.
"Younger people believe they're getting screwed by the Democrats on fiscal issues, and screwed by Republicans on social issues," said Nick Phillips, the Clark County party's political director. "Take that away, and you've got a party you can get behind."
The state has no organized bloc of socially conservative voters. The state's Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, supports abortion rights, recently decided to drop the state's defense of a lawsuit challenging its gay-marriage ban, and is so popular that no significant Democrat is challenging him for re-election this year. But there is still some bitterness over the platform within the party, which has been riven for years by infighting among rival conservative factions.
"If they come up with a totally neutered, watered-down platform that stands for nothing, they're going to disgust the base," said Ira Hansen, a Republican Nevada assemblyman. "They alienate them and humiliate them and then expect them to vote."
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Republican Activists Push Party on Gay Marriage
BOSTON Three political action committees that state investigators said were under the direction of a top Massachusetts Republican official have agreed to pay $17,500 after making excess campaign contributions.
The Office of Campaign and Political Finance said Tuesday that Chanel Prunier, elected Republican National Committeewoman for Massachusetts last year, effectively controlled the three PACs.
Prunier said she doesn't agree with that interpretation.
The PACs include Prunier's Massachusetts Republican Municipal Coalition PAC and two others the Massachusetts Independent PAC for Working Families and the Catholic Citizenship PAC. According to a Republican Party website, Prunier founded the Massachusetts Republican Municipal PAC in 2005 to support candidates for local office and build the Republican farm team.
State campaign regulators said that while the three PACs were organized by three individuals, they operated as "affiliated committees" under the direction of Prunier. Campaign finance laws prohibit affiliated PACs, which are defined as two or more PACs that are "established, financed, maintained or controlled" by a single individual.
Investigators said they found 25 instances during 2012 in which an individual candidate received contributions from two or three of the PACs that exceeded the $500 donation limit.
In total, the PACs made about $24,000 in excess contributions, according to investigators.
The campaign finance office also concluded that Prunier had "significant influence" in determining which candidates the PACs would support and "drafted or provided input into fundraising letters" for the three PACs. There were also instances in which contributions to individual candidates were made on the same day and in the same amount by more than one of the PACs, the office said.
Prunier said she doesn't agree that all three PACs were under her direction, but decided it was better to pay the fine and move on rather than wage what could have been a costly fight.
"In general I disagree with the OCPF interpretation of the regulation," she said in a telephone interview. "The PACs were definitely not controlled by any one person. In some cases my political action committee supported a different candidate than the other PACs."
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Republican official cited for excess contributions
DAVIDSON Greg Brannon repeatedly challenged House Speaker Thom Tillis conservative credentials Tuesday while Tillis saved his punches for Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan in the first debate of the Republican U.S. Senate primary.
The two Republicans dominated the debate with their back-and-forth as Mark Harris and Heather Grant sought to remain largely above the fray.
The debate before a live television audience and more than 600 people at Davidson College received national attention. It came two days before the start of early voting and two weeks before the May 6 primary.
It gave the highest profile yet to a race where no candidate has emerged as dominant and one largely defined by millions of dollars in outside super-PAC spending.
Tillis is favored by the Republican establishment, endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, but polls show him short of the 40 percent necessary to avoid a July 15 runoff. The numbers suggest Brannon and Harris could be competing for second place and a runoff against Tillis.
Despite the need to differentiate themselves, the four candidates found more common ground. All oppose the Affordable Care Act. All oppose medical marijuana. All want to eliminate federal agencies. All believe Russia is the biggest foreign policy threat. And all believe climate change is not a fact.
The debate represented the first time all four leading candidates traded jousts and showcased the ideological battle within the race and the broader Republican Party. Brannon cited the Constitution at least 15 times in the first dozen questions, while Tillis advocated a practical conservatism that encouraged bipartisan cooperation.
Brannon used the first question on immigration to paint Tillis as weak and followed with two more attacks on Obamacare and Common Core education standards, a pattern that persisted through the hourlong debate.
This is a distinction between Thom and I, he said repeatedly.
An emerging issue in the race that didnt get mentioned: the 2012 departure of two top Tillis legislative staffers after they admitted affairs with lobbyists an issue Democrats and Republicans are using to question the speakers ethics. At the time Tillis said they resigned and gave them taxpayer-funded severance packages worth nearly $20,000.
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Republican Senate candidates pledge to close federal departments
Loyalists involved in many Racist attacks in NI
Police figures show that there has been a huge rise in the number of racist attacks in the past 12 months and loyalist paramilitaries are thought to be behin...
By: Protestant Irish Republican
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Loyalists involved in many Racist attacks in NI - Video