Jim DeMint’s coming out party as head of the Heritage Foundation is not going very well. The conservative think tank’s immigration report – which labels the cost of immigration reform at $6.3 trillion and was co-authored by a white supremacist – has caused a backlash against the group from prominent Republican lawmakers and party donors. [...]

This is probably another vote in the Senate for the hard-right conservative movement that DeMint fostered. Scott was DeMint’s choice for his replacement.

Fiscal slope talks have basically stalled out, but leader in the conservative movement Jim DeMint cried uncle this morning, affirming that the President will get higher taxes, though he exaggerated it to mean higher taxes on everyone, not just on those earning over $250,000. “He’s going to get his wish,” DeMint said. “I believe we’re [...]

Jim DeMint, a leader of the conservative faction in the Senate, is moving on to a place of higher significance: a Washington think tank. DeMint, a staunch conservative who often clashes with party leadership, was reelected to a second term in 2010. He will depart before the new Congress is sworn in next month. “I’ve [...]

Here comes the calvary. I mentioned this morning that Todd Akin passed the deadline to take his name off the ballot in the Missouri Senate race. Claire McCaskill’s campaign immediately responded with a hard-hitting ad bringing up the “legitimate rape” comments, which they had held off from using previously, before Akin’s place on the ballot [...]

Yesterday was the final day that Todd Akin could take himself off the Missouri Senate ballot. But I think the national Republicans who desperately wanted this to happen gave up on the idea long ago. Clearly Akin marches to his own beat, and wouldn’t be swayed even by the cutoff of funds. Some conservative movement [...]

I’ve been on quite a few listservs in my career, including ones that were supposed to wield supreme influence. But I can assure you that I’ve never been involved with any listserv as effective as this. Basically, within 30 minutes of a story in Politico about how House Republicans may try to reinstate parts of [...]

It looks like Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans have backed down on their obstruction of judicial confirmations. But it’s a little unclear at the moment. What we know is that McConnell and Harry Reid reached a deal that will allow the judges to get a vote. However, the JOBS Act, the financial market IPO deregulation [...]

We heard that Harry Reid would make a last stand to deal with the crisis in the federal judiciary, and now we’re getting it. Today, Reid announced he would spend the next two weeks seeking to confirm 17 federal judges who received unanimous or near-unanimous votes out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Reid will file [...]

The White House offered a brief riposte to John Boehner’s two-stage plan to raise the debt limit and cut the deficit. Here it is in its entirety: STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICY S. 627 – Budget Control Act of 2011 The Administration strongly opposes House passage of the amendment in the nature of a substitute to [...]

Putting aside Barack Obama for a second, where are the Republicans on the debt limit talks right now? We know Mitch McConnell’s position, essentially a surrender. But with the spending cuts and commission processes tacked onto it, it starts to look like a surrender in the other direction. No matter, though: Jim DeMint will work [...]