Mediaboss Marketing

Two retiring veteran Republican politicians are creating a potential conservative shift in the states 2014 election.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Petri, 73, who has served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1979, announced he wont seek re-election. His decision came after Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, the assistant State Senate majority leader, said hed challenge Petri and seek the GOP nomination for the seat.

State Senate President Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, 73, announced he wont seek re-election after serving 44 years in the Legislature. His decision came after a conservative group released an audio clip of Ellis talking in a bar about a campaign tactic that apparently would violate campaign finance law.

Both men are regarded as moderates. Ellis was a champion of campaign finance reform, a topic which attracted little Republican support in recent decades. He also has an independent streak as a legislator who wouldnt roll over for caucus positions until his questions were answered.

Petri won his congressional seat in a special election in 1979 following the death of U.S. Rep. William Steiger. After his election, Petri made a reputation as a moderate in Washington, a diminishing breed in the current Republican Party. Indeed, he was too moderate for Republicans who passed over his seniority in 2000 to select more conservative lawmakers for key committee chairmanships.

After that happened, Petri complained about a purge of moderates from GOP leadership roles. Conservatives have stepped up that effort in primary elections across the country since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives.

Petris decision will certainly trigger a hotly-contested primary this summer. Ambitious politicians get few real opportunities to be elected to the Congress. Grothman is in the middle of a four-year term in the State Senate. Hell have his State Senate seat even if he isnt elected to the Congress.

Ellis was caught on a secret recording at a downtown Madison bar frequented by politicians and lobbyists. Ellis who often is full of verbal bluster said he was putting together my own Super PAC in an effort to win re-election. The senator was facing his first serious challenge in many years in November.

Ellis is the second moderate Republican state senator who decided against seeking another term. Earlier, State Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, announced hes retiring after the current term. He has served in the Legislature since 1983.

Schultz, 60, also was facing a conservative opponent this fall. Schultz had drawn the ire of Republicans for opposing Gov. Scott Walkers plan to dismantle public employee unions. He was the only senator to oppose Walker although Ellis had privately challenged the Walker administrations anti-union efforts.

View post:
Republican moves

Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., Gov. Paul LePage, R-Maine, and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. Reuters and BDN file photos.

Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey will come up to Maine for a reception with our own GOP governor, Paul LePage, and his wife, Ann, on May 7 in Portland.

The announcement was made in a fundraising email to supporters from The Committee to Re-Elect Paul LePage. Today is the last day of the current campaign finance reporting period, and the notice about Christies stop inMaines largest city is an attempt to get one last donation rally before the books on Q1 close at midnight.

Tickets for the event cost between $150 (general reception for an individual) and $1,500 (VIP reception for a couple).

Christies May 11 stop will be the second visit from a high-profile 2016 presidential hopeful in less thantwo weeks. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., will speak at theRepublican State Convention on Saturday.

Paul and Christie offer two different flavors of Republican candidate; Paulis a Tea Party darling of the libertarian, free-market crowd, while Christieis a more-or-less moderate conservative from a reliably Democratic state (he even approved Medicaid expansion).

LePage will share astage with both men, though its likely for the best that its not on the same night: Christie and Paul have traded several barbs in the past year as both have angled for the soul of the party leading up to 2016s presidential election.

Paul has said Christie is a conservative only if you have a very loose definition and essentially called the New Jersey governor a bully in the wake of the Bridgegate scandal.

Last year, Christiecalled Pauls brand of libertarianism dangerous for its opposition to using a broad surveillance regime to ferret out and prevent terrorism. He cast the entire libertarian school of thought as one for those interested only in intellectual debates, not pragmatic policymaking.

Both high-profile Republicans could giveLePage a boost in hisgubernatorial campaign against Democratic U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud and independent businessman Eliot Cutler. Most polls have indicated a close race between the two partisan nominees.

Follow this link:
Chris Christie and Rand Paul are not friends, but theyll both share a stage with LePage

Republican governor blocks efforts to raise minimum wage
Oklahoma #39;s Republican governor has signed a bill banning cities and counties from setting their own minimum wage standards. Rep. Eric Proctor joins Tamron Ha...

By: TheOneSlayerKing

See the article here:
Republican governor blocks efforts to raise minimum wage - Video

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

See more here:
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."

Go here to see the original:
Republican Activists Push Party on Gay Marriage