North Suburban Republican Forum

Scottsdale, Arizona (CNN) – Tapping into the online social networks of voters is a top priority for the digital strategists working for President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney – and no site offers a larger trove of personal data than Facebook.

Now the Republican National Committee is getting into the social media game.

The party organization, which has the mammoth task of turning out Republican voters in every battleground state this November, is preparing to launch a new Facebook tool that lets users share news, talking points and the latest updates about the presidential campaign with their friends.

But the “GOP Social Victory Center,” which has been in development for almost a year and will be released next week, lets Republicans go far beyond just clicking “like” on a story about Joe Biden’s most recent gaffe or the latest veepstakes chatter.

Republicans using the application will be able do the work usually reserved for campaign offices simply by logging into Facebook from their personal computers, party officials told CNN in a briefing about the new technology at this week’s RNC meeting in Arizona. Read the rest of this entry »

Krauthammer: Free-lunch egalitarianism By Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post Boulder Daily Camera Posted:

DailyCamera.com

Here we go again.

At the beginning of his presidency, Barack Obama argued that the country’s spiraling debt was largely the result of exploding health care costs. That was true. He then said the cure for these exploding costs would be his health care reform. That was not true.

It was obvious at the time that it could never be true. If government gives health insurance to 33 million uninsured, that costs. Costs a lot. There’s no free lunch.

Now we know. The Congressional Budget Office’s latest estimate is that Obamacare will add $1.76 trillion in federal expenditures through 2022. And, as one of the Medicare trustees has just made clear, if you don’t double count the $575 billion set aside for the Medicare trust fund, Obamacare adds to the already crushing national debt.

Three years later, we are back to smoke and mirrors. This time it’s not health care but the Buffett Rule, which would impose a minimum 30 percent effective tax rate on millionaires. Here is how Obama introduced it last September:

“Warren Buffett’s secretary shouldn’t pay a (higher) tax rate than Warren Buffett. … And that basic principle of fairness, if applied to our tax code, could raise enough money” to “stabilize our debt and deficits for the next decade. … This is not politics; this is math.”

OK. Let’s do the math. Read the rest of this entry »

PHOENIX—An appeals court upheld a requirement in a 2004 Arizona law that voters show identification before they can cast ballots, saying that there wasn’t evidence that the mandate disproportionately affected Latinos as the challengers had alleged.

Does President Obama have the foggiest idea how jobs are created in America? There’s not much evidence he does, beyond lip service to the helpfulness of the private sector.

When the president begins a speech these days with praise for free markets, look out! What comes next are proposals for more government intervention in the economy and higher taxes. That’s the recipe, Obama says, to “encourage our long-term economic growth and stabilize our budget.”

He said so in his Republicans-are-Social-Darwinists speech in Washington two weeks ago to newspaper editors. Near the outset, Obama declared: “I know that the true engine of job creation in this country is the private sector, not Washington, which is why I’ve cut taxes for small-business owners 17 times over the last three years.”

Those cuts have had minimal effect, and not surprisingly. They were tiny and temporary, and few small-business owners bothered to claim them, if indeed they were eligible to do so. Meanwhile, the president has persistently sought to raise their income taxes. Read the rest of this entry »

By Tim Hoover The Denver Post The Denver Post Posted:

DenverPost.com

A bill to reduce tuition costs for illegal immigrants in Colorado has been assigned to the state House Education Committee, whose Republican chairman, state Rep. Tom Massey, has said he would support the bill this year.

But it’s not clear if Senate Bill 15 will ever make it to the GOP-led House floor, where Massey, R-Poncha Springs, could cast the critical swing vote to pass the bill. While Massey’s vote could help the bill clear the Education Committee, the legislation is set to make at least one other stop — the House Appropriations Committee.

House Speaker Frank McNulty’s assignment of the bill came the same day proponents launched an all-out offensive from businesses, clergy and key Republicans who back the bill

By Allison Sherry The Denver Post The Denver Post Posted:

DenverPost.com

WASHINGTON — The richest and largest Republican super PAC has begun a barrage of radio, TV and social-media ads in Colorado — during what is normally a quiet political season — in an effort to cement messages about health care reform, the economy, the price of gas and taxes.

The group’s target: wandering, undecided voters.

American Crossroads has already spent more than $1.1 million in Colorado and plans an aggressive campaign — both through advocacy on issues and through sharpened attacks on President Barack Obama — in six to 10 swing states between now and November’s election.

Don’t expect talking points on contraception and abortion, though. Read the rest of this entry »