"Want to know if Republicans finally back immigration reform, stand a chance of picking up Senate seats in the midterms, or get their act together by 2016? Instead of the GOP, watch the Rubio-Paul Party. 

"Forget John Boehner. Ignore Karl Rove. The real action in the GOP is coming from the newest wing of the party, the one born in the spring of 2009 - the offspring of Tea Party activists that almost single-handedly propelled Republicans to control of the House. 

"This new movement brought Marco Rubio and Rand Paul to Washington – and made them the two most potent forces in GOP politics today. It also brought Chris Christie to New Jersey and Scott Walker to Wisconsin – and made them two of the most potent forces for 2016."

"Advice to the RNC: Don’t 're-brand.' Fight.

"That’s it. Fight. Fight them on every front, fight them in every state, fight them on television and in print and on the airwaves. Confront them at every opportunity, seek out and embrace conflict, and fear not bullies like Chuck Schumer (the living embodiment of the Lefty Sneer), Dick Durbin, and passive-aggressive corruptocrats like Harry Reid. Don’t make nice with them, don’t play fair with them, don’t reach across the aisle and above all, treat them and their ideas with exactly the same amount of respect with which they treat yours: none. Contempt is the only language they understand. ...

"[...] Get in their face, harass them, worry them, give them not a moment’s peace or respite. Come at them constantly, in shifts and in waves. Never back down. But act like it’s fun while you’re doing it — that’s what being a 'happy warrior' means.
 
"You may lose, you may win. But at least fight."

"Our military destroyed Saddam's regime in three weeks with few casualties, effectively eliminating the threat the administration most feared. But we then blundered into an occupation that vastly raised the price of the insurance the war was intended to secure. 

"Those who argued that we should stand up an Iraqi interim government immediately after Baghdad fell were dismayed when the administration decided instead to send thousands of Americans to Iraq to run a country about which we knew little. We were asking for trouble and we got it. After four months of occupation a ruthless, bloody insurgency was launched that lasted for years and killed thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. 

"The decision to remove Saddam was right. The decision to occupy Iraq was not. The failure to see the difference is to substitute hindsight for insight."

"If there was any villain at the just-completed Conservative Political Action Conference, it was the generic figure of the Republican political consultant.  Overpaid, unprincipled, always on the lookout for the next client — or easy mark — the consultants, to listen to a number of CPAC speakers, have helped bring the Republican Party to its current low state. ... 

"So yes, Republicans should look at the way they run their campaigns, and who they hire to do the work.  But in the long run, winning candidates win and losers lose, regardless of who the consultant is.  A good candidate has deeply-felt beliefs that guide how he runs — and how he chooses and uses campaign help.  At the moment, the Republican Party has far, far bigger problems than its consultant class."

"George W. Bush was excoriated for waterboarding exactly three terrorists, all of whom are now enjoying an extensive retirement on a sunny Caribbean island (though strolls beyond Gitmo’s gates are prohibited). Whereas President Obama, with thousands of kills to his name, evokes little protest from yesterday’s touch-not-a-hair-on-their-head zealots. Of whom, of course, Sen. Obama was a leading propagandist. 

"Such hypocrisy is the homage Democrats pay to Republicans when the former take office, confront national security reality, feel the weight of their duty to protect the nation — and end up doing almost everything they had denounced their predecessors for doing. The beauty of such hypocrisy, however, is that the rotation of power creates a natural bipartisan consensus on the proper conduct of this war."

"The 10-year budget plan drafted by Senate Democrats includes a $1.5 trillion tax-hike, according to GOP staffers who combed through the long document as soon as it was released. 
 
"The 'budget would raise taxes on Americans by $1.5 trillion to pay for increased spending … on top of the $1.7 trillion in tax increases already signed into law during the Obama administration,' said a statement from Sen. John Thune, the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. ... 

"President Barack Obama quickly endorsed the plan ..."

"The political class seems to be scandalized that Paul Ryan had the cheek Tuesday to propose another reform budget. Doesn't the House Budget Chairman understand that the 2012 election settled every political question in President Obama's favor? 

"Er, no. The federal fisc is still a shambles — despite the tax increase on millionaires and billionaires that Mr. Obama said would solve everything and despite the modest sequester spending cuts he says are too painful to abide. Thus Mr. Ryan's proposal for fiscal 2014 is still an important document, even if it has no chance of becoming law this year, because it reaches for that elusive thing in Washington — realistic solutions to the country's problems."

"Bootleggers can stand down: Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling took the fizz out of Mayor Bloomberg’s prohibition on sweetened beverages in containers larger than 16 ounces yesterday — just hours before the ban was to kick in. 

"And here we had visions of a new black market, served by canvas-covered convoys crossing the Mexican border smuggling caseloads of two-liter Coke. Or perhaps the terror group Hezbollah would capitalize on it, possibly via Indian reservations, as it’s been accused of doing with high-taxed smokes.

"OK, maybe a black market for large sodas might not have been necessary in New York. That’s because, as Tingling noted, the ban itself created enough loopholes to defeat its own purpose. Which is partly why he struck it down."

"If there’s one issue that Democrats worry could become sticky in 2014 races, it’s gun control. While party strategists believe that the president’s forceful advocacy of immigration reform and gay marriage tracks with shifts in public opinion, opposition to new restrictions on guns is palpable in many conservative pockets of the country. 

"'In some of those conservative to moderate districts, the gun debate is a real challenge for Democratic candidates,' said Andrew Myers, a Democratic pollster who advises many candidates in conservative states. 

"More broadly, some Democrats worry that Obama’s liberal tack will have the effect of reinvigorating Republican voters at a time when the GOP is still trying to lift itself off the mat from the disastrous 2012 election."

"In all the noise caused by the Obama administration's direct assault on the right of every person to keep and bear arms, the essence of the issue has been drowned out. The president and his big-government colleagues want you to believe that only the government can keep you free and safe, so to them, the essence of this debate is about obedience to law. 

"To those who have killed innocents among us, obedience to law is the last of their thoughts. And to those who believe that the Constitution means what it says, the essence of this debate is not about the law; it is about personal liberty in a free society. It is the exercise of this particular personal liberty -- the freedom to defend yourself when the police cannot or will not and the freedom to use weapons to repel tyrants if they take over the government -- that the big-government crowd fears the most."