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House and Senate Republican leaders told President Barack Obama Thursday that they will refuse to nominate candidates to serve on an advisory board that is to play a role in holding down Medicare costs under the new health care act.

Chris Nogy wrote that legislators should realize they could be shot if they step out of line or at least be targeted politically.

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Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush won’t confirm he’s a candidate for the next presidential race, but he sounded like a White House hopeful Monday, declaring his party in need of leadership.

For the first time since losing the White House to President Obama, Mitt Romney sat down for a TV interview that airs on Sunday. "We were on a roller coaster, exciting and thrilling, ups and downs," Romney told Fox News, in an excerpt released Thursday night. "And then you get off. And it's not like, oh, can't we be on a roller coaster the rest of our life? It's like, no, the ride's over."

California's elected Republicans have long had a simple approach to illegal immigration: Those who broke the law coming here should leave. But the confluence of politics and personal threat have now put many Republican legislators in Washington and Sacramento in a very different place: eager to embrace an overhaul of immigration laws and willing to consider legal status for some of the country's nearly 12 million illegal immigrants, 3 million of whom live in California.

The most popular Republican governor in the United States has not been invited to the country's most important gathering for conservative activists, a source familiar with the situation said on Tuesday.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Saturday that there's a chance Republicans will filibuster former Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel's nomination as secretary of defense. "Sen. Hagel did not do a very good job before the Armed Services committee," McConnell said. "I think the opposition to him is intensifying. Whether that means he will end up having to achieve 60 votes or 51 is not clear yet." McConnell did not say how he planned to vote.

George W. Bush was president of the United States less than five years ago. You'd never know it by listening to Republican politicians or talking with GOP party strategists -- all of whom seem perfectly willing to simply erase Bush from their collective memory. (It's a sort of political version of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.")

When Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) announced Saturday that he wouldn’t seek a sixth term, Republicans rejoiced at the possibility of picking up the seat in 2014. But, that joy soon gave way to political reality — the likelihood of a primary between conservative, tea-party-aligned Rep. Steve King and a more establishment GOP figure such as Rep. Tom Latham or Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds. And, just in case Republicans thought they might avoid that sort of primary fight, King released this statement Saturday night: “Iowans now have a real opportunity to elect a true Constitutional conservative.” (In case you were wondering, he is referring to himself.)

The budget battles rocking the capital have exposed a deepening fault line within an already fractured Republican Party: the divide between the GOP's solid Southern base and the rest of the country.