South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint is leaving Congress to head the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The Tea Party-backed senator announced the move Thursday, saying he will step down from the Senate in January to become president of The Heritage Foundation think tank.

"I'm leaving the Senate now, but I'm not leaving the fight. I've decided to join The Heritage Foundation at a time when the conservative movement needs strong leadership in the battle of ideas," he said in a statement. "No organization is better equipped to lead this fight and I believe my experience in public office as well as in the private sector as a business owner will help Heritage become even more effective in the years to come."

DeMint has been an outspoken voice in the Senate for its most conservative wing, most recently chiding House Republican leaders for offering to put revenue on the table as part of negotiations over the looming fiscal crisis...

Sources close to the Gingrich campaign say preliminary "what-if" conversations are underway that could lead to a Gingrich-Perry ticket being announced prior to the Republican National Convention at the end of August.

Gingrich insiders hope forming a predetermined ticket with Perry will unite the evangelical, Tea Party and very conservative voters that make up the core of the GOP.

As discussions got underway, a spokesman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry released a statement saying, "Gov. Perry thinks Newt Gingrich is the strongest conservative to debate and defeat President Obama and truly overhaul Washington. The speculation is humbling but premature."

Floating Perry as a runningmate two days before Alabama and Mississippi could energize conservatives or turn them off.

A senior aide to Rick Santorum called it a desperate hail mary to create buzz ahead of contests in Alabama and Mississippi Tuesday...

Pledging to run a "national campaign" and denying he faces a do-or-die "Alamo" moment in Texas -- whose April 3 primary will award 155 delegates -- Newt Gingrich accused newly minted frontrunner Rick Santorum of being a "Big Labor Republican" who has attacked the Tea Party and amassed a voting record conservatives will find "dubious."

In an impromptu interview at the Fox News Washington bureau, the former House speaker claimed Santorum's clean sweep of this week's nominating contests in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri shows that the Republican presidential primary is a "wide open race" he can still win. Asked if Santorum's ascendancy deprives Gingrich's own candidacy of oxygen, Gingrich maintained that he appeals to a wider and deeper constituency in the GOP electorate.

"Among Tea Party members, I have a much stronger following than Rick does.

(CNSNews.com) – Conservative leaders challenged congressional Republicans to continue to hold the line against tax increases and urged them to further cut federal spending. They also congratulated the GOP for opposing Democratic proposals to raise taxes in the failed congressional supercommittee.

“Today we applaud the Republicans on the supercommittee for not caving in to any disastrous taxes,” said ForAmerica Chairman L. Brent Bozell III at a Washington, D.C. news conference on Tuesday. “We applaud grassroots conservatives and the Tea Party members who made it clear to Republicans in Congress that raising taxes is absolutely unacceptable.”

Congressional liberals killed any meaningful debt reduction because they were unwilling to admit that spending is the problem.

Capitol Hill Republicans say the GOP members of a deficit "Super Committee" are showing flexibility on revenue hikes as the panel heads closer to its Thanksgiving deadline.

GOP aides said Tuesday that among the options floated by Republicans is one that would place limits on the total amount of tax deductions and credits that individuals could claim, in exchange for lower income tax rates. The tradeoff could net hundreds of billions of dollars for the Treasury over the coming decade.

The idea, discussed by Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Pat Toomey in talks with Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, is but one of many options on the table.

America's ever-growing debt crisis is in the trillions -- more than $14 trillion, give or take a few billion.

That's a lot of zeros, numbers so large they're sure to make Americans numb when trying to get their arms around what it means to them.

But what would the federal debt crisis look like if you set it up as a household budget?

A heck of a lot simpler, according to new figures from one Tea Party group, which estimates the government "household" spends nearly twice as much as it takes in every year, has a credit card bill nearly seven times annual income and cuts back less than 2 percent of that spending in an effort to control the debt.

The Judge explains how we got to the point of a government so large its fiscal woes threaten it with a shutdown if it can’t borrow more.

"We had discussed about how any citizen needs to understand what the proposed cuts mean," said Laurie Newsom, president of the Gainesville, Fla., Tea Party.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a rebuke to GOP leaders, the House on Wednesday rejected a measure providing $3.7 billion for disaster relief as part of a bill to keep the government running through mid-November.

The surprise 230-195 defeat came at the hands of Democrats and tea party Republicans.

Democrats were opposed because the measure contains $1.5 billion in cuts to a government loan program to help car companies build fuel-efficient vehicles. For their part, many GOP conservatives felt the underlying bill permits spending at too high a rate.

The outcome sends House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and his leadership team back to the drawing board as they seek to make sure the government doesn't shut down at the end of next week.

While some commentators are hesitant to point to a clear winner in Monday night's Republican presidential debate on CNN, some claim the real winner was the tea party movement -- a co-sponsor of the event.

Many pundits contend there has been no other movement in recent decades that has challenged the political establishment like that of the tea party movement.

Last night’s Republican debate — unlike the one last week — touched briefly on pro-life issues and featured a heated exchange between a couple of the candidates and pro-life Texas Gov. Rick Perry over the issue of parental rights.

Because none of the questions from the Tea Party participants or CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer queried about pro-life issues, Michele Bachmann, the pro-life Minnesota congresswoman, was the first to bring up the issue of abortion, doing so on her own.

Shortly before President Barack Obama spoke to the labor unions in Detroit, Jimmy Hoffa Jr. warmed up the audience and harshly attacked the Tea Party movement saying: (emphasis is mine)

"We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They've got a war, they got a war with us and there's only going to be one winner. It's going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We're going to win that war," Jimmy Hoffa Jr. said said

"President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let's take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong," Hoffa then added.

Condemnation for Mr. Hoffa's statements will not be coming anytime soon from the White House. In fact, President Obama immediately praised Mr.