Free Republic

Democrats are facing a senior problem that could get even worse this year. The party has traditionally had trouble with older voters, losing the group aged 65 and over by 21 points in 2010 — when Republicans picked up 63 seats — and by 12 points in the 2012 presidential race. Seniors are the GOP’s most reliable voting bloc in midterm years, turning out in higher numbers than Democratic base voters. A recent Gallup poll showed seniors have become even more Republican over the last two decades; in 2013, 48 percent considered themselves Republican. That spells trouble for Democrats, who...

A verified @Faith4Hillary Twitter account purporting to be the "Faith and Value Voters for Hillary Clinton 2016" appears to have purchased a large percentage of its 42.6k followers. The website Twitter Audit determined that more than half of the account's followers were obtained by "inorganic, fraudulent, or dishonest means," and the similar website StatusPeople calculated that only 18 percent of the account's followers were "good." Per StatusPeople, the rest of the followers were either fake accounts or accounts that are inactive. Additionally, the account has a comparatively small amount of interaction via retweets and favorites compared to the amount of...

The Supreme Court decision killing limits on total donations to political candidates means billionaires will be running amok. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson can lay out astronomical sums to help Republicans. Oilmen Charles and David Koch can see him and raise him. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg can burn through his fortune like a blowtorch. Oh, wait. They already did all that. Under this ruling, tycoons will have one more relatively modest way of supporting the candidates and causes they like. But trust me: You won't be able to see a difference. Adelson went through some $100 million in 2012,...

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush will make a decision on whether he’ll enter the 2016 presidential race by the end of this year, he said during an interview on Fox News Channel Sunday during the 25th anniversary celebration of his father’s presidency in College Station, Texas. ... He said in the Fox News interview that illegal immigration is, for many people, an effort to provide for their families, and “not a felony.” “It’s an act of love. It’s an act of commitment to your family,” Bush said. “I honestly think that that is a different kind of crime. There should...

Roughly 1,800 New Jersey children had their insurance plans cancelled last week due to Obamacare. With the flurry of cancellation notices hitting mailboxes across the Garden State, one parent, Bob Miotla, told the NJ.com news of his son's cancellation made him "extremely angry." "Without having that safety net, if an illness arises, we will probably take him to the ER," said Miotla, who is on Medicare and disabled. Obamacare's new mandated requirements killed New Jersey's low-cost children's insurance coverage plan, FamilyCare Advantage. The plan, offered by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, was designed for children whose parents...

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush discussing immigration reform on Fox News this Sunday: "I'm going to say this and it will be on tape, and so be it. The way I look at this is someone who comes to our country because they couldn't come legally, they come to our country because their family's dad who loves their children was worried that their children didn't have food on the table, and they wanted to make sure their family was intact. And they crossed the border because they had no other means to work to be able to provide for their...

With eyes increasingly on him, Jeb Bush signaled on Sunday the kind of campaign he would mount if he ran for president: one arguing against ideological purity tests while challenging party orthodoxy on issues like immigration and education. Even as he sharply criticized President Obama for his handling of foreign affairs and health care, Mr. Bush made clear that he would run against the style of politics that has characterized recent Republican nominating contests. He said he would decide by the end of the year, in part on whether he thought that with a “hopeful” message, he could avoid “the...

If President Obama means what he says about wanting an immigration system that reflects American values, helps the economy and taps the yearnings of millions of Americans-in-waiting, he is going to have to do something about it — soon and on his own. It has been frustrating to watch his yes-we-can promises on immigration reform fade to protestations of impotence and the blaming of others. All Mr. Obama has been saying lately is: No, in fact, we can’t, because Republicans and the law won’t let me. Mr. Obama is correct when he complains that long-term immigration repairs have been throttled...

Maybe Jimmy Fallon really does want to follow Jay Leno’s tradition of full-political-spectrum comedy. Earlier this week, Fallon ripped Barack Obama for his victory lap on ObamaCare, and last night he invited Sarah Palin to join him in this four-minute mockfest of Obama’s foreign-policy acumen. Palin is a good sport here, joking about the unusual names of her children at one point, but the subtext throughout this is that Palin was smart enough to see through Vladimir Putin — and Obama wasn’t. Watch for a cameo from “Obama” near the end (via Katie Pavlich): CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE...

Why did the National Republican Congressional Committee Young Gun Program just endorse a RINO in New Jersey?TEA Party conservative Steve Lonegan is fighting RINO unknown Tom MacArthur for the soul of the GOP in New Jersey’s 3rd congressional district.Liberal Republican Mayor Tom MacArthur of Randolph has a lot of money but not a lot of support. And so, like any former insurance company CEO with ties to AIG, he’s trying to buy it by bribing the local GOP county clubs in New Jersey’s third congressional district. MacArthur gave over $25,000 to the Ocean GOP County to buy the powerful organization’s...

You’re probably sourly amused at all the signalling done in these paragraphs: A new Minnesota poll, commissioned by a partisan group, finds that Democratic U.S. Sen. Al Franken is “potentially vulnerable” as he mounts his bid for re-election. It found that Franken has a 3 percentage lead over Republican Julianne Ortman and a 6 percentage point lead over Republican Mike McFadden. The poll was conducted by Magellan Strategies for American Encore, a group connected to the Koch Brothers that is already running television ads bashing Franken. It included 1,081 likely Minnesota voters in late March. …because you probably also suspect...

The conventional “wisdom” is that this year’s elections will see the Republicans gaining seats in the House and retaking the Senate. This is a lovely thought but nowhere near reality. The forces who will wage war to save the Democrats’ hold on the Senate and reduce, if not totally erase, the Republican margin in Congress are too formidable. It is time we recognized this fact. We conservatives can win both chambers of Congress in a tough clean fair fight, but the 2014 elections will be nothing of the sort. We can beat a cabal of the RNC, DNC, Koch brothers,...

As the 2014 elections draw near, panic is setting in for President Obama and Democrats across the country. As John Harwood of The New York Times observed on Tuesday, “The very structure of the 21st-century national Democratic coalition makes its November turnout predicament bad, perhaps historically so.” Blacks, women, and young people turned out in historic numbers for Obama in 2012; those groups will experience significant turnout drop off in 2014.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Hey, somebody help me out here. I might have missed it, as I was in transit yesterday. Did any of the Republican leadership respond to Obama's despicable lies about Obamacare yesterday? (interruption) There wasn't? There wasn't any Republican response to that? You gotta be kidding me. I was flying to -- well, I was in transit. I had it on the television and I'm watching this. I'm heading up to a celebratory occasion, I'm watching this thing, and it's ticking me off, this Rose Garden thing. I mean, here you've got Obamacare, which is mandatory under penalty...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Go to the sound bites coming next and you'll hear them: They think they've turned the corner. Like on April 15th, everybody's gonna file their taxes. Is Obama gonna do a Rose Garden ceremony to talk about how persuasive he's been and how many people love the income tax? "My God, look at this, folks! Look at how many have complied this year. Look how many people love the income tax, and the income tax is making our country and a transfer of wealth possible. Look at how many millions and millions and millions of people file...

"The analysts said from the get-go that al Qaeda was involved in this attack" -Mike Morell, Deputy CIA Director So today we find out from Mike Morell, the Deputy CIA Director at the time of the Benghazi attacks, that he crafted the talking points which were ultimately used by Susan Rice on talk shows based on what a few CIA analysts believed had happened instead of the on the ground accounts from the CIA Station Chief. The idiocy is mind-boggling. So mind-boggling you have to wonder if he isn't just covering his ass along with the ass of the...

Sources on the ground in Benghazi during the 2012 terror attack are pushing back hard on former CIA acting director Mike Morell's testimony on Capitol Hill, where he defended his role in shaping the administration's narrative and claimed politics were not involved.

Can banning one school-yard word really change the world? Sheryl Sandberg says yes. Sandberg -- the chief operating officer of Facebook and author of the best-selling book "Lean In" -- is spearheading the launch of a campaign today to ban the word "bossy," arguing the negative put-down stops girls from pursuing leadership roles. "We know that by middle school, more boys than girls want to lead," Sandberg said, "and if you ask girls why they don't want to lead, whether it's the school project all the way on to running for office, they don't want to be called bossy, and...

If Wendy Davis wanted to achieve the goal of becoming the first Democrat to win statewide office in 20 years, she needed to run an extremely well-funded and nearly flawless campaign. While the Wendy Davis campaign has received plenty of funding, its execution has been anything but flawless. Since Wendy Davis’ announcement to run in October 2013, the campaign has had a number of missteps along the way. A few of these include Wendy Davis getting caught misrepresenting the truth about her past, claiming to be “pro-life”, claiming she supports a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and...

Democrats should be worried about more than just the U.S. House and Senate. If President Obama's poll numbers remain underwater, Republicans are poised to capture control of several state legislatures this fall. The GOP could capture as many as 8 state legislative chambers in November and pick up seats across the country. “Republicans are poised to gain control of chambers in blue states and purple states across the country," John Loe, spokesman of the Republican Legislative Campaign Committee, told Breitbart News. "With issues like Federal Balanced Budget Amendment legislation passing in state houses, and Democrats’ weak legislative record, voters are...