Free Republic

As the political winds are turning to presidential politics in 2016, now is the time for Republicans to start thinking about their ticket. I know it's early, but the top of the Democratic ticket has already been pretty much decided by the mainstream media. It's Hillary and whoever she wants as her veep. For the Republicans, they will need someone at the top of the ticket who is principled. He'll keep his campaign promises. He must have an economic issue that will resonate with women because men already support the GOP. Women — especially independent women — are the holy...

The next 24 hours will be crucial for Chris Christie, top Republicans say. The New Jersey governor, who was on top of the political world two months ago as he cruised to reelection over his Democratic challenger now finds his status as the potential front-runner of the 2016 GOP presidential field imperiled. The test comes with the release of e-mails and text messages that tie top members of his administration to the closure of two lanes leading to a crucial bridge in what appears to be political retaliation against a Democratic mayor who refused to endorse Christie’s reelection. Republican communications...

NOTE: I started writing this in May. Dan wrote something along these lines in August. Read it. He put it down much better than I ever could.Things to keep in mind when running for President as a Republican. Somewhere between 93% to 98% of the people who would be covering the race on behalf of the nation’s largest national and regional news media outlets will be supporting your Democrat opponent – whoever she (or he) may be. This lopsided level of support for Democrats in the news media, especially within the Beltway has been consistent for nearly half a century....

Top Republican leader and current Governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal is planning to run for president in 2016, a top US Senator from his home State has said.

Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan is the most popular of the would-be 2016 Republican contenders among Iowa Republicans, handily outstripping his potential competition in the state that holds the first nominating contest every four years, according to a new poll. ... Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, on the other hand, sits at the bottom of the pack. Just 46 percent of Iowa Republicans say they have a favorable view of him, compared to 17 percent who hold an unfavorably view. Despite frequent trips to the state in recent months, he is still not well known to many Republicans: 37 percent still say...

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a 2008 GOP presidential candidate turned media personality, is looking at another bid for the presidency, this time backed by ministers eager to put an evangelical into the White House. Huckabee will test the waters when he returns home to Little Rock, Ark., December 12-13 to address the Arkansas Renewal Project, part of evangelical organizer David Lane's American Renewal Project. Huckabee had the support of pastors in his 2008 fight against eventual winner Sen. John McCain. Among the potential candidates looking at a GOP bid, Huckabee is closest to the pastors. He is a social...

Mitch McConnell for Pres. 2016 and General of Counter-Terrorism for VP. I thought you would be interested in this story I found on news.msn.com: US ambassador summoned by Germany over NSA spying ( http://news.msn.com/world/us-ambassador-summoned-by-germany-over-nsa-spying#tscptme, ) Wait a second? Didn’t Snowden first go to China? Where China and their reverse-technology, was granted the rights to reproduce the Grundig SW radio? I hear people in American jails, know how to increase the band-with of small transistor radio’s. What could China do with a Grundig or cell phone, like the Samsung knock-off. Now didn’t Germany discredit our secrets, as found in the German...

Hewitt imposed a lighting round format on Krauthammer during the interview and asked for one word descriptions of the current likely field of presidential candidates heading into 2016. Krauthammer called New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie a “frontrunner,” Ohio Gov. John Kasich “interesting” and “possible,” and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker “young, ambitious,” and “brash.” The conservative columnist added, “I like him.” Of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Krauthammer said he was “very strong” and “could be a contender.” “A lot of energy” and “a great orator,” Krauthammer said of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). He was cautious about Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) political...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush predicted Monday night Congress would pass a series of immigration bills next year and touted his conservative credentials as he talked about his thought process on a potential 2016 presidential bid. In a wide-ranging, onstage interview at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, Bush said he didn't necessarily agree with his mother, who joked there have been "enough Bushes" in the White House. The Spanish-speaking former governor also took a slight dig at another potential 2016 contender, Sen. Ted Cruz, for his Spanish language skills. 'I'm a conservative' At one point in the...

Alternate headline: “Second look at Chris Christie?” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie gets all the love as the current GOP front-runner for 2016 (to the extent there can even be a front runner three years out.) But there is growing chatter in elite New York financial circles that former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is giving more serious consideration to getting in the race, especially if it appears at any point that Christie is not drawing big national appeal beyond the northeast. Several plugged in GOP sources said Bush has moved from almost certainly staying out to a 30 percent chance...

WASHINGTON -- They are at it again. They are again telling Republicans and conservatives how dreadful their political condition really is. I am speaking, of course, of the voices of the Kultursmog, and to hear them tell it we are in a hell of a heap. We lost the governorship of Virginia. Even worse, we won the governorship of New Jersey. What dreadful news. Of course, in Virginia the Republicans lost to a congenital liar, backed by the most famous congenital liars in American politics, the Clintons. It is only a matter of time before he is in deep do-do....

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, brother and son of the former presidents Bush, is considering a run for president, but only if Gov. Chris Christie fails to gain nationwide traction, Politico reports this morning.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is accelerating efforts to explore another bid for the presidency. But few Republicans, including some past supporters, are excited at the prospect of him launching a second White House campaign. Perry is making all the moves of a traditional candidate, with multiple visits to Iowa, an upcoming trip to South Carolina and a flurry of recent appearances on cable news networks. But following his disappointing 2012 campaign, and heading into an election where the GOP field appears to be much stronger, few strategists think he would stand a real chance of winning the 2016 nomination....

Those sophisticates at Time magazine made a funny. They put Chris Christie on their cover with the headline, "The Elephant in the Room." Get it? Elephant. Christie. Time magazine did a junior high fat joke right there on its cover. Time's executive editor Michael Duffy explained the cheap shot this way: "Well, he's obviously a big guy. He's obviously a big Republican. But he's also done a really huge thing here this week." The "huge thing" wasn't only winning re-election as New Jersey's governor, but doing it by appealing to a broad range of voters in a very blue state...

If the entire nation were one big New Jersey, Chris Christie would have the 2016 Republican presidential nomination in the bag....an NBC poll out Tuesday found that Christie was the preferred candidate of GOP voters in just one region, the Northeast. There, 57 percent of Republicans said they would support Christie in a GOP primary versus 22 percent who said they would not. However, pluralities of Republicans everywhere else said they would prefer a different candidate. Christie trailed a generic "other" GOPer in the Midwest (35/30 percent), the South (29/27 percent) and the West (40/22 percent.)

If New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie runs for president in 2016, he would face the dual challenges of uniting a fractured Republican Party and besting a formidable Hillary Clinton in a general election, according to a new NBC News poll. Following his resounding re-election victory last week, 32 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning respondents say they would vote for Christie in a GOP presidential primary, while 31 percent prefer another Republican candidate. “Naming just Christie divides the faithful equally into Christie, Not Christie and Don’t Know,” said G. Evans Witt, CEO of Princeton Survey Research, which conducted the poll. “A...

Democrats insist they can thwart Chris Christie (R) if he seeks the White House in 2016, despite the broad appeal he showed in winning reelection last week. Even though the New Jersey governor secured more than 60 percent of the votes against state Sen. Barbara Buono (D), Democratic strategists in the Garden State and beyond believe he has vulnerabilities they could exploit in a national election. Above all, they assert that Christie’s famously combative style could result in a loss of self-control during the heat of a presidential campaign. Steve Elmendorf, who served as deputy campaign manager for then-Sen. John...

I know…I know….here we go again right? All the talk is about how Chris Christie will be the best GOP nominee because he’s the most electable. We’ve heard this before. We heard it with John McCain in 2008. We heard it with Mitt Romney in 2012 and now we are hearing it with Governor Christie. But there’s a crucial difference. No disrespect to McCain or Romney but Christie has pizazz. He has more chutzpah in one finger than McCain and Romney do combined. That’s important. A lot of Tea Party conservatives are going to focus in on the purity of...

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says she thinks it's good that Gov. Chris Christie won another term in mostly Democratic New Jersey. But the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate stops short of embracing Christie as a potential GOP presidential candidate in 2016, saying "I would never put my faith and hope in any one politician."

Last week, it came out that New Jersey‘s Republican Governor Chris Christie refused to campaign for Ken Cuccinelli in the Virginia governor’s race, which no doubt contributed to Cuccinelli’s loss. The jovial, fun-loving, charismatic Christie is wildly popular, with the second highest approval rating of Republican governors. He won re-election in Democratic-stronghold New Jersey by a landslide last week, with 60 percent of the vote to his Democrat challenger’s 39 percent. Christie and the Republican establishment wrote the Virginia gubernatorial race off; the RNC spent only one-third as much money on the race than it did in 2009. Even so,...