Free Republic

When House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday he wasn’t ready to support Donald Trump, the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, his Wisconsin primary opponent saw an opening. Following the Trump campaign’s lash-out on Friday, Paul Nehlen seized that opening, suggesting he will do what Ryan won't: support Trump.

An hour before the Libertarian Party presidential debate in New York City on Saturday, the cybersecurity guru John McAfee, one of the candidates, was smoking a cigarette outside the venue, a Ukrainian restaurant in the East Village, and explaining how he could win in November. "I would dance circles around Trump," McAfee said. "Trump likes to sling mud. It's impossible to sling mud at me—I sling it at myself first." That is a gentle way of putting it. Four years ago, McAfee was deported to the United States from Guatemala after escaping from Belize, where authorities declared him a person...

Asked about what Politico reported as Paul Ryan “ditching” presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, “It was stunning,” Ryan’s primary challenger Paul Nehlen told Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon. “I couldn’t believe it,” continued Nehlen. “I don’t know where you get off…” pausing to read from, then direct listeners to a new Nehlen campaign press release on the subject, “Paul Ryan’s elitism is showing.

Some are still stunned with the speed at which Donald Trump suddenly elevated himself from front-runner to presumptive nominee following Mr. Trump’s landslide victory in Indiana on Tuesday. Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s campaign supervisor, a man who has navigated the often turbulent waters of national politics for several decades, is likely not a bit surprised, for it was Manafort who just a few short weeks ago put the fear of God into a collection of anti-Trump GOP Establishment figures during a posh resort retreat in Florida – a meeting which it can now be said altered the trajectory of the...

Huckabee: "Donald Trump broke the code, owned the media, and inspired the masses. I will be all in to help him defeat Hillary Clinton and I call upon all fellow Republicans to unite in defeating Hillary and abandoning and repudiating the hapless “Never Trump” nonsense. The dirty little secret is that the Never Trump movement was more about providing high dollar work for the political consultants than stopping the disaster of an Obama third term which is the result of electing Hillary Clinton."

Absolute and simple, the message blasted across social media this year, a shield worn by Republicans horrified by Donald Trump. Anyone not on board was a sellout. On Wednesday, the movement was in shambles. John Kasich followed Ted Cruz in getting out of the way of the #TrumpTrain. Some vowed to continue to oppose the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, but the failure was, in retrospect, evident from the start. The effort began too late, lacked organization, misread voters' appetite for change and Trump's unscripted style and overestimated the ability of social media and TV ads to change minds. "It was...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, abruptly suspending his Republican presidential campaign Tuesday night after another crushing primary defeat to Donald Trump, assured emotional supporters in Indiana that they helped grow an “extraordinary” movement – declaring his team “left it all on the field” in their final push. ADVERTISEMENT "It appears that path [to victory] has been foreclosed," Cruz told supporters in Indianapolis. "Together, we left it all on the field of Indiana. We gave it everything we've got, but the voters chose another path, and so with a heavy heart but with boundless optimism for the long-term future of our nation,...

Trumped! Why It Happened And What Comes Next, Part 1   Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blogFirst there were seventeen. At length, there was one.Donald Trump’s wildly improbable capture of the GOP nomination, therefore, is the most significant upheaval in American politics since Ronald Reagan. And the proximate cause is essentially the same. Like back then, an era of drastic bipartisan mis-governance has finally generated an electoral impulse to sweep out the stables.Accordingly, the Donald’s patented phrase that “we aren’t winning anymore” is striking a deep nerve on main street. But that is not on account of giant trade deficits or a faltering foreign policy and failed military adventures per se.Indeed, it...

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) is calling for a third-party presidential candidate to emerge, saying there is no reason to believe that either of the two national front-runners "believe in limiting anything about DC's power." The conservative senator late Wednesday issued the call in a letter on Facebook to "the majority of Americans" who wonder why the U.S. "can't find a healthy leader who can take us forward together." "With Clinton and Trump, the fix is in. Heads, they win; tails, you lose. Why are we confined to these two terrible options? This is America. If both choices stink, we reject...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - In finishing the Republican presidential race well ahead of Donald Trump's other rivals, Ted Cruz is likely to be a leading GOP voice for the foreseeable future. Less clear is whether Cruz harnesses that clout to help Trump win the White House or whether he simply solidifies his place as a champion of conservative causes, Senate troublemaker and star of Texas politics. Cruz is being talked about as a leader of the national conservative movement, and he has an unmatched organization in Texas....

Anyone else think Kasich must have had a gentlemen's agreement with Trump? Why else would he stay in the race for weeks/months after it was obvious his polls weren't going much higher? Though he didn't have much hope of winning, his staying in divided the "not Trump" vote, siphoning valuable votes and momentum away from Cruz. Just my two cents. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see Kasich as the VP nominee, especially since he could deliver Ohio in November.

With Donald Trump now the presumptive Republican nominee, the various #NeverTrump forces are pondering everything Thursday from enlisting first-term Sen. Ben Sasse to avoiding the White House battle altogether. Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, has emerged as a central figure in the movement. He wrote a Facebook post early Thursday arguing for an alternative candidate to Trump and Clinton, which had garnered more than 6,400 likes by late morning. "Why shouldn't America draft an honest leader who will focus on 70% solutions for the next four years? You know ... an adult?" Sasse wrote.

The GOP's 2008 presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, says the 2016 campaign is like none other because candidates in both parties are tapping into the "frustration and anger" of voters.[snip] "You see a frustration and anger which then rejects the establishment," he added. "[Sen. Ted] Cruz has tapped into it, [Vermont Sen. Bernie] Sanders has tapped into it, [Donald] Trump…" "Anybody that says he can shoot somebody and still get elected, that's beyond any framework of politics that I've ever seen," the Arizona lawmaker said, USA Today reports.

If in the Land of the Blind, the one-eyed man is king, then columnist David Brooks of the New York Times is blind, deaf and dumb inside the Beltway. In an election year where all the experts have been exactly wrong about absolutely everything, it really is something of a feat to be as spectacularly and enthusiastically wrong as Mr. Brooks. This probably should not come as much of a surprise, given how highly revered the pundit-scribe is inside the Beltway. He serves as some kind of “Republican voice” for the New York Times and offers up nerdy commentary for...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Polling? Who needs to do that? Fundraising? Can't be bothered. Parse your words? Fuhgetabout it. Donald Trump took the rules of modern politics, trashed them and became the last man standing for the Republican nomination anyway. 12 ways Trump did it his way: SAY ANYTHING It's what Trump's supporters love about him: He blurts out whatever pops into his head. He rejects "political correctness." He insults rivals and critics. He has fun. After one particularly salty salvo, Trump explained, "That's what I mean about being politically correct, every once in a while you can have a little...

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said this morning that even though no one could have "predicted what happened" in the GOP primary, "I don't think that's necessarily bad." "You know what? I think something different and something new is probably good for our party," he told CNN. (snip) Priebus added this morning on CNN that "obviously, you still have to get to 1,237 delegates." The chairman said he "was surprised" that Cruz dropped out, "and that's a hard thing to do." "I mean, he ran a very, very serious operation. Just an incredible ground game. His delegate operation was...

On June 19, 2015 Ann Coulter predicted Donald Trump would be the best candidate to win the general election. The liberal audience roared with delight. They thought it was the funniest thing they ever heard. coulter trump maher Bill Maher: Ann, which Republican candidate has the best chance of winning the general election? Ann Coulter: Of the declared ones, right now, Donald Trump. (liberal audience roars). Ann then added Democrats would have a better candidate in Bernie Sanders than Hillary Clinton: Ann Coulter: If you ran Bernie Sanders it would be much tougher… It would much tougher to beat him...

Bing is now projecting that Trump will win the remaining states in which he has primaries by garnering at least 70% of the popular vote. The only exception is Oregon where he is projected to get 65% of the vote. Up until yesterday Trump was projected to lose Nebraska but now he is projected to get 75% of the popular vote.

While the Republican field has now been cleared for Donald Trump, the road ahead is still messy for the front-runner to become the official nominee at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, in July. Currently, Trump has 1,012 bound delegates, plus an additional 43 unbound delegates who are free agents -- though they have told ABC News they support Trump. Most likely, Trump will hit and far surpass the needed 1,237 in total delegates on June 7, when delegate-rich states like New Jersey and California cast their ballots. He is predicted to take most of the 228 delegates up for...

<p>INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – For the past week, Carly Fiorina was one of the most talked about people in politics. Ted Cruz formally named Fiorina as his vice presidential running mate last Wednesday, and she spent the week campaigning with the Texas senator all across Indiana.</p>