Free Republic

‘Gestapo tactics.” That’s how Donald Trump’s recently installed campaign manager, Paul Manafort, characterized the Ted Cruz campaign’s successful effort to win all 34 of Colorado’s pledged national-convention delegates at the long-scheduled Republican congressional-district and state conventions. “Today winning votes doesn’t mean anything,” Trump complained. “It’s a corrupt deal going on in this country and it’s not fair to you people.” Such complaints typically come from people who are not, in one of Trump’s favorite words, “winners.” Trump conspicuously refrains from complaining about the fact that, even though he has won just 37 percent of the votes cast in Republican primaries...

Marco Rubio won Minnesota decisively on March 1, but the 17 delegates he was awarded are now up for grabs, free to vote for any candidate they like on a first ballot at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. In a hotly contested Republican primary that looks increasingly likely to culminate in a contested convention this summer, those delegates will be critical. The battle for them is essentially throwing states such as Minnesota, which have already held their nominating contests, back into play as they elect delegates at state conventions. And Ted Cruz’s campaign, which has run circles around Donald...

In 1980, Ronald Reagan campaigned on a four point economic recovery plan. First, reduce tax rates, to increase incentives for job creation, investment, business start-ups and expansion, and wage growth due to the resulting increased demand for labor and increased productivity. Even liberal Keynesian economics holds that tax cuts are pro-growth. Two, reduce regulatory costs and barriers to business, which can act as further tax cuts. Three, reduce federal spending, to reduce the government’s drain on the private sector. And four, restrain monetary policy to restore a stable value for the dollar. After Reagan led adoption of those policies in...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/04/14/ben-carson-could-trump-spoiler-new-york-primary/83036318/

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers spoke at the International Monetary Fund on Wednesday, warning against austerity measures amid a tepid economy. Yahoo Finance sat down with him to get little more color on the economy and to find out what keeps him up most at night. “I think the prospect of Donald Trump being President would be the gravest threat to our prosperity, our security, and our freedom in my adult lifetime,” Summers said. “That's the thing I would worry most about.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)97% can add Nebraska to his list of states where he’s out organized GOP frontrunner Donald Trump in collecting delegates. “Party officials say they saw virtually no organization by the mogul’s campaign last week when Republicans in all 93 Nebraska counties held local conventions. Those county conventions picked 800 delegates to May’s Nebraska state convention, where 33 delegates to the national convention in Cleveland will be selected,” Politico reports. “Because there was little resistance, many county conventions became Cruz pep rallies, according to interviews with party insiders and convention attendees.” “I didn’t see any Trump supporters,” said...

Via BuzzFeed, I’m going to be bold and pronounce this the single Trumpiest thing he’s said since the campaign began. Really! Trumpier than him goofing on McCain for being taken prisoner in Vietnam, Trumpier than him goofing on his fans by claiming they’d stick with him even if he shot someone in broad daylight. I’m a lapsed Catholic turned nonbeliever so I’ll let the faithful among our readers correct me, but isn’t this … one of the worst possible answers that a Christian could give to this question? An “eye for an eye” does appear in the Bible, true, but...

Damascus, April 12, Interfax - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad sees no future for his country and the entire region without the Christian presence, Hieromonk Stefan (Igumnov), secretary for inter-Christian relations at the Moscow's Patriarchate's Department for External Church Relations, told reporters after a meeting with al-Assad on Tuesday. "During the talks today, Bashar al-Assad noted that Syria has traditionally been a multi-faith country, and both its future and the future of the Middle East is inconceivable without the Christian presence," he said. According to him, al-Assad noted the crucial peacekeeping and humanitarian role of the Russian Orthodox Church in efforts...

The story of Putin’s fabled billions is a case study of something which people passionately believe in independently of any facts. As often happens in such cases, those who believe in that thing then hunt around for facts to prove it true. Every so often they come up with facts they claim proves it true. On careful examination however it turns out they do nothing of the sort. When that is pointed out to the true believers it does not change their belief that what they believe is true. Instead they retreat into denial and set off hunting for new...

The conventional wisdom is that though Ted Cruz can excite the conservative-activist base of the Republican party, he can’t beat Hillary Clinton in a general election. But the recent head-to-head polling tells a different story. Unless your name is George W. Bush, it’s tough to win 270 electoral votes without winning the popular vote. And Cruz is hanging in there against the Democratic front-runner. The RealClearPolitics average puts Clinton at 46.4 percent and Cruz at 43.9 percent; the most recent McClatchy-Marist survey has it a tie. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the current Republican front-runner, hasn’t led Clinton in any national poll...

A senior Russian official says Moscow has started delivering S-300 air defense missile systems to Iran. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who spoke on Monday on Ekho Moskvy radio, wouldn’t say how many systems have been delivered or provide any other specifics. […] The S-300 deal has long worried the U.S. and Israel, which see it as destabilizing. …

Donald Trump has repeatedly labeled his political opponents liars. He dubbed Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) Lyin' Ted when it became clear that Cruz was a serious rival for his nomination; he called Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) an "even bigger liar" than Cruz. He dubbed Dr. Ben Carson a "pathological liar" and said former Florida Governor Jeb Bush's lies were almost as bad as Cruz's. Trump has termed virtually every mildly adversarial media member a liar, too. But there's only one truly massive liar in this race: Donald Trump. When Politico attempted to measure how many lies Trump told over the...

Donald Trump’s organizational problems have gone from bad to worse to flat-out embarrassing. Here’s Politico with the play-by-play from this weekend’s Colorado GOP convention, the latest scene of Trump’s delegate-securing failure: Trump’s last-minute organizing effort did not go well. The leaflet his campaign handed out listed a slate of 26 delegates. But in many cases the numbers indicating their ballot position — more than 600 delegates [were] running for 13 slots — were off, meaning that Trump’s team was mistakenly directing votes toward other candidates’ delegates. When the balloting results were announced Saturday evening, [Ted] Cruz picked up the 13...

Front-runner’s adult children huddle with their father as staff divides among three competing aides. Donald Trump’s campaign overhaul has inflamed an internecine struggle among three of his closest advisors, creating an atmosphere that multiple sources likened to a political “Hunger Games.” According to interviews with more than a dozen people on or close to the campaign, staffers are increasingly dividing themselves into competing factions aligned with Trump’s three top officials – embattled campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who still commands deep loyalty among many of the people he hired; deputy campaign manager Michael Glassner, who has a growing group of supporters;...

The agit-prop machine, agitation and propaganda, has spent billions of dollars on hundreds of special schools which produced “armies of experts in brainwashing and subversion” Readers Digest published an article in November 1960 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gen. Carlos P. Romulo (1899-1985), a diplomat, statesman, Philippine Ambassador to the U.S., and President of the United Nations General Assembly (1949). He served in WWII with Gen. Douglas McArthur. “America, Wake up!” was a critique of the United States of America and of its citizens whom he perceived and described as “strangely unmoved” and “meek” in the face of the “menace...

Just over a month ago, after TrumpÂ’s big win in Nevada and after CruzÂ’s SEC state southern strategy fell short amidst the Trump tidal wave across the south, it looked like Trump had the momentum to prevail against a fractured field. Trump thought it was over, and was confident enough to hold unifying post-primary press conference events like a President. As more March contests took place however, the persistent overperformance of Cruz (in places like Kansas, Wyoming and Maine) and underperformance of Rubio that led finally to RubioÂ’s withdrawal after Florida. Despite Kasich staying in, the race has winnowed and...

In Colorado and South Carolina, the GOP's embattled front-runner had another very bad day. Donald Trump’s struggle to win loyal delegates to the Republican National Convention grew even more desperate on Saturday, with crushing losses in Colorado and South Carolina that put victory at a contested convention further from his grasp. Trump, who handed the reins of much of his campaign this week to strategist Paul Manafort in an effort to shore up his operation before the nomination slips away, was swept out of delegate slots up for grabs at Colorado’s state convention. Adding to his woes, he picked up...

Washington is behind the recently released offshore revelations known as the Panama Papers, WikiLeaks has claimed, saying that the attack was “produced” to target Russia and President Putin. On Wednesday, the international whistleblowing organization said on Twitter that the Panama Papers data leak was produced by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), "which targets Russia and [the] former USSR." The "Putin attack" was funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and American hedge fund billionaire George Soros, WikiLeaks added, saying that the US government's funding of such an attack is a serious blow to its integrity.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch voted Wednesday in a referendum on a far-reaching free trade deal meant to foster closer ties between Ukraine and the European Union that has run into opposition in the Netherlands where many see it as evidence of unwanted EU expansionism. The non-binding vote in the Netherlands exposes deep divisions about this country's place in Europe and comes less than three months before British citizens decide in their own referendum whether to leave the EU altogether. Dutch opponents of the EU-Ukraine association agreement argue its ultimate goal is bringing Kiev into the EU. Supporters...

Professional criminals convince parents that their daughters are going to a better life in Turkey. The parents are given 2000-5000 Turkish liras ($700-$1700) as a "bride price" -- an enormous sum for a poor Syrian family. "Girls between the ages of twelve and sixteen are referred to as pistachios, those between seventeen and twenty are called cherries, twenty to twenty-two are apples, and anyone older is a watermelon." — From a report on Turkey, by End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT). ◾Many Muslims have difficulty with, or even an aversion to, assimilating into...