Free Republic

With Donald J. Trump absent from the debate stage, critics had a chance to focus on the rest of the Republican field. While the verdicts varied, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas was seen as starting strong but fading late, while Senator Marco Rubio of Florida had his moments but grew testy at times when faced with tough questions. Some thought Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, had one of his most energetic performances, while the retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson barely registered.

During Thursday night's Republican debate, Jeb Bush awkwardly praised a questioner for working as an entrepreneur of "the YouTube." Bush was fielding a debate question from YouTube personality Dulce Candy, who asked about the GOP's openness to immigrants. Bush emphasized the need for the U.S. to be open to immigrants, and offered strong praise for Candy's past military service and her current entrepreneurial endeavors. "We should be a welcoming nation." Bush said. "And Dulce Candy - pretty cool name, actually - that is now an entrepreneur of the YouTube, is part of that American experience, and we should celebrate it...

After the Fox News-Google debate Megyn Kelly interviewed Ted Cruz. [7:40 Video begins with a 1:00 clip of the earlier debate] Kelly continued to pursue the "amnesty" angle that she'd begun during the debate [starting at 3:41] - about his history on illegals, immigration and amnesty, but concedes: Kelly: "I look at your record, a lot, to see: Did Ted Cruz really want legalization, or didn't he?" "I think the record supports you - that you did not want it; it does." "It really was a poison pill amendment." Then there is back and forth where Kelly states that Cruz...

Video at link. Under-card debate starts at 7pm EST, 4pm PST. Main debate starts at 9pm EST, 6pm PST.

Corey Lewandowski, the campaign manager for 2016 GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, exposed a blatant conflict of interest on Wednesday that the Fox News Channel has been hiding for months. Lewandowski showed how Fox News has been hiding the fact that Fox News Channel Vice President Bill Sammon has a daughter working for the campaign of the Washington establishment-backed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). Sammon's daughter, Brooke Sammon, is Rubio's national press secretary, and obviously both have a vested interest in the success of the Rubio campaign and the demise of the other campaigns. CNN's Erin Burnett asked Lewandowski about Fox News's...

January 28, 2016, 10:35 am Coulter: Trump boycott isn't about Kelly, it's about Fox being pro-open borders By Ann Coulter Donald Trump is the first alpha male to run for president since L.B.J., but his opponents think it's clever to claim that he's "scared" of Fox News Channel's Megyn Kelly because he's said he's skipping this week's Republican debate. This is like attacking 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney for being a libertine - or President Bill Clinton for being boring.In addition to being the only candidate who will build a wall and deport illegals, apparently Trump is the only candidate...

Axelrod's Wish: On page 424 of his recent memoir, Obama's former top strategist David Axelrod describes running into Fox chieftain (and immigration amnesty supporter) Rupert Murdoch at a dinner in the fall of 2010: During the dinner, Murdoch, who was seated beside me, insisted that the president had to move on immigration reform. "But the solution has to be comprehensive," I said. "We can't just attack a piece of the immigration problem. And you know, there's one big thing that you can do to help, and that is to keep your cable network from stoking the nativism that keeps us...

Did you ever think you’d live to see anchor babies discussed on TV every night? H1-B visas replacing American workers? Illegal alien murderers? Mexican rapists? Could you ever have imagined that instead of Republicans weeping over illegal aliens “living in the shadows,” we’d see them assailing one another for having once supported amnesty? It’s all Trump. Everything we’ve been begging politicians to talk about for the past decade, Donald Trump has brought up with a roar. But the conservative Miss Grundys complain that Trump isn’t satisfactory. They say he’s “not a serious person”; he’s “a clown,” a “vulgarian”; he’s not...

The announcement from Donald Trump's campaign that the Republican frontrunner will "definitely not" partake in Thursday night's Fox News debate has sent shock waves throughout the nation’s political scene. At a press event Tuesday evening, Trump seemed to cite disparate treatment from the network as his reasoning for not participating. "What’s wrong over there, something’s wrong," Trump said of the "games" Roger Ailes and the network are "playing." In asking the question of "what’s wrong over there?" Trump has shined a spotlight on one of Washington's best kept secrets: namely, Fox's role via its founder Rupert Murdoch in pushing an...

The announcement from Donald Trump’s campaign that the Republican frontrunner will “definitely not” partake in Thursday night’s Fox News debate has sent shock waves throughout the nation’s political scene. At a press event Tuesday evening, Trump seemed to cite disparate treatment from the network as his reasoning for not participating. “What’s wrong over there, something’s wrong,” Trump said of the “games” Roger Ailes and the network are “playing.” In asking the question of “what’s wrong over there?” Trump has shined a spotlight on one of Washington’s best kept secrets: namely, Fox’s role via its founder Rupert Murdoch in pushing an...

All is forgiven if you're not familiar with the "take care" clause in Article II of the Constitution about the presidency, the words that say "he shall take Care that the laws be faithfully executed." The Supreme Court hasn't fooled with it in many years. The words are buried below the State of the Union clause, and the business of receiving "Ambassadors and other public Ministers." They lack resonance; they sound polite. But their meaning, traced back through hundreds of years of history and translated into today's colloquial English is indeed a command: They mean "Mr. President, don't act like...

Sen. Ted Cruz at Hearing on the Administration’s Immigration Enforcement...

Jeff Sessions: Ted Cruz was on my side to defeat the Gang of Eight amnesty bill...

From MSNBC Hardball.

On Thanksgiving night, Ben Carson sat in a chartered plane on a Baltimore airport tarmac surrounded by his wife and campaign advisers. The destination: Jordan. A secret mission to the Middle East, his team hoped, would help reestablish the retired neurosurgeon's credibility amid searing questions about his shaky grasp of foreign policy. The trip would be kept under wraps until Carson appeared on the Sunday news shows from the location -- partly a security measure, partly a political play. But as Carson and his team awaited takeoff, they were blindsided when The New York Times posted a story outlining the...

Presidential candidate Ted Cruz has praised Donald Trump for making illegal immigration a central issue of the Republican presidential race, but in an exclusive interview with ABC News, Cruz said that Trump's immigration plan amounts to amnesty. "So Donald Trump's position is once you deport them, it's what's called touchback. A lot of establishment Republicans had touchback," Cruz said in an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos. "Basically you make them fly back to their country for a minute, touch the ground, and then they come back with amnesty as citizens. Now, Donald is entitled to do that. He can...

Donald Trump is taking his rivalry with Republican presidential opponent Ted Cruz to a new level, unveiling an attack ad that portrays the U.S. senator from Texas as weak on illegal immigration. The minute-long commercial, which Trump's campaign released Friday morning, zeroes in on an interview last month in which Cruz struggled to explain his involvement in immigration reform efforts in 2013. The spot then flashes back to Cruz introducing amendments to the so-called "Gang of Eight" legislation that has become toxic to many GOP primary voters. "I want immigration reform to pass," Cruz is quoted as saying at the...

So, Big Government and the Open-Borders Lobby's best friend, Sen. Orrin Hatch took to CNN today to trash GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz: "I think we'll lose if he's our nominee," said Orrin Hatch, the most senior Republican in the Senate. "There's a lot of people who don't feel he can appeal to people across the board," Hatch said. "For us to win, we have to appeal the moderates and independents. We can't just act like that only one point of view is the only way to go. That's where Ted is going to have some trouble." Let me be...

Former New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino argues there will be an outpouring for Donald Trump.

Sen. Ted Cruz on Thursday called out Donald Trump for previously supporting immigration amnesty in 2013, back when Cruz was fighting against the Gang of Eight amnesty bill. "Congress must protect our borders first. Amnesty should be done only if the order is secure and illegal immigration has stopped," Trump tweeted in August 2013, expressing a more lenient stance on immigration than he does on the campaign trail today. "Trump SUPPORTS amnesty. Read his 2013 tweet - while I was leading the fight to defeat Rubio Gang of 8 amnesty. #Truth" Cruz said in his retweet of Trump's words. Trump...