Free Republic

On Sunday, the GOP presidential hopeful acknowledged that his position has changed since 2013, when he helped craft a comprehensive immigration reform bill that included a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. But that shift, he argued, was a concession to the political realities in Washington –– where House Republicans have refused to consider the issue –– as well as a reaction to recent terrorist attacks he says have exposed holes in the enforcement of existing law. "It is very clear now more than ever that we are not going to be able to do anything on people...

There was a time in my life when I was a campaign communications consultant, responsible for helping political campaigns come up with new and intriguing ways to engage voters using digital media. There is a reason I don't do it anymore, and that reason is, because no matter how many times I or any of my colleages explained that most Republican consultants had the pop culture knowledge of 80 year old men and couldn't find a connection to Millennials if they were accosted by an entire room of Urban Outfitters employees, they still produced things like this. Though, in fairness,...

Republican presidential candidate Senator Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) says that no one who has ever run for president knows more about fixing immigration in the United States than he does. In a New Hampshire town hall meeting, the Florida Senator argued that he was not a supporter of amnesty – even though his immigration bill proposed by the Senate “Gang of Eight” offered illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. “No one who has ever run for president understands this issue personally better than I do and that’s why I can tell you and you should tell your friends that no...

It is now axiomatic that Marco Rubio is the "establishment" favorite in the 2016 Republican primaries, due for a collision with a conservative alternative such as Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or Ben Carson. But if Rubio really represents the new GOP "establishment," then the fight is over and the conservatives won. Despite infuriating many grassroots conservatives by pushing the failed Gang of Eight immigration-reform bill and advocating a path to legalization, Rubio has an indisputably conservative record as a senator. This is a man who has a lifetime ACU rating of 98 out of 100. A man who has a...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), under fire on the campaign trail just four weeks ahead of Iowa’s all-important caucuses on Feb. 1, appears to have changed his tune on whether America is great or needs to be made great again. Rubio is amid a full-scale pander to conservatives as he’s found himself trapped in the ever-compressed GOP establishment lane of 2016 GOP presidential candidates. This week he’s endorsed Mark Levin’s Convention of States, trotted out Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) as an endorser, and framed himself as a “conservative” while his own campaign team refers to him as a “moderate.” And now...

Political analysis of the Las Vegas debate immigration dust-up between Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio is missing a key ingredient: the money factor. You can read the lips of the candidates till the cows come home. But you'll get to the truth much faster when you learn where pro-amnesty power brokers have placed their bets and hitched their wagons. Rubio's brazenly fraudulent campaign to paint Cruz as soft on illegal immigration is a flabbergasting attempt to distract from the Florida junior senator's faithful allegiance to the open-borders donor class. Here's what you need to know: Facebook, Microsoft and Silicon...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has earned the support of conservative favorite Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who will join the freshman Senator for a three-day trip to Iowa to rally support for his campaign. “Marco is a rock solid conservative and a strong leader we can trust,” Gowdy said in a statement proved to reporters. “I look forward to campaigning in Iowa with him, and introducing my good friend to voters across the state.” Gowdy is a celebrity among many conservatives, thanks to his tough prosecutorial grilling of members of the administration officials during congressional hearings and because he has chaired...

It wasn’t long ago that conservative proponents of comprehensive immigration reform were insisting that the idea is popular among Republican voters. In 2014, the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin told us, “nope, immigration reform [isn’t] toxic” and that “the anti-immigration forces are loud but in the distinct minority” within the Republican party. To be fair, Rubin and others of the same view backed up their claim with poll data, but they didn’t persuade me. I remembered how, during the 2012 primary season, Republican presidential candidates, whose polling operations have an enormous interest in being right, treated immigration reform as “toxic” indeed....

In a Tuesday morning interview with radio host Bill Bennett, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) defended his omnibus bill’s controversial expansion in the H-2B visa program, which would allow foreign workers to fill blue-collar American jobs, by arguing that if the provision were not included, American companies would be forced to shut their doors. Bennett pressed Ryan on the details of the H-2B visa expansion, slipped 700-pages into Ryan’s 2,009-page omnibus spending bill—asking Ryan directly, “Do you believe there are not enough Americans to fill these jobs?” In response, Ryan described the H-2B visa expansion as “a very small, discrete provision.”...

Marco Rubio may be the most gifted natural politician to come out of the GOP since Ronald Reagan. But the GOP base seems in no mood to rally around a principled conservative who happens also to be an optimist. That may change, but it hasn't yet. The problem is, Rubio is competing in a primary with two demagogues willing to say pretty much anything to win; several other candidates long on experience but with little personal appeal; and one neurosurgeon who should stick to medicine. Donald Trump tapped into a deep well of anger in the Republican grassroots, driven by...

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says GOP front-runner Donald Trump is doing so well in the polls because nearly half of Republican primary voters think President Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim. “Well there’s about 40 percent of the Republican primary voter who believes that Obama was born in Kenya and is a Muslim,” Graham told Boston Herald Radio on Friday, according to BuzzFeed News. “There’s just a dislike for President Obama that is visceral. It’s almost irrational,” Graham added. Graham said Trump will not get 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency if he doesn’t grow support...

Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Republican presidential candidate Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) said he does not believe the polls favoring his opponent Donald Trump and pointed to a crowd’s reaction at a rally in Ohio as evidence. When asked if he believes the poll showing Trump leading Kasich said, “He came to Ohio and had a big crowd, Thousands of people, and ten minutes into it, you know, the crowd was leaving, ... So do I believe them? No, I don’t necessarily believe what I see because it’s not a poll on likely voters."

... but at the same time, who are they surveying. Are these people for real? I don’t think so.

Via RCP, choose one: (a) “It’s a trap!” or (b) “They’ll tell you who they fear.” Actually, no, “they’ll tell you who they fear” is something righties say when Democrats are attacking a Republican, not praising him. They’ll tell you who they fear by how eager they are to tear that Republican down instead of building him up. Although … Democrats have been taking plenty of shots at Rubio lately, including the queen bee herself, so I dunno. Maybe he is the guy they fear. He’s the guy whom Bill Clinton fears, if you believe Ed Klein. Carville’s goofy, though,...

We can talk all we like about national polls and Iowa polls and New Hampshire polls, and Ben Carson and Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. But among the bookmakers, there’s only one hot bet right now, and it’s Marco Rubio. Florida’s junior senator has surged into a commanding lead in the betting for the Republican nomination for president following last week’s strong showing in the CNBC debate. Bookmakers are now giving Rubio an astonishing 40% or better chance of becoming the nominee — nearly four times as high as they were rating him just three months ago, before the debates...

FULL TITLE: MARCO RUBIO TO JORGE RAMOS: I WILL KEEP OBAMA’S FIRST EXECUTIVE AMNESTY IN PLACE UNTIL LEGISLATIVE AMNESTY ENACTED In a little-noticed interview earlier this year with Univision’s Jorge Ramos, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) declared that, as President, he would keep Barack Obama’s executive amnesty for DREAMers in place until it was permanently codified through legislation. Rubio said, in part: DACA…applies to young people that arrived in this country at a very young age before they were adults and I don’t think we can immediately revoke that… I’m not calling for it to be revoked tomorrow, or this week,...

Real-estate mogul Donald Trump hit presidential rival US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) left and right during a Bloomberg Politics interview airing Monday. Trump has repeatedly feuded with Rubio on the campaign trail, even going so far as to send him a case of Trump-branded water to taunt him for supposedly sweating too much.But Trump's distaste for Rubio, who has surged in recent polls, was clearer during his interview on Bloomberg's "With All Due Respect."At one point, Trump even declared that he's "better looking" than Rubio.Here's a list of Trump's latest Rubio insults: "I think he's highly overrated. I think he's...

GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush has returned to Florida to recharge his struggling campaign. He spoke and took selfies with supporters at an outdoor rally Friday night before attending a high school football game in southwest Florida. ...

One of the wealthiest and most influential Republican donors in the country is throwing his support to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a decision that could swing millions of dollars in contributions behind Mr. Rubio at a critical point in the Republican nominating battle. In a letter that Mr. Singer sent to dozens of other donors on Friday, which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Singer described Mr. Rubio — who was elected to the Senate in the Tea Party wave but has been embraced by the party’s Washington elite — as the only candidate who can “navigate...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)79% told a nationwide audience in Wednesday’s CNBC Republican presidential debate that companies are importing foreign graduates because American college grads just can’t do the work. The claim came when CNBC’s John Hardwood asked Rubio if he was undercutting American professionals by supporting a bill to let companies import more foreign temporary H-1B “guest workers” for white-collar jobs. Rubio evaded the question by blaming Americans’ supposed lack of skills. “We need to get back to training people in this country to do the jobs of the 21st century… The best way to close this gap is to...