Free Republic

Jeb Bush found himself on defense after his town hall meeting in Reno, Nevada yesterday after a young voter told him, “your brother created ISIS.” Ivy Ziedrich, a 19-year-old student at University of Nevada who said she was a registered Democrat, approached Bush after the event and told the likely presidential candidate he was wrong about the origins of the terror group... Ziedrich said she is a member of the Young Democrats at her university although in an interview with ABC News yesterday she said she was not speaking as a representative of the group. She said she likes to...

Jeb Bush’s decision to forego this summer’s Iowa Straw Poll has roiled many conservatives in the state, but that snub might only be the beginning: According to three sources with knowledge of Bush’s campaign strategy, the likely Republican presidential candidate does not plan to seriously contest the first-in-the-nation caucuses — and may ultimately skip the state altogether. Tim Miller, a spokesman for Bush, strongly denied that the candidate planned to write off Iowa, and suggested those who say otherwise are merely speculating. “There is nobody with any shred of authority or proximity to Gov. Bush suggesting that, should he decide...

It is nearly axiomatic that presidential contests tend to shine a harsh light on conservative Christians — inasmuch as they are viewed as the Republican Party’s base and are, therefore, deemed fair game. Of course, religious folks come in a variety of stripes, checks and polka dots. Many are Democrats. But it is the members of the Christian right — evangelicals and Catholics, especially — who are treated every four years to the sneers of lefties, academics, proud atheists (allow me to quote myself: “There’s no dogma like no dogma”) and certain but not all media. Roger Ailes’s Fox News...

Marco Rubio proved he can hang with the big hawks in his first foreign policy speech since he declared his run for president. The student has now become the teacher. Sen. Marco Rubio, once viewed as a protege of presidential competitor Jeb Bush, schooled the former Florida governor Wednesday evening in the first national security address of his national campaign. As compared to Jeb Bush, who fumbled and stumbled through his first major national security address, Marco Rubio delivered a master class on foreign policy that spoke to the soul of the right’s hawkish neoconservatives. In New York City, before...

A number of Republican candidates for the 2016 presidential nomination have now formally declared or are poised to announce very soon. Here’s my assessment where each stands right now and how I see their strengths, weaknesses and prospects – at least at this moment. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush – his family has a record of winning elections and he has won perhaps the most important swing state twice. He has name recognition, money, clear leadership capacity, and the demeanor to be President. He also will raise a staggering amount of money. Given the GOP tradition of ultimately nominating the...

We've seen a flurry of presidential campaign announcements over the last several weeks: Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee. Oh my. But there's still at least one big notable absence. Jeb Bush, the first candidate to actually declare he was exploring a presidential bid, seems in no hurry to formally launch one. Instead, Bush has put in motion a plan that's effectively wrecking what's left of our flimsy campaign finance laws. Bush is taking the time before his formal announcement to build a super PAC that Politico says "would be...

Conservatives in America are sick and tired of letting the elitist political establishment in both parties, as well as the leftstream media, select Republican presidential nominees (RINOs who lost like: Ford, Dole, McCain, Romney), leaving the country with the false choice of two liberal candidates. One organization and one man are doing something to turn around this treacherous strategy that results in loss after loss, and has given us the worst president in history, Barack Obama. Election after presidential election, we are informed by the Karl Rove-types on who the “most electable” candidate is, and conservative icon Brent Bozell and...

Tell me who I’m leaving out: Bush, Walker, Rubio, Paul, Cruz, Christie, Huckabee, Perry, Jindal, Santorum, Graham, Carson, Fiorina, Trump, maybe John Kasich, maybe even Rick Snyder. There’s also a chance Peter King and/or John Bolton will run, just to make life extra miserable for Rand. That would be … 18 candidates onstage in a forum that’s never accommodated more than 10. Huh. You could, of course, limit the debates to the 10 most popular and/or credible candidates in the field. Just tell me how you go about reliably discerning who those people are circa early August, five months before...

Ted Cruz is breaking from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) about whether or not he would have ordered the U.S. military into its eight-year war in Iraq. “Knowing what we know now, of course we wouldn’t go into Iraq,” the Texas Republican told The Hill on Tuesday. “At the time, the intelligence reports indicated that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction that posed a significant national threat to this country. That’s the reason there was such widespread bipartisan support for going into Iraq,” he added. “We now know in hindsight, those intelligence reports were false.” “Without that predicate,...

Likely GOP presidential contender Jeb Bush says he will try to convince grassroots groups of parents who oppose the Common Core standards to flip-flop and embrace the education initiative. When Megyn Kelly of Fox News Channel’s The Kelly File observed how unpopular the Common Core initiative is with grassroots conservatives in particular, Bush responded: “Common Core means a lot of things to different people, so they could be right, based on what’s in front of them…but the simple fact is we need higher standards; they need to be state-driven. The federal government should play no role in this – either...

Lotta buzz about this in the political Twittersphere this afternoon. I can’t figure out why. The likely Republican presidential candidate will instead attend a competing event, the RedState Gathering in Atlanta, the day of the Iowa event, GOP sources in Iowa told The Des Moines Register Tuesday. A spokesman for Bush confirmed the report…

The headlines I’ve seen this morning about this exchange claim that Bush said he wouldn’t rescind Obama’s executive action “right away,” which is sort of true. What Jeb said is that he’d rescind the amnesty as part of a deal with Congress on immigration. That won’t happen on day one of his presidency, so yeah, technically O’s order would remain intact for at least a few months while President Bush works out the details of the new bill with the House and Senate. But focusing on the timing misses the point of what Jeb’s implying: If Republicans in Congress refuse...

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush believes he can convince conservative primary voters that illegal immigrants should be “punished”–by being granted a path to amnesty. In an interview from Liberty University that aired Monday on Fox News, host Megyn Kelly told him, “you know that there’s a core wing of the party for whom this will be a deal breaker.” Bush replied, “I don’t know that.” “I’ve been traveling over the last three months. I get a sense that a lot of people can be persuaded, to be honest with you,” he said. Polls, though, have shown conservatives in early primary...

MIAMI – Union leader Dolores Huerta prefers a woman in the White House in 2016, saying that “there’s a lot at stake for Latinos” if one of the current Republican hopefuls wins the election, even if he has “a Latino name or speaks Spanish.” The tireless 85-year-old activist said in an interview with Efe that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) “took two steps back” when he could have used his “influence to pass immigration reform” in 2013. “Some of those candidates who are Latinos in reality don’t represent the values of the Latino community, who for the most part are working...

The former governor of Florida, John (or as he prefers to be called, Juan) Ellis Bush, doesn't appear to have a lot of support among Republicans, as opposed to Republicans in Name Only (RINOs), who absolutely adore him. But Juan isn't sweating it. He's rolling in dough, and more importantly, he's rolling in opponents. Have you ever heard of a "straw" candidate? When you have a weak front-runner that can't reach 50 percent, often a third, or a fourth, or even a fifth candidate suddenly jumps into the race. If he has a name similar to that of the strongest...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush rejects the popular notion that his support for a path to legal status for some undocumented immigrants is a surefire way to doom his shot at being the GOP presidential nominee. In an extensive interview with Fox News host Megyn Kelly that is scheduled to air Monday night, Bush – who has strongly suggested he is moving toward announcing a run for the White House, but has yet to do so – said he believes that undocumented immigrants brought to the country as minors should be able to legalize their status.

Jeb Bush said in an interview that he would not immediately move to repeal President Obama’s executive order on immigration — suggesting he would instead wait for a new law to be passed addressing the matter. In an interview with Megyn Kelly that is to be shown Monday night on Fox News, Mr. Bush said that rather than overturning the order, he believed in “passing meaningful reform of immigration and make it part of it.” The president’s executive order seeks to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation. Most presidential candidates in the Republican field either oppose Mr. Obama’s order...

Why Republican candidates are scrambling to court Jeff Duncan, a one-time Clemson benchwarmer and arguably the most right-wing member of the House. Welcome to the Jeff Duncan primary. The what? Exactly. If you’ve never heard of Rep. Jeff Duncan, you’re not alone. The former banker and auctioneer isn’t well known outside his conservative South Carolina district. But Republicans running for president know Duncan as a man who is quietly emerging as an unlikely yet crucial figure in the process to pick the Republican nominee for 2016. In South Carolina this past weekend, more than a dozen Republicans from across the...

Jeb Bush defends his stance on immigration in an interview that airs tonight on Fox News, contending that "a lot of people can be persuaded" to support a rewriting of laws that would allow for legal status. "I think illegal immigration ought to be punished by coming out from the shadows, earning legal status over an extended period of time where you pay a fine, where you work, where you don’t receive government assistance, where you learn English, where you don’t -- you know, you’re where deported if you commit a crime as is the law," Bush said in an...

Jeb Bush says that he would have authorized the 2003 war in Iraq — just like his brother did. “I would have, and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody,” the former Florida governor told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly Saturday after delivering the commencement address at Liberty University in Virginia. “And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got.”