Free Republic

How meaningful is Donald Trump’s impressive lead in the polls, really? Not very meaningful, think most people in the know. Here’s why.Donald Trump’s authoritative lead in early polling in the 2016 Republican race for the presidential nomination has left Americans excited, confused and afraid. Trump hasn’t been out of first place in national polling since he filed as a candidate with the Federal Election Commission in mid-July. Most polls have him leading in the double digits. He is not only ahead on paper. He draws the biggest crowds, too. A rally for the candidate in Mobile, Alabama, on Friday night...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump clearly prides himself in shunning focus-group research. He refuses big campaign donations that he asserts make his opponents beholden to special interests. He seems to target no specific constituency. Many pollsters remain puzzled by Trump’s political appeal. “Republican support for Donald Trump just continues to grow,” said Patrick Murray, director of Monmouth Polling after its August survey, “with no clear sense of who his constituency really is.” Yet a constituency is emerging. Trump’s strongest supporters, roughly a quarter of Republican voters across the polls, are not dissuaded by any increased media scrutiny of their candidate....

Billionaire who has spent weeks at the top of Republican presidential polls must be taken seriously.

Donald Trump is a racist, sexist hypocrite who doesn't understand the economy (or basic math) and probably doesn't have anything resembling an inner life—but the man sure can put on a good show! Good enough that thousands of people who get off on the xenophobic, hate-filled subtext of his blathering will pack half a stadium to watch his combover blow in the wind. Which leaves one question for the sane among us: why is a television punchline appealing to people now? Andrew Kaczynski ✔ ‎@BuzzFeedAndrew Pro-Trump Twitter is such a weird place 11:30 AM - 23 Aug 2015 · Big...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/08/21/ted-cruz-power-gop-presidential-candidate/31995527/

The good news for Jeb Bush is that he’s the perfect candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. The bad news is that he’s the perfect candidate in the year 2000. That’s the counterfactual scenario that most Bush-watchers have spun over the years. Had Jeb won the 1994 race in which he first pursued Florida’s governorship, the theory goes, it would have been him rather than his older brother who became the GOP’s standard-bearer in 2000. Instead, Jeb narrowly lost the ’94 race to Democrat Lawton Chiles, George W. won his contest in Texas in the same year and the younger...

China conducted a flight test of its new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) this month. This week, Bill Gertz reported that earlier this month, China conducted the fourth flight test of its DF-41 road-mobile ICBM. “The DF-41, with a range of between 6,835 miles and 7,456 miles, is viewed by the Pentagon as Beijing’s most potent nuclear missile and one of several new long-range missiles in development or being deployed,” Gertz reports. He goes on to note that this is the fourth time in the past three years that China has tested the DF-41, indicating that the missile is nearing deployment....

Bestselling author Edward Klein's bombshell claim that Michelle Obama and top White House adviser Valerie Jarrett have become so close they may live together in Europe after President Barack Obama finishes his second term has sent the rumor mill into overdrive. But Klein, who made the startling assertion on his website, told Newsmax TV on Friday that the relationship between the high-powered women definitely does not involve physical intimacy. "There's nothing sexual. A lot of people ask me that question. No, there's nothing sexual at all," Klein — author of "Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas" — said in...

If you look on the surface, one might think that the polls indicate that Donald Trump is the best candidate to go up against the Democrats in the general election. As history has shown, the ability to get support within one’s own party is not always an indicator of ability to win in the general election. In fact, one can argue that either Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich were more likely to defeat President Obama in 2012, though we’ll never know. Before we get into the list of candidates, let’s look at general election “winning attributes” that work in...

Charles Krauthammer and George Will continue to showcase their insane alignment with the DC Machine writ large. You might think of them as pundits, until you realize their punditry is expressed alignment with the policy positions of: John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, George Pataki and Jim Gilmore. Laura Ingraham scratches the surface on the “anchor baby” issue, but more directly frames the discussion around the larger picture of failed immigration enforcement which has led to the crisis. We are...

I must admit I have enjoyed the Trump-a-palooza this summer. The truth is, I have thrown in the towel on America so I don’t think our elections mean very much. It’s just a question about how fast we intend to drive into the abyss. Being old I should be rooting for slow as that means I can reach escape velocity before it gets ugly. On the other hand, life is for living and sticking around long enough to see the collapse has its attractions. I can go either way so the elections are just entertainment at this point. Six months...

Other GOP presidential hopefuls are eyeing Alabama. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz's stop in Tuscaloosa on Tuesday is part of a spate of visits to the state by Republican hopefuls seeking the party's 2016 nomination for president. "We are very, very excited about the kind of traffic we are getting, and we know it is all because of joining the SEC primary. This is unprecedented in the history of our state," Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill said. Alabama lawmakers voted during the 2015 regular session to move up the presidential primary beginning in 2016 from the second Tuesday of March...

While thousands streamed into a football stadium Friday evening in Mobile, Alabama to see Donald Trump, a much smaller crowd of committed conservatives unwound at a bar and mused over the good, the bad and the unknown of the unlikely Republican presidential front-runner. They were volunteers and staff for Americans for Prosperity, a non-profit group funded by industrialist billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, two of the most effective conservative activists in U.S. politics. According to AFP, 3,600 people came to this year's annual Defending the American Dream Summit from around the country Friday and Saturday, taking in appearances by...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-08-22/trumpus-maximus-goes-to-mobile

Islamic preacher Hamza Andreas Tzortzis has been allegedly "named" on the leaked list of members of the adult website Ashley Madison. However, the well-known preacher has denied that the account belonged to him. Tzortzis has also denied signing up for an account on Ashely Madison, the infidelity dating website -- which was recently attacked by hackers who leaked the names of hundreds of thousands of its members -- and said that it was a conspiracy by hackers to defame him. Tzortzis, a member of the Islamic Education and Research Academy, is known for his debates with atheist Richard Dawkins. In...

Space agency kills off internet rumour by confirming an asteroid strike will not wipe out humanity in the next few weeks, or years, or decades.Good news for those with plans for October and beyond: the Earth will still be in existence. NASA has confirmed – after rumours swept the internet about an imminent asteroid strike expected between 15 and 28 September – that the two-week period in question will be entirely free of Earth-destroying space attacks. The likelihood of any known potentially hazardous asteroid striking the planet within the next 100 years stands at 0.01%, the space agency said in...

How do the Clintons, dogged by scandal and suspicion at every turn, not just stay afloat in American political life, but thrive? The contrast between the apparent inevitability that surrounded Hillary Clinton’s procession toward the Democratic presidential nomination for so long and the air of scandal and suspicion that seems to trail behind her wherever she goes is striking. And it points to something important: Hillary Clinton isn’t a candidate borne aloft on a wave of popular enthusiasm. She is no JFK, no Ronald Reagan. She is no George Wallace or William Jennings Bryan. The marching bands processing before her...

Donald Trump could transform the Republican Party into a coalition focused on white identity politics. We've seen this in Europe, and it's bad. Now that we have had time to observe the Donald Trump phenomenon, there is enough evidence to make a clear assessment of what it represents. The rise of Trump is an epic expression of frustration with the American political system, and it is a natural outgrowth of frustrations with America’s changing demographics; the hollowing out of white working class values and culture, as Charles Murray has documented extensively; and what life is like when governed by...

The Daily Mail writes: Leading Republican candidate for the White House Donald Trump hasn’t officially begun scouting running mates – the first primary is still six months away. Two of his 2016 competitors come to mind for the position, however: Ben Carson and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Trump’s campaign said he has ‘cordial’ relationships with both men based on ‘mutual respect.’ An ex-aide to Trump, Roger Stone, was also seen meeting with Carson’s campaign chief Jake Menges yesterday in New York. Stone says he did not set up the meeting at the behest of Trump, however. Stone told DailyMail.com that...

COLUMBUS, OHIO — Texas’ Sen. Ted Cruz was the hands-down favorite of the Americans for Prosperity annual summit in Columbus, Ohio, this weekend, if the number and volume of ovations during the speeches of five presidential candidates who addressed the annual convention of tea party activists was the measure. The reception to former Gov. Rick Perry’s energetic appearance at the event was somewhat muted by the fact that he was its very last speaker. At the other end of the spectrum was former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a newcomer to events financed by conservative industrialists Charles and David Koch. Bush...