Free Republic

Quiet conversations have begun in recent weeks among some of the Republican Party’s biggest donors and normally competing factions, all aimed at a single question: How can we stop Donald Trump?

Hillary Clinton's second race for the presidency is only about a quarter through, but she already seems to be causing general fatigue. The lurid revelations about the Clinton Foundation proved that it was not so much a charity as a huge laundering operation. Quid pro quo donations from the global rich and powerful fueled the Clintons' jet-setting networking. In between political campaigns, the foundation provided sinecures for out-of-work Clinton politicos. This is hardly proof of Hillary's grass-roots progressivism. Then came Clinton's email fiasco. No one knows how the current investigation of her alleged misuse of email accounts, servers and classified...

MOST ENTERTAINING PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF MY LIFETIME! Without question—it is a statement I’ve said repeatedly on-air, and one that comes out often in private conversations. Look at the interest level. People who have never voted in primary elections are turning out by the thousands to see the consummate socialist at one end of the spectrum, and by the tens of thousands to see a man who brags how well he’s beat the system of free markets. I don’t expect most of these people to vote in the actual primary elections—because they probably won’t—but man is it fun to watch....

To many in Washington, there's little question that the 2016 presidential election should feature a dynasty rematch between the Clinton and Bush families. To most outside of Washington, that's the last match-up they want to see. The difference could perhaps be described as a tale of two Americas. The past 15 years have been a great time for political insiders, as the city of Washington, D.C., has become a boomtown. In fact, our nation's capital is now the nation's wealthiest metro market. Fueling the economic growth in our nation's capital has been an explosion of federal spending during the Barack...

On paper, Donald Trump offers a lot as a candidate. He’s able to command a room, he is decisive, confident, unapologetic for what he believes, doesn’t need to kiss rings and make promises to raise money, and he stands up to an activist media. But campaigns aren’t run on paper, they’re run in life. And in life, Donald Trump appears to have an out-of-control ego in need of constant feeding, which is coupled with no ability to control himself. Nothing about Donald Trump’s life requires constraint. Worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 billion, there is nothing he can’t afford...

By Joel Leyden United States News AgencyNew York --- August 23, 2015 ... Social media is no longer the bastard son of the media. It is the media. There was a time when newspapers (print), billboards, lawn signs, buttons, radio and TV ruled in winning a political campaign. Those days are history. Classic media is still relevant, but no longer primary. It is no longer the question "should we add social media to our campaign budget?" But - "should we add newspaper, TV and radio to our campaign budget". The reason is called "instant", "feature" and "cost effective". One need...

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders represent two sides of the same coin. Both men have tapped into a deep anger -- a discontent -- in the public mood. Little seems to be going right. America appears in decline under a disengaged president. We can't seem to win wars, or know why we are fighting them. People are afraid of losing their jobs or unable to find one. While the treasury takes in record amounts of money from working people, it outspends its income. Sanders and Hillary Clinton want to spend (and borrow) even more. Why the anger? Is it justified...

We can acknowledge that Donald Trump's popularity is partially related to his unapologetic defense of himself and his policies, but let's examine why that is particularly appealing to his supporters and others. How did we get to this point? Grass-roots conservatives believe that their policies can make America great again, that they can make Americans more secure and prosperous. Many of them still believe in traditional values, which are now in disrepute. They are appalled at the systematic assault on their ideas in our public schools, our universities, the media and Hollywood. They are horrified by the attacks on their...

In 1935 George Dangerfield published "The Strange Death of Liberal England, 1910-1914," a vivid account of how Britain's center-left Liberal Party, dominant for a century, collapsed amid conflicts it could not resolve. The Liberal Party had appeared impregnable. Its cabinet in 1910 included Herbert Asquith (in the midst of the longest consecutive prime ministership since the Duke of Liverpool's and until Margaret Thatcher's), and the future wartime leaders David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. But after 1910 the party never won an election again. What got me thinking about Dangerfield's delightfully written book were political developments here and in Britain...

The continuing saga of Hillary Clinton’s missing e-mails just keeps getting “curious-er and curious-er”. And I’m becoming more and more reminded of the Nixon Watergate investigation. You know, the one Hillary Clinton was fired from for unethical and dishonest behavior. Then North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin gained fame through his leadership of the Senate Select Committee to Investigate Campaign Practices, also known as the Senate Watergate Committee, which was looking into the campaign practices of the Nixon re-election campaign. The Watergate investigation gave us the phrase, “What did the president know, and when did he know it,” regarding President Richard...

This past weekend at my annual RedState Gathering, I rescinded an invitation to Donald Trump to speak after getting the runaround from his campaign on what he really meant when he said Fox News' Megyn Kelly had "blood coming out of her eyes or wherever." It was an unfortunate outcome. As I told the Trump campaign, I feel like the other candidates have been doing their best to ignore Trump and treat him as a sideshow, when, in fact, he was sitting in the center seat at the debate. The other candidates, the media and the Republican Party should give...

Hillary Clinton is in a freefall right now. Her poll numbers are dropping, her socialist rival is drawing larger crowds and a new book being released this week is reminding Americans about her phony marriage. In Ron Kessler’s new book, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of Presidents; it was revealed that former President Bill Clinton is once again cheating on his wife. This time his mistress is a buxom blonde who brings cookies to the secret service agents, according to Kessler. He also claims that Hillary treats agents with “contempt.” In fact, he says...

One might say that the president was rather presumptuous when he declared, passionately and quite seriously, that if he launched another bid for the White House, he would emerge victorious. But would he? The voters have spoken, it seems, and it doesn't look good, at least according to a new Rasmussen poll. Not surprisingly, almost every self-declared Republican surveyed (93 percent) said they would decline to pull the lever for President Obama if he was on the ballot. (I suppose after six and half years, the public is ready for a change). But far more interesting, perhaps, is the fact...

For the first time in national history, a Rhode Island native son is running for President: Lincoln Chafee. “Stumbling” is more accurate, since shortly after declaring an exploratory committee, he fumbled into making himself a full-fledged candidate, and all the campaign finance hoopla which accompanies it. A one-term Republican US Senator, then one-term Independent Governor, Chafee entered the 2016 Presidential Election as a Democrat. Confused? Cable news program Common Sense openly derided his ambitions: “Are you kidding me?” MSNBC took his campaign seriously enough, asked him serious questions, and Chafee already looked like a deer in headlights. Joining the repeal...

Walker's backers look forward to updating this sign to "Hometown of President Scott Walker." Drive into Delavan, Wis. and you immediately notice the giant circus animals downtown. A giraffe towering over a small grassy park, and an elephant rearing up on its hindquarters. They're statues actually — here to commemorate the town's quirky history as home to circus companies that needed a place to winter over. They began arriving in the mid 1800's — P.T. Barnum's Greatest Show on Earth was founded in Delavan. But the last of the circuses pulled out of the town three decades ago. You might...

Right to work. The elimination of wage control laws. Voter ID laws. Defunding Planned Parenthood. Expanding school choice. These are some of the No. 1 priorities for Republican legislators around the country. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has hit every item on this list, and he did so in a deep blue state; Wisconsin hasn’t gone red in a presidential election in more than 30 years, and its labor union culture may be second only to that of the automotive capital in neighboring Michigan. Walker’s uncompromising conservative governance made him Democrats' No. 1 target at both the state and national level,...

Editor’s note: "2016 Debate Watch" is a running, bi-weekly series. This week we’ve seen Jeb Bush and Donald Trump gain some momentum. Carly Fiorina, meanwhile, recently turned some heads as well, cracking the top ten for the first time ever. If the August 6 Fox News debate were held tonight, however, only the following candidates would make the (prime-time) cut. (See the debate rules here): (1) Jeb Bush: 15.0 (2) Scott Walker: 10.6 (3) Marco Rubio: 9.4 (4) Ben Carson: 9.4 (5) Mike Huckabee: 8.0 (6) Rand Paul: 8.0 (7) Donald Trump: 6.0 (8) Ted Cruz: 4.8 (9) Chris Christie:...

A die-hard Hillary Clinton supporter – a young, female Millennial – recently applied to be a fellow with the campaign and was accepted. However, she was asked to move out of state and work for free. It was hard not to laugh at her over-the-top, entitled millennial reaction published in USA Today: “Finding out that Hillary perpetuates the exploitation known as unpaid internships was like discovering that Santa wasn't real.” Poor baby. Millennials are in a tough position right now. They are hard pressed to find work, with 14% of them unemployed, others barely able to make it on a...

"This is not about guns. This is about evil. Here at home, and evil abroad." No GOP candidate for president has yet used those words but I hope some and perhaps all of them will before a week or more passes. I do not fault any of them as they have waited on Governor Haley to make her declaration about the flag of the Confederacy that flies on the grounds of the South Carolina state house. Governor Haley's actions and words Monday were powerful because they were not the consequence of demands made on her by her colleagues from other...

Untrustworthy. That’s how the majority of Americans view Hillary Clinton according to a recent CNN ORC poll. To anyone following the news this is not a surprise. Clinton has been immersed in scandals, whether it is her secret email server, her tenure at the State Department or the Clinton Foundation donors making financial contributions when they had matters before the State Department that includes arms deals. These are serious questions that voters deserve to have answers to, but Clinton and her aides have been dodging the press and voters. Her campaign has been one of the least accessible during this...