Free Republic

PARIS -- Candidates in the U.S. presidential race would be wise to pay attention to what's happening in France. Over the weekend, France's so-called "far-right" National Front won 27.7 percent of the national vote in the first of two regional election rounds. Anyone looking at this result through a strictly ideological lens risks oversimplifying it. An iceberg doesn't just appear overnight. When it finally breaks through the water's surface, it's only after a long period of ignored growth. More than anything, the surge reflects the public's increasing hunger for three things: lucidity vis-A -vis the country's problems, authenticity of expression,...

Is Trump-mentum finally slowing down? While this is only one poll and the GOP establishment is still in panic mode over Trump's continued lead, a Reuters/Ipsos survey released Friday shows the GOP frontrunner lost 12 points in less than a week, "his largest single poll-to-poll drop since he took the primary lead in July," The Hill reports. The rolling poll, which was conducted from Nov. 23 to Nov. 27, still has the real estate mogul at the top, finding favor among 31 percent of Republicans. However, support for Trump is down from a peak of 43 percent, which was registered...

The Wall Street Journal calls it populism ("Populism Rises in GOP Race," Page 1, November 12, 2015), but you could just as well describe populism as what it has always been since it was all the rage -- and I mean rage -- as it swept the Great Plains in the wilder years of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. How begin to describe the wild mix called populism? Among its many ingredients: know-nothingism, conspiracy theories, anti-Catholic and anti- Semitic feeling, and the xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner, and just about anti-everything else. Except the kind of anti-Us feelings fueled by...

It's official! Sen. Ted Cruz's immigration plan trumps Trump's! I expected that the unveiling of his plan would take a back seat to the Islamic terrorist attack in Paris, France, and rightfully so. However, in lieu of the chaos, presidents will be forced to make many decisions during their tenure that will affect the safety and security of the American people. The Paris attack gave us a chance to see how our candidates would respond if an event like that occured during their administration. In a world with an ever increasing threat of an ISIS attack, immigration is no longer...

On Thursday night and Friday morning, NBC News tried their best to go after Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson by attempting to make a mountain out of a molehill of his relationship with a man who was convicted nearly a decade ago of insurance fraud while ignoring the ongoing investigation of Hillary Clinton over her private e-mail server. Even though competitors ABC and CBS didn’t cover this story, NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt hyped on Thursday that “Republican frontrunner Ben Carson is facing new questions about his friendship with a convicted felon. NBC Tries (and Fails) to Make...

You don't have to wander long in the liberal commentariat to find projections that the Republican Party is in a death spiral, doomed by demographics, discredited by the dissension among House Republicans, disenchanted with its experienced presidential candidates and despised by the great mass of voters. There is something to be said for each of these propositions -- and yet Republican candidates keep winning elections, as in recent contests in Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia. Admittedly, the first three of these states have been solidly Republican in recent presidential and congressional elections, and Americans have increasingly been straight-ticket voters. But...

Has political polling reached the end of the line? While some won’t find it as terribly shocking anymore, the polls in Kentucky which had previously been considered among the most reliable missed the Bevin win in the governor’s race by a wide margin. This wasn’t the first time either. The last few cycles down there saw the Bluegrass Poll taking one hit after another and they responded this week with something of an apology. The wide gulf between the results of Tuesday’s election races and the most recent Bluegrass Poll is a source of frustration for the Herald-Leader and its...

1) Hillary Clinton, your husband has had numerous affairs, has had sex with an intern and he settled a sexual harassment case with Paula Jones. Incidentally, there are far worse accusations than that against him that haven't been proven. So, isn't it fair to say that your husband is part of the war on women? 2) Hillary Clinton, in the first debate, you said you were proud to have drug companies and health insurance companies as your enemies. However, your campaign and the Clinton Foundation have received millions of dollars from both industries. Will you be giving that money back?...

During an appearance on CNN’s Reliable Sources Sunday, veteran journalist Carl Bernstein trashed the Benghazi committee ahead of Hillary Clinton’s testimony and insisted the Democrat will “murder them because it has been a witch hunt. It has been partisan. It's great opportunity for her.” Bernstein also praised Clinton’s debate performance as “her greatest moment in this campaign which has been a disaster for her up until the debate” but ultimately admitted “I don't think that a reset button was successfully hit. We're still back to these basic questions about her truthfulness about the server, the foundation, about the FBI investigation.”

Donald Trump likes to boast about his enormous wealth and how he doesn't need anyone else's money to pay for his presidential campaign. That hasn't stopped tens of thousands of people from chipping in with checks as small as $10 to let the Republican candidate know they're behind him.

Of course Donald Trump is doing very well and doesn’t need any help; but the way he is mopping the floor with the “other guys” could actually present a small but real problem on his march to victory. Those who have run local political campaigns, say for County Executive, have likely experienced or seen the problem of dealing with the down time between the county committee’s endorsement in April or May and the real campaign against a Democrat that starts unofficially the day after Labor Day. This can be called the July 5th problem. If there is excitement about your...

The Friday Filibuster: The one-stop-shop for everything you need to know about this week in politics.Closing Numbers12: The number of Christians ISIS executed in recent attacks for refusing to renounce faith.9: The number of people who died in South Carolina’s historic floods.$20,000: The amount of taxpayer dollars one ATF agent stole after submitting fraudulent work hours.16% of New Hampshire Republicans would vote for Fiorina, meaning she came in second place and is gaining on Trump. 42%: The amount deportations have dropped since 2012. 30% of Americans still have a ‘very favorable’ view of Planned Parenthood, despite the undercover video investigation. 42%...

Give him credit. Most elected officials are content to tinker at the edges, but Governor Jindal of Louisiana actually wants to solve problems. Look what he’s done, for instance, on fiscal policy. He sought to abolish his state’s personal income tax, a step that would have dramatically boosted the states competitiveness. That effort stalled, but he actually has been successful in curtailing state spending. He’s amassed one of the best records for frugality of all governors seeking the GOP presidential nomination. And he’s now joined the list of presidential candidates seeking to rewrite the internal revenue code. Since we’ve already reviewed...

After left-wing media went crazy over Dr. Ben Carson's comments about whether or not he'd vote for a Muslim president a few weeks ago, and he gained 100,000 new Facebook "Likes" as a result, I decided to begin tracking how many new Facebook followers each of the GOP candidates were attracting weekly. What I found may surprise you. Candidates perceived as part of the "establishment," such as Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, Lindsey Graham, and George Pataki had surprisingly few followers considering their name recognition and experience. My initial research revealed Jeb Bush had the most followers amongst the...

In a new web advertisement released this week, Hillary Clinton expresses solidarity with victims of sexual assault. She implores those who have been abused not to “let anyone silence your voice. You have a right to be heard. You have a right to be believed. We’re with you.” So, Hillary Clinton, a willing participant in the 1992 Clinton for President Campaign’s plan to handle “bimbo eruptions,” is supposedly concerned about victims of sexual assault. She is so skilled at lying that she does not realize the hypocrisy so evident in her new campaign message. In defending her husband from the...

The wheels haven't come off Hillary Rodham Clinton's bus quite yet, but they're getting wobblier. Hence the Joe Biden boomlet. As a columnist, never mind as a conservative, I think it's a fantastic idea. (A Biden vs. Trump debate would cause a national popcorn shortage.) But is Biden really the answer to the Democrats' problem? That depends. As with any malady, the right treatment hinges on the correct diagnosis. You don't recommend better diet and exercise for a shark bite. Biden is a treatment for one symptom, not the whole disease. The latest ABC/Washington Post poll numbers underscore the continuing...

Here are the current rules of the political game in America. When Democrats are in office, they move the country to the Left as quickly as possible. When Republicans are in office, the country still moves to the Left, albeit more slowly; so the GOP can claim it’s "gotten something done." Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been caught in enough scandals, committed enough gaffes and made enough mistakes to destroy any Republican ten times over; yet they've gotten a pass. Meanwhile, Republicans live in holy terror of having their political careers destroyed by having a quote in...

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....