Free Republic

How a proven rock-ribbed leader handles protesters: https://youtu.be/GEXOpm0H7QA

If Ted Cruz is to come from behind and win the Republican nomination, it's "gonna take an entire unity effort" to win support from the establishment, Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show Thursday. The comment from Limbaugh, who has not formally backed any candidate, is the latest indication that the iconoclastic Texas senator will have his work cut out for him as he seeks to cut off Donald Trump. Limbaugh presented two theories, the first of which assumed that Cruz accepts the premise that he still has time to get to 1,237 delegates before the Republican National Convention, adding...

For 26 years, Rush Lim­baugh has insisted that con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues, clearly and pas­sion­ately artic­u­lated, will win every time. By con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues Rush meant: God, coun­try, fam­ily, com­mu­nity, lib­erty, indi­vid­u­al­ism, per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity, lim­ited gov­ern­ment, and free mar­kets. Rea­gan was the model, and the promise: it had hap­pened once, and could hap­pen again. Eas­ier said than done.

National Review, one of the country’s leading conservative magazines, will endorse Ted Cruz on Friday in a blow to Marco Rubio after its top editors and publisher decided that the Texas senator is the only candidate left who can defeat Donald Trump, POLITICO has learned. “Ted’s the only one with a plausible path to stopping Trump,” National Review editor Rich Lowry told POLITICO, “either by getting a majority himself or denying Trump a majority and finishing close behind and getting it to convention.”

Leading up to the 2008 presidential election, I let it be known to anyone who would listen that I was going to vote for Barack Obama. After years of leftist activism, it was exciting to be able to vote for a candidate who embodied much of what I believed to be true. For me, the previous eight years under President Bush had been a wasteland of oppression, war-mongering, and greed. Obama presented me with the voting opportunity to help usher in a new age of compassion, justice, and equality. This is, in large part, why I read with interest the...

I have been much concerned that so many people today with Conservative instincts feel compelled to apologize for them. Or if not to apologize directly, to qualify their commitment in a way that amounts to breast-beating. “Republican candidates,” Vice President Nixon has said, “should be economic conservatives, but conservatives with a heart.” President Eisenhower announced during his first term, “I am conservative when it comes to economic problems but liberal when it comes to human problems.” Still other Republican leaders have insisted on calling themselves “progressive” Conservatives.1 These formulations are tantamount to an admission that Conservatism is a narrow, mechanistic...

If you haven't listened to Rush Limbaugh's speech at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, in 2009, you should put it at the top of your must do list. If you have listened to it but not recently then do yourself a favor and listen to it again. It is an inspirational definition of conservatism. He begins with this gem: "Let me tell you who we conservatives are: We love people. When we look out over the United States of America, when we are anywhere, when we see a group of people, such as this or anywhere, we see Americans....

Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, said Sunday that he is unlikely to support real estate developer Donald Trump in a general election. "If Trump becomes the Republican nominee my expectation is that I'll look for some 3rd candidate - a conservative option, a Constitutionalist," Sasse tweeted Sunday night. Sasse, a conservative former university president, has previously been sharply critical of Trump's views, arguing the former reality television star does not embrace the conservative principles of limited government and liberty. Sasse becomes the most prominent congressional Republican to announce plans to deny Trump his support. "Christians - recognizing threats vs...

With a few bold stokes of historic significance, Trump has single-handedly broken the hold that "politically correct" bullies have long exerted over the vast bulk of those euphemistically described as "public servants." Thanks to Trump, it may never again be quite so easy to intimidate dissent in America. With a few unpleasant, yet effective, strokes on the platform in Presidential debates, Trump has easily derailed the plans of political bullies & the incredibly wealthy users of those political bullies, who were trying to force the nomination of another globalist, Neocon influenced, candidate on the Republican Party; clearly demonstrating the tactical...

The GOP race is not over yet. There is still some time to slow and then stop Trump's march to the nomination. But that probably won't happen if numerous prominent conservatives remain under the delusion that Trump is leading a conservative revolt against the establishment. Some conservative commentators - notably Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham - have been cheering on both Senator Ted Cruz and Donald Trump in the GOP presidential-nomination fight. These commentators like to lump Cruz and Trump together because this allows them to explain the Trump phenomenon as emanating from the same source they say has been...

RUSH: Robert B. Reich produced a video. Robert B. Reichhhh, a former contributor on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, labor secretary for Bill Clinton, produced a YouTube video explaining why Ted Cruz is more dangerous than Donald Trump. They're both disasters, but Ted Cruz as an absolutely horror, the worst possible thing that could happen to in the United States of America. VIDEOREICH: Four Reasons Ted Cruz is Even More Dangerous than Donald Trump -- Cruz is more fanatical. Sure, Trump is a bully and bigot, but he doesn't hew to any sharp ideological line. Cruz is a fierce ideologue: He denies...

Conservative leaders are sending a blunt message to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: The Supreme Court is more important than your majority. McConnell’s (R-Ky.) top priority since becoming majority leader last year has been to put his colleagues in a strong position to win reelection, in part by showing that Republicans can govern. But bottling up President Obama’s nominee to replace the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia could bring the work of the chamber to a screeching halt if Democrats choose to retaliate. Conservatives say that’s the risk McConnell has to take. Taking action on a Supreme Court nominee —...

For the last several days, I’ve spent a lot of time spreading the following paragraph around the Internet: Donald Trump is a biblically-illiterate, adulterous, strip-club owning, casino magnate. He has been on every side of almost any political or moral issue you can imagine. Yeah, he's said some things that people like to hear, but what is there in his life that reveals that he will actually do what he says? He is "wise in his own eyes" and we should not be swayed by his cunning, craftiness, and deceitful scheming. Even the shallowest of political observers knows well that...

Debate Performance Cannot Overshadow Decades of Personal HistoryOne of the aspects of the current campaign climate that I find deeply discouraging is the fact that the majority of the American electorate spends little or no time learning about the candidates in the weeks and months leading up to the primaries, and they apparently spend little or no time during non-election years paying attention to the roles that American politicians, and would-be candidates, play in events and policymaking that are happening both in America and elsewhere around the globe. One of the shocking and disturbing ramifications of that sad state of...

Trump Is Not A Liberal or Conservative, He’s A Pragmatist by Mychal Massie January 19, 2016 We recently enjoyed a belated holiday dinner with friends at the home of other friends. The dinner conversation was jocund, ranging from discussions about antique glass and china to theology and politics. At one point reference was made to Donald Trump being a conservative to which I responded that Trump is not a conservative. I said that I neither view nor do I believe Trump views himself as a conservative. I stated it was my opinion that Trump is a pragmatist. He sees a...

The old right, which I would define as Anglo-Saxon traditionalism, was obliterated in America during the first years of the 20th century. When Wilson abandoned traditional American isolationism in favor of Teddy Roosevelt's jingoistic internationalism, American conservatism was finished as a dominant political ideology. It could not exist in a world where America was an active participant in European intrigues. It staggered along after Wilson, until the Great Depression delivered the final blow. What replaced it was the mild corporatism of FDR that was an adaptation of what we would come to understand as European fascism. In America this meant...

One of the little known aspects of recent American history is that Russell Kirk served as one of Barry Goldwater's most important intellectual advisors, 1959-1964. The two talked frequently, met frequently, and strategized frequently. In private and public, Goldwater acknowledged Kirk's role a number of times. Only recently, however, did I discover that Kirk wrote a number of speeches for Goldwater. The one that intrigued me most (as Goldwater praised Kirk innumerable times for writing it; Goldwater considered it one of the best speeches he ever delivered) was the talk that Goldwater gave in February 1962. After a very exhausting...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VckRA4tYFo

Why do millions of voters, low-information and otherwise, never get it that the Democrats NEVER give up when it comes to the relinquishing of power? They were always out there even though those watching nightly television never heard them. Overnight the wolves have come out of the fields and up over the bluffs into front and back yards where the primal sound of their howling foretells the coming death of Conservatism in America. The spine-chilling howling of the wolves is the Conservative Funeral Requiem of the lib-left, now that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has passed.

If conservatism is your bag, if conservatism is the dominating factor in how you vote, there is no other choice for you in this campaign than Ted Cruz, because you are exactly right: This is the closest in our lifetimes we have ever been to Ronald Reagan. ***snip*** But for those of you that conservatism's the answer and conservatism is the way, you have no choice here. Ted Cruz has got to be your guy. There's nobody even close. Nobody.