Free Republic

It’s safe to say each of the CNN Town Halls this week painted the remaining Republican presidential candidates in a positive light and that’s a good thing for those of us who see the number one priority as the need to defeat Hillary Clinton (or Bernie Sanders) in November. Instead of #NeverTrump, we were reminded that #NeverHillary is a much more important objective than the need to settle scores, even if there’s good reason to carry grudges in the first place. Ted CruzAnd while it’s somewhat likely the Republican candidates’ favorability ratings could get a boost courtesy of CNN’s idea...

Donald Trump's campaign is going all out to win delegates in Nevada, offering to cover transportation and lodging costs for Nevada supporters who travel to Reno in mid May to participate in delegate elections. Trump's Nevada activities contradict his claim that he has deliberately declined to invest resources in the election of delegates to the Republican nominating convention in Cleveland because the process is "corrupt." "With overwhelming success throughout each county, we're in a strong position going into the state convention being held in Reno on May 14th and 15th," Charles Munoz, Trump's Nevada state director, wrote in an email...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: We have a guy on here from Southampton, New York, named Bill. Greetings, Bill. Great to have you. What is the point that you wanted to make here? You've been holding on for quite a while now. CALLER: Thank you, Rush. My conclusion is that if Donald Trump is denied the nomination -- and in line with everything that you've just been saying -- that the big lesson for all of us is that there is no political solution available for our grievances to be addressed in America today. RUSH: I did not say that. See, that's......

Via Red State, not a huge deal but worth flagging in case there’s another poll this weekend showing his numbers dipping a bit in New York on the eve of the primary. That would suggest a trend, and that would be a big deal given what’s at stake. To be clear: Trump’s going to romp in NY on Tuesday night, winning by 25 points or better, and will pick up something like 75 delegates even in a worst-case scenario. But since his path to 1,237 is so difficult, it matters a lot whether he ends up with 75 in New...

He won a big victory in Wisconsin. He pierced the Donald Trump mystique. He even got some of the Capitol Hill lawmakers who regard him as a revolutionary and renegade to slink cautiously into his corner. By all logic, this should be a Ted Cruz moment — if only the next primary weren’t in New York. But on Tuesday, New Yorkers go to their polling places, and though Cruz has been the beneficiary of the calendar before — his performance on Super Tuesday helped force out of the race Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a demographically identical and philosophically similar...

As Ted Cruz-mania skyrockets exciting millions http://bit.ly/1SHWzWW, I still get emails from professed Christians ripping me to shreds for choosing Cruz over Trump. These anti-Cruz Christians dig deep, coming up with reasons so weak not to choose Cruz that they equal saying Ted Cruz took another kid’s candy when he was seven. Then, they fall back on rehashing Cruz’s eligibility. http://bit.ly/22nhGD6 Frankly, anti-Cruz Christians have me scratching my head. Clearly, these Christians are willing to overlook all of Mr Trump’s shortcomings, anti-Christian political positions http://bit.ly/23mAGaI and liberal leanings. http://bit.ly/1LUzCxd Meanwhile, they “passionately” leave no stone unturned, relentless in their attempts...

The conventional wisdom is that though Ted Cruz can excite the conservative-activist base of the Republican party, he can’t beat Hillary Clinton in a general election. But the recent head-to-head polling tells a different story. Unless your name is George W. Bush, it’s tough to win 270 electoral votes without winning the popular vote. And Cruz is hanging in there against the Democratic front-runner. The RealClearPolitics average puts Clinton at 46.4 percent and Cruz at 43.9 percent; the most recent McClatchy-Marist survey has it a tie. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the current Republican front-runner, hasn’t led Clinton in any national poll...

Candidates like Donald Trump are exciting. Trump is guaranteed to bring out thousands to his events and generate copious decibels of noise. He has built a campaign on telling it like it is and refusing to be politically correct. Ted Cruz, on the other hand, is boring. He brings hundreds to his events and utters Ronald Reagan’s name a few times to get the crowd going. His demeanor is confident but not quite as in-your-face as Trump is. But for those afraid of what Trump stands for, Cruz may be the far more dangerous candidate. For one, Cruz is much...

I am a delegate to both the North Carolina State GOP convention to be held in May and my Congressional District Convention next week. My political insider connection is that I showed up at my precinct caucus/county convention last month, where I expressed the willingness to commit to the time and expense of attending these other conventions. I have made a similar commitment every few years for the past three decades. When I lived in Chicago I was also a delegate to several Illinois State GOP conventions for the same reasons: I voted in Republican primaries, attended my ward Republican...

In “Through the Looking Glass,” the Queen tells Alice: “sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” She might have choked on her grits, however, at the thought of Ted Cruz becoming the Republican nominee. Until a few weeks ago he was low in the polls and loathed by the GOP establishment. Sen. Lindsey Graham joked about murdering him. But now, the impossible has happened: Cruz’s unlikely emergence as the favorite to beat Donald Trump. His transformative win in Wisconsin. And even his unthinkable endorsement by Graham. Can Ted believe this is happening? And does he —...

Republican Sen. Cory Gardner says Donald Trump has a “diminishing future” after his loss to Ted Cruz in Wisconsin’s primary last week. The Colorado senator was asked on the Kelley and Kafer show Friday about Trump’s former adviser, Roger Stone, threatening to publicize the hotel rooms of Republican convention delegates who don’t support Trump. “It sounds like to me like a consultant, a political consultant who has a candidate that is kind of wits end because they see a diminishing future, and I think you can see that turning point in Wisconsin as somebody else has caught momentum,” Gardner said....

The state will host what’s likely to be the contest's decisive primary in June, but the campaigns are already marshaling their forces. Ted Cruz lands in California on Monday for two rallies in a state where voters won’t head to the polls for nearly 60 days, but the West Coast swing is anything but a diversion. It’s preparation for the campaign’s endgame. If Cruz is to stop Donald Trump short of 1,237 delegates, the final, decisive stand will almost certainly come in California. And that realization has spurred a behind-the-scenes arms race, with Cruz, Trump, John Kasich and their allies...

On March 1, the Colorado Republican party prepared for 60,000 voters to arrive at nearly 3,000 precinct-caucus sites across the state. Those voters would select men and women to attend the party’s county assemblies and congressional district conventions, in the first step of a multi-part process that determined 34 of Colorado’s 37 delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. To hear Donald Trump and his fans tell it, those tens of thousands of Republicans never arrived, never made their choices, and never had the chance to play a role in selecting the party’s delegates. Matt Drudge, the populist Right’s...

Donald Trump played up his plans to tax companies that move jobs out of the United States as he tried to appeal to blue collar workers in a New York rally Sunday. Speaking for about an hour Sunday in Rochester, N.Y., Trump recited statistics about the area's loss of manufacturing jobs and economic hardship in recent years. He reiterated his desire to tax goods sold by companies once based in the United States that moved away to find cheaper labor. The plan has been widely panned by economic experts. But the Rochester crowd ate it up. "I'm the only one...

Tsk, tsk. Donald Trump’s effort to reset his campaign following defeat in Wisconsin showed no signs of paying off this weekend, as a series of technical failures by his campaign set his hopes back even further. From Thursday to Saturday, Trump suffered setbacks in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, South Carolina and Indiana that raise new doubts about his campaign’s preparedness for the long slog of delegate hunting as the GOP race approaches a possible contested convention. He lost the battle on two fronts. Cruz picked up 28 pledged delegates in Colorado. In the other states, rival campaigns were able to place...

As the Republican presidential race moves toward its closing stages, more and more attention is being focused on the race for delegates. It is that contest that will decide whether front-runner Donald Trump can become the GOP nominee or whether someone else — his closest rival Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) or perhaps some compromise candidate who has not participated in the primaries — can wrest the prize away from him. Many elements of the delegate race are complex and confusing. Here, we try to answer the most frequently asked questions. What are the basics? There are expected to be 2,472...

Warren Throckmorton is a good man and as a leader in taking down liars and grifters like David Barton he has been a great man. He is a man of principle with integrity, both qualities in short supply in the Republican Party Yet I disagree with Dr. Throckmorton on his case for never casting a vote for Ted Cruz in the general election. Like the good Professor, if I had picked the nominee, we would not be left with a Trump, Cruz, Kasich set of options. Before I became President of The Saint Constantine School, I was a Walker guy,...

Donald Trump is blasting a "corrupt" election system for complicating his path to the Republican nomination. Trump tells a crowd of thousands of enthusiastic supporters gathered in a frigid airport hangar in Rochester, New York on Sunday afternoon that "it's not right" that the person who wins the most votes may not be the nominee. He says he's doing fine, but if he's denied the nomination, "you're going to have a big problem, folks." While Trump has won more states than any of his Republican rivals, it's possible that he won't secure the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination...

Those in the know are now spreading the word. Read it here first! Earlier I had a different Note, and different stuff written. Now I can tell you that Ted Cruz is the winner, I can prove it for most people. Yes read it again, Ted Cruz has won the nomination. Trump is letting people go as we all know. Florida, Ohio, and other battleground States have seen most positions slashed. Staff in his Headquarters have been let go as well even when they were performing critical roles. Trump did not even have a New York Team until last week....

Front-runner’s adult children huddle with their father as staff divides among three competing aides. Donald Trump’s campaign overhaul has inflamed an internecine struggle among three of his closest advisors, creating an atmosphere that multiple sources likened to a political “Hunger Games.” According to interviews with more than a dozen people on or close to the campaign, staffers are increasingly dividing themselves into competing factions aligned with Trump’s three top officials – embattled campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who still commands deep loyalty among many of the people he hired; deputy campaign manager Michael Glassner, who has a growing group of supporters;...