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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...

On the surface, things are looking pretty good for Donald Trump’s efforts to capture the Republican nomination. He’s received more votes, and has more pledged delegates, than any other candidate. After Missouri certified its race on Tuesday, Trump’s delegate lead was 755 to 545 over Sen. Ted Cruz, with 1,237 needed to win the nomination. Trump is about to overwhelmingly capture his home state of New York, and is poised to do nearly as well in Pennsylvania. And Trump has the full backing of some crucial parts of conservative media, notably The Drudge Report. And yet there’s an increasing desperation...

Ted Cruz rejected Donald Trump's claims that the GOP race is rigged, telling Glenn Beck on Tuesday that Trump will continue "to scream that they're stealing the election" as long as they continue to successfully wrangle delegates before a possible contested convention this summer. "Apparently, when anyone votes against him, it's an act of theft," Cruz said on Beck's online radio show. He also told Beck the Trump campaign's "inability to even show up and win elections" makes it appear the front runner "can't run a lemonade stand." "Donald, it ain't stealing when the voters vote against you -- it...

Call it a high-tech lynching. In the wake of Donald Trump’s being shut out in Colorado — final delegate count: Ted Cruz, 34; Trump, 0 — his fans have formed virtual mobs, and on Sunday a particularly passionate Twitter user tweeted out the home address and phone number of Steve House, chairman of the Colorado GOP. House’s personal information has been retweeted more than 1,100 times. He says he’s received some 3,000 phone calls, most of them uncomplimentary: Meanwhile, the same Trump partisan also tweeted information for the state’s national committeewoman, Lily Nuñez, and committeeman, George Leing. Of course, the...

As Donald Trump attempts to distract from his campaign's myriad failures in Colorado by cynically stirring the "rigged corrupt game" pot, one of the public faces of this phony outrage is a gentleman who earned himself prime Drudge real estate when he dramatically burned his voter registration card on camera -- claiming that he was wrongfully turned away from the state party convention because he's a Trump fan. It's a disenfranchisement conspiracy cooked up by the elites, he argued, torching his Republican documentation in protest.  The Federalist's Mollie Hemingway was skeptical of the man's version of events and dug into the back story....

So, here’s what’s going on: Trump wants delegates from the state of Washington, so the campaign sent out an email soliciting possible delegates on Friday, April 8 to let everyone know that the deadline to submit their Declaration of Candidacy for Delegate form was Wednesday, April 6. Oh, no. It gets worse, though. There is no deadline anyway. Well, there sort of is, but it isn’t April 6 across the board; Washington has a number of conventions that all take place on different days and have different deadlines.. The gaffe would have reflected poorly on the campaign if they’d send...

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...

Breathe easy, America. Before you judge Donald Trump's proposed Muslim ban too harshly, consider this: It will not apply to Muslims who are, A. Donald Trump's friends, and B. rich. Feel better? The Republican presidential candidate, with a totally straight face, told MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Wednesday that he has "a lot of friends that are Muslim," many of whom are "rich" and would get special treatment to let them in the country....

You can’t win if you’re this disliked. Former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) is pretty sanguine about the Democratic Party’s chances in a general election should Donald Trump become the Republican Party’s nominee. Unlike the labor wing of the party, which worries about Trump’s appeal to working-class white voters, and operatives who fear a scorched-earth campaign, Weiner says the real estate tycoon’s inherent flaws will ultimately doom his candidacy. Put simply, Trump’s campaign reminds Weiner of his own race for mayor of New York City in 2013. “Donald Trump, if he’s the nominee, with 65 percent negatives, is not going to...

By this time, everyone with a television, a smart phone or a computer has already seen the MSNBC town hall exchange between Chris Matthews and Donald Trump where the abortion question came up. (Even if you lack all three of those modern devices, you may have caught wind of it via the screams of horror emanating from the windows of your neighbors, both Democrat and Republican.) But on the odd chance that you were in a coma for the past sixteen hours and happened to turn to Hot Air before doing anything else this morning, here’s the short but brutal...

Jimmy Kimmel’s show aired a “death threat” against Donald Trump made by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Trump staffer charged on CNN today. Jimmy Kimmel To Ted Cruz: “If he wasn’t Ted Cruz, he probably would be reported and investigated by the Secret Service,” Karen Giorno, identified by CNN as Trump campaign southeast regional director, told Jake Tapper. “It should offend every American. This is a presidential race,” said the staffer of a GOP candidate who, two months earlier, boasted at a rally, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”...

Real estate mogul Donald Trump continues to reveal his true leftist colors, smearing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) for being too conservative. After Walker endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Trump unleashed a barrage of leftist talking points against Walker. "There’s a $2.2 billion deficit and the schools were going begging and everything was going begging because he didn’t want to raise taxes ’cause he was going to run for president," Trump said. "So instead of raising taxes, he cut back on schools, he cut back on highways, he cut back on a lot of things." Townhall's Guy Benson points out that...

In one of the most heated exchanges in Tuesday night's debate, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) hit Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — who's painted himself as an anti-illegal immigration hardliner — for allegedly supporting legalization of illegal immigrants already in the country. Cruz supported a 500% increase in the number of H1b guest worker visas, Rubio said, and wanted to double the number of green cards available. At the end of the back-and-forth, the Florida senator pinned down his colleague from Texas — asking Cruz whether he plans to support legalization of any sort for immigrants already living in the United...

KINGSTON, New Hamsphire -- Texas Sen. Ted Cruz hit on immigration topics early and often Wednesday in his first public event a day after the Republican presidential debate, looking to sharpen contrasts with GOP rivals -- including Senator Marco Rubio -- on the contentious issue. "Last night, you listened to one Republican after another who said, 'Gosh, it would be mean to enforce our immigration laws,'" Cruz said at a Veterans Day town hall in New Hampshire. "And I would point out, by the way, everyone talks about how compassionate it is to grant amnesty to 12 million people here...