Free Republic

In addition to winning more primaries, more convention delegates and 2 million more votes than any other Republican presidential candidate running this year, billionaire developer Donald Trump has won a significant national following with his repeated pledge, as a shrewd negotiator, “to beat China, Japan and Mexico at trade.” Trump offers a simple explanation for the problem: “Their leaders are much smarter than our leaders.” But they’re not smarter than the no-nonsense negotiator Trump: “I beat China all the time.” If that is true, then why has candidate Trump been so publicly and griping about his campaign’s having been cheated...

Donald Trump supporters walked out of a delegate election in Georgia Saturday to protest a vote that robbed Trump of all of his slated delegates from a district that he won in the primary. A Cruz-Rubio alliance at the district convention in Buford, Georgia helped to knock Trump supporters out of the district’s national delegation altogether. Cruz supporters implied that Trump’s people would “embarrass” the district at the convention in Cleveland. Then things got heated. “This morning, I attended Georgia 7th Congressional District GOP convention as a delegate and a Donald Trump supporter. We were there to elect the 3...

Virginia's 10th Congressional District Republicans today nominated their three delegates and three alternates to the Republican National Convention in July, and all three main delegates are backers of Sen. Ted Cruz (R). State Sen. Dick Black, Mick Staton (Black's son-in-law) and Beau Correll were elected as delegates, while two supporters of front-runner Donald Trump – former Loudoun County Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio and past 10th District chairman Howie Lind – were elected as alternates. Blaine Dunn, a Cruz supporter, was selected as the third alternate. Trump narrowly won March's GOP Primary in the commonwealth -- although Sen. Marco Rubio comfortably took...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. – It’s a Ted Cruz sweep in Wyoming. Cruz won 14 of 14 Republican National Convention delegates up for grabs at the Wyoming state convention here Saturday. The crowd here was clearly in Cruz’s corner, as the Texas senator was the only candidate to make the trip to Casper — ahead of a major snowstorm — and Sarah Palin, scheduled to speak for Trump, previously canceled.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. -- Donald Trump's presidential campaign has all but thrown in the towel in Wyoming ahead of Saturday's Republican convention. The billionaire businessman's campaign made a conscious decision not to commit resources to Wyoming, according to Alan Cobb, a senior Trump adviser. Trump picked only up a single delegate in last month's Wyoming county conventions while rival Ted Cruz scored nine. There are 14 more delegates at stake at this weekend's state convention. In a telephone interview with The Associated Press from the convention site in Casper, Cobb said Friday that he expects Cruz to sweep what remains of...

CASPER, Wyo. — On Saturday morning, while his two rivals for the Republican nomination stay back east, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, will fly to this city to address the state GOP convention. The potential prize: Fourteen delegates to the national convention in Cleveland. The competition: Hard to find. On Friday, with no explanation to either party officials or media, Donald Trump's campaign announced that Sarah Palin would cancel her scheduled speech here. Additionally, while Republicans gathered for a barbecue and fried chicken dinner, the campaign of Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, was invisible, and the Trump campaign was clearly outmatched. The...

Businessman Donald Trump’s seemingly unstoppable presidential campaign might be losing its momentum. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s recent sweep in Colorado put up another speed bump in Trump’s path to the Republican nomination. While Trump claimed the Colorado outcome was “rigged” and “totally unfair,” his campaign is simply no longer winning all aspects of the race. Prediction markets are reacting to this latest hiccup for the Trump campaign. As the possibility of a contested convention in July looks more and more likely, Trump’s numbers have dipped. Prediction markets are where people bet on the possibilities of certain outcomes in politics, sports...

"To be suspicious is not a fault. To be suspicious all the time without coming to a conclusion is the defect." -- Lu Xun Donald Trump and his campaign generals have lodged serious allegations and complaints about the 2016 Republican Party rules governing the election of delegates to the National Convention via primaries, caucuses, county/local and state conventions or a combination of these. Words such as "rigged", "fixed", "corrupt" and "broken" have been thrown at the party on state levels in the aftermath of delegates allegedly being 'poached' from the Trump Camp by the Cruz Camp, with the conspiratorial assistance...

Today in Denver, Donald Trump’s supporters are holding a massive protest party and expecting 1,000 people to attend. Trump's supporters have been disenfranchised by the Colorado Republican Party. They plan to protest at the state Capitol building Friday from 4PM - 7PM. The organizer, Erin Behrens, leads her own personal effort called “Colorado Votes Matter.” Trump was awarded zero national delegates at the state GOP convention in Colorado Sorings and Cruz was awarded all the delegates. The caucus result touched off an avalanche of complaints from Trump supporters in Colorado. Many republicans felt disenfranchised and have spoken directly to the...

Why are the Trumpists so angry at Cruz? In fact, doesn’t it seem like they are always angry at something or someone? It’s true. It’s either “lyin’ Ted,” the Washington insiders, the press, which is bit surprising considering how much free air time he is given, or whatever. It almost appears Svengali Trump has figured out that he must continually invent new villains to keep his followers amped up. This reminds me a bit of the leaders of the hard left, who must keep some form of “The Man” in perpetuity, holding down the oppressed democrat faithful, who are then...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Donald Trump's presidential campaign has all but thrown in the towel in Wyoming ahead of Saturday's Republican convention. The billionaire businessman's campaign made a conscious decision not to commit resources to Wyoming, according to Alan Cobb, a senior Trump adviser. Trump picked only up a single delegate in last month's Wyoming county conventions while Cruz scored nine. There are 14 more delegates at stake at this weekend's state convention. In a telephone interview with The Associated Press from the convention site in Casper, Wyoming, Cobb said Friday that he expects Trump's rival Ted Cruz to sweep...

After Ted Cruz won every delegate up for grabs at the Colorado Republican convention, Donald Trump began complaining that the process at such conventions is unfair. His claim is that party insiders should not be making these choices, but rather that the power should be vested with the voters. As a consequence, Cruz is “stealing" delegates from Trump, and in so doing defying the will of the voters. Trump's accusations are specious and disingenuous. The process that has been playing out is perfectly legitimate. Trump's real problem is that he is being outhustled by the Cruz campaign. The Republican nomination...

Donald Trump's soldiers in Georgia are waking up -- perhaps too late -- to what's at stake on Saturday, when Republicans gather by congressional district to pick more than half of the 76 delegates and alternates who will attend July's presidential nominating convention in Cleveland.logo-all This morning, Trump state director Brandon Phillips sent out an email that was one-half alarm bell and one-half plea. It included this paragraph: "Mr. Trump won Georgia by more than 14 points, almost 200,000 more votes than his next closest rival. He also carried 155 counties out of 159. Ted Cruz didn't win a single...

Unbound delegates in Louisiana are fuming over media reports that they have decided to back Ted Cruz over Donald Trump in the presidential GOP primary, calling them untrue. Trump edged out Cruz in the Louisiana primary that was held March 5, though the margin was close enough that each candidate ended up taking 18 delegates.

The Trump campaign had little problem getting on the ballot, having quickly gathered more than the 4,500 voter signatures necessary. And Early is convinced that Trump will take Indiana, winning over not only Republicans who like his tough talk but some cross-over Democrats, too. Despite polls that show the blustery Trump offending women, Early said he heard nothing but praise from some Tea Party-affiliated women he visited this week. The bumper stickers went fast, he said. “I don’t think he’ll have a problem with women,” Early said. Trump's delegate situation in Indiana is proving tougher. Behind the scenes, younger and...

A series of brand new trend polls (three – full pdf’s below) highlight an ongoing discussion/trend. With increased visibility Senator Ted Cruz support decreases. It would be inaccurate to say Cruz is collapsing, if it were not for multiple polls indicating the same trend line. However, when you have three completely disparate polls, indicating an almost identical retraction, you cannot dismiss the reality. Fox News and IPSOS Reuters both identify the issue on a national scale, and within the CBS polling of Pennsylvania voters you find the specifics as to why. First, the Fox Trend Poll showing Donald Trump extending...

Marco Rubio won Minnesota decisively on March 1, but the 17 delegates he was awarded are now up for grabs, free to vote for any candidate they like on a first ballot at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. In a hotly contested Republican primary that looks increasingly likely to culminate in a contested convention this summer, those delegates will be critical. The battle for them is essentially throwing states such as Minnesota, which have already held their nominating contests, back into play as they elect delegates at state conventions. And Ted Cruz’s campaign, which has run circles around Donald...

On Saturday, April 9, Colorado had an “election” without voters. Delegates were chosen on behalf of a presidential nominee, yet the people of Colorado were not able to cast their ballots to say which nominee they preferred. A planned vote had been canceled. And one million Republicans in Colorado were sidelined. In recent days, something all too predictable has happened: Politicians furiously defended the system. “These are the rules,” we were told over and over again. If the “rules” can be used to block Coloradans from voting on whether they want better trade deals, or stronger borders, or an end...

Making sense of the 2016 Republican primary is a task best left to future historians, but here’s one rough measure of how crazy things have become: Results of one hotly contested primary in March are still being disputed. And the fight has gotten so bitter that negative campaign ads are being run on the radio—not against one of the GOP candidates but against one of the lowly 2,472 elected delegates tasked with going to the Republican convention and voting for the party nominee. The story involves a multigenerational rivalry between two Republican powerbrokers from Michigan, and at stake are six...

Give Donald Trump credit for planning ahead. He is preparing to be a sore loser. Trump’s complaints that he is being undone by a rigged system crafted by a corrupt Republican Party is the dress rehearsal for his campaign’s closing argument should it come up short in Cleveland. Trump will, in his telling, have been stabbed in the back by insiders and be fully justified in wreaking a terrible revenge on the party that he briefly sought to lead. Facts and logic don’t particularly matter to Trump or his mouthpieces, yet the “rigged” charge is absurd even by the standards...