Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Republicans won't win the presidency in 2016 without making inroads in the Midwest. Happily for the GOP, two Midwestern governors are running for their party's nomination. Both won re-election in 2014. The one from the state with more electoral votes won with 64 percent of the vote with wide appeal to Democrats and independents. The one from the smaller state got just 52 percent of the vote after a divisive campaign. The former fought to have his state accept the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion. He made his case on moral grounds, arguing that at heaven's door, St....

"........[Kasich] fought to have his state accept the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. He made his case on moral grounds, arguing that at heaven’s door,St. Peter is “probably not going to ask you much about what you did about keeping government small. But he is going to ask you what you did for the poor.”[Walker] adamantly opposed expanding Medicaid under the health care law,and his speeches are compendiums of every right-wing bromide that party activists demand.“We need a president who—on the first day in office—will call on Congress to pass a full repeal of Obamacare,”...declared when he announced his candidacy....

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including whether presidential candidate Donald Trump is hurting the Republican party, the historic removal of the Confederate flag from South Carolina’s state house and whether Sen. Bernie Sanders’ momentum poses a viable challenge to Hillary Clinton.(AUDIO-AT-LINK) TRANSCRIPT JUDY WOODRUFF: And to the analysis of Brooks and Dionne. That’s New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne. Mark Shields is away. Welcome to you both. E.J. DIONNE: Good to be with you. JUDY WOODRUFF: So, let’s...

There is a rule in American politics: Hope and optimism nearly always defeat fear and pessimism. The Republican Party faces a long-term challenge in presidential elections because it is defining itself as a gloomy enclave, a collection of pessimists who fear what our country is becoming and where it is going. The party’s hope deficit helps explain why there’s a boomlet for Jeb Bush, a man who dares to use the word “love” in a paragraph about illegal immigrants. The flurry doesn’t mean that the former Florida governor is even running for president, let alone that he can win. But...

GHNS -- A not-so-small miracle is unfolding before our eyes. After nearly two decades in which established opinion insisted that it would never again be possible to pass sensible regulations of firearms, the unthinkable is on the verge of happening. This week, Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is expected to announce plans to start marking up gun bills to send to the Senate floor, proposals that will include ideas put before the country by President Obama and Vice President Biden. The president’s agenda, in turn, was inspired by advocates and legislators, mayors and police chiefs,...

In an astonishing display of hypocrisy, NBC News repeatedly decried Mitt Romney using celebrity businessman Donald Trump to fundraise for his campaign. This is the same Donald Trump who hosts NBC reality shows The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice and who routinely appears on the Today show to promote those programs, including just last week. On Tuesday's Today, correspondent Peter Alexander declared that Trump "causes heartburn for some in the Republican Party because of his insistence on renewing questions about where the President was born." He later wrapped up his report by parroting Obama campaign talking points: "The Obama campaign...

Can a nation remain a superpower if its internal politics are incorrigibly stupid? Start with taxes. In every other serious democracy, conservative political parties feel at least some obligation to match their tax policies with their spending plans. David Cameron, the new Conservative prime minister in Britain, is a leading example. He recently offered a rather brutal budget that includes severe cutbacks. I have doubts about some of them, but at least Cameron cared enough about reducing his country's deficit that alongside the cuts he also proposed an increase in the value-added tax, from 17.5 percent to 20 percent. Imagine:...

Just heard on Fox....breaking. No further details yet as to what announcement is.

CNBC: Cruz will make major announcement at 4PM

What was once furious Republican opposition to Donald Trump's proposal to temporarily ban foreign Muslims from entering the U.S. has turned to virtual silence in the face of widespread GOP voter approval. Exit polls from the nation's biggest Republican primaries show impressive majority support for Trump's proposal. In the latest example, in Pennsylvania Tuesday, 69 percent of GOP voters said they support "temporarily banning Muslims who are not U.S. citizens from entering the U.S." In New York last week, the number was 68 percent. In Wisconsin, 69 percent supported Trump's idea. In Florida, 64 percent. Georgia, 68 percent. Ohio, 65...

Now let’s talk about Trump’s sky-high unfavorability rating that hovers around 70%. Trump haters use that figure as their last hope. No one can get elected with such high negatives, they say. That is cognitive dissonance. And it is one of the cleanest examples you will ever see. I’ll tell you why. ... When the race gets down to a clean Trump versus Clinton contest, and people realize there are no other options, the comparison changes. Trump wins the matchup against “crooked Hillary” with ease, based on skill, not policies. You haven’t even imagined that contest yet. Your brain won’t...

Ted Cruz has teamed up with GOP establishment hack John Kasich, to usurp the will of We The People. The two of them are in cahoots trying to cajole our (rigged) system in Ted’s favor to force a contested convention. Ted can’t mathematically win with the voters, so he’s bribing delegates to try and win on a second ballot at a brokered convention. From the backlash he’s receiving on Facebook, it appears that many of Ted’s supporters are not pleased with his latest scam. “I supported you because I believed you were an outsider, boy was I wrong!” scorched one...

Ted Cruz campaign refuted a video purporting to show the Texas senator passing money to a Republican delegate at a campaign event. Cruz rapid response director Brian Phillips told The Daily Caller that the man Cruz handed the money to is Bruce Redden, a Cruz campaign staffer, and that the money came from a supporter. The video surfaced on Reddit Friday morning, and claimed to catch Cruz trying to conceal "cash under a flyer" while handing it to a man standing with his face off-screen. "Cruz has the money, fails to slip it," the video text reads, before showing Cruz...

An hour before polls closed in five states last night, Our Principles PAC declared that Donald Trump would sweep all five primaries. No worry, the anti-Trump outfit said. "The path to the nomination does not hinge" on any of these outcomes.

Since politics as we used to know it is apparently dead and gone, what the heck? We may as well dive into this story. You’re probably already at least somewhat familiar with actress Lena Dunham of Girls fame and her unabashed lurch into the world of politics. She’s a major Hillary Clinton supporter and has done her level best to raise money for her and push the young folks toward electing the historic First Female President. But now she may be inadvertently influencing conservatives around the nation and giving GOP frontrunner Donald Trump one last push toward the finish...

I voted for Cruz in the NY primary because I thought he was the most conservative candidate. But it's over. Trump is the nominee. Any contested convention with the number of delegates Trump will have will guarantee defeat in November. I will not sit at home either and let the Clintons back into the White House without a fight. I may not have voted for Trump (yet) but he is what I have to work with to defeat the Clintons and save the Supreme Court and that's what I plan on doing starting tomorrow morning. I'm all in, and that's...

By the end of the night, Super Tuesday III could be all but the clinch for Hillary Clinton -- while Donald Trump could be poised to turn the Ted Cruz-John Kasich alliance from a potential game-changer into a Hail Mary. Up for grabs Tuesday are delegates in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Maryland, Delaware and Connecticut – with Pennsylvania the biggest prize. Polls close at 8 p.m. ET in all five states. Democrats are competing for 384 delegates in Tuesday's contests, while Republicans have 118 up for grabs (not counting the 54 unbound delegates in Pennsylvania).

Donald Trump’s sweeping victories Tuesday night move the Manhattan billionaire a step closer to winning the Republican nomination for president and to pulling off the most improbable political feat in modern American history. But Trump’s story is about more than a first-time candidate’s stunning rise. It is also about the humiliating defeat suffered by an increasingly isolated political and media class who still do not understand the causes and scope of Trump’s populist revolt. In his book “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” Charles Murray wrote about the rise of a new American upper class and the “narrow...

Tuesday on CNN’s “The Lead,” when asked about Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s convention manager Paul Manafort’s comments last week at a Republican National Committee meeting saying that Trump is playing a “part,” Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said the comments meant Trump tailors his messaging based on crowd size, but added “Donald Trump will never change.” Lewandowski said, “What you have, as you know, Mr. Trump—when he goes to an event, he speaks to massive crowds and wants to make sure they understand what his message is. His messaging in large crowds is tailor made to that large crowd....

Donald Trump: 10,050,657 votes Mitt Romney (2012): 10,031,336 votes