Free Republic

This weekend brings Easter Sunday and the beginning of Passover, and Christians and Jews will be filing into houses of worship this weekend to celebrate - most certainly more than usual for what are considered important holy days for people of both religious persuasions. The difference in the number of people in those churches and temples this weekend has a political significance. Often we talk about how different religious groups vote at election time, but the data show that the bigger divide in the electorate is around religious attendance - how often people go to a house of worship. In...

When Congress voted repeatedly on short-term funding for the Department of Homeland Security this year, five Virginia Republicans were in firm opposition, part of a failed conservative attempt to halt President Obama’s executive order protecting millions of undocumented immigrants. Call it the Dave Brat effect. His surprise primary victory last spring over former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) not only created a power vacuum in Virginia’s delegation, it left Republican lawmakers from the commonwealth willing to buck their party’s leaders in order to avoid angering conservatives, Republican strategists say. That fear reflects a division in the state party that...

Muslim Group With Links To Extremists Boasts Of Influencing Election A group suspected of being a front for Islamic extremists claims it can control as many as 30 seats in the general election and boasts of acting a "kingmaker" By Andrew Gilligan 04 Apr 2015 A front group for Islamic extremists which wants to let British Muslims fight in Syria has boasted that it is “negotiating with the Tory and Labour leadership” to secure some of its demands. Muslim Engagement and Development (Mend) has built links with both parties – and been chosen as an “official partner” by the Electoral...

This Is Our Fight’: Ted Cruz’s First Badass Campaign Ad

The eminent George Will has penned a baffling column. The headline: “Cruz is aiming at the wrong Republicans.” Writes Will: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was born in 1970, six years after events refuted a theory on which he is wagering his candidacy. The 1964 theory was that many millions of conservatives abstained from voting because the GOP did not nominate sufficiently deep-dyed conservatives. So if in 1964 the party would choose someone like Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, hitherto dormant conservatives would join the electorate in numbers sufficient for victory. This theory was slain by a fact — actually, 15,951,378 facts....

<p>Florida Senator Marco Rubio will make his big announcement at the historic Freedom Tower in downtown Miami.</p> <p>Rubio, on Thursday, told our news partners at the Miami Herald that the rally is scheduled for April 13th.</p> <p>The 11-story Freedom Tower that, for more than a decade, was where refugees first met with U.S. government officials after leaving Cuba off the Florida coast.</p>

Maybe driven by Sen. Ted Cruz's presidential bid or the fight over Indiana's "religious freedom" law, Americans have taken notice of the Constitution of the United States, ordering so many pocket versions that the nation's founding document has blasted into the Top 10 bestseller list. In revealing their second weekly Conservative Best Seller list, the Conservative Book Club said that the Constitution published by National Center for Constitutional Studies barnstormed into No. 7 on the new list. "We are pleased to see that The Constitution of the United States is still a bestseller after 228 years," said Christopher Malagisi, editor...

As U.S. Sen. John McCain readies his official announcement of a bid for a sixth term, national “tea party” organizations are stepping up their efforts to find a viable conservative opponent to challenge him in Arizona’s 2016 Republican primary. … Over the years, McCain has taken positions that many tea-party conservatives oppose: most notably his support of comprehensive immigration reform, which critics say would provide “amnesty” to illegal immigrants, and of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which they viewed as a big-government bailout. Besides being a top target of big spending by out-of-state groups, McCain also must manage a long...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has seen his advantage blunted in his home state over the past two months, according to a new Quinnipiac University swing-state poll released Thursday. Bush leads potential Republican contenders in Florida with 24 percent, a decrease from 32 percent in the Quinnipiac poll of Feb. 4. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker follows with 15 percent, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is next at 12 percent. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson follows the top three in Florida with 8 percent; Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who announced his presidential bid in Virginia on March 23, grabs 7 percent; and...

A former staffer to Jeb Bush established a group earlier this year that can raise money without disclosing its donors, a revelation that has drawn criticism from campaign-finance watchdogs who say the group will allow the likely 2016 candidate to benefit from contributions his campaign might prefer not to disclose. The nonprofit corporation—called Right to Rise Policy Solutions, sharing the same “Right to Rise” name as two other political-action committees raising money for Mr. Bush’s potential campaign—is the latest addition to a group of politically linked organizations not required to disclose their donors. Other potential 2016 candidates, including Louisiana Gov....

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R) is essentially tied with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) in early primary and national polls. While he is cleaning up with big donors, Politico suggests some just are not sold: “Reliable top-tier Republican donors in Orange County — one of the nation’s most lucrative fundraising locales — are leery of committing until they get a better feel for Bush’s electability. … That keep-the-powder-dry approach represents a stark difference from the county’s embrace of Romney, who raised more than $40 million from California for the 2012 cycle.” Meanwhile, Bush’s likability ratings are nothing to write...

Jeb Bush appeared to modify his public comments about Indiana’s “religious freedom” law on Wednesday in a closed-door Silicon Valley fund-raiser, telling a small group of potential supporters that a “consensus-oriented” approach would have been better at the outset. Mr. Bush’s comments were strikingly different in tone and in scope from what he said on Monday night in an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. In that interview he praised Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana for doing the “right thing” and said that the new law was similar to one in Florida and to a law signed by...

PHOENIX -- The head of the Senate Education Committee is blocking the confirmation of one of the governor's picks for the Board of Education because the nominee supports the Common Core academic standards. Sen. Kelli Ward, R-Lake Havasu City, refused to schedule a hearing on Tim Carter. He is the Yavapai County school superintendent. More to the point, he was involved in crafting the standards. And that was too much for Ward to take. "There's a large outcry against Common Core,'' Ward told Capitol Media Services Tuesday. And Ward has made it quite clear she wants them scrapped. The move...

Republicans are debating whether their path to the presidency in 2016 runs through the blue-collar Rust Belt states, or the demographically changing new South and Sunbelt states. For Democrats looking to retake the Senate, however, the formula is more clear-cut: Win back white working-class voters, or be consigned to a longer-term minority. Most of the Senate battlegrounds run through the Midwest—Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio—along with New Hampshire, which carries demographic similarities with those older, whiter Great Lakes states. To defeat the vulnerable Republican incumbents, Democrats have a challenging task ahead: Making inroads with blue-collar voters, who have been stubbornly resistant...

Some try to wish April Fool's Day away. Others do their best to ignore it. Then there are those who embrace the day's possibilities. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is one of those people. So on Wednesday morning, Walker's tweet that he would make a "big announcement" later in the day essentially had a *wink wink* tacked on at the end. There was no chance Scott Walker was going to announce his all-but-certain White House bid, or anything else of substance. Still, political reporters -- like this one -- nonetheless had to tune in to Walker's announcement. Would he --...

1. The GOP will choose the most moderate candidate before the primary begins. That person will be the GOP candidate in the presidential election. Our preferences don't matter. Our rallies don't matter. Our letters and calls don't matter. Elections are pre-programmed. Now the sale of that candidate begins. It's a con job. They must convince us why we should vote for their choice for us. 2. The GOP and the media will shove the above mentioned GOP Moderate at us every single day all day long, bombarding us with their images and sound-bites, telling us what a great candidate they...

If the 19th century English philosopher George Henry Lewes heard Senator Ted Cruz speak as he did Monday at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, then Senator Cruz could convincingly be said to be the inspiration for Mr. Lewes’ quote that “originality is independence, not rebellion; it is sincerity, not antagonism.” Senator Cruz announced at Liberty that he is seeking the Republican nomination for president. Our story does not end there. Cruz’s speech touched on more than campaign promises or party platform. It touched — focused — on the senator’s beliefs, deeply felt, on government’s limited role in relation to man,...

Unsure: 20 Ted Cruz: 18 Scott Walker: 18 Jeb Bush: 16 Marco Rubio: 7 Ben Carson: 6 Rand Paul: 5 Chris Christie: 4 Mike Huckabee: 4 Rick Santorum: 2 Carly Fiorina: 1

Republican Congressional leaders aren't exactly known as the biggest fans of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., but their current legislative strategy could inadvertently benefit his presidential candidacy. Cruz has rankled the likes of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, due to a confrontational style that has triggered high-profile battles, most notably the effort to defund President Obama's health care law, which led to a government shutdown in fall of 2013. After Republicans took over the Senate, McConnell declared, "Let me make it clear: There will be no government shutdowns and no default on the national...

Forget for a moment about facing off against the liberal juggernaut which continues to rip apart the fabric of American culture and the principles upon which the nation was founded. Grassroots conservatives have another mountain to scale, right in our own backyard. A Yahoo News item via The Center for Public Integrity claims the U.S. Chamber of Congress’s new political strategy “will include a greater emphasis on recruiting the right sort of business-friendly GOP candidates, intervening in primaries as it attempts to sculpt a compliant Congress that mirrors its priorities.” In other words, the Chamber is planning to throw even...