Free Republic

Ross Douthat says that the true divide in Western politics is now between globalists and nationalists — and this divide is tribal. He explains the identifying markers of the Cosmopolitan tribe, i.e., what makes them different from the nationalist tribe (among them: their “out group” is Evangelical Christians). Douthat says there’s not necessarily anything wrong with this. A propensity for tribalism is part of human nature. More: But it’s a problem that our tribe of self-styled cosmopolitans doesn’t see itself clearly as a tribe: because that means our leaders can’t see themselves the way the Brexiteers and Trumpistas and Marine...

Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump is just getting started. Or so he has said to worried GOP leaders who fear his rival, presumptive Democratic nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is getting the upper hand too early — an edge he might not been able to regain later in the general election contest.

Britain’s decision to leave the European Union could inspire other disaffected nations to consider a way out unless the bloc responds to anxiety across the continent over jobs, immigration, and globalization.While experts say an all-out breakup of the European Union is far-fetched, countries both successful (like Sweden) and struggling (such as Greece) may view the British experience as a model to change their own lots in life.“There is a serious risk that Britain’s decision to withdraw from the European Union could set off similar demands on other member states,” said Michael Leigh, a senior fellow at The German Marshall Fund...

News flash: The revolt against elites is real in the UK and America and it's only getting started. Maybe there will always be an England. In a surprise, Leave won the Brexit referendum on whether to stay in the European Union by an equally surprising amount. British sovereignty won. David Cameron lost. Jeremy Corbyn lost. The EU lost. Bureaucrats lost. Angela Merkel lost. Barack Obama lost. Globalism lost. Authority figures almost everywhere lost. And, most of all, unlimited immigration lost. So what happened to the vaunted British betting market that is almost invariably correct and was predicting by 80 percent...

The American dream is given its name in 1931 James Truslow Adams defined the American Dream in his book, The Epic of America. He wrote, “The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”

Yahoo said Chief Executive Marissa Mayer faced “specific security threats” in 2015 — and the company accordingly spent more than a half-million dollars on her personal security. Last year’s tab came to $544,061 — more than 20 times the $26,891 Yahoo had spent a year earlier on protecting Mayer and her immediate family, according to a Monday filing. “During 2015 Ms. Mayer faced specific security threats that we believed were credible,” Yahoo said in the filing. The company didn’t elaborate on the threats. By comparison, Facebook said last month it spent $6.5 million on bodyguards and other security for its...

Bush 41 and 43 REFUSE to endorse Trump: Former Presidents join a growing list of top Republicans who will not back their party's presumptive nominee Both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush will not back Donald Trump A number of Republicans say they will not back the presumptive nominee Trump has all but secured the nomination after Cruz & Kasich dropped out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Trump has the 'opportunity and the obligation' to unite the GOP Former Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush will not endorse Donald Trump, their spokesmen have announced....

A red Ferrari with the top down swerved past on the winding dirt road, heading to what looked like a small Mars encampment. Helicopters landed on the side of the road and greeters darted across. At a farmers’ market with overflowing baskets full of raspberries, watermelons, and focaccia, I asked for a mango, and the farmer started cutting it in half for me: “That’ll be $7.” This weekend, outside Las Vegas, a group of Burning Man veterans put on a festival called Further Future, now in its second year. Across 49 acres of Native American land over three days, with...

In addition to "grass-roots" campaign workers, there are at least eight Super PACs backed by 'shadow elites' who are driven to defeat Donald Trump and they are banking on Ted Cruz. At least one of these super PAC leaders, Katie Packer of OPP, met behind closed doors at the RNC Spring Meeting this week in Florida. Packer states that a republican candidate should "uphold orthodox GOP ideology." This smacks of irony given her past allegiance with Romney/Ryan and Ryan's inability to uphold GOP principles as Speaker of the House. The super PACs are calling, texting, emailing, lobbying, and all-out wining...

'No mystery' behind the move says Vatican spokesman(ANSA) - Vatican City, March 16 - A white marble tomb has been made ready under St Peter's Basilica to receive the remains of the next pope who dies, French-language news agency I-media reported Wednesday. Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said there is "no mystery" behind the move. "It is necessary to foresee room being made for tombs in future years...there was only one free chapel, so it was wise to foresee other possibilities as well," he said.

At a private luncheon in Washington, DC, a group of GOP establishment figures gathered to lament the rise of Donald Trump and discuss what can be done to defeat him. The luncheon was filmed as part of an episode titled “The Reckoning” in the Showtime documentary series The Circus, which chronicles the 2016 race for the White House. Executive producers Mark Halperin and Mark McKinnon sat down with these establishment figures before Super Tuesday.

A Republican National Committee Standing Rules Committee member told the membership Friday that convention delegates are not bound to cast their votes at the convention according to primary vote results in the first round of voting. Curly Haugland of North Dakota, a long time member of the RNC Standing Rules Committee, sent a letter to the RNC membership at large about this issue. He explained how he came to the conclusion that all Republican delegates who participate in the 2016 Republican National Convention are unbound on each ballot round, including the first. Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/13/rnc-rules-comm-member-every-delegate-at-gop-convention-not-bound-on-first-ballot/#ixzz42pBrTlVl

The latest media narrative “Donald Trump Cannot Beat Hillary Clinton” and “Donald Trump support Dropping”, is being spurred by another NBC/Wall Street Journal poll being pushed – yet again – by NBC political director Mark Murray.On February 17th we completely deconstructed the ridiculous methodology being deployed in the agenda polls –SEE HERE– What the general audience continually seems to overlook is the source of the information.Here’s another screengrab of the latest “poll” being pushed by NBC/WSJ (the full pdf is here). Look closely at the origin of the information.What you’ll see is: “Hart Research Associates / Public Opinion Strategies”...

Neil Bush, brother of Jeb and George W. Bush, has joined the Ted Cruz national finance team, the senator’s campaign announced this afternoon. Whether Neil Bush is an outlier within the family, or the vanguard of a dynastic shift, remains to be seen. “This is certainly great news,” said Cruz communications director Alice Stewart. -snip- Neil Bush, a Houston businessman, was a director at Denver-based Silverado Savings and Loan in the 1980s. Its failure caused political headaches for his father, then the vice president.

The ultimate result of the 2016 presidential election could yet rest on the likes of Erling “Curly” Haugland, 69, a businessman from Bismarck, North Dakota, who will be one of the 2,472 delegates to the Republican party convention in July. And he isn’t saying what he’ll do. “I wouldn’t know until the day of the first ballot [at the convention in Cleveland, Ohio] because a lot can happen between now and then,” he said. With the Republican party in uproar over the runaway primary lead of billionaire property mogul Donald Trump, the role of convention delegates could be crucial in...

Elections are a rigged game, and everyone knows it but the voters. They are pawns, the useful idiots, if you will. The establishment Republican hierarchy, the Rubio campaign, the GOP and the Republican National Committee, along with the shadowy “evil spirits” who assume human form during times of great fear that We the People might actually have a true say in the governance of our lives, are roaming the political landscape with the character and stench of the rotting dead. The object of the 2016 general election has become: “STOP DONALD TRUMP,” even if it means finding a way to...

Not in memory has the leadership of a party been so out of touch. The Republican rank and file are in revolt, not only against the failures of their fathers but the policies of their present rulers. Fully 116 members of the GOP’s national security community, many of them veterans of Bush administrations, have signed an open letter threatening that, if Trump is nominated, they will all desert, and some will defect – to Hillary Clinton! In every primary upcoming, Trump is under a ceaseless barrage of attack ads on radio, TV, cable and social media, paid for by super...

PARK CITY, Utah — The presentation is an 11th-hour rebuttal to the fatalism permeating the Republican establishment: Slide by slide, state by state, it calculates how Donald Trump could be denied the presidential nomination. Marco Rubio wins Florida. John Kasich wins Ohio. Ted Cruz notches victories in the Midwest and Mountain West. And the results in California and other states are jumbled enough to leave Trump three dozen delegates short of the 1,237 required — forcing a contested convention in Cleveland in July. The slide show, shared with The Washington Post by two operatives advising one of a handful of...

Party elite don’t care for they are quite comfortable losing the White House to the Democrats again, as long as they retain their party positions and power At a speech in Salt Lake City Thursday, 2012 Republican Party presidential nominee and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney laid out his reasons why Donald Trump should never receive the Republican endorsement. According to Romney, Trump is a “phony” and a “fraud,” that would lose to Hillary Clinton in the fall election. Romney favors a deadlocked GOP presidential race that withholds the nomination from Trump at the convention. It was only the latest...

We're in a funny moment. Those who do politics for a living, some of them quite brilliant, are struggling to comprehend the central fact Republican primary race, while regular people have already absorbed what has happened and is happening. Journalists and politicos have been sharing schemes for how Marco parlays a victory out of winning nowhere, or Ted roars back, or Kasich has to finish second in Ohio. But in my experience any nonpolitical person on the street, when asked who will win, not only knows but gets a look as if you're teasing him. Trump.