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Senate Republican leaders spent a rare Sunday session scolding Ted Cruz. The leaders wagged their fingers at the younger senator, accusing him of using his pedestal in the upper chamber to "pursue personal ambitions." Cruz, a Texas senator who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, drew the ire of his colleagues for claiming the top Republican in the Senate lied to him. He accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) of going back on a promise he claims McConnell made to him about the contentious Export-Import Bank. On Friday, McConnell set up an amendment vote to reauthorize the bank,...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Donald Trump unloaded on Scott Walker over the weekend while in Iowa: He went down a list of criticisms that seemed the result of an overnight opposition-research effort. “Wisconsin is doing terribly,’’ he said. “The roads are a disaster because they don’t have any money to rebuild them, and they’re borrowing money like crazy.’’ He cited figures for the state’s budget deficit. “I wrote this stuff all down but I don’t need it because I have a really good memory,” he said. He also accused Mr. Walker of flip-flopping on the Common Core education standards, having once supported them....

Lindsey Graham might thank Donald Trump for getting him to finally buy a new phone, but the South Carolina senator said today he still doesn't think the Republican Party should "hire" the real estate mogul as its presidential candidate. Graham made national headlines last week when he destroyed his old-school cell phone after Trump read the number aloud on national TV, but Graham had more just jokes for his opponent in the race for GOP presidential nomination. Speaking exclusively with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on "This Week," the senator said he sees great dangers in continuing to support Trump, the current...

Senior Senate Republicans lined up Sunday to rebuke Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz for attacking Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, an extraordinary display of intraparty division played out live on the Senate floor. As the Senate met for a rare Sunday session, Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and John Cornyn of Texas each rose to counter a stunning floor speech Cruz gave on Friday accusing McConnell, R-Ky., of lying. None of them mentioned Cruz by name but the target of their remarks could not have been clearer....

Donald Trump was supposed to flame out fast. Instead, he's burning ever hotter in the first contests of the 2016 Republican presidential primary. The real estate mogul and reality TV star has a seven-point lead over his nearest competitor in New Hampshire, and he's breathing down the neck of longtime Iowa caucuses leader Scott Walker, according to two NBC-Marist University polls released Sunday morning. It's still very early in the 2016 campaign, and the first Republican debate on Aug. 6 in Cleveland could shake up the race, but Trump's surprising success suggests he will continue to be a significant force...

(snip) Already threatened by a growing trust deficit with voters, her would-be majesty now faces an even more lethal adversary. It’s called the truth, though she probably sees it as a vast, left-wing conspiracy. The news that two inspectors general from the Obama administration want the Justice Department to investigate her handling of classified material is a potential game changer. For many Democrats, it will serve as final proof she is ­fatally flawed. ..... Look for Vice President Joe Biden to jump in soon, and lefty Sen. Elizabeth Warren might also take the leap. Meanwhile, Clinton must play ­defense against...

* RNC chief strategist confirms contest would be allowable on Capitol Hill * Sanders has expressed wish to square off against ‘reactionary agenda’ Bernie Sanders could participate in a one-on-one, leftwing versus right debate with Ted Cruz during the presidential primary, without violating restrictive rules set by the Democratic and Republican national committees. The two senators would just have to face off at their workplace, the US Capitol. The first debate of the extended primary election will see the top 10 Republican candidates in a field of 16 face off in Cleveland on 6 August, in an event hosted...

It isn't hard to figure out what's driving the so-called Donald Trump phenomenon that just prompted one-quarter of America's likely Republican voters to say in a poll he's the one they want to be our commander-in-chief. What's harder to figure out is why the Trump phenomenon blindsided the Republican Party's presidential pack, the working press and the parasitic punditocracy. And why we keep being surprised every time this happens. After all, this political driving force isn't really about The Donald or his billions; and it is as old as politics itself. It's about the way things happen -- and often...

Governor Christie spent the past week on the campaign trail hitting key issues that are popular with the conservative voters who likely hold the key to his success as a Republican candidate for president. His tour through the early voting states, which includes return trips to New Hampshire and Iowa this week, comes as his campaign and a super PAC supporting his candidacy are spending a combined $1 million to run political ads nationally on Fox News that show Christie criticizing President Obama over the Iran nuclear deal, just as the next round of horse-race polls are being conducted. The...

While Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are bringing in a sizeable number of donations of under $100, Republicans have been going for the big money, like the huge score Ted Cruz just made from a pair of Texas frackers. Even so, on July 16, Newsmax made a big deal of Hillary receiving donations from wealthy individuals, with the headline, “Hillary Clinton’s Donations From Hedge Fund Titans Exceed Republicans.” Those Democrats are such elitists! You don’t want to be drinking milk when you read these things, at least not without a bib. And here the Texas Messiah, Ted Cruz, just hauled...

IT WAS a winter night in 1854 when nine men broke into the building site of the Washington Monument, stole a slab of marble and—according to a later confession—heaved it into the Potomac river. The stone, which once belonged to the Temple of Concord in Rome, was a gift from Pope Pius IX. The attackers belonged to an anti-Catholic political movement, nicknamed “Know-Nothings” on account of their strict code of secrecy. Their movement considered Catholic immigrants a menace to the republic. At its peak, followers included dozens of congressmen, some governors and an ex-president. The Know-Nothings feared that the papal...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) On Saturday’s “Melissa Harris-Perry” Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors spoke about the protests at Democratic primary candidates Martin O’Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), when Black Lives Matters protesters demanded O’Malley and Sanders mentioned Sandra Bland, who was recently found dead in her prison cell, by name. Cullors was asked by guest co-host Janet Mock what her plan was for Republican candidates, specifically Jeb Bush, for calling “black lives matter” a “slogan.”(continued)

Former presidential candidate John McCain has some debate advice for the GOP candidates sparring with Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump: Stick to your message. "Answer the questions," Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, said in a moderated discussion Saturday at the Aspen Institute. "Do not ... not so much ignore something like a direct attack, you don't want to totally ignore him, but get your message out," he said. Trump, who leads the crowded Republican field in several recent polls, recently said the Arizona senator, a former prisoner-of-war in Vietnam, was only considered a hero because he was captured. Trump has also...

On 4/23/2007, Jim Robinson posted a manifesto, "Giuliani as the GOP presidential nominee would be a dagger in the heart of the conservative movement" (and a knife in the back) . The thread was subtitled, "The only difference in a Liberal Rudy Giuliani and Liberal Hillary Clinton is the fact of which bathrooms they select to use and there are some who are willing to even question that.

Billionaire businessman Donald Trump on Saturday unleashed a personal attack at Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, days after being the target of the governor’s latest campaign blast. Trump’s speech in Iowa came on the heels of a fundraiser for Walker referring to the New York business mogul as “DumbDumb” in an event invitation email earlier this week. Blasting the “horrible” insult from Walker’s campaign, Trump went on the offensive with criticism against Walker’s economic record. “Wisconsin is in turmoil,” Trump told a boisterous crowd at a rally in Iowa. He pointed to the state’s roads, schools and hospitals, which he said...

It's become one of his loudest, most frequently repeated boasts. As polls have shown him surging to the top of the Republican pack, Donald Trump has made a point of asserting his particular strength among Hispanic voters. "I have so many Hispanics, and they love me," Trump said during a speech in Laconia, New Hampshire, last week. "And interestingly, we just got from the state of Nevada a poll [that] just came out, and Trump won with a tremendous amount. And the second line was, 'Takes Hispanic vote in a landslide,' and I've been saying that. I'm going to win...

Donald Trump’s incendiary rhetoric isn’t making him a lot of friends among his fellow candidates for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, but it’s winning him converts in California. “If I walked into a poll booth right now, and I had to cast my vote, I would vote for Donald Trump,” said Robin Hvidston, the executive director of the Claremont-based We the People Rising, a grass-roots organization pushing for stronger enforcement of existing immigration laws and the enactment of stricter immigration laws. “I wouldn’t have said that three weeks ago. ... Both parties are so ingrained in political correctness and both...

Via the Weekly Standard, where were you the day Hillary’s campaign imploded? No, I kid. Drudge was pushing this earlier because the idea of lefty infighting over whether their nominee-in-waiting is a racist or not is simply delicious. Spoiler: She is racist, or at least the left used to think so. (A few of them still do.) Now that their hold on power depends upon her being absolved, though, absolution is freely granted via the memory hole. She’ll be given a pass on this partly for that reason and partly because her admission about fear of black men in hoodies...

Welcome back, everyone. This column went on hiatus last week, so we could attend Netroots Nation. So we've got two whole weeks to cover today, just to warn everyone in advance. Two weeks ago, we kind of went out on a limb (the polling evidence was not all that clear when we wrote it) and subtitled our previous column: "Donald Trump, Frontrunner." Since that time, such a statement has gone from being a wild prediction to becoming an equally-wild reality. The first Republican presidential debate is happening in less than two weeks, and Donald Trump is not only guaranteed one...

Real estate billionaire Donald Trump's recent showing in national polls looks less like a fluke with each passing day, and numbers from Friday's YouGov.Economist poll has him leading the pack with support from 28 per cent of Republican primary voters. The survey, which is based on Internet interviews, ranked Trump twice at high as second-place finisher Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor who leads in the fundraising sweepstakes but will fall far short of competing with Trump's $10 billion personal wealth. Bush is the first choice of 14 per cent of Republicans in the poll; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is...