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The conservative 2014 Senate challengers have endorsed the candidate who, like them, hopes to be a vessel for anti-establishment frustration.Ted Cruz's presidential campaign may not get many endorsements from Senate colleagues. Not coincidentally, the Texas senator is racking up support from primary challengers who tried but failed to unseat some of those senators last year. Tennessee's Joe Carr, Mississippi's Chris McDaniel, and South Carolina's Lee Bright, three conservatives who opposed longtime GOP senators in 2014 primaries, have all backed Cruz for president. It's a small part of Cruz's effort to do next year what those candidates did last year: serve...

NCLR president Janet Murguia blames Trump for the beating of a Hispanic man in Boston and says the GOP’s attacks on birthright citizenship and immigration will further damage its reputation with Latinos. Pointing to an assault against a Hispanic man last week allegedly inspired by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, National Council of La Raza (NCLR) president Janet Murguia said the GOP’s embrace of Trump and lurch to the right on birthright citizenship and immigration could damage them in 2016 with Latino voters. On Wednesday, two Boston white men with extensive criminal histories allegedly urinated on and beat a homeless...

The odds of Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination are up from 1% in late July to 19% now on Pivit, an interactive prediction marketplace that combines public opinion, news and data to predict the live odds of election outcomes. Over the last month, the billionaire business man has topped several national polls that show him leading the Republican pack of 17 candidates. But his worth in the Pivit's prediction game had not followed suit until recently. Trump still trails former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is at 24% odds to take the GOP nomination on the Pivit marketplace. Pivit...

The GOP frontrunner’s surprising staying power has inspired soul-searching and agony among party elites.What is happening to the Republican Party? I put that question to Lindsey Graham, the senator from South Carolina and basement-dwelling presidential candidate, who was getting ready to hold a campaign event in Hooksett, New Hampshire. “Well, the front-runner is crazy,” Graham said. He was referring, of course, to Donald Trump, the GOP’s seemingly unstoppable chart-topper, who has survived outrage after outrage that would have ruined a conventional candidate. He commands, on average, double the support, among potential Republican primary voters, of his nearest challenger. Graham—who is...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sam Clovis, the highly touted Iowa campaign co-chair for Rick Perry, has departed the Texas governor's presidential bid, a blow that comes as the campaign prepares to restructure its program in the early states. Confronted by anemic fundraising that forced the candidate to stop paying all its workers, Perry's campaign is preparing to off-load some of its field operation to an allied super PAC. The move will test whether an outside group can organize just as well as a traditional campaign. Over the next two weeks, Perry's field program will revamp as the $17 million super PAC...

Ted Cruz got a big boost in Iowa recently when the influential social conservative activist and radio host Steve Deace endorsed him. To call it a sought-after endorsement would be an understatement. Deace says prospective 2016 GOP campaigns began contacting him well before the 2012 election. (All just assumed that Mitt Romney was going to lose.) The recruitment efforts picked up in 2013 and 2014. When few people were paying any attention to the still-forming Republican race, Deace was hard at work. “For me, this vetting process has been going on for a couple of years,” he says. “In our...

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Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he stands by his outspoken criticism of fellow candidate and reality show star Donald Trump because he is worried about the country succumbing to an obsession with celebrity over substance. "My fear ... is that there are countries that do succumb to celebrity... often in the developing world, celebrities and very wealthy people will win," said Paul during a 22-minute pre-taped interview posted on the web site of NBC's "Meet the Press." "I worry about the country because I don't believe that there's any sincerity to what [Trump's] message is." "And even...

Attending Congressman Jeff Duncan's 5th. annual Faith and Values BBQ/fund raiser this evening.Scheduled speakers include: Dr. Ben Carson, Scott Walker, and my personal favourite; Sen. Ted Cruz. I more than likely will not receive any one-on-one time with these gentlemen but if given the chance to ask any or all of these a question, I respectfully ask my much more learned FReeper colleges what best and poignant question(s) to ask?

In order for a candidate to attract supporters, he needs at least one of two things: to show that he is winning, or to show that he has the potential to win. In the early stages, which we are now, a candidate can be viable and still be in single digits in the polls, as long as people think he has potential to move up. The minute he concedes that he's not going to win, he's lost. And that's just what Rand Paul has reportedly done. In March, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul put his odds of winning the Republican presidential...

Who are the leaders in this crowded race for the GOP nomination? If you look at national polls, the top three are Trump, Bush, and Carson. If you look at New Hampshire, it's Trump, Kasich, and Bush. If you look at Iowa, it's Trump, Carson, and Walker, though I don't know how proud Scott Walker can be to be third in a state that should almost be giving him a home-state advantage. But these polls by themselves don't show who the leaders are in the race. To know the answer to that question, you have to look at all the...

The clear hatred of the Republican establishment for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and the mainstream media’s genuine fear that the articulate Cruz could be the nominee of the Republican Party in 2016 were clearly revealed in a telling exchange on NBC’s Meet the Press. Charlie Black—who worked on Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaigns in 1976, 1980, and 1984 before serving as senior political adviser to the 1992 re-election campaign of George H. W. Bush and chief campaign adviser for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in 2008—bluntly told host Chuck Todd that Donald Trump will not be the nominee of the Republican Party....

How meaningful is Donald Trump’s impressive lead in the polls, really? Not very meaningful, think most people in the know. Here’s why.Donald Trump’s authoritative lead in early polling in the 2016 Republican race for the presidential nomination has left Americans excited, confused and afraid. Trump hasn’t been out of first place in national polling since he filed as a candidate with the Federal Election Commission in mid-July. Most polls have him leading in the double digits. He is not only ahead on paper. He draws the biggest crowds, too. A rally for the candidate in Mobile, Alabama, on Friday night...

Donald Trump is a racist, sexist hypocrite who doesn't understand the economy (or basic math) and probably doesn't have anything resembling an inner life—but the man sure can put on a good show! Good enough that thousands of people who get off on the xenophobic, hate-filled subtext of his blathering will pack half a stadium to watch his combover blow in the wind. Which leaves one question for the sane among us: why is a television punchline appealing to people now? Andrew Kaczynski ✔ ‎@BuzzFeedAndrew Pro-Trump Twitter is such a weird place 11:30 AM - 23 Aug 2015 · Big...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/08/21/ted-cruz-power-gop-presidential-candidate/31995527/

Donald Trump continues to lead all Republican candidates in the latest Economist/You Gov Poll – despite criticism of some statements he made during the GOP debate earlier this month. His closest competitor (far behind Trump) is another candidate without a political resume – former neurosurgeon Ben Carson, narrowly ahead of two Floridians, former Governor Jeb Bush and current Senator Marco Rubio. Trump is just about as likely to be named as the Republicans’ second choice as each of the other top four. His ride at the top of opinion polls more than four months before the first official presidential nominating...

Charles Krauthammer and George Will continue to showcase their insane alignment with the DC Machine writ large. You might think of them as pundits, until you realize their punditry is expressed alignment with the policy positions of: John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, George Pataki and Jim Gilmore. Laura Ingraham scratches the surface on the “anchor baby” issue, but more directly frames the discussion around the larger picture of failed immigration enforcement which has led to the crisis. We are...

While thousands streamed into a football stadium Friday evening in Mobile, Alabama to see Donald Trump, a much smaller crowd of committed conservatives unwound at a bar and mused over the good, the bad and the unknown of the unlikely Republican presidential front-runner. They were volunteers and staff for Americans for Prosperity, a non-profit group funded by industrialist billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, two of the most effective conservative activists in U.S. politics. According to AFP, 3,600 people came to this year's annual Defending the American Dream Summit from around the country Friday and Saturday, taking in appearances by...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-08-22/trumpus-maximus-goes-to-mobile

The Daily Mail writes: Leading Republican candidate for the White House Donald Trump hasn’t officially begun scouting running mates – the first primary is still six months away. Two of his 2016 competitors come to mind for the position, however: Ben Carson and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Trump’s campaign said he has ‘cordial’ relationships with both men based on ‘mutual respect.’ An ex-aide to Trump, Roger Stone, was also seen meeting with Carson’s campaign chief Jake Menges yesterday in New York. Stone says he did not set up the meeting at the behest of Trump, however. Stone told DailyMail.com that...