Free Republic

Ok Freepers, put down the Trump/Cruz bats for a minute and consider this. According to polling a plurality of Iowa voters are either undecided or soft in their support for any candidate. Religious voters play a significant role in Iowa politics. Religious voters have demonstrated in the past a distaste for candidate who engage in the bare knuckle politics Cruz/Trump have recently engaged in. Historically polling in Iowa has been rather in accurate. Iowa almost always produces a surprise result. Rubio has gone full out of for the religious votes. His ads spend a lot of time with him talking...

MILWAUKEE – On the Republican side, Donald Trump is supported by 24 percent, followed by Marco Rubio at 18 percent and Ted Cruz at 16 percent, among respondents who say that they will vote in the Republican primary. Ben Carson is backed by 8 percent, with Chris Christie at 5 percent. Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina receive 3 percent each. Jeb Bush and John Kasich are each at 2 percent, with Mike Huckabee at 1 percent and Rick Santorum at 0. Carson led the Republican field in November at 22 percent, with Trump and Rubio each at 19 percent. Cruz...

Presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) continues to rack up the endorsements, picking up four more in the past 24 hours. They include Dr. Chuck Harding and Pastor Michael Creed, leaders of a Christian ministry committed to the education, engagement and encouragement of the nation, particularly among Independent Baptists. Also, he's been endorsed by U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Eddie Calvo, the governor of Guam....

Only a few days out from the Iowa Caucuses, we still don’t know what to expect. The polls look more like darts tossed by a drunk than a discernible pattern. Worse still, we don’t really even know what they are measuring. There is one critical factor in a caucus system that makes it different from a primary. Unlike a primary that may have early voting and absentee voting and where the voters straggle in over the course of a 12-hour day, in a caucus you actually have to get your voters to a caucus site within a relatively small envelop...

Vice President Joe Biden told fellow Democrats on Thursday that they should see it as “a gift from the Lord” if Republicans nominate Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or billionaire businessman Donald Trump for president in 2016. “We may be given a gift from the Lord in the presidential race here,” Biden told lawmakers attending the annual House of Representatives Democratic conference, held this year in Baltimore. “I don’t know who to root for more: Cruz? Or what’s that guy’s name, he’s having a fundraiser for veterans tonight, I’m told,” said the vice president. Trump has announced he will snub...

We can confirm multiple reports of Bernie Sanders’ campaign staffers attempting and gaining access to Employee Dining Rooms at Las Vegas Strip properties where over 57,000 members that we represent work. We are disappointed and offended. It's completely inappropriate for any campaign to attempt to mislead Culinary Union members, especially at their place of work. The Culinary Union button that hundreds of thousands of union members have proudly worn to work every day represents 80 years of struggle and fighting for justice. We strongly condemn anyone falsifying their affiliation with the Culinary Union in order to gain access to properties...

DML Unfiltered | Trump backing out of Fox Debate-- brilliant or bust? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWjqw0FpmNU&index=6&list=PLanUqPajptu5HpcNiSqLgWpeK4M-waBpC

And it’s good news for more than one reason, although the current temperature of the electorate may not appreciate the nuances at the moment. The RNC set a record for off-year fundraising in 2015, chair Reince Priebus announced on Twitter earlier today, with a total haul of $105 million. The party entered 2016 with nearly $19 million in cash, too: BREAKING: Historic year for @GOP. Raised off-year record $105.6M in 2015, $18.7M COH. We're the only org focused/ready for general election— Reince Priebus (@Reince) January 27, 2016 Much of that came from smaller donors, according to The Hill’s sources:...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders are energizing grassroots voters as the first balloting of the 2016 presidential race draws near. Yet the three maverick contenders are also alarming political operatives over the damage each could wreak on their own parties' House candidates this November. The worry is that each man's take-no-prisoners appeals would alienate moderate voters in the two to three dozen competitive House races expected in seats from Florida to California, often in the suburbs. While it seems unlikely Republicans will lose House control, some in the GOP envision a serious dent in their...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/01/27/donald-trump-ted-cruz-republican-establishment-calculations-column/79407410/

Former presidential candidate and New York governor George Pataki announced on Tuesday that he's "throwing his support," as ABC News put it, to Marco Rubio. I bet it was like catching a feather. But it was characteristic of how the great-on-paper Rubio campaign has progressed. With the invisible primary coming to an end, it's time for Rubio, everybody's early smart-money candidate for the GOP nomination, to start piling up the kind of support that suggests a big, clanking political machine. Instead he's winning over George Pataki. Back at the beginning of December I wrote a piece that didn't deny Rubio's...

Nobody has been paying attention to the rules governing the Republican Party's early caucuses and primaries. They make it inevitable the 12-person field will be winnowed down to a two-way race by March 15. Here's how: It will take 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination in July. Of the nearly 700 delegates Republicans will parcel out on March 1, 363 of them -- 52 percent -- will be in states that require candidates to reach a threshold of either 20 percent or 15 percent to share in the proportional allocation of delegates. Only two candidates are likely to meet...

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has been under investigation by the FBI for several months, and former U.S. House Majority leader Tom DeLay said Monday that the FBI is "ready to indict" her for using a private email server to conduct government business. During an interview on "The Steve Malzberg Show," DeLay, a Republican from Texas, said he has friends in the FBI who tell him "they're ready to indict" the former Secretary of State. "They're ready to recommend an indictment and they also say that if the attorney general does not indict, they're going public," DeLay said. Clinton's use...

Washington (CNN)--Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul on Wednesday welcomed Donald Trump's announcement that he was skipping the upcoming Fox News debate, saying the "IQ of the debate went up." "It's an improvement to the debate. The IQ of the debate went up a couple dozen points, I would say," he told Fox News Wednesday morning. "He thinks he's already elected himself king. I say, good riddance. We're going to have a much better debate," Paul added. Paul is returning to the debate stage after he boycotted the last Republican event earlier this month because Fox Business Network assigned him to the...

One of the recurring fantasies of many in the media is that Republicans are going to wake up and finally acknowledge that Marco Rubio is their nominee. Politico (again) has one of these types of stories today. The thinking behind this is as goes: * Marco Rubio will do well, somewhere * He has the highest favorable ratings of any Republican * He's also the most "electable" * Everyone else will come to their senses, drop out, and endorse him * Republicans will then finally realize Rubio is the one and he'll defeat Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and be...

Bernie and Trump boast about inspiring new people to head to the polls but less than a week away from the Iowa caucuses, the number of registered voters has decreased in the state over the past year. If the major political parties had some trick up their sleeves to get more voters registered ahead of the Iowa caucus, it hasn't happened yet. With under a week left until people vote for the first time in 2016, the number of registered Democrats and Republicans has remained fairly static in the last six months. So the big crowds at rallies for Bernie...

Donald Trump may be the front-running candidate to beat in Iowa, but a new poll suggests his victory strategy relies on a key factor: whether Iowans who don't usually vote show up next Monday. According to a Wednesday Monmouth University survey, a victory for Trump in the Iowa caucus hinges on whether his non-traditional campaign style motivates irregular voters to caucus for him. "Turnout is basically what separates Trump and Cruz right now," Monmouth University Polling Institute director Patrick Murray said. "Trump's victory hinges on having a high number of self-motivated, lone-wolf caucus-goers show up Monday night." Trump's support in...

A new Monmouth University poll shows Donald Trump leading Ted Cruz among likely Iowa Republican caucus goers, but low turnout in Monday's caucus could hurt his chances of winning. Thirty percent of likely caucus goers said they supported Trump, while 23 percent said they supported Cruz. While Cruz's support is just one point behind what he received in Monmouth's December poll, Trump's support has grown from 19 percent that month. It is the businessman's best showing in a Monmouth Iowa caucus poll since he entered the race. The poll found Marco Rubio receiving 16 percent support, Ben Carson receiving 10...

Voice of the people be damned. With a week until the Iowa caucuses, it would appear that the fix is in – at least if you take the words of some of the world’s most elite to heart. It is perhaps no surprise that the Davos elite – which just converged in the snowy Alps – have it out for Trump. Reuters reported that the “Davos elite [are] alarmed at prospect of nominee Trump,” whom they consider “dangerous.” Now, one of their attendees, Martin Sorrell – who heads WPP Group, a very powerful advertising and marketing firm that steers hundreds...

Trump said he would host his own Iowa town hall to raise money for veterans and let other networks cover it. One clear sign of the gravity of tonight's development is the sense of confusion that is swirling throughout Fox. The network is split between Kelly's allies like Brit Hume and conservative anchors that are furious that Kelly - who graces the cover of Vanity Fair this month - has become the face of the network. An anchor fumed that Kelly hosted Michael Moore on her program tonight and the lefty filmmaker defended her against Trump. "That would be like...