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Former FBI Supervisory Special Agent and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Fitzpatrick, standing outside the Bucks County Courthouse in Doylestown on Thursday, announced his candidacy for Pennsylvania’s Eighth Congressional District in the House of Representatives. “The time is now to restore integrity and honor to our nation’s capital. Our government is broken. People have lost faith in the system: Corruption is rampant in our nation’s capital and Harrisburg. And all the while, too many politicians prefer to be political ideologues, rather than the problem solvers we need,” said Fitzpatrick surrounded by supporters. “I believe I have the experience and background...

Veterans have come out against Sarah Palin after she said in a speech on Wednesday that PTSD caused her son Track’s alleged domestic abuse ‘As a combat vet, EXTREMELY disgusted by #SarahPalin blaming PTSD 4 domestic abuse,’ wrote one man on Twitter Another said: ‘Speaking as a combat vet who literally slept in the same barracks as Track Palin, his mother is wrong and her son is not a victim’ Paul Rieckhoff, who heads Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, also criticized Palin for blaming the incident on President Obama Brandon Friedman, former digital media director for the Department of...

Reuters Top News Marco Rubio emerges as champion of battered Republican party http://reut.rs/1SAq0xv Yes, Rubio's fans, and the permanent GOP establishment (but I repeat myself), are just sort of ignoring the winner, Ted Cruz, and the second place finisher, Trump, and declaring Rubio won. They'll keep on saying it. They always throw some caveat around Cruz's win, which was apparently tainted by the fact that he worked really hard at it, and out-organized everyone else. So they just sort of blow that off. Rubio didn't even try, and he got third. Marcomentum! Meanwhile, this happened during Hillary's speech: 😂 RT...

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin flew out of Iowa on Tuesday after traveling there to campaign with presidential hopeful Donald Trump. Yahoo News spoke to Palin, who was the GOP's vice presidential candidate in 2008, as she passed through airport security. Trump came in second to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in the Iowa caucuses on Monday night, so we asked Palin whether she thinks Trump will catch up in the next primary state, New Hampshire. "I think so," Palin said of Trump's chances in the Granite State. "He's going to do well there." Palin also shared...

On Monday, Iowa voters did something that Republican "party elites" had failed to do for more than seven months: They rejected Donald Trump. Trump received 24 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses, placing him closer to the third-place candidate, Marco Rubio (23 percent), than to the winner, Ted Cruz (28 percent). Trump underperformed his polls, which had him winning Iowa with 29 percent of the vote, while Cruz and Rubio outperformed theirs. It's not uncommon for the polls to be off in Iowa and other early-voting states, but the manner in which Trump underachieved is revealing. It turns...

...Forget Trump and consider instead Trump’s constituencies. They are weary of being lectured that they deserve presidential rebuke for their supposed Islamophobia because they are angry about the terrorist killings of Americans. The middle classes are exhausted from being sermonized that they do not “pay their fair share,” when their state and federal tax bite is nearly 50 percent — especially when half the population pays no income tax, and massive federal entitlements have done little to address the pathologies of the underclasses. The contractor and the insurance salesman are furious at being scolded that “they didn’t build” their businesses,...

Rich Lowry of National Review magazine is seriously taken to task by four Fox women commentators Smith, Faulkner, Colby, Camerota, and Tantaros about his undeniable bias against Trump, his lack of logic, and called out in a lie... To the three minute video link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei6f5F4zIvo

"Three tickets out of Iowa." It sounds like a movie starring, say, Glenn Ford, Henry Fonda (or Peter in the remake), and Van Heflin. Actually, it's the conventional wisdom regarding Iowa caucuses. When there's a large field, Iowa punches three candidates' tickets to New Hampshire and beyond, so they say. The conventional wisdom happens to hold up well this year. As John says, after Iowa it looks like a three-man race for the GOP nomination among Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Marco Rubio. I believe a fourth ticket will be punched in New Hampshire if Jeb Bush, John Kasich, or...

Most polls are pointing to a second place finish for Ted Cruz in Iowa, but new fundraising data shows he has plenty of money to keep his campaign going in the weeks and months ahead. The Texas lawmaker, who has lost his lead over billionaire Donald Trump in the Hawkeye State, raised $20.5 million in the last quarter of 2015, coming in second in the money race to retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who brought in $22.6 million. Meanwhile, the "Keep the Promise" super PACs supporting Cruz's candidacy now have $32.2 million in cash on hand, second only to the PACs...

The lack of consensus among Republican party leaders has dramatically shaped the presidential primary. This can be seen most clearly among Republican governors, senator, and members of the House. Few have endorsed a presidential candidate, and among those who have endorsed, there is no clear front-runner. But there is a larger universe of party leaders outside Congress and governors' mansions. A key part of that universe is state legislators. And they tell us something different about the race, particularly in Iowa. One key story is the under-appreciated strength of Ted Cruz. Iowa has only six members of Congress and a...

An interesting potential signal from the sought-after donors. DES MOINES, Iowa -- Republican casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam donated the maximum amount permitted to Ted Cruz's campaign last quarter, Federal Election Commission records released on Sunday show. The Adelsons donated $2,700 each to the Cruz campaign on Nov. 18. The news arrives on the eve of the Iowa caucuses -- a seemingly make-or-break moment for Cruz, who hopes to defeat Donald Trump. After publication of this story, Sheldon Adelson's political adviser Andy Abboud told BuzzFeed News in an email, "The Adelsons gave to several candidates. Nobody has...

Reports filed with the Federal Election Commission on Sunday showed that wealthy donors who according to The New York Times have built a powerful shadow Republican Party of outside groups, are splitting into two mutually hostile and deep-pocketed factions in support of Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. The report shows that many of the Wall Street financiers who have been the backbones of Republican super PACs in the last six years believe that Sen. Marco Rubio is the best GOP candidate to win a general election battle against front-runner Hillary Clinton and in the last six months has raised...

In the last poll before the Iowa Caucus, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are virtually tied with Trump at 27% and Cruz at 26%. This is a 6-point drop in one week, as the Emerson Poll on January 21 had Trump at 33%. In the same period, Marco Rubio's is at 22% - up 8 points from 14% during the same time period. The rest of the GOP field is far behind, all under 5%.

If you had to vote in your state primary/caucus today, knowing what you know now about the various declared and probable candidates, who would you vote for? Why? Who would you like to see as the running mate for your preferred candidate? If you could help staff your candidates cabinet and other top appointments, who would you choose? If you could recommend different congressional leaders than we have now, who would they be? And who would you like to see on the Supreme Court and why? And finally, feel free to donate to Free Republic.

"Sad and telling," says Sanders campaign. There's an app for that. Hillary Clinton's campaign for president is instructing its Iowa caucus leaders to -- in certain cases -- throw support to former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, with the goal blocking her main opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, from securing additional delegates. The tactical move is rooted in the complex math of the Iowa caucuses Monday night, where the campaign is looking to defeat Sanders in a state whose caucus-goers have historically backed progressive challengers. A precinct captain, Jerome Lehtola, confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the campaign has trained precinct captains...

URBANDALE, Iowa -- Senator Ted Cruz's leading Iowa supporters say his get-out-the-vote operation is the best they have seen for a presidential campaign here. He had better hope they are right. With his monthlong lead in the polls erased, Mr. Cruz's hopes for pulling out a much-needed victory over Donald J. Trump in the Iowa caucuses on Monday now rest in the hands of thousands of campaign workers and supporters who are spending this weekend telephoning, emailing and knocking on the doors of likely caucusgoers. Mr. Cruz's campaign boasts a chairman or chairwoman for each of Iowa's 99 counties, captains...

I'm rather torn as to whether this is some sort of indicator that's worth watching tomorrow or just a piece of inevitable political minutia like so many others which gets flushed away with the next dawn. We learned something about Iowa Governor Terry Branstad's primary preferences last month at that same time that he celebrated the milestone of becoming the longest serving governor in the nation's history. He insisted that he wasn't going to be endorsing anyone or playing favorites, but he definitely didn't want Ted Cruz to carry the day. At the same time we saw how the rest...

They both have Iowa caucus wins, yet the only feeling voters seem to manage for these two is apathy. Rick Santorum was unhappy. While other candidates have managed to draw crowds of hundreds and even tens of thousands this cycle, Santorum arrived at Second Street Emporium, a dimly lit restaurant and bar in Webster City, Iowa, on Saturday afternoon, to find that fewer than 50 people had come to see his town hall. Making matters worse, the majority of them weren't Iowa voters, but high school students who'd been bussed in from Cincinnati. They couldn't even vote in the caucus...

Des Moines, Iowa -- 135,000. That's the "magic number" to watch Monday night as Republican caucus-goers gather around the Hawkeye State to choose their presidential nominee, according to data collected and analyzed by numerous GOP campaign officials. Four years ago, a record-breaking number of Iowans -- 121,503 -- participated in the Republican caucuses. If turnout exceeds 135,000 this year, GOP insiders agree, it will be an indication that Donald Trump has attracted a significant number of new voters to the caucuses. And if the increase is even more drastic -- say, upwards of 150,000, which some Republicans believe is possible...

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