Free Republic

The reality show clan backed Mike Huckabee in '08 and Rick Santorum in '12. Now, they may face a real tough choice. It may be that the fastest-growing demographic in the Republican Party is pro-life, telegenic, homeschooled, and mostly under the age of 27—you know, the Duggars. As in the stars of the TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting. In the past couple election cycles, this birth-control-shunning family has emerged as a political player on the right. And now it looks likely that they will face a tough decision when it comes to which social conservative GOPer to back...

The Washington Post’s Chris Cilliza explains… A prominent Republican consultant — who isn’t working for any of the 2016 presidential candidates and has been right more times than I can count — said something that shocked me when we had lunch recently. He said that Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) had about the same odds of becoming the Republican presidential nominee as former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Jaw-dropper, right? After all, the conventional wisdom is that Bush, the son and brother of presidents, is the Republican standard-bearer, while Cruz, a conservative’s conservative, is a factor, sure, but not someone who could...

The 2016 presidential campaign is already upon us and the debate is heating up over an unexpected issue -- the theory of evolution. Of course, in an ideal world, evolution would never really become a campaign issue. But the anti-science wing of the Republican Party continues to voice skepticism. Apologists for this wing would dearly like to distract the media and the voting public from what is, frankly, a national if not a global embarrassment. In truth, the President of the United States needs to be scientifically literate. For the federal government has an important role to play and it...

The Hill reports: “Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will be among the possible 2016 Republican presidential candidates speaking to a prominent group of conservatives in Iowa this spring. Walker and Cruz will speak at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition’s spring kickoff event on April 25, the group announced in a Monday statement.” Ironically, in an election cycle in which many pundits discount the influence of Christian conservatives, they could play a critical role in selection of the nominee. In past cycles, these values voters have split their vote, never managing to unite behind a single,...

The Walker surge in Iowa, Hillary’s Obama problem and other news from Week One of our yearlong insiders’ survey from the ground in 2016’s first-in-the-nation races.Most Iowa insiders believe Scott Walker would win their state’s Republican caucuses if they were held this week. But they’re not this week, and virtually none of the most influential thought leaders in the Hawkeye State believe that the Wisconsin governor will sustain his recent bounce in polls. This is one of several intriguing findings in the debut survey of The POLITICO Caucus. More than 100 of the most plugged-in activists, operatives and elected officials...

This column is so easy to pick apart, it's amazing that the Washington Post actually published it. This is by far the strangest column I’ve read on Senator Ted Cruz’s potential — he hasn’t even announced yet — candidacy. It’s written by Jennifer Rubin, who basically argues that Cruz is unpopular because he’s too “extreme.” He behaves, she writes, like an “angry young man,” and is not “presidential” at all. The “evidence” she uses? He’s “only” polling at 5%, she says, at RealClearPolitics. OK, so let’s look at RCP’s poll of polls. And what do we see? Jeb Bush is...

The early dinner crowd near the Capitol on Thursday yielded at least one notable pairing, with overtones of the presidential election cycle to come: Sen. Ted Cruz and former Ambassador John Bolton. Sharing a meal at Johnny’s Half Shell before Bolton was set to appear on Fox News, Cruz launched into a discussion of 2016 strategy audible to anyone within earshot, including a reporter for the Washington Examiner. Bolton has himself flirted with the idea of running for president in 2016, but his conversation with Cruz suggested the Texas senator, at least, views Bolton as a source of valuable input,...

Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie, in case you're wondering.I’ve said this before, in various places. But here’s Andrew Ferguson, saying it over at the Weekly Standard: Boy, that didn’t take long. Over the span of a few short days in late January and early February, three members of the top tier of Republican presidential candidates demonstrated why they’ll never be president. They didn’t do anything to disqualify themselves directly, just revealed the traits that will make them appear unsuitable to most voters by the time the campaign really heats up, say, when the presidential election is a mere...

Scott Walker is the only ambidextrous candidate in the Republican field. He appeals equally to the Republican establishment and the Tea Party/evangelical wingers. All other candidates fit neatly in one or the other box. While Jeb Bush’s record in Florida used to make him the most attractive member of his family to conservatives, he has blown that accolade with his strong support for immigration amnesty and Common Core. Chris Christie was never the darling of conservatives, but his appeal to establishment Republicans is obvious. Neither Bush nor Christie is a switch-hitter. On the right, Ted Cruz’s views fit the Tea...

“It’s not my cup of tea.” The former Arkansas governor and probable presidential candidate compared homosexuality to drinking and swearing on CNN: “People can be my friends who have lifestyles that are not necessarily my lifestyle. I don’t shut people out of my circle or out of my life because they have a different point of view,” Huckabee told CNN’s Dana Bash, while deflecting a question about whether he believes being gay is a choice.“I don’t drink alcohol, but gosh — a lot of my friends, maybe most of them, do. You know, I don’t use profanity, but believe...

The 2016 presidential election cycle is already underway. Whether you are delighted or horrified at the prospect, the race is indeed now on. While it might seem impossibly far in the future, consider that the Iowa caucuses are only a year away. So we're going to take a very early look at the Republican field, which seems to be getting larger every week. The 2016 election will be rather unique, since it is a wide-open presidential election on both sides. No incumbent will be running, in other words, but the truly notable aspect of the race is that the parties...

This morning, Nate Cohn of the New York Times Upshot tries to answer the question asked by many Tea Party leaning Republicans in southern states: Why does it seem that the GOP presidential candidate always ends up being a moderate, rather than a ‘true conservative?’ And, he finds some interesting data about the power of the GOP in the states won by President Obama: But the blue-state Republicans still possess the delegates, voters and resources to decide the nomination. In 2012, there were more Romney voters in California than in Texas, and in Chicago’s Cook County than in West Virginia....

Video at site Possible Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee says homosexuality is a lifestyle choice like drinking and swearing — which is why he can accept friends who are gay, despite his religious convictions. "People can be my friends who have lifestyles that are not necessarily my lifestyle," Huckabee said in an interview with CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday. "I don't shut people out of my circle or out of my life because they have a different point of view. I don't drink alcohol, but gosh — a lot of my friends, maybe most of them, do. You know,...

Mike Huckabee, perhaps better than any other presidential contender, demonstrates the difficulties Florida presents for White House candidates. When the former Arkansas governor returns to Sarasota on Saturday, he will be revisiting the site where his presidential aspirations were dashed in 2008 because of Florida’s complexities. While the candidates spend months in the early, smaller primary states engaging in the retail politics of pancake breakfasts and county fairs, Florida presents distinct problems requiring a vast, developed campaign network and huge sums to advertise on the air. “It’s a state where you just can’t succeed doing that same retail politicking,” said...

“If that bothers you to the point that you’d say, ‘I’d never vote for you,’” he told an audience in Virginia, “then you’re never going to vote for me.” Oh, now. There are plenty of reasons never to vote for Huck without dragging the poor DREAM kids into this.Lefty Greg Sargent says this is a big deal. Is it? I think it’s a “big deal” in the sense that righties who don’t like Huckabee now have another reason not to like him, but realistically, how many candidates in the nascent GOP field will be coming out hard against DREAM...

Media reports claim former governor called Fox women "trashy".

At a stop on his book tour Tuesday, Mike Huckabee again defended his decision as Arkansas governor to grant the children of illegal immigrants in-state tuition at state universities. But he also went a step further, hinting that those children should be put on a path to citizenship — a position more in line with Democrats and DREAMers than some of Huckabee’s more conservative Republican peers who are also weighing bids for the presidency.

WINDSOR HEIGHTS, Iowa — When former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee walked into Walnut Creek Church here on Sunday night, fresh off his gleaming navy-blue bus, he was greeted by the crowd of suburban evangelicals as a visiting celebrity rather than a 2016 presidential candidate. Waiting in line to get their copies of the Republican’s latest book signed, a handful of the attendees shared recollections of Huckabee’s spunky 2008 bid for the White House, when he won the Iowa caucuses and seven more states before bowing out. But most of the conversations focused on Fox News, where Huckabee had been perched...

A tsunami struck the country this morning. A tsumani of stupid. I wasn't sure what to do with it all, so here are some of the best bits. Politico makes an issue of Huckabee complaining that women at Fox News swear while at work, apparently referring to them as "trashy." “My gosh, this is worse than locker-room talk,” Huckabee continued. “As we would say in the South, that’s just trashy.” Neither Huckabee nor Politico seems to have met Hillary, who is said to swear "like a sailor." Sara Nelson writes about the book in Tuesday's New York Post, revealing the...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) In the fall of 2007, as Mike Huckabee was surging in the Iowa polls, Mitt Romney’s foundering presidential campaign dispatched a camera crew to Arkansas with the charge to produce one of the most brutal ads of the election cycle. The final product — a withering spot that tied Huckabee to a 2003 murder committed by a serial rapist who was paroled while he was governor of Arkansas — never saw the light of day. But the unaired ad, obtained this week by BuzzFeed News, highlights a potentially potent line of attack on Huckabee as he considers a 2016...