Free Republic

CPAC ‏@CPAC Very disappointed @realDonaldTrump has decided at the last minute to drop out of #CPAC -- his choice sends a clear message to conservatives.

Short version: at last night’s debate the topic of H-1B visas* came up.  Last night Megyn Kelly asked Donald Trump at the debate how he felt about temporary work visas now.  Trump said that he loved them to death, and was softening the position found on his website.  Somewhere out in the political wilderness, Senator Jeff Sessions (an H-1B visa restrictionist who is endorsing Trump solely because of Trump’s position on immigration, supposedly) immediately suffered a nosebleed from the psychic shock of this sudden, yet inevitable betrayal**.  The Trump campaign had to go out and send around an email saying, No, really, forget...

Republican front-runner Donald Trump said Thursday he is softening his stance on visas for highly-skilled workers. “I’m changing. We need highly-skilled people in this country,” Trump said during the Fox News Republican debate in Detroit. “If we can’t do it, we will get them in.” Trump’s stance toward awarding H1-B visas is different from the one he takes on his campaign website, which argues that more visas for highly-skilled foreigners would “decimate American workers.” “One of the biggest problems we have is people go to the best colleges … as soon as they’re finished, they get shoved out. They want...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump inexplicably changed his position on the H-1B visa program in Thursday’s Fox News debate, saying Silicon Valley actually does need to import tech workers for jobs instead of hiring Americans. “We need highly skilled people in this country,” Trump told Megyn Kelly in the debate, when she questioned him about statements he’s made that contradict the policy of reducing access to the visas outlined on his website. “I changed my mind,” he added. The reversal comes on the heels of a huge endorsement from Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions  80% of Alabama, who is leading...

Donald Trump has claimed  he has the "world's greatest memory," but when it came time this winter to give testimony in fraud cases filed against him and a real estate training program known as "Trump University," he displayed a repeated inability to recall names and faces of instructors he had claimed to have hired personally. "I can't remember that," he said on Dec. 10, when asked by trial lawyers in one of the class-action cases whether he had met one of the instructors in a program that provided training in building wealth through real estate. "The name sounds familiar but...

In his remarks today at a rally in Fort Worth, Tex., Donald Trump knew he’d make news. “I’ve never said this before,” he declared. We’ll await the word of the Washington Post Fact Checker on the integrity of the statement, but Trump did appear to be veering into a new talking point. A media-law talking point, that is: One of the things I’m going to do, and this is going to make it tougher for me…but one of the things I’m going to do if I win…is I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely...

Shortly after he claimed to be a “unifier” during his Super Tuesday press conference, Donald Trump was at it again, lambasting “so-called conservatives” who don’t share his liberal position on Planned Parenthood, continuing to insist he applauds the group because it allegedly “does a lot of good of good things” for women’s health. Similar logic applies to his position on ObamaCare. He loves the coercive freedom- and job-killing individual mandate, which is the heart of ObamaCare, because he doesn’t want to see bodies in the street, a classic liberal rhetorical scare tactic. Planned Parenthood may do the occasional mammogram referral,...

Those Republicans who don’t want Donald Trump need a better alternative candidate than either member of the Cuban junior varsity. Neither Senator Ted Cruz nor Senator Marco Rubio can win in November.

"Data from the Federal Election Commission and state elections offices provided by the two websites show that Trump has given $584,850 to Democrats and $961,140 to the GOP over the last 26 years." (this is at the Federal level and does not include state or local)

An honest question fro Trump supporters

Why I Changed My Mind and Joined the #NeverTrump Movement DAVID FRENCH March 2, 2016 Let me begin by saying that I was wrong. Weeks ago I said on a number of radio interviews that while I opposed Trump in the primary, I’d back him if he won the GOP nomination. I hadn’t yet seen — or had been unwilling to believe — the full extent of his contempt for the truth, his fondness for far-left conspiracy theories, and his sheer malice. When I saw Trump in full, my decision was easy: Never Trump. I have spent my entire adult...

John Sununu, the former New Hampshire senator and John Kasich supporter, urged Republican voters to “choose the strongest nominee they can — someone who will win.” But he thinks Republicans may “look at alternatives” if “we have a nominee who is a disaster for the party.” On Breitbart News Daily, Stephen K. Bannon asked Sununu what he thought about the potential for a third party candidate should Trump become the nominee. Sununu cautioned that if Hillary Clinton is not defeated, she would continue Obama’s agenda, and would be able to appoint a Supreme Court nominee. “That is one of the...

Is Joe Scarborough having his Colonel Nicholson moment? That's what I wondered Monday morning as I watched the host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" insist that Donald Trump's inability and unwillingness to simply and plainly denounce the Ku Klux Klan in a Sunday CNN interview was "disqualifying." For those who might not have seen "The Bridge on the River Kwai," it's partly the story of British Lt. Col. Nicholson, played by Alec Guinness. Nicholson, a prisoner of war held by the Japanese, convinces himself that he and his men should help his captors build a strategically invaluable bridge over the Kwai...

If Donald Trump wins the Republican presidential nomination, he’ll have undermined a lot of assumptions we once held about the GOP. He’ll have become the nominee despite neither being reliably conservative nor being very electable, supposedly the two things Republicans care most about. He’ll have done it with very little support from “party elites” (although with some recent exceptions like Chris Christie). He’ll have attacked the Republican Party’s three previous candidates — Mitt Romney, John McCain and George W. Bush — without many consequences. If a Trump nomination happens, it will imply that the Republican Party has been weakened and...

I disagree with those conservatives who say they will never, ever, ever, ever vote for Donald Trump should the GOP embrace his special brand of nonsense and nominate him, but I can't blame them. Hell, I'm about one more round of foolishness away from joining them. But not quite yet. Trump is the lesser of the candidates, lesser of the conservatives, but also the lesser of the two ancient socialist evils that the Democrats are eenie meenie miney moeing between. At least Trump pretends to embrace capitalism, of a sort. And at least he doesn't seem to hate America, just...

For the last eight months or so, a significant portion of the Republican party's voters have been in thrall to a bizarre, Occupy-esque conspiracy theory, which holds as its central thesis that sabotage and pusillanimity are the root causes of the Right's recent woes. In this mistaken view, the conservative movement's failure to counter all of the Obama era's excesses is not the product of the crucial democratic and structural factors that prevent any one faction from ushering in substantial change, but of a lack of will or desire. Sure, the advocates of this view will concede, the shutdown of...

The phrase "follow the money" is supposed to help explain human behavior, especially in politics. So why has Donald Trump embraced Russian President Vladimir Putin? Why has he denied the evidence of Putin's killing of Russian journalists and dissidents? A savvy businessman, Trump is certainly not dumb. There must be something else to it. Reports dating back to 1987, during the time of the old Soviet Union, reveal that Trump has been seeking business in Russia and attempting to build a "Russian Trump Tower" in Moscow and perhaps other Russian cities. At this particular time in history, with Putin's cronies...

Marco Rubio supporter and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley not only went after Donald Trump on ABC’s This Week but took a shot at Chris Christie over his endorsement of The Donald. She told George Stephanopoulos, “Donald Trump is everything we hear and teach our kids not to do in kindergarten.”

David Duke, a white nationalist and former Klu Klux Klan grand wizard, told his audience Wednesday that voting for anyone besides Donald Trump “is really treason to your heritage.” “Voting for these people, voting against Donald Trump at this point, is really treason to your heritage,” Duke said on the David Duke Radio Program. BuzzFeed News first reported the comments. Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/david-duke-trump-219777#ixzz41bXJPthx

On “The Apprentice,” Donald Trump is the guy who fires people. In real life, it’s a different story. For 16 years, Anthony “Tony” P. Senecal was Trump’s personal butler at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s home and club in Palm Beach, Fla. Few people know Trump as well as Senecal. During the first interview Senecal has given since retiring last year, he told Newsmax what it was like to work for him.