Free Republic

Steve Schmidt, one of the founders of the notoriously anti-Trump Lincoln Project, is a registered member of an ultraconservative political party, voting records show — just weeks after he claimed he was becoming a Democrat. In a post-election interview on Dec. 15, the longtime GOP strategist who former President Donald Trump once denounced as a “blathering idiot,” announced he was registering as a member of the Democratic Party after almost three decades as a Republican. “I spent 29 years as a Republican, I’ve spent two and a half as an independent, and later this afternoon I will register as a...

Just a general question have you left or are leaving the GOP? Cause I was talking to a few people today who seem to have had it with the Party and just going for the candidate they like and won’t be volunteering or donating to the party for a very long time

Dr. Anthony Fauci complained Wednesday in an interview with the Washington Post that America’s tradition of individualism and freedom is making the coronavirus pandemic worse. The Washington Post asked Fauci if the spike in cases was the fault of America’s individualist tradition or President Donald Trump’s refusal to demand national mandates.

My company uses a lot of independent contractors. I have employees but, given the nature of the work my firm does (short term projects), it makes more sense for me to hire specialists to perform certain tasks rather than bring on a new employee. I have been using essentially the same group of independent contractors for the past 10 years. Some of them work as little as 10 hours a month, others as much as 30 hours a week depending on the jobs we have. Clearly, I'm not the only small business doing this. Sites like UpWork, Fiverr, Guru and...

Dan Wu, an immigrant chef and owner of Atomic Ramen in Lexington, Kentucky, operated his restaurant for two and a half years before COVID hit. The location’s closure turned from temporary to indefinite as the government instituted stay-at-home orders and dining room restrictions. To-go and delivery weren’t feasible lifelines. Eventually it became clear the restaurant wasn’t going to hang on, so Atomic Ramen closed permanently about three weeks ago. Wu’s situation is an example of what numerous independent operators are facing nationwide. According to a report released by Compass Lexecon in conjunction with the Independent Restaurant Coalition, 85 percent of...

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Republican senators running for re-election next year should not couple their messaging to President Trump but rather run “independent” campaigns built around how they’ve helped their states. The Kentucky Republican, who is himself up for reelection, said senators’ races are big enough that they can escape the gravity of the presidential race and establish themselves on their own. Mr. McConnell also said Republicans must — and can — reverse disastrous losses in the suburbs that cost them their House majority in November’s elections. “There’s no good reason for your typical suburban resident to be frightened...

SEATTLE (AP) — For a businessman who grew a small coffee roaster into an inescapable global chain, who ensured that even his part-time workers had benefits and who has given about $150,000 to Democratic campaigns, former Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz is generating tepid — or even hostile — responses within the party as he weighs a presidential bid in 2020. That’s partly because — as Schultz told “60 Minutes” on Sunday — he’s considering running as an independent, a prospect many worry could draw support from the eventual Democratic nominee and hand President Donald Trump another four years in office....

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz appeared on 60 Minutes last night and proceeded to scare the bejesus out of the Democratic Party. CBS: I am seriously thinking of running for president.  I will run as a centrist independent, outside of the two-party system we're living at a most-fragile time not only the fact that this president is not qualified to be the president, but the fact that both parties are consistently not doing what's necessary on behalf of the American people and are engaged, every single day, in revenge politics. What makes Democrats so skittish is that Schultz doesn't fit...

Year end news: the Democrats finally found an old white guy billionaire they can love. That’s right, Michael Bloomberg, the man who first ran and won New York’s mayoral race as a “Republican” and later as an Independent has decided he might want to run for President - as a Democrat! Why not run the table? Michael Bloomberg: demonstrating the need for his ‘Sugary Drinks Portion Cap Rule’ He’s still mad about the New York Court of Appeals throwing his statute out so he’s going to run for Head Nanny in order to right that egregious wrong. Of course he’ll have...

The Arizona Republican Party announced it would be conducting an independent and private audit of the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office performance in the 2018 election, after the performance of the Democrat County Recorder was widely criticized on numerous procedural and legal grounds.In a press release, the State Party Chairman, Jonathan Lines, announced that he had asked Stephen Richer, a Phoenix attorney with substantial history in public and private audits and investigations of major organizations, to oversee the project.This comes after the Maricopa County Recorder’s office- the county’s election division led by Democratic donor Adrian Fontes- has become a target of suspicion...

Voters casting ballots early in Sarasota say Trump was a big factor in their vote this year Sarasota retiree Patricia Rardin doesn’t always vote in midterm elections. “It depends on the issues,” said the 66-year-old former medical transcriptionist after she cast her ballot early over the weekend. “This one was important. I want to get rid of the people who vote alongside Trump.” Rudy Fraccio used to vote for Democrats but now believes the party is too liberal. The 85-year-old Sarasota health care worker voted a straight Republican ticket over the weekend, in part to support President Donald Trump. “I...

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stated that, despite winning the Democratic primary, he will run for re-election in 2018 as an Independent. Sanders said, “I have always run as an Independent, and that’s what I will do. And I think people in Vermont understand that. We have a very good relationship with the Democratic Party. I suspect that this coming campaign we’ll be putting more money — our campaign will be putting more money into the Vermont Democratic Party than anybody else and supporting a whole lot of good Democratic candidates.” Host Ali Velshi...

Quick, with MAGA-shocking news reverberating there’s a mid-west rush on winnamins. Remember that massive MAGA Trump rally last week in Duluth Minnesota? That would be the 9,000 strong rally where twice as many were turned away? Well, the data team at MAGA HQ have crunched the numbers and Brad Parscale shares the results: “The crowd at the Minnesota rally was 60% Democrat and Independent.”

New York Democratic leaders say they want more people to vote — except they won’t allow anyone but registered Democrats to vote in party primaries. The New York State Democratic Party plans on blocking a proposed resolution at its May 23-24 convention that would allow independent or “unaffiliated” voters to vote in this year’s Democratic primary for governor. New York’s restrictive voting laws became a national embarrassment in 2016 as many younger voters realized they couldn’t vote for Bernie Sanders in the presidential primary against Hillary Clinton because they missed the deadline to enroll as Democrats.

Former Gov. Lincoln Chafee’s unanticipated interest in running for his old U.S. Senate seat began with an email from two passionate supporters of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. A 61-year-old retired chef and a 48-year-old real estate agent worried Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s votes were promoting an overly militaristic America. So in January they asked Chafee, a quirky Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat, whether he would be interested. Chafee has “been able to buck the party trends and look at the issues on the merits,” one of the writers, Jonathan Daly-Labelle, told The Associated Press recently. “Sheldon is a typical Democrat and locked into the...

I know how bad the platform is and I feel like it was only made to sew discord and cause problems, just like the rest of social media... The thing is, either we give up that ground or we fight them where they are... I just put this post out there and I would encourage people to copy and paste it all over any social media you are a part of, Twitter wont work, its too long, but rewrite your own that works there. I don't want any credit make this your own conversation, just start it. We are continually...

MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough has made his departure from the GOP official. The “Morning Joe” anchor said on Twitter on Thursday that he became an independent and he added a picture of himself with an elections official in New Canaan, Connecticut, smiling while holding a form.

A few years ago I did an article about net neutrality and government attempts to ban the internet or make it obsolete through over regulations and limited choices. This is something all the Democrats support doing in every facet of our lives. They want to make it a crime to even pee without permission by some expensive overpaid bureaucrat. The internet is the last great vestige of freedom of thought. The one place where we can read play and watch whatever we want when we want to. But liberals and big government supporters and the big bolshevik supporting corporations that...

Independent journalist Mike Cernovich and writer/reporter for Sputnik, Cassandra Fairbanks posted a picture of themselves in the White House press room doing the ‘ok’ symbol and the left went crazy. They were immediately called ‘white supremacists’. Emma Roller, a senior reporter for Fusion sent out a tweet, ignorantly saying, “just two people doing a white power hand gesture in the White House’. This tweet went viral and as of this moment has nearly 5,000 retweets. This tweet eventually caught the eye of ‘The Independent’ because they did a hit piece on both Mike Cernovich and Cassandra Fairbanks. See how fake...

The race to replace former U.S. Rep. Tom Price is more than an early test of President Donald Trump’s popularity. It’s also a bitter battle between powerful Republican factions and a proving ground for Democrats who hope Trump helps them win conservative areas. Eighteen candidates qualified to run this week for the April 18 special election to succeed Price. And the fight over the suburban Atlanta district, which spans from east Cobb County to north DeKalb County, could fast become a template for the 2018 election.