Free Republic

Lee Bright, a local lawmaker who is serving as the South Carolina co-chair for the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), compared the calls to remove the Confederate flag from the capitol building in his home state to a "Stalinist purge." According to a spokesperson for Cruz, those comments don't conflict with the candidate's position on the issue. "What Senator Cruz has said is that this is an issue for the state of South Carolina and South Carolinians to sort out and I think that's what you're watching happen," Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler said in a conversation with...

“… I think to every African-American in the country it’s a symbolism of slavery to them and now it’s a symbol of murder for this young man and so I think it’s times to put it in a museum.” Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says he believes the Confederate battle flag is “inescapably a symbol of human bondage and slavery” and needs to go. “No, I agree, I think the flag is inescapably a symbol of human bondage and slavery, and particularly when people use it obviously for murder and to justify hated so vicious that you would kill somebody I...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)With more and more Republican candidates jumping into the 2016 race, radio host Hugh Hewitt has a surprising take on the state of the GOP landscape, telling HuffPost Live on Friday that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is leading the pack due to a favorable election calendar and his social media prowess. "Right now he’s actually ... the frontrunner," Hewitt told host Josh Zepps. "Right now, I think he’s actually prepared better to run the board than anybody else. I know conventional wisdom says Jeb’s got the money and Marco Rubio is lighting up the crowds, and he does. But if...

Former Clinton advisor Paul Begala told CNN's Chris Cuomo Tuesday morning that Hillary Clinton "absolutely" has to answer for standing by her husband when he served as governor of Arkansas and defended that state's flag's relationship to the Confederate battle flag. "Does she have to answer for her time as first lady in Arkansas with Bill standing by the Arkansas flag proudly when it, too, is said to borrow from the Confederate symbology?" Cuomo said. "Well, sure, absolutely," said Begala. "Times change. Circumstances change." Watch the video below: (VIDEO-AT-LINK)Begala added he is "really thrilled" that South Carolina appears likely to...

"We are not going to allow this symbol to divide us any longer," South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) said Monday afternoon, in a televised address to the nation, of the soon-to-be-retired Confederate flag that has flown on the state capitol grounds for decades. And so long as GOP state legislators follow their governor and their party, after 150 years, South Carolina will no longer endorse the Confederate battle flag, but will consign it to a museum to recognize, as Haley emphasized in her address, its place in the state's history.

The perils of the progressive plan to build an electoral majority by fighting inequality. A century of new rules—from the advent of direct presidential primaries, to the end of the seniority system in Congress, to conservative Supreme Court decisions on campaign finance—has dramatically eroded the power that official party structures once exercised over politicians and their platforms. Today, an informal network of donors, policy and political groups, media outlets, consultants, labor unions, and star politicians determine in what broad directions both sides of the spectrum will evolve over the long term. Many of these players don't actually identify themselves by...

Mayor de Blasio declared Sunday that Donald Trump is no real New Yorker, even if the mogul has his name plastered on so many buildings in town. The mayor told reporters that The Donald’s politics were out of line with “the values” of everyone else in the city. De Blasio — who is still refusing to endorse his former boss Hillary Rodham Clinton for president — took the shot at Trump during a Washington Heights press conference in which a reporter asked about the billionaire being the only New York City resident running for the White House. “I don’t think...

Don’t count Lindsey Graham among the Republican Presidential hopefuls who think that mass shooting in Charleston was about something other than race. He spoke out this weekend to address the murders, and his statement differs sharply from what some of his colleagues are saying. Unlike Rick Santorum and Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham isn’t pretending the murders were about religion or insisting that we can’t tell yet what motivated the attack. Instead, Graham openly recognizes that this attack was racially motivated — and says that America has a long way to go in the racial relations department. “There can be no...

Full title at site: "Huckabee Squirms Defending Confederate Flag: "I Don't Personally Display It So It Is Not An Issue For Me"" NBCs Chuck Todd unearths 2008 video of Mike Huckabee voicing an opinion about South Carolina's confederate flag. "You don't like people from outside the state telling you what to do with your flag, in fact, if someone came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell them where to put the pole." Huckabee swings between saying that it is not the president's job to tell states what flag to use and the ultimate...

Clinton's positioning on TPP is way too cute. When it passes with Dems' implicit support, grass roots will explode. Hillary Clinton went to New York’s Roosevelt Island earlier this month to relaunch her campaign for president. Her first kickoff fell flat, perhaps because she herself didn’t attend, opting instead to send a video greeting card in which people she still insists on calling ‘everyday Americans’ shared their life plans. (To go to school! Plant a garden! Get married!) She came on at the end to say she had plans of her own that include being president, and that she does...

Donald Trump, the bombastic builder of Trump towers and Trump gambling casinos, is moving from his reality TV show to the theater of presidential elections. If he survives the first three months of mass media drubbing him and his notorious affliction of ‘leaving no impulsive opinion behind,’ he’s going to be trouble for the other fifteen or so Republican presidential candidates. Already the commentators have derided his massive egotitis – he said “I” 195 times in his announcement speech, not counting the 28 times he said “my” or “mine” or the 22 mentions of “me.” But Trump revels in self-promotion...

Ted Cruz said Saturday that the Confederate flag flying in front of their statehouse is “a question for South Carolina” to decide. He is not alone. Marco Rubio said the same: “This is an issue that they should debate and work through and not have a bunch of outsiders going in and telling them what to do.” Scott Walker and Carly Fiorina also feel it is an issue for South Carolina alone to decide. Funny. I seem to recall South Carolina trying to decide that issue in 1861, when on April 12 they opened fire on Fort Sumter, inaugurating the...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Scott in Philadelphia. Great to have you on Open Line Friday, sir. Hello. CALLER: It's an honor, Rush. I got a problem with all the... McConnell, Boehner, and Karl Rove. They've hijacked the party. RUSH: Yeah. (sigh) CALLER: I want to know why nobody says nothing about it. I mean, we elect these conservatives, they get in there, and then they're browbeaten into submission. RUSH: Well, it's not that nobody says anything about it. I myself have been referencing this. Others I know have. I mean, I know people who are making this the focal point of...

Were it left to me, I’d probably retire the “clown car” analogy for the crowded 2016 Republican presidential contest. Like the “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” line employed by those who sought to dismiss Hillary Clinton and the other contenders for the 2008 Democratic nomination, I think it diminishes the real competition that is going on—and the real distinctions between the candidates. But the “clown car” line is going to be amplified as Donald Trump grabs for the wheel. Trump’s candidacy begins as a punchline, and it’s hard to imagine how it will end as anything other than that....

Poor Jeb. He's Donald Trump's first Republican victim, but he won't be his last. On Monday, Bush officially declared he was a Republican candidate for president, something everyone knew was coming. Jeb gave a serious, by-the-book announcement speech, explaining his many qualifications, making his claim that he's a true conservative and promising to make America great again. It was boringly Bush, and maybe a little too moderate for hardline conservatives. But it was mature and dignified. Presidential, even. The mainstream media gave Jeb token coverage for about a day. Some were especially impressed by his fluency in Spanish. But then...

As the fight to remove the Confederate flag from the state House grounds in South Carolina heats up, politicians are weighing in on the debate.rWhat do you think? Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham defended displaying the flag, while former presidential candidate Mitt Romney called for its removal. Carly Fiorina called it a “symbol of racial hatred,” but stopped short of saying it should be removed. Sen. Ted Cruz said South Carolinians should decide what their state does. President Barack Obama’s spokesman said the flag belongs in a museum.rWhat do you think? But while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has weighed...

From immigration and the “Latino registration machine” to the GOP’s apparent inability to recognize the racial aspects of the Charleston church shooting, Real Time host Bill Maher had a field day with his panelists on Friday night’s show. Yet it’s the “Overtime” segment’s extra nuggets that made for some of the most WTF-worthy viewing, especially for this reaction from MSNBC’s Joy Reid: Of all the possible conversation topics, what could have triggered such a reaction from Reid? Oh nothing, really — just guest Ann Coulter‘s funny-but-serious answer to Maher’s question about “which Republican candidate has the best chance of winning...

The fatal shootings this week at a historic black church in South Carolina has sparked a feud between the presidential campaigns of Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton. Clinton suggested Thursday that Trump’s comments about Mexicans, during his campaign announcement speech three days earlier, could incite racial hatred like that which led to white male Dylann Roof on Wednesday evening allegedly killing nine black people attending a bible study inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Charleston, S.C. “The people who do this kind of dastardly, horrible act are a very small percentage,” Clinton said in Nevada on...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) When it comes to dealing with the Confederate flag, Jeb Bush isn't leaving much room for interpretation in his stance on the issue. The former governor recalled Saturday how he ordered the removal of the flag from Florida state grounds in 2001, adding that he believes South Carolina will do "the right thing" as the state decides what to do about the controversial symbol that flies at the capitol in Columbia. His comments come as 2016 presidential candidates face questions over how to handle the racially sensitive debate that follows the massacre of nine African-American parishioners by a white...

JOHNSTON, Iowa – Sen. Ted Cruz says whether or not South Carolina removes the Confederate flag from a state house memorial is an issue for the state to decide and that he sees “both sides” of the debate. In an interview with The Washington Post on Saturday, Cruz (R-Tex.) said that he understands why people equate the flag with both racial oppression and historical traditions. “I understand the passions that this debate evokes on both sides,” the GOP presidential hopeful said. “Both those who see a history of racial oppression and a history of slavery, which is the original sin...