Free Republic

McCain is right on Free Trade.Conservatives rightly have many fears over John McCain. However, it is noteworthy that on certain issues — health care, earmarks, agricultural subsidies, and the subprime situation ("no bailouts!") to name a few — he is notably superior to our current president.The Club for Growth today released this statement on his free trade policy, which is also meritorious:  Washington – The Club for Growth commends Senator John McCain for calling for a new free trade agreement with the European Union. Currently, the United States and the European Union have low tariffs on most manufactured goods traded between...

Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Outnumbered,” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) commented on Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton electing to leave his post-Super Bowl press conference Sunday after his team lost to the Denver Broncos 24-10. McCain defended the 2015 NFL season MVP, saying he knows “what it’s like to lose” having lost a presidential election to President Barack Obama, but he does think Newton can bounce back from the Super Bowl loss.

A former Mexican president had some tough words when asked about GOP candidate Donald Trump's much-touted plan to build a border wall that he says will be paid for by Mexico. "We are not going to pay any single cent for such a stupid wall! And it's going to be completely useless," said former Mexican president Felipe Calderón when asked about this at the AmCham Egypt for Business Conference on Sunday. Calderón told CNBC's Hadley Gamble his country will not be funding the construction of the wall, also adding that while Trump blames Mexican migration for the majority of illegal...

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) made a cameo appearance on Saturday Night Live last night, playing a character named "Bernie Sanderswitzky" who was upset at a passenger on a sinking ship was attempting to hop the line for a lifeboat due to his higher economic status. "Sanderswitzky" said that he was not a socialist, rather that the policy was "democratic socialism," and that the difference between the two was "yuge."

GOP establishment hacks from TrumpQuestions.com sent out thousands of Anti-Trump flyers this week attacking the Republican frontrunner in New Hampshire. TrumpQuestions.com is an offshoot of Our Principles PAC.Our Principles PAC is an anti-Donald Trump super PAC founded by Katie Packer, a former aide to Mitt Romney‘s 2012 presidential campaign. The super PAC has sent mailers and aired television ads in Iowa criticizing Trump’s policies. The super PAC operates OurPinciples.com and TrumpQuestions.com.The GOP hacks are trying to smear Trump as anti-gun in their most recent flyers.** Donald Trump is a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment. The anti-Trump PAC is hoping...

The anti-Trump super-PAC that spent more than $2 million slamming the billionaire in Iowa is preparing to launch a new secret weapon in New Hampshire -- John McCain. "Probably the only significant strategy shift is we are going to remind voters in New Hampshire about the disgraceful things that he said about John McCain," said the leader of Our Principles PAC, Katie Packer, who was Mitt Romney's deputy campaign manager in 2012. Trump offended many Republicans when he mocked McCain's Vietnam War service last July, saying "he was a war hero because he was captured. ... I like people who...

McCain is the best chance at taking out an incumbent but the Club For Growth don't like it when candidates talk about amnesty instead of 2% spending cuts. The Club For Growth wanted pro-amnesty Gosar, Salmon or Schweikert to run in Arizona against McCain. http://archive.azcentral.com/opinions/articles/20130430schweikert-salmon-gosar-immigration.html http://atr.rollcall.com/conservative-groups-not-sold-john-mccain-challenger/ http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/257876-club-for-growth-claims-credit-as-trump-drops-in-iowa

Keeping things in perspective: 2008 Republican Iowa Caucus winner: Mike Huckabee, eventual nominee John McCain finished a distant fourth. 2012 Republican Iowa Caucus winner: Rick Santorum, eventual nominee Mitt Romney finished a very close second.

During the Fox Business News debate several political junkies noted a rather curious omission: Senator Marco Rubio was never questioned about the 2013 Senate Gang-of-Eight bill and his stance on Comprehensive Immigration Reform. In fact, if you were to review the debate substance you'd note that candidate Rubio wasn't directly questioned about his immigration positions at all.It is not disconnected that during the 2013/2014 Gang-of-Eight immigration constructs, Fox News was an active participant in the promotion of the immigration reform proposals. In order to facilitate the congressional immigration intent Fox launched a previously unknown pro-amnesty propaganda blitz to support senate...

Tina Fey gave her fans what they were hoping for all week. Fey returned to Saturday Night Live to once again play former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on the heels of the political commentator's endorsement of Donald Trump. Fey appeared as Palin in the cold open alongside the GOP presidential candidate, played by fellow SNL veteran Darrell Hammond.

PHOENIX -- There's no earthly chasm disrupting tree-lined Central Avenue here as it placidly heads north of Bethany Home Road, past well-off residences. However, there might as well have been an abyss between U.S. Sen. John McCain's former home on Central and the church auditorium not far away where local Republican precinct committeemen convened for their annual assembly. McCain left that neighborhood once his children were grown, and the regular January meeting of Maricopa County GOP precinct ground troops, resounding with denunciations of their own party's dispiriting record, in effect voted overwhelmingly that McCain should leave the Senate, too, although...

...there’s no basis for the common claim Obama won through a superb, unprecedented, supremely effective get-out-the-vote effort by the Democrats. Even downcast Republicans have hailed the opposition’s turnout operation as magnificent, but they fail to note that it resulted in far fewer voters showing up for President Obama. - The president drew 7.6 million fewer votes than he did in the hope-and-change election of 2008. - Exit polls showed that Obama got a slightly smaller percentage of the black vote than last time and that turnout was sharply down, delivering at least 1.5 million fewer African-American ballots for the Democrats....

Sen. John McCain declined on Wednesday to criticize Sarah Palin, his former running mate, for endorsing Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump. "I respect her view," McCain (R-Ariz.) told reporters in the Senate on Wednesday, a day after Palin endorsed the man with whom he has had a bitter feud. "I have great affection and appreciation for her," he said. "I respect what she does." Palin's decision isn't affecting his own thinking about the race, McCain added. "I'm not considering anyone," he said. "I've got my own race to run." McCain had previously endorsed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of his...

Rick Davis, the campaign manager for 2008 GOP nominee John McCain, said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is the loser in former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's decision to endorse businessman Donald Trump for the 2016 GOP nomination. "You win every day or you lose every day in a campaign at this stage down to the wire. And it was a big win day for Trump and a big lose day for Cruz," Davis said on "CBS This Morning." There's a "battle for the dwindling Carson vote," he said, which is why both Trump and Cruz are pushing so hard to build...

There was one race in which Palin appears not to have been much help -- and, in fact, hurt the candidate. According to a 2010 study from researchers at Stanford University, noted by Brendan Nyhan, Palin's presence on the 2008 Republican presidential ticket cost John McCain 1.6 percentage points. In an election in which 131 million people voted, that's 2.1 million votes that McCain should have gotten but didn't.... As the campaign progressed, fewer people said they didn't have an opinion on Palin. And as nearly all of those people formed an opinion on her, that opinion was a negative...

-snip- One "Amigo" is in the Bush camp -- and another is being courted. Sen. Lindsey Graham endorsed Jeb Bush this past week, calling him best-prepared among the Republican candidates to be commander in chief. Graham's own presidential campaign didn't get very far, but Bush is hoping his endorsement helps in the senator's home state of South Carolina. And now, the former Florida governor is trying to enlist Graham's help in winning another high profile endorsement: that of Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain. McCain, of course, was the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, and traveled often with Graham and then-Sen. Joseph...

A quarter of Republicans think White House hopeful Ted Cruz is disqualified to serve as U.S. president because he was born in Canada to an American mother, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found. Republican voters nearly mirror independents and the broader electorate in their belief that Cruz cannot hold the White House, with 27 percent of all voters and 28 percent of independents responding he should be disqualified. Cruz, a U.S. Senator from Texas who was born to a U.S. citizen mother and Cuban father in Calgary, Alberta, has brushed aside the attacks about his eligibility as pure politics. But...

It was the biggest dinosaur that ever lived, so when museum experts tried to reconstruct a life-sized skeleton of the recently discovered titanosaur it presented something of a challenge. The American Museum of Natural History in New York needed to use some careful spatial planning when it built a replica of the enormous creature for a new exhibition. At 20 ft (6 m) tall and 122 ft (37 m) long, the recently discovered dinosaur's skeleton is so big it does not fit in the museum’s warehouse-sized exhibition room.

Weighing on the controversy over whether Canadian-born Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is eligible to be president, his fellow senator Rand Paul said Sunday that it would be "extraordinary" to have a president born outside of the U.S. "He would be the first president not born in the United States. And so that alone would be extraordinary. And so people have to decide for their own minds whether it makes a difference where someone is born," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday. ... Paul predicted Sunday that Democrats would challenge Cruz's eligibility and that it would ultimately have...

Five and a half years after Senator John McCain killed off what was left of The Maverick - the independent-thinking, "not afraid to tell it like it is" character he'd been LARPing since the 2000 Republican primary - in order to win a contentious primary against Tea Party challenger J.D. Hayworth, he's facing the prospect of the end of his career once again. This time, it's against a state senator who's perfectly content with grifting votes at a Donald Trump rally. McCain's seat has been targeted by conservative groups for years now to no avail, but this time, it's a...