Free Republic

Jeb! Donation Letter: I know it's hard asking for money when you're at 3% but everybody's on my ass… My dad and brother think I'm a total loser… Even my punk-ass son we helped get elected to Texas Land Commissioner wants to change his last name – to Trump... I now know what Hitler felt like while in the bunker during the Fall of Berlin... His big problem was listening to that idiot Joseph Goebbels. And we all know what happened to those two... You might be surprised to know that I've got my own idiot I listen to. His...

-snip- To many of the billionaires it felt like a mugging. -snip- Rove's 2012 crash is having profound effects on the 2016 Republican primary. To begin with, George W. Bush's Brain is no longer considered much of a brain. "I gave Rove $500,000. What did I get for it? Nothing!" Langone told me. Two of Rove's most generous 2012 funders, Texas billionaires Bob Perry and Harold Simmons, have since passed away, and their heirs have turned off the cash spigot. "Everyone is still shocked Romney lost," says Simmons's widow, Annette. "I haven't committed at all." So far this year, Crossroads...

If repeat business is the top sign of a success, then Karl Rove is now the poster boy for campaign strategy failure. According to a report by Gabriel Sherman in New York Magazine, Rove's fund raising for the 2016 campaign is currently at less than 1 per cent of what he ended up with in 2012, and indications are it's not going to get much better. Do the math: he's down more than 99 percent. Even if he eventually raises ten fold what he's pulled in so far, he's still likely to be down 90 percent plus. That's because many...

Karl Rove, who served as an adviser to former President George W. Bush, warned Republicans that nominating Donald Trump could be a death wish for the party. In a Wall Street Journal column published Friday, Rove acknowledged Trump's consistently strong standing among Republicans in the polls, and the impressively high percentage of backers -- 46 percent, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll -- who say they won't stray from Trump before the primaries. Hitting Trump for his antics -- citing the Republican presidential candidate's beef with Fox News host Megyn Kelly and insults of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for being...

Republican officials and leading figures in the party's establishment are now preparing for the possibility of a brokered convention as Donald Trump continues sit atop the polls and the presidential race.

. Remember Mississippi ? The professional apparatus of the Republican Party are signaling their intent to do exactly what we predicted they would do. Trump will win the primary, and the GOPe will split the party to run an additional candidate in the general election. It’s not Trump going third party – It’s the establishment GOP (GOPe) intending to go third party. They are planning a modified version of the Mississippi Strategy from 2014. .

Jeb Bush's operation has spent an incredible amount of money already during this campaign - to no apparent effect. According to ad-buying data from SMG Delta, posted by Mark Murray of NBC News, Bush's Super PAC and campaign have already spent a massive $32.5 million on ads in total - far, far more than the operation of any other GOP candidate. In fact, Team Bush's spending is twice as much as the combined money spent on ads for the top four GOP candidates in the polls - Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Ben Carson. Yet Bush remains in...

I used to feel bad for Jeb because he was so overmatched in his war of words with Trump, but Trump doesn’t bother much with him now that he’s faded in the polls. Lately I feel bad for him because no matter how far he falls and how much people goof on his struggles, he and his team seem dead set on staggering on to New Hampshire. His ads may be ineffective and his media appearances may be completely overshadowed by Trump’s, but there’s simply no way Bushworld will accept the humiliation of quitting the race before any votes...

The Jeb Bush backers who poured more than $100 million into pro-Bush super PAC Right to Rise haven't exactly been getting a lot of bang for their buck. The group has already spent more than $49 million, not including salaries and other operating expenses, only to have its candidate's poll numbers drop to the low single figures, the Washington Post reports. The spending blitz included $18.5 million on Bush ads in New Hampshire, where Politico reports he's still stuck in sixth place. The super PAC still has more than $67 million, according to finance filings, but that may not be...

New Hampshire is beginning to look like Jeb Bush's final stand. Stuck in the middle of the GOP pack he was expected to dominate, Bush is accelerating the time frame for his campaign's next ad buy in the state. His campaign also announced Tuesday that it is opening four regional field offices in New Hampshire and upping its on-the-ground staff from 12 people to 20. That concentration of resources comes after his Right to Rise super PAC has already spent $12 million on TV ads and blanketed New Hampshire with four direct mail pieces. Bush himself has made 60 campaign...

No election season is complete without a good scandal, and even those close to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio know that. According to an excerpt from McKay Coppins' forthcoming book The Wilderness, unsubstantiated rumors about Rubio have been swirling around him practically since he entered politics: Jilted mistresses, sordid affairs, secret love children - Rubio's team had heard it all [...] One [rumor] that reporters in Florida had repeatedly tried to run down over the years dealt with a Tallahassee politico who Rubio had supposedly taken on several romantic out-of-state trips and paid for them with the state party's credit card.

The press corps tends to go with the cheap, easy, and spoon-fed narrative. That narrative is that Karl Rove is opening doors and rolodexes for Ben Carson to stop Donald Trump.That’s not it and people in the know, know it.Carson is collapsing and his support is headed to Ted Cruz. In Iowa and elsewhere, Carson voters are toying with Cruz and Rubio. Rove wants an establishment guy. On Bloomberg Politics With All Due Respect earlier this week, Rove listed Bush, Christie and Marco Rubio as the three candidates most likely to knock Trump off when “the other 70 to 75...

Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson traveled to Jordan to meet with Syrian refugees Friday, according to his campaign. "Dr Carson and a small group are in Jordan," a campaign aide said. "There was no intention to make this a press event. He is there fact finding, listening, learning and meeting." The goal of the surprise trip is to better understand the refugee crisis stemming from Syria's brutal civil war, his campaign told The New York Times, which was first to report the news -- and the trip comes as he struggles in the race with a renewed focus on foreign...

Republicans are riding high with white voters, but need to win over American minorities if they expect to recapture the White House in next year's presidential election, influential GOP consultant and policy adviser Karl Rove tells Newsmax TV. "It's not just Latinos. Republicans have to do better among African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans because we're tapped out — we're taking six out of every 10 white voters," Rove said Wednesday on "Newsmax Prime" with J.D. Hayworth.

Republican strategist Karl Rove may be moving to help bankroll Ben Carson in the presidential race. Reports say Rove helped to set up a meeting between Carson's campaign and billionaire Steve Wynn, but additional details were not immediately clear. Wynn, who owns casinos and hotels across the country, has contributed a combined $30,000 to political action committees associated with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in this election cycle. Ben Carson presently ranks fourth in the Washington Examiner's power rankings. Wynn is munificent when it comes to campaign contributions, and he rarely discriminates between parties. Federal Election Commission filings indicate Wynn...

Republican strategist Karl Rove arranged a meeting between fundraisers for GOP candidate Ben Carson and casino tycoon Steve Wynn, Bloomberg reports. Wynn is a sometimes-business competitor of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, whose campaign is viewing the meeting as an attempt by the GOP establishment to help Carson topple his chief rival in the primary race. "Karl Rove is at the center of the GOP establishment — fearful of what real leadership in Washington D.C. will accomplish," Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told Bloomberg in a statement. "Mr. Trump continues to expose the all-talk, no action politicians propped up their dark...

Karl Rove says Donald Trump may very well win the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. But the influential GOP consultant and policy adviser, in an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV, adds the billionaire developer's acidic attacks on his fellow candidates could hurt his chances. "He's taken the lead - took the lead in July and held it. He's got a chance to win the nomination," Rove said Wednesday on "Newsmax Prime" with J.D. Hayworth. "His challenge is, he's created a high floor, but a low ceiling. It's sort of hard to grow when you've taken on the habit of excoriating everybody...

Influential GOP consultant and policy adviser Karl Rove says former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels would be the perfect running mate for whoever wins the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. And at the very least, Rove adds in an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV, the GOP's vice presidential pick should be a Midwesterner to maximize the Republican ticket's drawing power. "It would be good to have somebody from the Midwest. I've got an out-of-the-box idea for you, how about the former governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels," Rove said Wednesday on "Newsmax Prime" with J.D. Hayworth. "[He's] done an exemplary job serving in...

POLITICO Caucus shows Cruz gaining ground and Clinton pushing Sanders aside in the early voting states. After months of waiting for Donald Trump’s decline, Republican insiders now concede the poll leader could take two of the first four early voting states, though they caution his hold on Iowa is weak. That’s according to the POLITICO Caucus, our weekly poll of the top strategists, operatives and activists in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. For this Thanksgiving holiday week, POLITICO analyzed seven months-worth of responses to our weekly benchmark question: Who would win your state if the voting were today?...

The Washington Post has a fascinating article up about the Republican Party's establishment plans to take down Donald Trump. In short? There is no plan. Well, perhaps that's not entirely fair. Plan A is to wait for the Trump campaign to implode. This view is put into words by Frank VanderSloot, chief executive of a large nutritional-supplement company and a backer of Senator Marco Rubio: "It’s just going to take a little time for people to take a step back and look at his track record, see who he is and how he’s changed his positions and how unprepared he...