Free Republic

There is an old axiom in marketing: Good advertising makes a bad product fail faster. If you doubt that, may I submit Exhibit A: The 2016 campaign for the Republican nomination for President of Jeb Bush. It now joins the likes of the Ford Edsel and Coca-Cola's "New Coke" as a bona-fide marketing flop of an enormous magnitude. In each case, be it Edsel, New Coke or Jeb!, logic dictated a winner. Research for all three concluded a marketplace that was theirs for the taking. All three were rooted in strong family brand equity and even carried the brand name...

House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) suggested Tuesday night that he could reach for the Republican presidential nomination during a contested convention in Cleveland.

-snip- Mr. Trump suggests those numbers will improve when he begins attacking Mrs. Clinton in the general election: “I haven’t even started on her yet.” Then again, neither have Democrats started on him. They will pummel him over his bankruptcies, this summer’s Trump University fraud trial, his crude and misogynistic statements, his nativism while hiring foreign workers, his imperious manner. These things may not matter to Mr. Trump’s die-hard Republican primary supporters; they will matter to swing voters in a general election. The GOP contest will arrive at its most critical moment next week. If Gov. Kasich wins Ohio, Sen....

Tuesday on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, read aloud tweets from his critics, which include current GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump and supporters of his presidential campaign

Silicon Valley has little in common, politically, with either branch of the Republican Party, establishment or tea party. Executives at Apple, Google, and Facebook may run their companies with the ruthlessness of robber barons, but they also support Democrats such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and adhere to trendy environmental causes. But the two groups are united in one belief, that being that Donald Trump must be stopped. So, Republican movers and shakers from both the House and Senate as well as operatives such as Karl Rove met people like Apple’s Tim Cook and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon...

"Billionaires, tech CEOs and top members of the Republican establishment flew to a private island resort off the coast of Georgia this weekend for the American Enterprise Institute's annual World Forum, according to sources familiar with the secretive gathering. The main topic at the closed-to-the-press confab? How to stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump. Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google co-founder Larry Page, Napster creator and Facebook investor Sean Parker, and Tesla Motors and SpaceX honcho Elon Musk all attended. So did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), political guru Karl Rove, House Speaker Paul Ryan, GOP Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Cory...

From Michigan to Louisiana to California on Friday, rank-and-file Republicans expressed mystification, dismissal and contempt regarding the instructions that their party’s most high-profile leaders were urgently handing down to them: Reject and defeat Donald J. Trump. Their angry reactions, in the 24 hours since Mitt Romney and John McCain urged millions of voters to cooperate in a grand strategy to undermine Mr. Trump’s candidacy, have captured the seemingly inexorable force of a movement that still puzzles the Republican elite and now threatens to unravel the party they hold dear. In interviews, even lifelong Republicans who cast a ballot for Mr....

Donald Trump could end up destroying the Republican Party if he were to become the 2016 presidential nominee, famed strategist Karl Rove is warning party leaders. With Trump rolling in the first few states to vote, and polls showing him with significant leads in other upcoming contests, it appears difficult to stop his momentum toward the nomination. He has generated the most enthusiasm among voters, many of whom are tired of the same establishment candidates. That now has many within the Republican establishment worried, as evidenced by Karl Rove's address to major donors earlier this month. Rove, who led George...

Rick Perry's "treason" comments are drawing sharp criticism from a wide range of political observers and talking heads, among them Karl Rove. "You don't accuse the chairman of the Federal Reserve of being a traitor to his country. Of being guilty of treason," Rove, who has clashed with Perry before, told Fox News (via TPM). "And, suggesting that we treat him pretty ugly in Texas — You know, that is not, again a presidential statement." Rove continued: "If Rick Perry were to be elected president he'd be saddled with Ben Bernanke who has a term. He's an independent chairman of...

As Donald Trump picks up momentum, the chances of a well-funded assault to block him from the Republican presidential nomination are dramatically dwindling, according to interviews with about a dozen donors and operatives who are appalled by the billionaire real estate showman's campaign. The party's elite donor class has mostly closed its checkbooks to groups dedicated to stopping Trump, while the outfits that have built massive reserves are increasingly deciding to forgo anti-Trump campaigns, despite widespread fears that he is making a mockery of conservatism and could undermine Republicans up and down the ballot. The deepest-pocketed operation on the right,...

This is a stunning indictment of the Cruz Campaign's cheating scandal. Karl Rove explains how the tactic could have cost Trump Iowa.

Karl Rove said Donald Trump should be "worried" because he has hit his peak and he is on the decline. Rove points to Trump hitting 38% in the RealClearPolitics average earlier, while the frontrunner is currently only at 34%. "Remember, he peaks on February 11th at 38% in the RealClearPolitics average. If you took out the undecideds he was at 40 percent. And today he is going to be 34%. He's declining and not rising. If I were him I'd be worried," Rove said Saturday night after the primary was called for Trump....

On Fox, Karl Rove ACTUALLY JUST SAID, "If I were Donald Trump, I'd be worried."

After finishing in fourth place during Tuesday's New Hampshire Republican primary, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is looking towards a longer-term strategy for the GOP nomination. "I think the field will whittle down eventually," Bush said in an interview with "CBS This Morning" early Wednesday. "I'm a patient person. I wish it all happened overnight, that's kind of the obsession of the pundits want that to happen but it'll happen. And when it does, I'm the one candidate that has taken on Donald Trump that does not believe he's a conservative." Of Trump, who won the first-in-the-nation primary by a...

DONALD TRUMPS NEW HAMPSHIRE; BATTLE FOR SECOND BETWEEN BUSH AND KASICH AS DEBATE FALLOUT CONTINUES. SANDERS WELL AHEAD OF CLINTON. With the New Hampshire primary happening tomorrow, a new Emerson College statewide survey shows Republican Donald Trump poised to win in the Granite State with 31% of likely GOP primary voters. The battle is on for second place, with the next four candidates separated by just 5 percentage points: Jeb Bush (16%), John Kasich (13%), Marco Rubio (12%) and Ted Cruz (11%).

Eight months ago, Jeb Bush announced his candidacy for president, expressing his appreciation for the American immigrant experience by delivering a passage in Spanish and declaring that "my message will be an optimistic one because I am certain that we can make the decades just ahead the greatest time ever to be alive in this world." That candidacy, blessed by built-in advantages while cursed by high expectations and antiestablishment anger, faces in New Hampshire on Tuesday an existential moment, not just for the candidate but for the Republican Party's Bush dynasty. Will Jeb Bush do well enough to recharge his...

Jeb Bush is a nice guy, an optimistic guy, a substantive, forward-looking guy who just happens to be a little pissed off as his campaign bus rolls through the idyllic New Hampshire countryside. He's angry at Marco Rubio, thoroughly disgusted with Donald Trump, aggravated with the grubby, profane, uncivil tone of the Republican primary - and, above all, irate at the mere suggestion that he stop grinding this 2016 thing out until he finally convinces voters that he's the best guy to do the job.

Watching the Sunday talk shows, if I didn't "know" that Jeb Bush was considered washed up, I would have thought the other campaigns saw him as a real force in Tuesday's balloting. On ABC's "This Week," both Donald Trump and Marco Rubio laid into Jeb. Trump countered Bush scoring points on him in a Saturday night debate exchange on eminent domain. Rubio, meanwhile, felt the need to get to the right of Bush on abortions during "crisis pregnancy" scenarios. Bush has been left for dead by pundits in recent weeks and months. The seeming front runner status he enjoyed early...

His campaign is in overdrive. The family cavalry is en route. It may not be enough. The pundits think he's nearing the end. His donors are itching to jump ship. But Jeb Bush thinks he's about to take the first step toward an unlikely comeback. "You don't have to listen to the pundits," Bush told voters here. "In fact, you'll figure it out for the pundits." The Bush campaign enters its last day before New Hampshire votes with the single aim of delivering a top-five performance that justifies pushing south, where they say they believe a better organization and a...

It's 11 AM on Saturday morning in Bedford, New Hampshire, and Jeb Bush's staff has a problem: A police officer is saying that that McKelvie Intermediate School has reached its maximum occupancy. Hundreds of people-many wearing Bush '88 hats and W pins, the merch of a dynasty-have squeezed into the school's auditorium to see the latest Bush to seek the presidency speak. Other supporters are stuck outside, cheering the former Florida governor's "Safer, Stronger, Freer America" bus as it rolled in. While Bush takes selfies with the stragglers, Tom Ridge appears onstage inside. -snip- These aren't great times to be...