Free Republic

Republican candidate Donald Trump is firing back after neoconservative operative Bill Kristol announced that he expects an independent candidate to enter the race to split the Republican vote. Kristol’s effort to get a candidate to run on his anti-Trump “Latter-Day Republicans” ticket – already condemned by the Republican National Committee – has apparently come to fruition. Just a heads up over this holiday weekend: There will be an independent candidate--an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance. Trump did not take the announcement lying down. The presumptive Republican nominee slammed Kristol and implored Republicans to keep the...

Is the GOP co-opting the tea party movement, or are tea partiers taking down the establishment and sending the RINOs packing? A lengthy New York Times magazine article this week quoted several establishment Republicans crowing over what they see as the demise of the two-year-old tea party activism. Bill Kristol, the neoconservative editor of the Weekly Standard and a Fox News contributor, said the tea party peddles "an infantile form of conservatism."Veteran Republican strategist Scott Reed took the disdain one step further, saying the GOP is steadily co-opting the grass-roots movement. "That’s the secret to politics: trying to control a...