Free Republic

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/07/conservatives-starting-to-think-obscene-campaign-spending-might-be-a-bad-thing

The Donald has raked in $96,000 so far, and from birther beliefs to ‘the immigration thing,’ the characters who contributed to that haul are a lot like the candidate himself.You learn a few things, calling the 63 individuals who donated more than $250 to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign—helping him pull in a total of $96,000 in the 29 days since his June 16 announcement, according to the financial disclosure he released Wednesday evening. You learn, for instance, that President Obama, who is an African-born Muslim, wouldn’t help you if you were kidnapped in Iran, that not all undocumented Mexican immigrants...

There’s an elephant in the Republicans’ room that just won’t budge. Ted Cruz is trying to befriend it. Rick Perry is kicking at its shins. Chris Christie wants to pay it no attention without being offensive. The elephant, of course, is Donald Trump. The image may not be quite apt—Trump’s Republican bona fides are suspect, indeed, and he’s hardly being ignored by the voters, media, and other candidates. Truth is, many would argue an ornery monkey jumping about the room, throwing things, and performing tricks for the onlookers, would be a better comparison. Republicans, who have made a concerted effort...

Yes, 17 Republicans are running for president. But the field seems much, much smaller than that -- especially after the last three weeks of attention on Donald Trump. To put it simply, Trump has shrunk the Republican field. Now that won't last; as we've written before, Trump's past comments on abortion and health care will come back to bite him among GOP voters. He'll come back down to earth, just as Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain eventually did in the 2012 race. But RIGHT NOW, it seems as if there are just three 2016 candidates out there: Hillary Clinton, Jeb...

The fundraising numbers from last Federal Election Commission (FEC) fundraising quarter for 2016 GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz were so good combined with one week in the previous quarter, he has actually raised more hard money than former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a new memo from his campaign manager Jeff Roe obtained exclusively by Breitbart News reveals. "With the release of each presidential campaigns second quarter fundraising and expenditure data, it is clear the Sen. Ted Cruz for President campaign is well positioned against the other candidates, the Roe memo reads. "Sen. Ted Cruz raised more 'hard money' than...

At midnight, the deadline for candidates for president (and other federal offices) to report how much they raised and spent over the first six months of the year were due at the Federal Election Commission. Campaign finance nerds are spending today (and tomorrow and the next day) combing through the fine print of each report for the nuggets that provide some insight into how candidates are raising and spending their money -- and why. While they do that, we thought we'd give some of the topline takeaways from the second quarter of fundraising for the 2016 presidential race. Below are...

Can Walker Stop Trump? Can Scott Walker end Donald Trump’s rise in the polls? According to the Washington Examiner, Walker has the resume that could end Trump. The Wisconsin governor is well suited to put an end to the Trumpnado. He offers a blue-collar, can-do conservatism. He appeals to various wings of the party. And most importantly, he can take away immigration as Trump’s signature issue. Walker’s tentative embrace of a populist immigration position isn’t without political risks. But right now he is the only top-tier presidential candidate who is speaking to the four-fifths of Republicans who are dissatisfied with...

The Republican’s campaign is fueled mostly by big donors. The average size of a Bush donation: $926. Jeb Bush is a fundraising powerhouse among the Republican Party's biggest donors, but he is struggling among smaller donors. Of the $11.4 million his campaign raised during its first two weeks, only 3 percent came from donors who gave less than $200. Small contributors gave Bush only $368,023, the Bush campaign's federal filings show. Donors who gave the legal maximum of $2,700 accounted for more than 80 percent of Bush's total haul. For comparison's sake, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz raised $1.8 million from...

Mike Huckabee raised more than $2 million in the second fundraising quarter, in addition to $6 million raised by outside groups to boost the former Arkansas governor’s presidential campaign, according to two senior advisers. “The nearly $8 million raised to date is well over three times as much as Gov. Huckabee raised in the first three quarters combined of his 2008 campaign, when Huckabee was outspent 10:1 and won the Iowa caucuses and seven other states,” a Huckabee campaign official e-mailed several reporters, previewing the fundraising report on the condition of anonymity. Wednesday is the deadline for candidates to disclose...

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker announced Monday that he is running for President of the United States. With Walker's announcement, the Republican field of Presidential contenders is expected to include 17 major candidates by summer's end. Consensus among political insiders is that three of those 17 candidates have both a clear shot at winning the nomination and being competitive in a general election matchup with Hillary Clinton. Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and Walker have been dubbed the three candidates to watch in the coming months. Although Democrats salivate at the thought of facing an unelectable Republican like Ted Cruz or Donald...

I confess that I do not begin to understand homosexual or transgender issues. As life would have it, this matter has found its way into the lives of my own circle of friends and family members, people whom I love and respect most dearly. While I acknowledge that I do not fully understand the issues which formed the basis of the case before the Supreme Court, I am comfortable with the decision and fully believe the Court is right in its ruling that laws forbidding same-sex marriage are unconstitutional. Frankly, I don’t have to understand anything other than that I...

The Texas senator is making the most of the Gray Lady’s refusal to put his book on its bestseller list.The campaign gods are smiling down on Ted Cruz, gifting him a feud with conservatives’ most despised news outlet at a time when most 2016 campaigns are gasping for Trump-free air. At issue: The New York Times refuses to grant the Texas senator’s memoir, “A Time for Truth,” a place on its powerful list of bestselling books, despite his publisher’s insistence that his numbers should vault him well ahead of other titles in the top 10. News of Cruz’s exclusion broke...

By even his own admission, Donald Trump has only a 10-20% chance of becoming the country's next president. And most Republicans don't consider him a threat to win the nomination. But at least one prominent Republican figure is starting to worry that Trump could end up on the general-election ballot in another way: by running as a third party candidate. At a meeting of Republican strategists and lobbyists reported by the New York Times on Thursday, former Republican congressman Thomas Davis raised the possibility that Trump could play spoiler as a third-party candidate. "You've got to keep him in the...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Amidst the GOP infighting over Donald Trump and an uproar in Congress over the Confederate flag, the White House jabbed at Sen. Ted Cruz today. Opening his daily press briefing, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest called out Cruz as one who – rather than condemning Trump for depicting Mexican immigrants as rapists and killers — “saluted” the real estate magnate-turned-candidate. The comments came in prepared opening remarks, suggesting the poke was anything but inadvertent. Cruz appeared earlier today on Fox Business Network and again declined to repudiate Trump’s comments. “No, I am proud to stand with Donald Trump. I...

<p>Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Donald Trump, Ben Carson and six others would be in the first Republican presidential debate next month, while two governors, a U.S. senator and the 2012 Iowa Republican caucus winner would be out, according to a survey by NBC News’ political unit.</p>

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jeb Bush, two establishment candidates with long-polished fundraising machines, are poised to finish the first half of the year with the most donations in a crowded 2016 presidential campaign field where the money chase is the first real primary. Republicans Ted Cruz and Ben Carson — relative political neophytes compared to the current bearers of the Clinton and Bush dynasties — also have exceeded expectations with their early fundraising. The rest of the field has its work cut out for it in a race that analysts say will require candidates to raise in the nine-figure amounts...

How's this for a Dream Ticket? Cruz/Trump 2016. Probably wouldn't get far in a general election, but wouldn't it make for something most definitely entertaining to watch? Why, they'd serve up at least a year's worth of SNL skits just by announcing. Tempting scenario, but even in the circus-like atmosphere that the GOP primary is already turning into, there's actually a much more realistic – and likely previously worked out – strategy between the two loudmouths. He may still act all tough, but Trump has already publicly admitted not expecting the mega blowback he has received since unleashing his tirade...

The GOP candidate's campaign is working closely with a data company owned by Cruz's biggest donor.Ted Cruz’s presidential effort is working closely with a little-known company owned by his biggest donor that uses non-traditional “psychographic” analyses of voters to try to win them over with narrowly targeted micro-messages, POLITICO has learned. The company, Cambridge Analytica, has sent staff to Cruz’s campaign headquarters in Houston to help set up an intensive data analysis operation. Cambridge Analytica is connected to a British firm called SCL Group that provides governments, political groups and companies around the world with services ranging from military disinformation...

Mitt Romney's backing helped several candidates emerge from a crowded primary field and be successful in the 2014 midterm elections. He's aiming to do the same for presidential candidates in 2016. Many observers expected Mitt Romney to slink away from politics after his defeat in the 2012 presidential election, but the former Massachusetts governor has instead embraced a new role as an elder statesman and kingmaker within the Republican Party. While he has shied away from open campaigning, Mr. Romney has taken to tacitly supporting the more moderate, establishment-friendly candidates in a packed and ideologically tangled field. “Romney, who flirted...

An independent super-PAC has been formed to raise unlimited funds to power Donald Trump’s run for the presidency, The Post has learned. The political action committee is called Make America Great Again, the slogan of the Republican real estate mogul’s White House campaign. It says in its filings that it “intends to raise funds in unlimited amounts.” It does not specify whom it will support or oppose, but Jon Anderson, a Denver-based attorney involved in filing the paperwork, confirmed Make America Great Again is a pro-Trump PAC. “I am the election lawyer who represents the Make America Great Again political...