Free Republic

There is no politician in recent memory who seems more a product of her handlers than Hillary Clinton. But her handlers in 2008 did hardly anything for her, and now you wonder if the reinforcements she’s brought in this time are doing any better, or giving her better advice. Because all she continues to do is serve this whole thing up for Donald Trump. The other day she said that she was going to ask Bill Clinton to help her with the economy. She did this in a political season when Trump has sold himself two ways, apart from walls...

SAN ANTONIO - Next Friday is the day Donald Trump makes a pit stop in San Antonio. It's a private fundraiser at the Oak Hills Country Club, the same week as the Texas Democratic Convention and already several protests are in the works. Activists are making it loud and clear they don't support the candidate. "Donald Trump is not welcome in San Antonio," said Jaime Martinez, Chairman of the Cezar Chavez Foundation Board....

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, presumptive Democratic nominee, theoretically should have little difficulty defeating Donald Trump. He smashed the old political paradigm, casting aside political niceties and engaging in the politics of fear and smear. Trump arguably is both a bully and duplicitous, hardly a role model. He has historically high unfavorable poll ratings with women, Hispanics and other minorities. His attacks on the Hispanic federal judge overseeing a civil suit against Trump University likely will send his negatives even higher. Trump faces daunting demographic obstacles and an Electoral College stacked against him. However, Clinton may be Democrats’ Achilles...

New polls out this week matching the two presumptive presidential nominees, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, could spell danger for the Democrat even as she appears to be pulling away from Trump in the nationwide head-to-head matchup. Polling from crucial swing states that had previously been controlled by Clinton now appears to be heading back in the direction of the Republican candidate. What that means for the general election is that, even though Clinton appears to be consolidating her support among voters across the United States, the Electoral College, where the next president will actually be chosen, has started to...

<p>TAMPA (FOX 13) - Donald Trump is making his third appearance in Tampa as candidate from president Saturday at 11 a.m. at the Tampa Convention Center.</p> <p>Following several violent clashes between Trump supporters and opposition across the country, Tampa police said they plan to have a strong, visible presence at Saturday's event.</p>

California, where the GOP is so weak that it just got locked out of a Senate election because it didn’t have the numbers to place a Republican in the top two in a jungle primary. I think Trump can win the election. I … do not think he’s going to muster a Reaganesque landslide, which is what would be in the offing if California and New Jersey end up in play. If you disagree, odds are you’re either (a) guilty of an even more insular groupthink than the pundits who keep dismissing Trump’s chances or (b) convinced that what he...

Donald Trump is right. He did electrify the electorate in the Republican primaries. And the numbers prove it. In the 2012 GOP primaries, which former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney won, a total of 21.5 million votes were cast. In the 2008 primaries, which put Arizona Senator John McCain at the top of the Republican presidential ticket, 22.8 million people cast primary ballots, according to Real Clear Politics. But this year, about 7 million more Americans voted in the GOP primaries than in 2012, for a total of 28.5 million. Of those, 13.3 million votes were for Trump. True, Romney won...

The left-contrarian arsonist crowd is larger and wider-spread than the cubicled creatures in the Clinton campaign have accounted for. The historic opportunity of the 2016 election is one which Bernie Sanders likely will not have the courage to embrace: The burning to ashes of the corporatist Clintonite neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party. The scenario ideally plays out with Sanders contesting the nomination all the way to the convention and then running as a third party candidate, say on the Green Party ticket, siphoning away the base that Clinton needs to win. This will hand the election to Donald Trump,...

A writer for the Huffington Post is defending his recent op-ed that "a violent response” is the “logical” approach to stopping presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. Jesse Benn wrote in the op-ed titled “Sorry Liberals, A Violent Response To Trump Is As Logical As Any,” posted on Monday, “[T]here’s an inherent value in forestalling Trump’s normalization. Violent resistance accomplishes this.” "These denunciations of violence from anti-Trump protestors rest on the misguided view that the divide Trump’s exposed is a typical political disagreement between partisans, and should be handled as such.," he wrote. "This couldn’t be further from the truth. Trump...

Privileged. Childish. Stupid. Human tire fire. These are just a few of the fun labels being ascribed — by supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders and of Sec. Hillary Clinton alike — to Sanders supporters who won't back Clinton in November. Most Sanders fans will probably do so, in the end (with no shortage of ambivalence, as evidenced by Wednesday's trending hashtag #GirlIGuessImWithHer) but those of us not prepared to fall in line have our reasons. Calling us names dismisses that fact, and it certainly doesn't address those reasons. The prevailing argument for voting for Clinton in the general election is...

Among the dead-enders in Bernieworld, Sanders is still the next president and Clinton is a fate worse than Trump. SANTA MONICA, Calif.—Around 10:30 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, a triumphant Hillary Clinton offered her defeated Democratic presidential primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders an olive branch. “Let there be no mistake: Sen. Sanders, his campaign, and the vigorous debates that we’ve had about how to raise incomes, reduce inequality, and increase upward mobility have been very good for the Democratic Party and for America,” she told the crowd of supporters at Brooklyn’s Navy Yard as she celebrated becoming the first woman to...

At a press conference held in Mexico City, the Binational Coalition Against Donald Trump provided details on how Mexican civil immigrant-support organisations on both sides of the border are preparing to tackle the threats they see linked to Donald Trump's presidential candidacy as the Republican representative. The Coalition centres on making up for a perceived lack of action by authorities on matters important to immigrants and their families in both the United States and Mexico. It consists of a collective of primarily migrant- and migration-centred civil organisations brought together in the Mexican capital by the Binational Aztlán Migrants Organisation; Aztlán...

MIAMI – Shortly after Ted Cruz and John Kasich abandoned the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Denise Galvez found herself in a conundrum. The Cuban-American public relations guru had voted for Sen. Marco Rubio in the March Florida primary that he lost by double digits to the eventual nominee, Donald Trump. “I have known Rubio for a long time,” Galvez said. “I thought he was the best candidate.” She could have either sat out the general election, temporarily switch her allegiance to the Democrats, vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, or cast her ballot for Trump, a candidate who...

Local law enforcement lobbies for peaceful interactions, prepares for worst. Cleveland’s security plans for the Republican National Convention include the deployment of more than 3,000 police officers, but security experts and those expecting to attend fear that a compact space for demonstrations combined with turbulent crowds may be a recipe for explosive clashes. One of the key complaints by groups who support and oppose presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump is the limited space demonstrators will be allowed to occupy during the convention, which runs from July 18 through July 21 and is estimated to bring 50,000 visitors to Cleveland....

Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump offered a welcome to Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders's supporters in a speech delivered a day after The Associated Press reported Hillary Clinton clinched the Democratic presidential nod. "To all those Bernie Sanders voters who have been left out in the cold by a rigged system of superdelegates, we welcome you with open arms," Trump said during his speech, which struck an uncharacteristically conciliatory tone after high tensions from within his own party this week. Trump has often channeled Sanders as a kindred spirit, arguing that both were being kept down by a "rigged system"...

From Chicago to Albuquerque to San Diego, and now last week’s obscene riot in San Jose, California, Americans and the world saw supporters of the liberal agenda violently target Trump supporters, peacefully trying to attend a rally, as though they were prey. Make no mistake — these supposed anti-Trump riots are not organic nor are they natural; they are the result of leftist organizing using paid stooges. Fox News reported in March a Craigslist ad posted by Bernie Sanders supporters offering $15 an hour to protest at a Trump rally in Wisconsin. They would also provide shuttle bus transport, parking...

In a hilariously absurd post, the #nevertrump fanatic David French declined to be the nominee of Bill Kristol’s new political party. French is prone to drama so this is pretty standard stuff from him. I take some pride in having spotted him as a loony-tune a long time ago. I could just tell he was, in the mold of Glenn Beck, one of those guys who careens from one cause to the next, always overdoing it in a quest for grace. In a better age, these sorts were turned into missionaries and shipped off to Africa. That said, I’m a...

The case for an Obama third term, a.k.a. a Hillary Clinton presidency, just suffered a major blow. Indeed, Friday’s jobs report (or lack-of-jobs report) is just the thing Clinton feared most when she launched her presidential bid: namely, that Obamanomics, which boils down to the bizarre notion that higher taxes, more regulation and class warfare actually work, would begin to fully implode while she was forced into defending it on the campaign trail — or risk losing the president’s endorsement. The sickeningly weak job creation during the month of May (just 38,000 jobs when economists expected closer to 150,000) doesn’t...

Cycling, brunch, the beach. Bernie Sanders had quite the “Sunday Fun-day” this weekend, or at least observed others out and about as he crisscrossed Los Angeles shaking hands and greeting people. Two days before the California Democratic primary, the Vermont senator ventured into restaurants in West Hollywood, interrupted a fundraiser on the Santa Monica pier and listened to mariachi music in Lynwood. At every corner, as has been the case for months, excited fans swarmed the progressive superstar, jockeying for a photo. ---snip--- In West Hollywood, Sanders and his entourage stormed into a restaurant called Hamburger Mary’s, a disco joint...

Asked about the violent protests at Donald Trump rallies, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders gave a clear answer. "Violence is absolutely and totally unacceptable," he said. He added that if anyone was considering becoming violent, "please do not tell anybody you are a Bernie Sanders supporter, because those are not the supporters that I want." Of course, he couldn't help but also bash Trump, adding that he found the New York business mogul's positions "reprehensible and disgraceful," before launching into a lengthy diatribe about Trump's insults toward women and minorities. Still, Sanders told his audience that defeating Trump would not...