Free Republic

"I can only say this: My whole life has been about winning. My whole life," Donald Trump told The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in a free-ranging interview over the weekend. "My life has been about victories. I've won a lot. I win a lot. I win - when I do something, I win. And even in sports, I always won. I was always a good athlete. And I always won. In golf, I've won many club championships. Many, many club championships. And I have people that can play golf great, but they can't win under pressure. So...

A Unified Fields Theory Until Trump changed the subject to punishing women for having abortions, the Trump obsession of the week was Michelle Fields. I’m glad that story is largely gone. I don’t think it was good for Fields or for the forces opposed to Trump. And it distracted from more important stories, like Trump’s willingness to nuke Europe. RELATED: If Donald Trump Were Eight, His Behavior Might Be Endearing Without rehashing the whole thing again with reference to frame-by-frame analysis best left for the Zapruder film, let me just say I think all of the important and relevant facts...

We are sometimes skeptical about Republican presidential contenders who embrace the pro-life position late in life at a convenient moment, as Donald Trump did a few years ago when he was 64 years of age. Mitt Romney, for whom we have a great deal of respect, changed his mind, too, right around the time he started his journey from leadership of a liberal state to leadership of a conservative party. But sometimes Saul does fall off his ass, and there is more joy in Heaven. Donald Trump, however, does not seem to have thought this through. (Of course, we could...

An activist group at Stanford University is demanding that white people — as well as men of any race who are not transgender — be forbidden from being appointed as the school’s next president or provost. “We demand that the next appointment to the position of president and provost of the University break both the legacy of white leadership and cisgender male leadership,” states a document that the group, called the “Who’s Teaching Us Coalition,” released on Tuesday. Note that the students are demanding that “both” of these leadership legacies be dismantled — which means that neither a cis, black...

By:John Seiler | March 28, 2016 National Review’s jihad against Donald Trump turned against Americans themselves with Kevin Williamson’s screed, “Chaos in the Family, Chaos in the State: The White Working Class’s Dysfunction.” He writes about such working-class cities as Wayne, Mich., where I grew up after I was born in 1955. To this day, one-sixth of the city is the Michigan Assembly Plant. It’s a shot-and-beer town. Up until the 1974 Depression, the only way you could avoid providing for your family—your wife staying home with the kids and a cottage up North on a lake—was if you...

Defend Heidi Cruz by MONA CHAREN March 26, 2016 Is Trump the political genius that some have been hinting? Who else, without staff or experience, could rocket to the top of the polls and remain in that perch month after month despite everything? Maybe it’s genius, or maybe its shamelessness. The latter can be mistaken for the former. This week’s new slog in the mud demonstrates one of Trump’s techniques to perfection — he flings filth at an opponent and then invites the docile press to conclude that “both sides” are engaged in unseemly brawling. (This is usually John Kasich’s...

Meet Curly Haugland, former chairman of the North Dakota Republican party and current Republican national committeeman. Haugland is one of just 112 delegates who will arrive unbound to this summer’s Republican convention in Cleveland, free to cast a vote for any candidate he chooses on a first ballot because North Dakota does not hold a primary or caucus. That makes him a particularly valuable asset to the still-dueling presidential campaigns...

... Here’s the mistake we always make after a major terror attack — we believe this is what jihad looks like, and that stopping jihad means stopping violence. But the reality is that terrorist bombings represent merely an aspect of jihad — the most spectacular and bloody, to be sure — but only a part of the sinister whole. In the aftermath of 9/11, Americans were treated to a parade of “experts” who assured a worried public that jihadists were perverting the meaning of the term, that the term really and truly only referred to a peaceful, internal struggle —...

Washington, D.C. — It was billed as an attempt to win new supporters from the ranks of congressional Republicans. But after Donald Trump convened a handful of lawmakers and a number of party luminaries for lunch on Monday, the sole attendee not already backing Trump’s candidacy emerged as uncommitted as he’d gone in. Held in D.C.’s high-powered Jones Day law firm, the confab was supposed to be a congressional outreach effort, but only one attendee — Senator Tom Cotton — was neutral on Trump’s candidacy. The others — including Senator Jeff Sessions and Representatives Chris Collins, Scott DesJarlais, Renee Ellmers,...

Conservative Review has reached a new low for conservative publications by advocating a BLACKLIST to destroy those with a different opinion -- those who support Trump. Mark Levin is the editor-in-chief of Conservative Review. His response has simply been that he is not the columnist in question (Amanda Carpenter) so he is not responsible for the articles content. This is not good enough Mark Levin! As editor-in-chief you approved the publication of an enemies list to destroy those with a different opinion. Personal destruction is a tactic of the totalitarian left that shocks the conscience of those who value freedom...

Ted Cruz beats Hillary Clinton nationally in recent polls, though narrowly, and in state-by-state matchups performs better than the current front-runner for the Republican nomination. Predictably, Cruz wallops Clinton in Utah, a reliably Republican state. But — this is news — both Clinton and Sanders win there when they’re matched against Trump, according to a Deseret News/KSL poll conducted March 8–15. The best evidence we have here in March, as candidates fight for the nomination, is that Trump at the top of the ticket would remove Utah from the “solid Republican” column and put it and its six electoral votes...

Arizona’s primary on Tuesday is now a “yuuge” factor in the Republican nominating process. If Donald Trump were to win even a small plurality of votes, he would win all of the state’s 58 delegates and keep his momentum going. But the results in this important primary might be skewed. Arizona is an early-voting state, and people can cast ballots up to 26 days before the actual primary. As of last Thursday, 249,000 Republicans in Maricopa County alone (where Phoenix is located) had already cast ballots. That’s already more votes than the total cast in Maricopa in the 2012 GOP...

Pundit Erick Erickson's The Resurgent website got 10K from anti-Trump, Paul Singer-funded Our Principle PAC in their latest FEC reported, GotNews.com can report. The funding from the neoconservative billionaire wasn't disclosed to Erickson's readers at the new venture. Singer, who is a pro-gay marriage establishment billionaire, was one of the major financial donors for Marco Rubio. Singer is also a major supporter of National Review which was dispensing the #NeverTrump at CPAC.

In his latest column, George Will charges that Senate Republicans have had an “incoherent response to the Supreme Court vacancy” that “is a partisan reflex in search of a justifying principle.” But it’s Will’s attack on Senate Republicans that lacks coherence: 1. Will purports to present five reasons that Senate Republicans have provided for their determination to keep the vacancy open until after the election. But his presentation of those supposed reasons isn’t at all fair. For starters, Will entirely omits what I understand to be the predominant reason: that filling the Scalia vacancy with an Obama pick would drive...

Donald Trump and his backers want to redefine mathematics, and have the GOP nomination handed to him with a plurality of delegates, rather than a majority, being sufficient... The Republican party has held 39 national conventions since its first in 1856. At each and every one, a majority of delegates was needed for someone to get the nomination...

At this point, whatever happens, the GOP’s chances of winning this election is at best 25%, if Cruz is the nominee. If Trump is the nominee, that falls to 3% at best. The problem is; Trump won’t win … and he won’t let himself lose. If he loses the nomination, I see two possibilities; 1) He immediately endorses his friend, Hillary Clinton. His promises are as genuine as a three dollar bill. 2)He waits until mid-October, when all the ballot papers are printed, and then he’ll endorse his friend, Hillary Clinton.

<p>The Republican party’s incoherent response to the Supreme Court vacancy is a partisan reflex in search of a justifying principle. The multiplicity of Republican rationalizations for their refusal to even consider Merrick Garland radiates insincerity.</p> <p>Because they have a right to be obdurate, there being no explicit constitutional proscription against this.</p>

... The Republican party is not a direct democracy. It crafts its own rules, and it can change them. Here are questions that Republican delegates should be asking themselves: Is it worth upsetting a bunch of angry, marginally conservative voters who often have a minor fidelity to the doctrines of your party? Or are you prepared to put your political infrastructure and full weight behind a cartoonish George Wallace–like character who’ll probably inflict more damage than you could ever hope to repair? RNC chairman Reince Priebus says that he expects every GOP presidential candidate to uphold a pledge to support...

There is a line from John Adams of which conservatives, particularly those of a moralistic bent, are fond: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people." The surrounding prose is quoted much less frequently, and it is stern stuff dealing with one of Adams’s great fears - one that is particularly relevant to this moment in our history. John Adams hated democracy and he feared what was known in the language of the time as "passion." Adams's famous assessment: "I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run,...

As part of my ongoing Trump campaign biography, I thought it would be interesting to see what so-called "conservatives" had to say about Sarah Palin in 2008. Turns out, it's not much different than what they have said about Trump (i.e., hatred): Remember how the so-called conservative media treated Sarah Palin in 2008? Charles Krauthammer wrote, “with Palin, the case against Obama evaporates.” Palin’s choice, he claimed, “negates the theme of readiness” to assume the office. Referring to her as a “wing-nut candidate,” Krathammer wrote of Palin’s “inevitable liabilities” due to the fact that any “unvetted neophyte has ‘issues,’” such...