Free Republic

For Jeb Bush, who I believe really wants to be president, the theory of the case has always been this: At some point, his party, the Republicans, will break from the tea party. The angry fever that overtook the party when Barack Obama’s election produced its intended result: a universal healthcare bill, would break. And the movement, born on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to slag underwater homeowners, and harnessed by the GOP to break the spell of bipartisanship Obama rode into town on, would have so consumed the party base, that cooler heads within the party would...

On the same week that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin doubled down on waterboarding remarks she made, the campaign of CD3 GOP Primary candidate Steve Lonegan said it would welcome Palin in to campaign with the movement conservative candidate. “Darn right I’d do whatever it takes to foil [terrorists’] murderous jihadist plots – including waterboarding,” Palin, a Republican, wrote in a Facebook post Monday night, following up on controversial comments made last weekend at the annual National Rifle Association meeting in Indianapolis. “Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we’d baptize terrorists,” Palin told...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie delivered a message to his fellow members of the Republican Party on Thursday: being pro-life means reforming America’s drug laws and criminal sentencing procedures. Christie has long advocated for drug treatment programs as a means of reforming the country’s prison system, but Christie took a new tactic on Thursday when he framed that advocacy as a pro-life argument. “I’m pro-life, and I believe strongly in the sanctity of life,” Christie told an audience in Jersey City on Thursday. Addressing his fellow Republican governors, Christie said that “it’s great to be pro-life, but you need to...

Editor's note: Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter" and "Governing America." (CNN) -- ...The weaknesses of both men—Cruz in terms of his style and Paul in terms of his rhetoric—point out how desperate the GOP is to find someone who can build a broad coalition, something that is essential for a presidential victory, particularly when Republicans will likely be facing a formidable candidate. The problems of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have been a huge blow to the party, and there are not many alternatives at...

Though Karl Rove, Ronald Reagan, and Barry Goldwater weren’t in attendance at the 2014 edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, the contrasting visions each had for the Republican Party were well represented. Championing Rove’s cynical realpolitik wing that believes in winning simply for winning’s sake was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who essentially told the CPAC audience the GOP should keep doing what lost the last two presidential elections — but do it even worse. Showing he’s either out-of-touch with reality or really just a liberal, Christie even said Republicans have lost because they’ve been nominating candidates...

Who’s likely to do well in New Hampshire’s 2016 first-in-the-nation presidential primary? It’s a preposterous question, here in 2014, but what the heck? We asked six experts to weigh in on some of the biggest political players. Our analysts are Wayne Lesperance, political science professor at New England College; Phil Boynton, president of the University of New Hampshire College Republicans; Peter Burling, Democratic national committeeman; Dante Scala, professor of political science at UNH; Jess Steever, vice president of the Plymouth State University Democrats; and Brandon Lemay, public relations officer for the PSU Democrats. Today, our panelists consider the Republicans. Tomorrow,...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Dallas, Texas (CNN) -- In the afterglow of Chris Christie's smashing re-election win last November, a chorus of big-name Republicans heralded the charismatic New Jersey governor as the party's savior in 2016. Not everyone was so enamored. Just days after the election, Texas Gov. Rick Perry appeared on national television and poured cold water on Christie's impressive victory. "He was a successful governor in New Jersey," Perry said on ABC's "This Week." "Now does that transcend to the country? We'll see in later years and months to come. We're all different states. Is a conservative in New Jersey a conservative...

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) - Outspoken real estate magnate Donald Trump said on Tuesday he may seek the Republican presidential nomination for 2016, adding that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's prospects for a White House run have dimmed since a scandal erupted. A run for the presidency "is something I would certainly look at," Trump told Reuters. "You know why? I'm unhappy with the way things are going in America." Trump gave the telephone interview before making a breakfast speech at the "Politics & Eggs" forum at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire - an event that tends to...

The Republican Party put all of their 2016 eggs in the Christie basket. Now the basket has George Washington Bridge size hole, Hillary Clinton has opened up an 8 point lead and Republicans are panicking. The first whiff of GOP panic came from a recent New York Times story, Of all the new realities that Mr. Christie must confront, perhaps the most humbling is a sense of losing the momentum that surrounded him just a few months ago. Last year, the governor’s staff had begun building up his foreign policy bona fides, quietly reaching out to Brian H. Hook, a...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie strode to the microphones in Trenton Wednesday night and took an hour of reporters’ tough questions about a plot by staffers to punish Fort Lee’s Democratic mayor by snarling his city’s traffic for four days. Penitent, occasionally defiant, Christie insisted he didn’t know about the scheme. But he said he took full responsibility for the scandal, apologized to the citizens of Fort Lee and promised to get to the bottom of what happened. Oh wait. That’s not what Christie did at all. The famously fearless governor canceled his one public appearance of the day, ignored...

Democratic Party donor Rosemarie Arnold boasts that she’s the “Queen of Torts” based on a history of filing suits like a $30 million dollar dog bite lawsuit. Other attorneys don’t seem to think too highly of the Queen of Torts and her tactics. Which brings us back to Rosemarie Arnold and her claim on behalf of the child that he suffered a $30M injury to his ear. There are only two reasons for Ms. Arnold to do this: 1. The Queen of Torts is actually ignorant of the law; or 2. Rosmarie Arnold willfully elected to ignore the law, in...

Perfectly rational in one sense, deeply surprising in another. And not just for the obvious “RINO versus RINO” reasons. How the heck did Rand Paul lose the “bash Christie” sweepstakes to Lindsey Graham? “It seems to me that this whole bridge thing reinforces a narrative that’s troublesome about the guy, he’s kind of a bully,” Graham told NBC News on Thursday on Capitol Hill, referring to the scandal over land closures on the George Washington Bridge that’s engulfed Christie over the past two days… “If anybody in my office had done such a thing, they knew what their fate would...

Former Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said he’s still pondering a run for the White House because he doesn’t want Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) define the GOP. King, who’s made five trips up to early primary state New Hampshire and admitted in July that he’s toying with the idea of a presidential campaign, told MSNBC he hasn’t made up his mind yet and his decision should come “sometime next year, either next year or the beginning of 2015.” “Again, I’ve been up there five times. I am looking at it. People are talking...

The day after Chris Christie, the cuddly moderate conservative, won a landslide reelection as the Republican governor of Democratic New Jersey, I took the Internet Express out to Iowa, surveying its various newspapers, blogs and such to see how he might do in the GOP caucuses, won last time by Rick Santorum, neither cuddly nor moderate. Superstorm Sandy put Christie on the map. The winter snows of Iowa could bury him. From a Web site called the Iowa Republican, I learned that part of the problem with John McCain and Mitt Romney, seriatim losers to Barack Obama, “is they were...

Mike Huckabee sat out the 2012 election, but he may be game in 2016. The former Arkansas governor — who won the 2008 Iowa caucuses and emerged as the strongest challenger to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the race to capture the GOP nomination — ended his daily radio show Thursday and said he was considering another run at the White House. "I'm keeping the door open," he told the New York Times. "I think right now the focus needs to be on 2014, but I'm mindful of the fact that there's a real opportunity for me." Huckabee hasn't been...

One is a trusted friend, with decades of national campaign experience. Another is a media consultant who worked on six of the last seven presidential races. Then there’s a trio of strategy and communications experts who have been together since George W. Bush’s 2004 run for the White House. What they have in common are deep-seated relationships with Governor Christie and connections that reach across the country. They form the nucleus of a political team so tight and loyal to the governor, that it’s difficult to get them to talk about anything – even their success in helping him win...

Former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin took time out from her book tour to offer her thoughts on the 2016 presidential election. Governor Chris Christie is considered the Republican frontrunner in some circles, but Palin isn’t in his corner. She says the Party doesn’t have to “settle” for any particular candidate. Palin said in a Fox News interview, according to Politico, “We certainly don’t have to settle for any candidate that would go along with an agenda that stifles our economy and would strip any of our freedoms that are constitutionally protected.” Also, in an interview with...

Those sophisticates at Time magazine made a funny. They put Chris Christie on their cover with the headline, "The Elephant in the Room." Get it? Elephant. Christie. Time magazine did a junior high fat joke right there on its cover. Time's executive editor Michael Duffy explained the cheap shot this way: "Well, he's obviously a big guy. He's obviously a big Republican. But he's also done a really huge thing here this week." The "huge thing" wasn't only winning re-election as New Jersey's governor, but doing it by appealing to a broad range of voters in a very blue state...

Sarah Palin continues to withhold resounding support for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in 2016, saying Republicans don’t have to “settle” for candidates. “We certainly though don’t have to settle for any candidate, any politician that would go along to get along with an agenda that stifles our economy and would strip any of our freedoms that are constitutionally protected,” Palin said Monday on Fox News’s “Hannity,” when asked about the GOP establishment saying Christie is the only Republican candidate who could win the presidency in 2016. Palin said “those establishment people have been quite wrong, it seems, especially in...

Democrats insist they can thwart Chris Christie (R) if he seeks the White House in 2016, despite the broad appeal he showed in winning reelection last week. Even though the New Jersey governor secured more than 60 percent of the votes against state Sen. Barbara Buono (D), Democratic strategists in the Garden State and beyond believe he has vulnerabilities they could exploit in a national election. Above all, they assert that Christie’s famously combative style could result in a loss of self-control during the heat of a presidential campaign. Steve Elmendorf, who served as deputy campaign manager for then-Sen. John...