Free Republic

For all of the candidates, all of the debates and all of the unpredictability, the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 has taken a clear shape over the past month or so. There is a four-candidate top tier that has separated itself from the rest of the pack. There is then a trio of “if/then” candidates who would need a major mistake or collapse from one of the top four to have a realistic chance at winning. Everyone else running has a puncher’s chance — at best — at being relevant in the nomination fight. Below are my...

His felony conviction barred him from the Ohio House but not the U.S. House, so Steve Kraus has announced he will seek the Republican nod to challenge U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur next year. The 9th District stretches along Lake Erie shoreline from Toledo to East Cleveland. Miss Kaptur, who has been in Congress since 1983, was re-elected in 2014 with 68 percent of the vote. Kraus said his campaign will focus on the same things he did during his short tenure in the House, energy independence, job creation, and clean water. But given his recent experience with the justice system,...

“They are generally white males, who have shot up people in movie theaters and schools. Those are terrorist attacks, they’re just different kinds of terrorists.” (AUDIO-AT-LINK)Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown says most terrorist attacks in the country since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks have been committed by “generally white males.” “I think most of us recognize, we’re concerned but we also know that we trust the FBI and our security forces to do this right,” the senator from Ohio said on WAKR radio on Thursday morning. “Since the beginning of the Bush administration when we were attacked, September 11th, we’ve not...

Los Angeles (AFP) - President Barack Obama said the Republican Party has "gone off the deep end" with its messy failure to elect a new speaker of the House of Representatives. The Republican-controlled House was left in shock and disarray this week when Kevin McCarthy, the frontrunner to replace John Boehner, who has announced his resignation, suddenly withdrew from the race because of a revolt by conservatives. The challenge now is to find a consensus candidate who can soothe wounds and unite a fractious caucus. Obama addressed the drama at an expensive fundraiser at a private home in Los Angeles....

After my last two columns on Donald Trump, several people have written to ask what I think about some of the other Republican presidential candidates. So I thought I’d address that question this week. Hey, I’m nothing if not responsive to my readers. Please excuse me if I don’t mention everyone. I’ve only got 500 words. Ben Carson. No question, Dr. Carson is manifestly the smartest person in the race, on either side. His slogan should be, “It’s just politics, folks. Not brain surgery.” I don’t necessarily agree with him on every issue, but I believe he’s a man of...

Columbus — Gov. John Kasich is no longer the leading Republican presidential candidate among Ohio voters, according to a new poll released Oct. 7. Registered Republican voters in the state have shifted their support to business mogul Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who received 23 percent and 18 percent support, respectively, in the latest Quinnipiac University Polling Institute survey. Kasich was third with 13 percent, down from 27 percent in August and ending a string of Quinnipiac polls where he was atop the GOP field in his home state. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and businesswoman Carly Fiorina were...

So far, there are two Republicans I will NOT vote for under any circumstances if they are the nominee in 2016. One is Jeb Bush. The other is this jackass John Kasich. While pandering to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, John Kasich said: Ohio RINO John Kasich compares enemies of ObamaCARE to ISIS I mean, look at Medicaid expansion. You know how many people are yelling at me? I’ve gone to events where people yell at me. You know what? You know what I tell ‘em? I mean, God bless ‘em, I’m telling them a little bit better at...

The Beltway Establishment's secretive plan to hand Jeb Bush the GOP nomination by flooding the zone with candidates (also known as the "GOPe Splitter Strategy") has totally unravelled. Let's start in New Hampshire, where support for John Kasich has fallen off the cliff: The rise of anti-establishment candidates ... have stalled Ohio Gov. John Kasich's momentum in New Hampshire, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll shows. Kasich, who a month ago sat in second place, behind real estate mogul Donald Trump, does not rank among the Republican presidential field's top 5 this time. Kasich has distinguished himself as a...

With the Summer of Trump behind us, the GOP presidential primary race is beginning to take shape. The sharp decline and hasty exit of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker leaves only four truly competitive candidates for the Iowa Caucuses on Feb. 1: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Donald Trump, Ben Carson and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Cruz has the strongest ground game of that group and is the best-funded. Carson is better organized than most realize, but has an unproven team and is an unproven candidate. I agree with many experts who believe we now have seen Trump's peak in polling,...

Boehner's tenure has been viewed with suspicion by many conservatives, and it has coincided with a general loss of faith in the party's leadership. Even so, right wingers give him an undeservedly bad rap. As a Republican speaker with a Democratic president, he never had a chance to do several of the things they clamored for him to do. Sometimes his most critical Republican colleagues' demands that he get rid of Obamacare or, more recently, defund Planned Parenthood, have suggested a fundamental failure to grasp the mechanics of the system of government in which they work. Boehner was not in...

John Boehner is leaving as speaker because he can't control the tea party. Should the whole GOP give in? It has happened before. The Republican Party is barreling head-first toward a worst-case scenario – or is that a best-case scenario? The tea party wing of the party has essentially toppled House Speaker John Boehner. His replacement will almost certainly need the tea party's stamp of approval. Meanwhile, the Republican presidential campaign continues to confound the establishment. Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz together have more support than all other Republican candidates combined, according to polls....

URBANDALE, Iowa —Sen. Ted Cruz was Iowa on Saturday for the opening of his campaign office in Urbandale, making him the seventh Republican to set up shop in Iowa. Cruz and staffers opened their office just six months after the Republican first announced his candidacy. This opening means more than half of the 2016 presidential contenders are spending campaign cash on local rent space. Nearly 100 people including supporters and campaign staffers attended the opening. "I think it shows a commitment to the community to the state and to his supporters particularly, so he is here for the long term,”...

Outgoing Speaker of the House John Boehner lashed out at the House’s “most conservative members” during a Sunday interview on ABC’s “Face the Nation.”CBS host John Dickerson began the interview by asking Boehner about the threatened government shutdown: “Four days, the government runs out of money. Is there going to be a shutdown?” Boehner responded, “no,” that he expected the Senate to pass a continuing resolution and that with the help of Democrats in the House, he expected the House to vote to keep the government open. Moving to the issue of Boehner’s upcoming retirement, Dickerson asked Boehner about conversations...

The abrupt resignation of House Speaker John Boehner shows that “the crazies have taken over the party,” Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said Friday. “I think it signals the crazies have taken over the party, taken over to the party that you can remove a speaker of the House who’s second in line to be president, a constitutional officer in the middle of his term with no allegations of impropriety, a person who’s honest and doing his job. This has never happened before in our country,” King said in an interview on CNN. “He could have stayed on.” King praised Boehner,...

In June 2014, Senator Ted Cruz told The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin this: It is amazing that the wisdom of the chattering class to the Republicans is always, always, always ‘Surrender your principles and agree with the Democrats. That’s been true for my entire lifetime. The chattering classes have consistently said, ‘You crazy Republicans have to give up on what you believe and become more like Democrats.’ And, I would note, every time Republicans do that we lose. Cruz went on: And what does the entire D.C. Republican consulting class say? ‘In 2016, we need another establishment moderate!’ Hasn’t worked...

Non-House members have received votes for speaker, and that’s a trend that seems to be growing.Who can replace Speaker of the House John Boehner, who announced Friday he’s quitting? Almost anyone. Maybe even you. This isn’t a comment on the job Representative Boehner has or has not done in his role as leader of his legislative chamber. It’s meant to illustrate a little-known fact: Under the Constitution, the speaker does not have to be a member of the House. He or she doesn’t have to be an elected lawmaker or government official. The speaker can be an ordinary, private citizen....

WASHINGTON — Hours after House Speaker John Boehner announced that he would be resigning from Congress, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz added fuel to the fire by saying he’d heard “early reports” that Boehner cut a deal with Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to continue funding some of President Barack Obama’s most controversial measures. “I will say, the early reports are discouraging. If it is correct that the speaker, before he resigns, has cut a deal with Nancy Pelosi to fund the Obama administration for the rest of its tenure, to fund Obamacare, to fund executive amnesty, to fund Planned Parenthood, to...

The Fox News Channel’s efforts to promote the presidential candidacy of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) are not working out so well, according to the Fox News Channel’s own polling. Rubio is at just nine percent, according to the latest Fox News poll, trailing GOP frontrunner billionaire Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson by a significant margin. Trump has 26 percent according to the new Fox News poll, and Carson has 18 percent. Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is tied with the struggling Rubio’s nine percent, while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) comes in next with eight percent. Former Florida Gov....

MACKINAC ISLAND, Mich. — Back-to-back appearances on the main stage for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich during Saturday’s keynote lunch speeches at the Michigan Republican Leadership Conference provided contrast for how the two presidential hopefuls are approaching their races to the White House. Speaking first during the packed Saturday lunch on the island, Cruz told the crowd of about 1,000 that “if you see a candidate that Washington embraces, run and hide.” What followed was an audacious agenda the senator laid out for his very first day in office, including taking direct aim at President Obama...

Madison (WKOW) -- A new national poll shows Governor Scott Walker polling at 0 percent in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. The CNN/ORC poll released Sunday shows there were five candidates who received less than one percent of support from likely Republican voters. Walker was among them, joined by former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and former New York Governor George Pataki. Less than one percent equates to zero percent, statistically. The results show Donald Trump is still the front-runner with 24 percent, but has lost ground from earlier in...