Free Republic

Dinesh D’Souza is no one’s idea of a thoughtful participant in the nation’s public conversation. Still, his tweet on Wednesday morning may have set a new low for the right-wing rabble-rouser. Commenting on a widely circulated image of President Obama taking a picture of himself with selfie stick, D’Souza tweeted the following message: “YOU CAN TAKE THE BOY OUT OF THE GHETTO... Watch this vulgar man show his stuff, while America cowers in embarrassment.” The tweet has created quite a stir, especially among people who think it demonstrates D’Souza’s racism. But I think it reveals something that might actually be...

In his scheduled speech to the Democratic National Committee's 2016 winter meeting on Friday, President Barack Obama is expected to reclaim some ownership over an issue that is suddenly a hot topic among top Republicans -- income inequality. Recent comments from potential 2016 Republican presidential contenders about the growing gap between wealthy and working class Americans in the United States have not gone unnoticed at the White House. "Income inequality has worsened under this administration," Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, said after the president's State of the Union speech. "We're facing right now a divided America when it comes to the...

A crop of 2016 Republican White House hopefuls and stars of the conservative media firmament are on the list as organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference put the finishing touches on the speakers list for this year’s gathering. The four-day event, considered one of the prime political dates on the calendar for conservative officeholders and activists, kicks off with a daylong activist “boot camp” Wednesday and concludes the evening of Feb. 28 at the Maryland’s National Harbor just outside of Washington. Republican presidential contenders now scheduled to speak include former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Texas...

For the fourth consecutive year, gay conservatives will have no official presence at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference. On Thursday, Log Cabin Republicans accused the American Conservative Union, which organizes CPAC, of excluding the group of LGBT Republicans as sponsors of the annual conference. “Make no mistake: LCR is actively being prohibited from sponsoring CPAC,” said Gregory T. Angelo, executive director of Log Cabin Republicans, in a statement. According to Angelo, discussions with the ACU and its new leadership began this past July. But the ACU said participation by Log Cabin Republicans would prove difficult due to the group’s...

Fun stuff via BuzzFeed, portending an exciting “whose close relative is more of a devastating electoral liability?” primary for the GOP if the two men left standing are Jeb Bush and Rand Paul. I don’t understand this even within the parameters of the Ron Paul worldview. I thought hardcore isolationists — sorry, “non-interventionists” — believe that the war machine will always find a new pretext to keep rolling even if the current one goes bust. Obama, for instance, did eventually get Bin Laden, along with many other Al Qaeda capos … and yet at this very moment there’s an AUMF...

By this time next year we will have likely have been through the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primaries. We might have been through the hype of Nevada and headed to the warm welcome of South Carolina. So. Let's take a look at where we are. These are in no particular order, so please don't demand to know why your favorite wasn't mentioned first. On the Republican side, the surprise du jour has been Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's quick start largely as a result of a speech he gave in Iowa a couple of weeks ago. Walker has run...

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Yvonne Dean-BaileyA 19-year-old freshman at a Massachusetts college is hoping to become one of the youngest female state representatives in New Hampshire’s history as she enters a special election that will be decided this spring. Yvonne Dean-Bailey of Northwood, a Republican who graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy last year, said she is hoping to bring the voice of young, conservative women to the State House. Dean-Bailey is a veteran of two prominent lawmakers’ offices, having worked as an intern doing legislative research for U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte and as a field organizer in Cheshire County on Marilinda Garcia’s campaign for...

News 4 San Antonio's Randy Beamer shows you the all-but-official kickoff of the 2016 Presidential Race at the Iowa "Freedom Summit" over the weekend. And he wants to know what you think of the Texans fighting for support of the GOP right. Sen. Ted Cruz and former Rick Perry are in a very crowded field of Republicans. With so many candidates, the race may get heated (and interesting) earlier than ever. So which of the Texans do you think has the better chance? And who would you put money on to get the most money from donors? Go to our...

It's still early, but the future candidate is in serious trouble. Here's why his beloved Tea Party is to blame. Just before sundown on Monday, Politico unveiled a report on how Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s support for auditing the Federal Reserve has been received thus far on Wall Street. “Very poorly” seems to be the answer. According to Politico, in fact, the likely presidential candidate’s attempts to bring “the Fed” into the light may have permanently lowered the stock of “the most interesting man in politics” — at least among the conservative members of the 1 percent. “The Fed is...

Scott Walker climbs the rankings after a great start to the year, while Paul and Christie stumbled down the list.Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and a surging Scott Walker top Hotline's new GOP Presidential Power Rankings – in part because they're that good, and in part because the competition has been so bad. If you're going to make mistakes in the presidential race, it's better to make them early. But Rand Paul and Chris Christie have stumbled so often they've slipped from the top-tier slots they occupied in the first round of the Power Rankings we released last month. Walker is...

Earlier this year, Mitt Romney had a Galadriel moment. He appeared to be briefly seized by a vision of himself as an all-powerful, world-striding President Romney, before turning away from temptation and settling for the plain old Mitt Romney he has always been. It was political theater at its most bizarre, a flack-driven frenzy that doubled as a flashback to the self-delusion that blinded the Romney 2012 campaign in its final days. With Romney now out of the way, Jeb Bush has consolidated the support of the GOP's moneyed class with surprising alacrity. As Politico noted last week, the contest...

It’s far too early to guess intelligently about who will be elected president next year or whom the Republicans will nominate, but this doesn’t seem to be stopping many pundits. Fox News has its Special Report panels lay odds on the Republican field once a week. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza handicaps the Republican field once a week. And the Weekly Standard’s Steve Hayes has just produced an assessment of that field so exhaustive that it includes Donald Trump. Memories of eight years ago prevent me from joining in the fun. At this time in 2007, and for a considerable...

The 2016 Republican presidential field is shaping up into a legendary free-for-all, with polls showing the race wide open and more candidates expressing interest by the day. Will it be Jeb Bush who consolidates establishment support? Can Rand Paul or Ted Cruz break through with a powerful grassroots coalition? Could Scott Walker thread the needle between both sides? What about Marco Rubio? And then there’s the Democratic side. Will it be Hillary Clinton who prevails? Or will – actually, you know what, it will probably just be Hillary Clinton. While the former secretary of state hasn’t even said whether she’ll...

There are plenty of things to criticize Scott Walker over. His lack of a college degree is not one of them. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has emerged as a modest front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination in the past couple of weeks. This may well be a temporary state of affairs. If the 2012 GOP primaries taught us anything about the presidential nominating process in the super PAC era, it’s that every candidate will be the front-runner for a few weeks. At some point this year, everyone from Huckles to Doctor-Citizen Ben Carson will serve a brief spell as the...

The Hill reports: “Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will be among the possible 2016 Republican presidential candidates speaking to a prominent group of conservatives in Iowa this spring. Walker and Cruz will speak at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition’s spring kickoff event on April 25, the group announced in a Monday statement.” Ironically, in an election cycle in which many pundits discount the influence of Christian conservatives, they could play a critical role in selection of the nominee. In past cycles, these values voters have split their vote, never managing to unite behind a single,...

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has a Ron Paul problem. Or maybe it's a Ron Paul opportunity. Both sides of that particular coin were on display Friday, when Ron - Rand's father - spoke to the International Students for Liberty Conference in Washington, DC. It was the elder Paul's kind of audience - young and enthusiastic about the libertarian emphasis on robust individual freedoms and miniscule government. Crowds like this had fervently supported the former congressman's quixotic bids for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and 2012, where he proved to be a pesky participant in the debates and a headache...

The chances of him winning the presidency are, um, slim. But what if Hillary just keeps him around a bit longer?In the financial world, inflation is defined as “too much money chasing too few goods.” In the world of political journalism, inflation is “too many pundits chasing too few scenarios.” Like the editors of Cosmopolitan struggling each month to find new sexual positions, implements, and erogenous zones, scribes are already running out of ways to chronicle the strategies and prospects of presidential contenders: “How Marco Can Stop Jeb”; “How Paul Can Block Cruz and Huckabee”; “How A Fiorina-Santorum Alliance Can...

In a move more reminiscent of Texas Senator Ted Cruz than Ohio Representative John Boehner, the House Speaker has pursued a strategy to defund President Obama’s executive action on immigration, leveraging funding for Homeland Security in the process. Bloomberg News reports: House Speaker John Boehner said he’s prepared to let funding lapse for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and blame Democrats if the Senate fails to pass a House-backed bill for the agency. … The Homeland Security Department faces a shutdown of nonessential operations if Congress does not reach agreement before current funding ends on Feb. 27. When asked...

Top GOP fundraisers will reportedly join Grover Norquist and Michael Bloomberg’s Partnership for a New Economy group on a conference call next week to push for comprehensive amnesty legislation. According to a BuzzFeed report, the GOP fundraisers on the Tuesday call will include Mitt Romney’s “former finance director Spencer Zwick; California-based fast food CEO Andrew Puzder; and billionaire health care executive Mike Fernandez.” Fernandez is reportedly leaning toward Jeb Bush, who has said that illegal immigration is an “act of love” and has not backed down for his support of a comprehensive amnesty bill, while Puzder and Zwick are unaffiliated...