Free Republic

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A new focus group commissioned by GOP pollster Frank Luntz shows Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is virtually invulnerable to attack by rival 2016 candidates and the media, leading Luntz to say that it is now "totally conceivable" that Trump will become the Republican Party's nominee for president.

... the worst fears of the Republican establishment, that Trump's unapologetic condemnations of immigrants will scuttle their shot at retaking the White House, so far aren't revealing themselves in polling. If Trump's comments were hurting him and/or Republicans with voters, we'd expect to see them faring worse after the June/July period in which the comments became public -- and Trump rose in the polls. The opposite happened. Trump's position among non-white voters improved, substantially, when you look at how he fared in a head-to-head match-up with Hillary Clinton. In a CNN/ORC poll conducted in late June, Clinton led Trump by...

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump fired back at Fox News on Tuesday after the network's head and several of its star personalities criticized him in an ongoing feud over anchor Megyn Kelly. The celebrity real estate tycoon said he "totally" disagreed with a statement from Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes that defended Kelly's "tough but fair" questioning of Trump at the GOP debate Aug. 6. "I do not think Megyn Kelly is a quality journalist. I think her questioning of me, despite all of the polls saying I won the debate, was very unfair," Trump said in his...

... Watching Donald Trump bluster and bluff his way through a presidential campaign, I wonder if we underestimate the ways in which Internet vitriol has broadened the parameters of political debate. We are "shocked, shocked" by Trump's language, but all of it is exactly the sort of thing anyone can encounter in the normal course of reading about politics online. John McCain isn't a war hero? I'll bet he finds worse insults than that on his Facebook page, and so does everybody who writes about him. All Mexicans are rapists? I open my Twitter account every morning to find similar...

On Friday night, while the political media was transfixed watching Donald Trump's in-all-ways-secular stump ramble in Mobile, Ala., Ted Cruz was holding a deliberately religious rally in Des Moines. Evangelical voters were always meant to be a linchpin of Cruz's presidential bid, and as our Katie Zezima and Tom Hamburger write, the Des Moines event was not shy about making that pitch. Blasting Planned Parenthood and lamenting the "persecution" of business owners sued for denying services to same-sex couples, Cruz was clearly trying to do two things: Plant his flag as the Republican crusader -- and prompt religious voters to...

Though Fox News hosts remained largely silent during Donald Trump's first spat with Megyn Kelly, the channel's personalities were quick to defend their colleague Tuesday morning after Trump again decided to ridicule Kelly. Trump had patched up his relationship with Fox after commenting that Kelly "had blood coming out of her wherever" during the first Republican presidential debate. However, on Monday night he said Kelly was "off her game" upon returning from vacation. He also retweeted a comment calling Kelly a "bimbo." During "Fox and Friends" on Tuesday morning, co-host Brian Kilmeade said Trump's tweets attacking Kelly were "totally out...

Just flagging this so that we have an easy point of chronological reference for The Day Fox’s Trump Coverage Changed.The truce is over. I liked The Kelly File much better without @megynkelly. Perhaps she could take another eleven day unscheduled vacation!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2015 "@bigpaulfla: @realDonaldTrump She has come back looking like Nancy Grace"— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2015 "@mstanish53: @realDonaldTrump @megynkelly The bimbo back in town . I hope not for long ."— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2015 Roger Ailes allegedly warned Trump two weeks ago that if he didn’t...

Politico ran an article titled “The GOP’s Fantasy of a Bigger Nav [1]y” that is long on editorializing and short on facts or history.The article argues against reversing U.S. seapower’s decline. If nothing else, the article performs a useful service by encouraging a national debate as the Navy continues to shrink: little such debate has occurred about the Navy’s contraction by more than half since the Reagan administration.At stake is whether the U.S. will be required to defend itself at its coasts, and whether the international order that has existed since World War II will survive. U.S. seapower is...

Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes released a statement on Tuesday about Donald Trump's renewed war on host Megyn Kelly. “Donald Trump's surprise and unprovoked attack on Megyn Kelly during her show last night is as unacceptable as it is disturbing. Megyn Kelly represents the very best of American journalism and all of us at FOX News Channel reject the crude and irresponsible attempts to suggest otherwise.” -snip- On Tuesday morning Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade fired back, saying Trump is "out of control." At least 10 separate Fox News personalities publically rebuked Trump before noon on Tuesday,...

Donald Trump's bromides on undocumented immigrants appear to have deeply damaged whatever appeal he might have once had among Hispanic voters. A new Gallup poll released Monday evening found that 65 percent of Hispanic voters say they have an unfavorable view of Trump, compared with 14% who view him favorably - yielding him a net favorable score of -51, well below any other presidential candidate. ...

Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns told host John Dickerson he believes America is still a racist nation, and those who have questioned the legitimacy of President Obama’s birth certificate, namely, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, have done so as an alternative to using the N-word.

Ever since Donald Trump, the mercurial businessman, media personality, and presidential candidate, proposed his immigration policy, centering on the mass deportation of up to 11 million human beings, reaction among conservatives has been decidedly mixed. Ann Coulter, for whom illegal immigration is the alpha and the omega of public policy, exalted that Trump could perform abortions in the White House, and she would not care. But Charles Krauthammer, writing in the National Review on Thursday, and George Will, in his latest column published Saturday, provided reality checks. Krauthammer wondered what the practical political effects would be of reenacting the Trail...

Whoa. Sorry to say this, but I have a negative article to post about Donald Trump today. Donald apparently had a dust-up with Michelle Malkin recently. Michelle Malkin. Worse it appears Donald started the dust-up. Although it appears both got involved. Very bad move, Donald. I'm going with Michelle Malkin, 100%, on this. If you had any sense Donald, you would apologize to the lady, and admit you were clearly out of bounds. On this, and her. Just my opinion. Donald, apologize to the lady! She's right, and you're wrong. I'm serious. You messed up this time.

Red America, my new blog at washingtonpost.com, has been under attack since its launch. It is a conservative blog on a mainstream media site, so many of the attacks were expected. If one bothers to read it, I believe it stands as a welcome addition to the opinion debate. The hate mail that I have received since the launch of this blog has been overwhelmingly profane and violent. My family has been threatened; my friends have been deluged; my phone has been prank called. The most recent email that showed up while writing this post talked about how the author...

NEW YORK A two-day effort by liberal bloggers to find, and publicize, numerous examples of plagiarism committed by new Washington Post blogger Ben Domenech culminated today in calls that he give up his new position--from some of his conservative supporters. One of them, most dramatically, is columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin. As an editor at Regnery, Domenech handled her most recent book. Conservatives had hailed Domenech's appointment to write the Red America blog. "I cheered for Ben, the editor of my last book at Regnery, when he announced his new position," Malkin wrote on her Web site today. "I criticized...

NEW YORK Ben Domenech's conservative blog Red America lasted all of three days at the Washington Post. He quit today after numerous examples of alleged plagiarism in his work surfaced. Yesterday, in a seprate matter, he had apologized for calling Coretta Scott King a "Communist" the day after her recent funeral. The embarrassing episode for the Post culminated Friday afternoon when washingtonpost.com executive editor Jim Brady posted the following notice on the Web site: "In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting...

<p>A comedian moderating a presidential debate? Why not, if it’s Jon Stewart handling a face-off of Democrats?</p> <p>Yes, Stewart was far from impartial in his long run on his satirical “The Daily Show.” But he hasn’t played favorites within the Democratic Party. And many folks trust him: 150,000 have signed a petition pushing for him to host a presidential gig.</p>

It has come to this: The GOP, formerly the party of Lincoln and ostensibly the party of liberty and limited government, is being defined by clamors for a mass roundup and deportation of millions of human beings. To will an end is to will the means for the end, so the Republican clamors are also for the requisite expansion of government’s size and coercive powers. Most of Donald Trump’s normally loquacious rivals are swaggeringly eager to confront Vladimir Putin but are too invertebrate — Lindsey Graham is an honorable exception — to voice robust disgust with Trump and the spirit...

Jeb Bush is sticking with the plan. Despite Donald Trump shooting ahead in the polls and Bush’s debate performance getting bad reviews — and amid signs of frustration on the campaign trail from the former Florida governor himself — his supporters aren’t panicking, multiple sources close to the candidate insist. The Bush camp is projecting confidence that the Summer of Trump will fade to winter, and that Jeb will prevail when it matters. Here are five reasons Jebworld isn’t freaking out: 1. ‘TRUMP V. SOMEBODY’ Trump is the man to beat, the undisputed leader in national and early-state polls. Even...

The birther movement has come home to roost as the Republican presidential primary heats up. snip Ted Cruz snip Marco Rubio snip Bobby Jindal snip Rick Santorum In a column published last week on the conspiracy theory website WND, author Jack Cashill noted that questions had been raised about whether four of the 17 candidates in the GOP field were really "natural born citizens" and therefore eligible to run for President.