Free Republic

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz won the Value Voters Summit presidential straw poll on Saturday. The crowd burst onto applause on Saturday, as Family Research Council President Tony Perkins announced that Cruz won 25 percent of votes at the annual Washington conference. The victory is a big victory to the Republican firebrand and Tea Party icon, coming just a day after he drew standing ovations with a religious and emotional speech that blasted ObamaCare, congressional Democrats and called for Republicans to take over the White House in 2016. Cruz also won the straw poll in 2013. Coming in second was...

Think the Senate will be decided on Election Day, Nov. 4? There are all sorts of reasons why you shouldn't, unless in the next seven weeks one side or the other — probably the Republicans — starts opening up a clear lead in enough races to give them a clear majority. If neither side does, control of the Senate could remain up in the air — for a while. At the very least, political watchers are going to be in for a longer night than usual because one of the key races that is likely to determine control, Sen. Mark...

Denver Post: “A new poll by Quinnipiac University has Republican Cory Gardner ahead of Democrat Mark Udall by a striking 8 percentage points in their race for U.S. Senate — the challenger’s largest lead to-date among public polls. The survey of more than 1,200 likely Colorado voters favored Gardner 48 to 40 percent to the incumbent Udall, with independent, or unaffiliated, candidate Steve Shogan taking home 8 percent.” [A new Gallup survey released this morning finds Republicans are now viewed just as favorably as Democrats, rebounding from their low of 28 percent during last fall’s government shutdown. Respondents held equal...

It’s early, of course, and this is not scientific, but I thought it would be interesting and fun to see what you are thinking at this point in the process. You will only be allowed to vote once. Please note that there are two polls, one asking for your choice and another about your politics. Voting will close at noon on Thursday, and I will reveal the results then. All votes are anonymous, even to me. (POLL-AT-LINK)

Everybody knows there is no real leader in the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. But ask voters an open-ended question — Whom do you want to be the nominee? — and the range of answers can be breathtaking. That's what I did in an unplanned and totally unscientific way on my Twitter feed Tuesday afternoon. On Monday evening I posted a piece about Mike Huckabee's preparations for another run for the nomination in 2016. Twitter reaction to Huckabee was almost entirely negative: Nobody, or at least nobody reading my tweets on a Tuesday afternoon, seemed to like the...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)TRANSCRIPT JUDY WOODRUFF: A quick look at the calendar reminds us that today is just seven weeks away from this year’s midterm elections, when voters across the country will be deciding ballot issues and choosing state and local officeholders and members of Congress. With control of the U.S. Senate up for grabs, I headed to Iowa this past weekend, the site of one of the closest contests in the nation. If you love college football, the place to be in Iowa this past weekend was Iowa City, the home of the University of Iowa Hawkeyes, as they hosted the Iowa...

Hillary Clinton is heading to Iowa as the politician that most Democrats would choose as their 2016 presidential nominee. According to a new CNN/ORC poll, 53% of all registered Democrats contacted in Iowa said they would support Hillary Clinton if the 2016 caucuses were held today. That number far outpaces the 15% that would opt for Vice President Joe Biden, 7% who would choose Sen. Elizabeth Warren and 5% who would pick Sen. Bernie Sanders. Clinton will be visiting Iowa for the first time in six years on Sunday when she headlines the last Harkin Steak Fry. Biden, likewise, will...

Jeb Bush, Florida’s former governor, is still deciding whether to jump into the 2016 race. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie continues to endure an investigation into whether his administration abused its power by intentionally creating traffic jams. And Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is struggling to convince conservatives that he is not a foreign policy isolationist while Islamic terrorists run rampant through Iraq and Syria and execute Americans journalists. A dozen or more prominent Republicans have been testing the national political waters for more than a year trying to decide whether to make a bid for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination....

Is the political indictment of Gov. Rick Perry already backfiring on Democrat governor hopeful Wendy Davis? Gov. Perry’s official courthouse portrait immediately became the Mugshot Seen ‘Round the World. Instead of becoming a liability, it became a badge of honor. It will probably be on campaign T-shirts, mugs and shot glasses (the Rick Perry “MugShot” is irresistible) before long. Perry followed that visit up with a trip for ice cream, sealing the win on what the Democrats hoped would be a terrible day for him and the beginning of the end of the Perry era. The case itself is already...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)There are 65 prominent people who might run for president in 2016. The Democratic and Republican fields contrast sharply. Hillary Clinton is the clear front-runner, while there is no front-runner on the Republican side. Twenty-three Democrats have been mentioned as a candidate or are eyeing a bid, according to an analysis by The Hill. The GOP side has 42. Most of the people on this list won’t run, and some have adamantly claimed that they’re not interested. But many politicians have changed their minds on seeking the White House. Before mounting his 2008 bid, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said he...

The past few years have shown us that our political system is operating like a well-oiled machine, assuming that machine's primary purpose is to function horribly while producing nothing of value.. Stubbornness and disagreement have been raised to art forms, and the American people have made it clear they rate Congress only slightly more favorably than "scorpions in pants." The president isn't viewed much better, with an approval rating hovering around a dismal 40 percent. There's ample blame to go around — leftward, rightward, centerward (which isn't a word, but should be) — but a new poll homes in on...

With each trip to an early primary state, potential 2016 Republican candidates are defining the issues and their own experience in ways that will bolster their presidential prospects. Pundits call this sort of activity “creating a narrative,” but whatever you call it, it can provide insight into the candidates’ self-image and what they think the primary electorate will want in a nominee. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), in an Iowa visit, sought to define five conservative victories: “Stopping the gun legislation that followed the Newtown shooting;” “stopping a bill reforming the International Monetary Fund that would have put more taxpayer money...

’What do you think about Dr. Ben Carson as the GOP candidate for president in 2016?” Republican friends frequently ask me, to which my response is: “Did he win World War II?” In 1952, General Dwight David Eisenhower became the last president of the United States to be elected without first holding a lower elective office. Carson’s path from a very tough childhood to the head of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University is certainly impressive. (In a political field where many Ph.D’s insist on being called “doctor” and few office holders wow you with their intelligence, Carson stands out by...

I don’t know who is going to win Saturday’s special Democratic Senate primary between Sen. Brian Schatz and Rep. Colleen Hanabusa — and it’s not just because there’s a lot going on in Hawaii right now (an earthquake rattled Hawaii on Thursday, and two tropical storms are on course to hit or come near Hawaii in the next five days). Instead, the polling picture in the Aloha State is a mess. One poll has Hanabusa up by 8 percentage points, and another puts Schatz up 8 points. Why the discrepancy? Hawaii’s diversity has troubled pollsters in the past and looks...

Getting the president’s backing isn’t what it used to be—he looks set to go 0-2 on Saturday, with the two candidates he endorsed in his home state apparently headed for defeat.When Barack Obama vaulted onto the national stage a decade ago, part of his appeal was that he seemed to be from so many places at once. All corners of the country could lay claim to him: He was Hawaiian by birth, Illinoisan by choice, and Kansan by heritage, and he spent his formative years in New York City. He marched through the 2008 primaries by winning in both the...

Robert Draper’s New York Times magazine piece, “Has the ‘Libertarian Moment’ Finally Arrived?” dutifully if rotely runs through the greatest hits: Kennedy was on MTV, Nick Gillespie wears black and quotes Jack Kerouac, people bring guns to PorcFest, David Koch exists, libertarians disagree about abortion, and Rand Paul is not the ideologue his father is. There are some notable false notes, too: Draper describes Glenn Beck as a “partisan gunslinger” when he is if anything the opposite, a man who believes that “the Republicans have betrayed their own values” and who pronounces himself “done with them.” Glenn Beck no longer...

Via RCP, I want to believe it, I almost believe it — but I don’t really believe it. All the makings of a Democratic clusterfark are there. If O legalizes five million workers, plenty of blue-collar Democrats are bound to put two and two together and wonder what that means for their wages. And plenty of Democratic Senate incumbents in red states, like, oh, let’s say Mark Pryor, are going to panic, knowing what could happen if the backlash among conservatives is as ferocious as everyone expects. In fact, as Newt alludes to, both Pryor and North Carolina’s Kay Hagan...

As expected, such a pithy observation has elicited howls of outrage from the left. The comment was made by Alabama Republican Congressman Mo Brooks, who used the phrase in a purely political context — that the GOP’s immigration stance wouldn’t hurt the party, while the Democrats’ push for immigration reform was politically stupid. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) doesn’t think that the hardline stance Republicans have taken on immigration could hurt the party’s standing with Hispanic voters. Instead, he thinks Democrats are hurting their prospects with white voters. “This is a part of the war on whites that’s being launched by...

In the short term, the House GOP’s failure to pass an emergency immigration bill on Thursday over tea party opposition was another embarrassing moment for Speaker Boehner in a growing list. But the political damage may be limited: Americans tend to pay little attention to process stories in Congress, and the 2014 elections haven’t been particularly focused on immigration. Something Americans do pay attention to, however, are presidential elections. Here’s where this week’s border skirmish starts to look more significant. The key player in this drama is Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who has been working to corner the market...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Polling data compiled by Tea Party Patriots and provided exclusively to Breitbart News shows that a majority of Republican voters think Republicans standing strong on immigration is more important than repealing Obamacare, getting to the bottom of the Benghazi or IRS scandals—or anything else for that matter. When asked by TPP’s pollster which issue they think is the important for Republicans in Congress to deal with, 34.6 percent of GOP voters said stopping the flow of illegal immigrants across our southern border. Stopping Obama’s “illegal overreach” with executive power came in a distant second with 24 percent of GOP voters...