Free Republic

Donald Trump holds a 6-point lead over his Republican rivals on the eve of the Kansas caucuses, according to a new poll released Friday. Trump is supported by 35 percent of likely GOP caucusgoers, followed by Ted Cruz, at 29 percent, Marco Rubio, at 17 percent, and John Kasich at 13 percent in the Trafalgar Group poll. Public polling in the state has been infrequent. The Trafalgar poll is only the second survey included in the RealClearPolitics index of Kansas polls. Cruz has 43 percent support among self-identified conservative Republicans, followed by Trump, at 30 percent, and Rubio, at 16...

The truth sets us free...

In theory, Ted Cruz's best states are behind him. But at the Detroit debate, Cruz was clearly the class of the field and it's clear that no one should count him out as the delegate race moves into its next phase. The delegate math is complicated, but the basic gist goes something like this: Donald Trump has a commanding lead at the moment, but it is not a given that he will reach the 1,237 threshold he needs to clinch a majority. Simply put, Trump has failed to break through the ceiling of support he's held since New Hampshire even...

Marco Rubio had a rough Super Tuesday until the end of the night, at least in the W column, and in two interviews he got pressed on whether he had a realistic chance of prevailing for the Republican nomination. After having come in a close second in Virginia, where Rubio had hoped to perhaps score an upset victory, and falling off the pace elsewhere, Jake Tapper had a question for Rubio. "Is there a certain amount of denial that you're in?"(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Rubio makes the argument (shown in brief here) that this Super Tuesday isn't about wins and losses but simply tallying...

If you had to vote in your state primary/caucus today, knowing what you know now about the various declared and probable candidates, who would you vote for? Why? Who would you like to see as the running mate for your preferred candidate? If you could help staff your candidates cabinet and other top appointments, who would you choose? If you could recommend different congressional leaders than we have now, who would they be? And who would you like to see on the Supreme Court and why? And finally, feel free to donate to Free Republic.

The supporters of Donald Trump believe he might awaken a sleeping giant -- a cohort of white working-class voters that will propel him to the presidency. His more politically-minded opponents insist he will summon a colossal electoral disaster on Republicans that will not only secure the presidency for the Democrats but lose the GOP the House and Senate. I'll let the Trumpkins make the case for their man. I want to look at the potential for Republican disaster here. John McCain got roughly 60 million votes in 2008. Mitt Romney got roughly 61 million in 2012. Barack Obama secured 70...

A new CNN/ORC national poll (full pdf below) is being highlighted in the media discussion based on the top-line results: Donald Trump 49% ! However, that’s not the real headline in the data. The real lead story should be the damage Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have done to themselves as they continue a scorched-earth campaign. The first signals of a backlash appeared over the weekend’s polling when it became clear Senator Rubio and Senator Cruz where losing support at an exponential rate the longer they continued to make unfounded accusations. Donald Trump and Ben Carson are benefactors of the...

Bernie Sanders, having just finished two rallies in Texas with crowds larger than Hillary Clinton could ever dream of -- a 10,000-person rally in Austin and an 8,000-person one in Dallas -- called Clinton to concede the South Carolina primary and got on a plane bound for Minnesota, a state whose Super Tuesday vote the media hasn't bothered to poll, but which Bernie Sanders is likely to win. If he listened to any of the coverage of his dramatic defeat in the Palmetto State while en-route to Rochester, he probably wondered at its accuracy and cogency. Here's five reasons he'd...

If Donald Trump wins the Republican presidential primary, he is almost a shoo-in to win the presidency this November, a Stony Brook University professor predicts. Professor Helmut Norpoth's statistical model, which looks at a candidate's performance in their party's presidential primary and factors in the broader electoral cycle, shows that Trump has a 97 percent chance of beating Hillary Clinton in the general election, reported Stony Brook's newspaper The Statesman. His odds rise to 99 percent against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. The professor of political science presented his 2016 forecast at the SUNY Global Center in Manhattan on Monday. "Trump...

Link only, copyright issues. http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-02-25/bloomberg-politics-super-tuesday-sec-primary-republican-poll

I called it - as soon as Rubio rose to second place, Trump would cast doubt(VIDEO-AT-LINK)About a month ago, when Donald Trump was claiming that Ted Cruz probably was not eligible to be president, Trump was questioned by Jake Tapper about whether Marco Rubio was eligible. Trump exhibited some legal understanding of the issue, citing an op-ed written by Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe. Trump's conclusion was that he had no doubts Rubio was eligible: "It's a different [than Ted Cruz], very different thing because he was born here. He was born on the land."(VIDEO-AT-LINK)As the attacks on Cruz's eligibility rose...

Ranked choice voting could have told us this sooner A new poll has Donald Trump beating Marco Rubio 44 percent to 28 percent in Rubio's home state of Florida. This is devastating news for Rubio. It also is bad news for the conventional wisdom that Rubio would pick up support as the field winnowed, allowing him to overcome Trump. But had the GOP used ranked-choice voting in its primaries, this new Florida poll wouldn't have been that surprising. We'd have known by now that Rubio's chances were always poor, and that winnowing wouldn't vault him to the top of the...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-02-25/rubio-supporters-grow-restive-as-debate-looms

For months, Trump-fearing Republicans and the Trump-skeptical press have consoled themselves with the idea that there were clear limits to the celebrity billionaire's appeal. But during the Nevada caucus on Tuesday night, Donald Trump gave us all one more giant reason to worry as he wracked up more votes than Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz combined. Trump won a staggering 46 percent of the votes cast in what was a ostensibly a five-man race, far more than his mid-30s peak in the previous three contests and in national polls. The Republican nomination does not yet belong to Trump: He has...

The Miami Young Republicans, one of the more active GOP groups in South Florida, gathered Tuesday night for a straw presidential poll ahead of Florida's March 15 Florida primary. Though the organization is a Marco Rubio bastion -- it's run by Jessica Fernandez, a Rubio Miami-Dade County campaign chairwoman -- Ted Cruz supporters made sure to show up. The night ended with a Rubio-Cruz tie...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has boosted his lead over GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump in a new survey of Texas primary voters. The Dixie Strategies Poll taken Monday, and released Wednesday, shows Cruz ahead of the real estate billionaire by more than 8 percentage points statewide. At the end of January, Cruz was leading by 5 percentage points. Here's the latest breakdown: Cruz: 33 percent Trump: 25 percent Florida Sen. Marco Rubio: 15 percent Ohio Gov. John Kasich: 8 percent Retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson: 6 percent Undecided: 13 percent....

The Hour of Peril Comes First For CruzMany things about this campaign have been unfair, but are no less real for being unfair. One is that the primary calendar is not evenly distributed. As I have argued for months now, the front-loading of states favorable to Ted Cruz in the first week of March is both an opportunity and a challenge for Cruz. Now, the hour of peril is here. If ever there was a time for Cruz's projections of millions of non-voting true conservatives to materialize, this is it. But if Cruz doesn't have a very good showing on...

Updated yesterday Donald Trump 4/3 Marco Rubio 7/2 Ted Cruz 5/1 John Kasich 12/1 Ben Carson 300/1

Marco Rubio finished second to Donald Trump in the South Carolina primary, barely beating Ted Cruz by two tenths of a percentage point. In a celebratory speech to supporters, Cruz returned to the theme that he represents a "new generation of conservatives": Ronald Reagan made us believe that it was Morning in America again. And it was. Well now the children of the Reagan revolution are ready to assume the mantle of leadership. [Applause] Now those of us who grew up when it was morning in America and Ronald Reagan was in the White House are ready to do for...

Marco Rubio is emerging from the dust of the South Carolina primary as the GOP establishment's last hope: the candidate who might have a shot at beating Donald Trump. He's seen as the guy with the likability of Obama, the working-class immigrant background it would like to champion as the future of the party and the conservative credentials to appease the base. Only he hasn't won anything yet. Though he gave victory speeches in Iowa and South Carolina, Rubio came in third and second in those contests, respectively, and has just 10 delegates to Donald Trump's 67, proving that the...