Free Republic

It has been clear for some time that a significant portion of the Republican establishment in Washington wants Jeb Bush to run for president in 2016. Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, the party's senior-most elected official, has even departed from his formal posture of neutrality to openly pine for the former Florida governor to enter the race. Bush's family name notwithstanding, Boehner and other top Republicans see him as the candidate with the gravitas and fundraising potential to overcome a flawed field, unite the party, and stand on equal footing with Hillary Clinton, the prohibitive Democratic favorite.

It seems increasingly likely that Jeb Bush will run for president. (Even his son is talking up the prospects.) What remains to be seen is whether Jeb Bush can actually win. A lot of GOP establishment types are excited about a Bush candidacy. But don't expect the grassroots to eagerly embrace a former Florida governor who has made a habit of moderately breaking from conservative orthodoxy on big issues like immigration, or who recently (mildly) singled out Fox News for criticism. As the editor of the Washington Free Beacon said:

It wasn’t quite an “out-of-the-mouths-of-babes” moment -- George P. Bush is 38 years old -- but it was newsy nonetheless. Yesterday Jeb Bush’s eldest son told Jon Karl of ABC News that he believes his father is “giving this serious thought in moving forward ... that he'll run." Jeb’s thinking about running for president has been one tea leaf that many pundits have had a hard time reading. Unlike some of his fellow Republicans with 2016 aspirations, the former Florida governor has played it close to the vest. His big brother said recently that he believes Jeb would make a...

Will another member of the Bush family dynasty make a run for the White House? In an interview in College Station, Texas, this week, George P. Bush told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl he thinks his father, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, will “more than likely” run for president in 2016. “I think it’s actually, I think it’s more than likely that he’s giving this a serious thought in moving forward,” George P. Bush told Karl aboard his campaign bus in College Station, Texas. “More than likely that he'll run?” Karl asked. “That he'll run,” Bush said. “If you had asked...

It was just another routine photo-op at a Republican field office Tuesday morning until Mike Huckabee decided to improvise. In a cheeky attempt to bring himself level with Cody Hoefert -- the 7-foot-tall co-chairman of the Iowa Republican Party -- Huckabee pulled up a chair and began to climb atop it. He didn’t have to complete the physical joke to get the laughs he was looking for from the group of gray-haired volunteers who had assembled for his appearance with Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst. “Golly!” the 5-11 Huckabee marveled. “I’ve never felt like a shrimp like this before.”

“Far too often, what passes for history is nothing more than rehashed, undocumented folklore and myth, and this is especially true with ‘cocktail history.’ Not so with this fine book, Mint Juleps with Teddy Roosevelt. It is well-researched and documented, while also immensely enjoyable to read.” —Philip Greene, vice president, co-founder, and legal counsel of the Museum of the American Cocktail and author of To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion “This charming and erudite book is full of surprises. I never dreamed that the presidents were such boozers! Pour yourself a toddy and ponder a vexing question:...

Guerrilla street artist SABO, who made headlines with his Gwyneth Paltrow "Obama Drone" poster, has struck again -- this time ahead of Hillary Clinton's upcoming Democratic fundraiser at Tavern restaurant in Brentwood, Calif. The Los Angeles artist early Friday hung signs depicting Wizard of Oz flying monkeys holding "Hillary 2016" signs from traffic lights and pasted them on utility boxes near the San Vicente Boulevard restaurant.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie could be forgiven if he had chips on both shoulders as big as those shoulders. This year, the first of his second term, has been overshadowed by often partisan investigations, more protracted than productive, of the involvement of several of his former aides — he fired them — in the closing of some access lanes to the George Washington Bridge.

Michele Bachmann, the retiring Minnesota congresswoman and former presidential candidate, is again hinting that she may be interested in another run for the Oval Office. “I don’t know how you’ll see me, but I would like to be in a situation where I can offer an opposing viewpoint to Hillary Clinton,” Bachmann told Politico in describing her post-congressional plans.

Ted Cruz is running for president. The only thing left for him to do is say so. According to sources close to the Texas senator, Cruz could be preparing for an end-of-year announcement and is now dedicating considerable time and effort to cultivating a foreign-policy foundation that might help his candidacy stand out in what is guaranteed to be a crowded field. "At this point it's 90/10 he's in," one Cruz adviser said. "And honestly, 90 is lowballing it."

The gunman parked his black Honda directly south of the White House, in the dark of a November night, in a closed lane of Constitution Avenue. He pointed his semiautomatic rifle out of the passenger window, aimed directly at the home of the president of the United States, and pulled the trigger. A bullet smashed a window on the second floor, just steps from the first family’s formal living room. Another lodged in a window frame, and more pinged off the roof, sending bits of wood and concrete to the ground. At least seven bullets struck the upstairs residence of...

She's been to New Hampshire three times and South Carolina once. She's heading to Iowa this weekend, and then North Carolina and Michigan after that. Clearly, Carly Fiorina is thinking about 2016. But is anybody thinking about Carly Fiorina? The former Hewlett-Packard CEO and 2010 Senate candidate is hitting the campaign trail in the lead-up to Election Day for her new super PAC, teaching activists and politicians how to talk to female voters—and building herself a grassroots base in a half-dozen electorally important states in the process. While her efforts are focused on helping the GOP win control of the...

It’s now or never for Jeb Bush. The former Florida governor flirted with presidential runs in 2008 and 2012 but ultimately demurred, always with the flickering possibility of mounting a campaign down the road. But at 61 years old, the second son of former President George Herbert Walker Bush is now likely facing his last shot at the White House.

n one of his first public appearances of the 2014 campaign, former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida had a vivid preview Wednesday of the challenges he would face with his party’s conservative base should he seek the Republican nomination for president in 2016. Standing alongside Thom Tillis, the North Carolina House speaker and Republican Senate candidate, Mr. Bush outlined his views on two of the issues he cares most passionately about: immigration policy and education standards. But as Mr. Bush made the case for an immigration overhaul and the Common Core standards, Mr. Tillis gently put distance between himself and...

Is Mitt Romney, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination and lost in 2008, ran again and won the nomination but lost the general election in 2012, really thinking about running yet again for president in 2016? Many Republicans have simply assumed not. Romney has seemed to discourage such talk in media appearances, and there has been a general belief that after losing as the party's nominee, the 67 year-old Romney would return to private life for good. That belief is wrong. Romney is talking with advisers, consulting with his family, keeping a close eye on the emerging '16 Republican...

Ann Romney on Tuesday added a little more fuel to speculation that her husband, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, may make a third run for the White House. On Fox News’s Cavuto, Ann was asked about a scenario in which former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a moderate Republican and a potential 2016 candidate in his own right, decides not to run. “Well, we will see, won’t we, Neil?” Ann said to show host Neil Cavuto. “I think Jeb probably will end up running, myself… He’s probably looking at it very carefully.”

Former Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) said Tuesday that he is “seriously looking” at the possibility of running for president. Webb is a former Navy secretary and Marine who fought in Vietnam. In comments at the National Press Club, he framed himself as someone able to work with both parties to get things done, and spoke out about the danger of interventions in the Middle East. “We’ve had a lot of discussion among people that I respect and trust about the future of the country and we are going to continue having these discussions over the next four or five months,”...

Everywhere Hillary Clinton goes, a thousand cameras follow. Then she opens her mouth, and nothing happens. Clinton made a much-ballyhooed appearance in Iowa over the weekend, giving a speech widely noted for its substancelessness. She “had no explicit message of her own,” Politico noted, while The Economist pronounced it “underwhelming.” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough was so frustrated by Clinton’s lack of verve that he went on an extended rant about it, proclaiming, “I know her and like her, but she puts on that political hat and she’s a robot!” The coverage of Clinton’s speech seemed to contain more meditation about how...

One of Mitt Romney’s biggest Wall Street backers predicted Monday that the former presidential candidate would run again in 2016 under certain conditions. SkyBridge Capital’s Anthony Scaramucci said the former Massachusetts governor would run in 2016 if GOP favorites such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush decline to run.

Bobby Jindal is making a bet, according to someone familiar with is thinking: “Ideas and smarts are going to be crucial in winning the presidential nomination.” Jindal’s nascent 2016 campaign will be an exploration of the validity of this belief. When the Louisiana governor unveils his energy plan at the Heritage Foundation today, he will do so under the auspices of his ambitious attempt to “articulate and sell a national policy agenda to the country.” Consider it also a part of another ambitious plan, the second plank of a 2016 presidential platform and an attempt to persuade Republican primary voters...