Free Republic

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker made another massive misstep on Monday, hiring Liz Mair of Mair Strategies to handle communications and social media for his campaign-in-waiting. Mair’s support for amnesty for illegal aliens, wide-open-borders immigration policies, and public advocacy for the Senate “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill is sure to dog Walker in Iowa, South Carolina, and other early presidential states. During the Senate Gang of Eight bill fight, Mair very publicly and very aggressively promoted the amnesty bill—pushing it to media and making the case for the need for it over and over again. She claims her advocacy was done...

The night before an agriculture summit in Urbandale, Iowa, Lindsey Graham seemed concerned, above all else, about his attire. The event would mark Graham's introduction to the presidential campaign stage, in front of hundreds of members of Iowa and national press, and hundreds more Iowa farmers. The quality and reception of his remarks would likely bear on the trajectory of his candidacy, should he decide to run for president. But, roughly 12 hours before he was set to speak, Graham was puzzling not over his message, but whether to wear a tie.

Democrats need a debate about where their party goes next. Obamacare's passage marked the rough completion of the social safety net that liberals began constructing during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency. The end of the Iraq War drained Democrats of their foreign policy fervor. The rapid acceptance of gay marriage has robbed them of the next civil rights fight. There is work left to be done in all these arenas, but over time, the party will need to discover new dreams, much as Republicans have found the Ryan budget. The closest thing Democrats have to an organizing concern is income inequality....

Lindsey Graham’s prospective presidential operation is ramping up with the hiring of a new communications director and a senior political adviser. Brittany Bramell, a former spokeswoman for House Speaker John Boehner, will spearhead communications for Security Through Strength, the PAC that is laying the groundwork for the South Carolina Republican’s long-shot bid.

Jeb Bush, making his first visit to New Hampshire as a likely presidential candidate, implicitly criticized his Republican rivals for the nomination for changing their positions on difficult issues. Discussing his support for the Common Core education standards, which are viewed unfavorably by many Republicans, Mr. Bush said, “you don’t abandon your core beliefs” just because a position appears unpopular. “The way I’ve sorted it out is: I think you need to be genuine, I think you need to have a backbone. I think you need to able to persuade people this is a national crisis, this is a national...

Jeb Bush said on Friday that his plan for reforming the nation’s immigration system is “the grown-up plan.” Bush kicked off his first pre-2016 trip to New Hampshire with a visit to the Integra Biosciences manufacturing plant in Hudson, where he took questions from local business leaders. The former Florida governor, whose position on immigration reform has come under criticism from members of his party, once again endorsed “earned legal status” for immigrants who entered the country illegally.

Let us now make the case for Jeb skepticism. Jeb Bush is a fine man. He’s a conservative. He was a highly effective conservative governor. He would probably make a fine president. And, if he were the Republican nominee, there would be precious few good arguments — from a conservative perspective — for sitting out the election, never mind voting for the Democratic nominee (whoever she may be).

The controversy over Hillary Clinton’s e-mails and her unconvincing press conference at the United Nations have gotten many Democrats and others thinking the unthinkable: Clinton may not be the Democrats’ 2016 nominee for president. And it has many asking the question — scary for Democrats — of who else could be. It’s not a strong field. Vice President Joe Biden is 72 and has low poll ratings. Elizabeth Warren inspires the Democratic left, but says she’s not running — perhaps for fear of exposure of her dubious claim, when seeking prestigious law-school jobs, of Cherokee ancestry. Others are even less...

When the U.S. helped to oust Libya's dictator from power, supporters of the intervention included Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Nancy Pelosi, Marco Rubio, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Mark Kirk, Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol. In advance of Election 2016, when some of these people try to influence public debate and others vie to become president of the United States, let us continue to monitor the outcome of the war that they supported.

By Election Day 2016, taxpayers will have paid out more than $16 million to fund Bill Clinton’s pension, travel, office expenses and even the salaries and benefits of staff at his family’s foundation, federal records show. Since he left the White House in 2001, Clinton and his office have received more money through the Former Presidents Act than any other ex-president, according to a POLITICO analysis of budget documents.

Jeb Bush will in the coming days name Justin Muzinich the policy director of his likely 2016 presidential campaign, according to multiple sources. Muzinich, who holds an undergraduate degree and an MBA from Harvard and a law degree from Yale, has spent his career in finance, first at Morgan Stanley, where he worked in mergers and acquisitions, and then at the hedge fund EMS Capital. He currently serves as vice chairman of Muzinich & Co., the New York City investment firm.

Everybody’s talking about Rubio.” So says a top Republican operative who’s been in touch with nearly every potential presidential campaign, as well as with several top donors. Jeb Bush’s announcement in December launched both a fundraising juggernaut and an aggressive hiring spree, and Scott Walker’s speech in Iowa the following month lifted Walker to the top of national polls. But a little more than a month later, says the operative, “The Jeb boom is over and people are having second thoughts about Walker.”

No, Madam Secretary, we do NOT want to know about your yoga habits! Hillary Clinton’s press performance Tuesday afternoon was, truly, everything Americans could have hoped for from our former First Lady, Modern Joan of Arc, Lady Macbeth, Senate carpetbagger and eternal public Woman Scorned.

To someone who has watched many "scandals" surrounding Hillary Rodham Clinton evaporate into the Washington mist -- even when Pulitzer Prize-winning pundits predicted that she would end up in prison! -- the current furor over her emails hardly seems earthshaking. It isn't unreasonable to require public officials to conduct all public business on government email accounts, but there was no such ironclad rule when Clinton became secretary of state. In hindsight, it might have been better for her and the public if she had done so. Yet many prominent people, both in and out of government, have preferred private email,...

Sheryl McDonald, a retiree, voted for both Presidents Bush. “But I’m finding out they did some things we got stuck with,” she said. “I do not want to see Jeb Bush run,” she added. “He turns me off.” Scarcely anyone at a meeting of the Green County Republican Party here in central Iowa recently had anything kind to say about Mr. Bush, the former Florida governor. They objected to his moderate stances on immigration and education standards. But they also complained matter-of-factly about fatigue with his family — especially after the presidency of George W. Bush, whom they blamed for...

The report Monday that Hillary Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state raises a number of important questions about government transparency and access to public records. Unsurprisingly, however, the conversation quickly veered from matters of policy into ominous speculation about the political consequences for Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic Party presidential front-runner, including hyperbolic suggestions that the emails could “shake up the 2016 race,” cause irreparable damage to her, cause her to lose the general election, or even help force her out of the race.

David Brock, founder of the liberal Media Matters watchdog and a Hillary Clinton loyalist, said on Wednesday that a New York Times report on Clinton's email practices while secretary of state was "sloppily done" and "based on a false premise." "The piece didn't stand up to scrutiny after it was published," said Brock on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," where he called on the Times to issue a correction to the report, which was written by Michael S. Schmidt and published Monday night.

Prepared or not, the Wisconsin governor is now the 2016 front-runner. Any chef will tell you that you need great ingredients to pull off a great meal. Less discussed but just as true: You need to cook the ingredients in the right order. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has nearly all of the right ingredients to win the GOP nomination. He is popular among both anti-establishment activists and the big donors of the establishment. He has working-class appeal (desperately needed for the GOP), and he’s battle-tested in his home state — a state many believe the Republicans could finally pick off...

Forget the Democratic and Republican primaries: The two biggest names in the 2016 presidential race are competing directly against each other in an elite forum, the halls of Goldman Sachs. Jeb Bush will be back in New York raising money next week with his sights set on Goldman, the wealthiest and most successful bank in Wall Street history. He has a pair of events scheduled for next Wednesday with current and former Goldman executives, sources familiar with Bush’s plans said.

Anti-taxman Grover Norquist recently told ABC News he believes Jeb Bush will likely sign his no-new-taxes pledge if and when he officially becomes a candidate for president. But, as Dana Carvey might say, "Not gonna happen." Norquist may have had good reason to believe Bush would sign the Taxpayers Protection Pledge, where candidates vow to oppose "any and all efforts to increase taxes." After all, the vast majority of Republican candidates for national office and many for local and statewide office have been signing it ever since Norquist started Americans for Tax Reform in 1985.