Free Republic

No candidate can be happier to say goodbye to 2015 than Jeb Bush, whose months of futility in the face of Donald Trump’s attacks relegated him to an afterthought in a wild and unpredictable Republican primary. And yet, at year’s end, there are signs that people in New Hampshire, the state that could key an unlikely comeback, still take him seriously. Take the 200-person crowds showing up at his four Saturday town halls. Take the current polls in New Hampshire that put him within striking distance of every GOP rival but Trump.

The president can be heard — but not seen — supposedly answering a White House phone in a YouTube trailer posted Monday, but a Crackle press release photo appears to show Obama sharing a laugh with Seinfeld. Astute fans of Seinfeld's conversational series will note that, unlike previous "Coffee" installments that feature the host doubling as a chauffeur, the photo relating to the Obama episode shows both the host and guest as passengers in a vehicle emblazoned with a presidential seal. However, they took turns taking the wheel of a different vehicle at another point of their conversation. "The episode...

A strong statement from Sen. Cruz who voted against the bill: What we’ve seen in Congress today is profoundly disappointing. This spending bill does not honor the promises we made to the men and women who elected us. It funds Obamacare. It funds Planned Parenthood. It funds executive amnesty. It fails to protect our national security and stop Syrian refugees from coming to this country. It fails to do anything to stop the Iranian Nuclear Deal. And what does it do? It jacks up yet more low-skilled immigration, which will only drag down wages, kill American jobs, and hurt working...

Jeb Bush came at Donald Trump with everything he had, turning in his strongest debate performance to date just as much of the party was threatening to tune out his flagging candidacy entirely. He dismissed Trump as a “chaos candidate” who would amount to a “chaos president,” said the billionaire had “crazy” ideas about foreign policy and suggested Trump learned about foreign affairs from the Saturday morning cartoons.

During Tuesday's Republican presidential debate, the Washington Post's Matea Gold tweeted this bleak picture of a debate watch party for Jeb Bush in his home state of Florida:

Like many Americans, Warren Buffett can write a $2,700 check to support his favorite presidential candidate. But as one of the wealthiest Americans, he can also unleash immense financial clout by giving untold millions to super PACs supporting his preferred contender in the race.

Donald Trump has risen to a new high and Ben Carson’s support has plummeted among Republican primary voters after a tumultuous month of international and domestic terrorism, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds. Mr. Trump leads the Republican field with 27% support, taking over the top position from Mr. Carson, who led in a late October Journal/NBC News survey. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has vaulted into second place, amid signs that he has picked up former Carson supporters. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida placed third in the survey, but the poll also carried evidence that he stands...

Donald Trump attacked Ted Cruz tonight, first accusing him of loving oil too much because “oil pays him a lot of money” and saying he’s got go come a long way on ethanol or something. Cruz is not against ethanol as The Donald suggests. Cruz has said we need an all of the above approach on energy, but it needs to be driven by the market and not by the federal government picking winners and losers via federal subsidies. Later on Trump attacks Ted Cruz’s evangelical Christian faith, saying “I do like Ted Cruz, but not a lot of evangelicals...

Unlike many of the Republican Party's leaders and presidential candidates, Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wis.) is willing to both bash Donald Trump and rule out supporting him if he becomes the party's nominee. "My first oath is to the Constitution of the United States. Donald Trump has taken positions contrary to that document, so I could not support him and uphold my oath," Ribble told "So That Happened," the HuffPost Politics podcast.

With Donald Trump’s ruinous domination of the Republican primary polls showing no signs of abating, top leaders in the GOP are reportedly now preparing for the possibility of a contentious brokered convention next year in Cleveland. If that happens, a small group of wealthy donors and die-hard loyalists close to Mitt Romney will be ready with a strategy to win him the nomination from the convention floor.

Evangelical leaders are signaling an urgency to find someone other than businessman Donald Trump to win the Republican nomination, releasing endorsements and talking behind closed doors. Evangelical voters, who are an important voting bloc for the Republican Party and are not easily led by their leaders, are all over the map in polls leading up to the primaries in key states. And many evangelical leaders are struggling to coalesce around one candidate who they believe could beat Trump.

This morning Senator Ted Cruz will deliver what he says will be an important speech on national security policy at Heritage. The speech happens at 10am EST and you can watch it below:

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have commanding leads in the race for their parties' nominations in South Carolina, according to the latest Fox News poll. It’s no wonder Trump is leading. He’s ahead among both those who prioritize national security and economic issues. He’s the top pick among voters on the two most important candidate qualities -- strong leader and, to a lesser degree, honest and trustworthy. Plus, he’s considered the most electable -- by a lot. Here are the numbers: Trump leads with 35 percent among South Carolina Republican primary voters. Ben Carson gets 15 percent, and Ted Cruz...

Link to Instagram where the comments are of note.

Jeb Bush, struggling to gain traction in a 2016 race moving away from him, argued on Thursday that he could easily beat Hillary Clinton on Election Day. “If I win this nomination, I will take it to Hillary Clinton and I will whup her,” Bush said at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s candidate forum in Washington.

his ought to be Jeb Bush’s time. He laid out a detailed plan to crush the Islamic State three months before the Paris terrorist attacks. He gave a well-received speech on rebuilding America’s military at the Citadel two weeks ago. He has shown new confidence discussing terrorism, the Syrian refugee crisis and American values, and how they intertwine. But instead of winning a second look from voters, Mr. Bush continues to be ignored, and to languish in the polls, even as the nation contends with what he calls “serious times that require serious leadership.”

New Hampshire is beginning to look like Jeb Bush's final stand. Stuck in the middle of the GOP pack he was expected to dominate, Bush is accelerating the time frame for his campaign’s next ad buy in the state. His campaign also announced Tuesday that it is opening four regional field offices in New Hampshire and upping its on-the-ground staff from 12 people to 20.

Jeb Bush is grinding out his presidential bid in small towns across this early-voting state, backed by one of the largest campaign staffs and two months of TV ads. The result: He’s a blip in Republican primary polls. A $30 million television blitz by the super PAC supporting his campaign, Right to Rise—the biggest investment by a single entity in the 2016 race—has barely registered nationwide or in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, the states leading the nominating battle. The latest Quinnipiac University poll pegged his Iowa support at just 4%.

On Fox and Friends this morning Trump talked about ISIS and was asked about civilian casualties. “We’re fighting a very politically correct war,” he said. “The other thing is with the terrorists, you have to take out their families. When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself, but they say they don’t care about their lives. So you have to take out their families.”

After eight years of Obama that have decimated the Democratic Party, the Dems seem poised to nominate a candidate who’s generally thought of as a corrupt, insincere liar with no significant accomplishments. This gives the Republican Party a real opportunity to put someone in the White House who can reverse the damage of the Obama years and get the country back on track. As of today, there appear to be five candidates who are in the hunt for the nomination: Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Donald Trump. Out of those candidates, Ted Cruz should be an...