Free Republic

Which Republican presidential candidates support amnesty? I have analyzed all the major Republican presidential candidates (except Ben Carson and Rick Sanctorum, who are long shots, and Donald Trump, who has undocumented hair). I have found that all the major presidential candidates support amnesty for illegal aliens, except for one. Can you guess which one?

Popeye's Chicken vs. Rick Perry 2016As you may already know (or predicted long ago), Rick Perry is running for President, again. Rebranded with hipster glasses and a campaign logo that might make Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen cry plagiarism, Perry is hoping to correct the mistakes of his failed 2012 campaign. Separating himself from the current field of Senators, Perry’s announcement speech emphasized the need for governor that has led, rather than those who have given “a speech on the Senate floor”. His campaign website touts the Texas economy under his leadership, claiming he “he championed conservative principles that helped Texas become...

Platform Preamble As Republicans we uphold the principles of individual responsibility and liberty, adherence to traditional moral standards, a strong national defense, a free enterprise system, respect for the sanctity of human life, and freedom of religion and the free exercise thereof. We believe in retaining the original intent of our Constitution. We believe high moral character is a necessity for public servants. The highest standard of character should be embodied in both private and public life. We encourage the proliferation of these principles and their passage to future generations. Platform Principles The following are the fundamental principles that make...

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham is “ready to be commander-in-chief on day one,” the Republican will say when he announces his presidential candidacy in South Carolina today, according to excerpts of his remarks as prepared for delivery. “I intend to be president not of a single party, but of a nation,” he will say. “I want to do more than make big government smaller. I want to help make a great nation greater.” Graham, a retired Air Force colonel, enters the race just as a fierce battle over national security rages in the Senate. The South Carolina senator – a...

George Orwell wrote in his preface to Animal Farm that “Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban…At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question, anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness.” This prevailing orthodoxy defines the ideology of the contemporary Left of today. Motivated by abstractions and a vision of a utopian future based upon that which has never existed but which they are convinced they can create, the...

The CNN Republican primary debate on Sept. 16 will be divided into two parts featuring two different sets of candidates: those who rank in the top 10 according to public polling, and the remaining candidates who meet a minimum threshold of one percent in public polilng, the On Media blog has learned. The debate critera is more inclusive than the first Repbulican primary debate hosted by Fox News on August 6. That debate will only feature candidates who finish in the top 10 in an average of the five most recent national polls. The remaining candidates will get airtime on...

Mark Levin announced on his 5/15/15 radio program that he will soon name his top one, two or three choices for the Republican presidential nominee. He said that he will be endorsing earlier than he usually does in the Republican primary process, because he wants to help prevent the RINO nominee from winning. He said that he will be announcing "soon."

According to the Washington Post, Hillary Clinton told a group of her fundraisers that she will have a litmus test for her nominees to the Supreme Court (if she should win the presidency): they will have to agree with her that the 2010 Citizens United ruling must be overturned.  In that ruling the Supreme Court held that corporations have First Amendment rights to engage in political speech and to spend money on such speech.  In making her pledge, Mrs. Clinton follows Bernie Sanders, who is also running for president.If Republican critics of Mrs. Clinton wanted to be demagogues about it,...

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Republican District Attorney Daniel Donovan has won Tuesday's special election and is going to be Staten Island's new congressman. Donovan vied with Democratic Councilman Vincent Gentile and Green Party candidate James Lane for the seat. The final tally for the election is not yet available, but the Donovan camp declared him the winner of the special election on Tuesday night. The DA celebrated with supporters at the Hilton Garden Inn in Bloomfield.

"When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship." Red or Blue?

Last night’s interview with Bruce Jenner by Diane Sawyer on ABC’s 20/20 turned out to be very revealing … in a much different way than many thought. By this time, a relentless series of media reports had made it quite clear that Jenner had embraced a transgender identity, at least privately. The big reveal turned out to be that Jenner also identifies as a conservative Republican: When Sawyer asked if Jenner cheered when Obama became the first president to even say the word “transgender” in a State of the Union address, the 65-year-old replied that he “would certainly give...

In an interview with ABC Friday, Bruce Jenner said he is transgender, and also Republican. [Snip] According to a July Gallup poll, 21 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans are Republican or lean Republican ... Note: Bruce Jenner's current name and a male pronoun is used in this post, as he has not requested a new name or pronoun be used.

Since Marco Rubio was born in the U.S. to the parents that were not U.S. citizens, does that make him an anchor baby? I personally think at least one parent should be a U.S. citizen before citizenship is granted upon birth. I haven't really seen many people talking about this.

NASHUA, N.H. (AP) - Nearly 20 Republican White House prospects will court presidential primary voters in New Hampshire this weekend at a state GOP meeting in Nashua. It's the first gathering of its kind in the first-in-the-nation primary state this year and offers no shortage of intriguing storylines as Republican contenders across the political spectrum deliver speeches, answer questions and work to stand out in the crowd. Five things we'll be watching for: [SNIP] Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, will be in New Hampshire as well to make sure Republicans don't get a free pass. [SNIP]

As he did with Rand Paul, Ted Cruz praises the entrance of Marco Rubio into the 2016 race for president: Today U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, released the following statement regarding the announcement that U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., will also seek the Republican nomination for President of the United States:“Marco is a friend and colleague whom I greatly respect. We’re both the sons of immigrants who escaped Cuba to build a better life in the United States, and we share a deep appreciation and understanding of what it means to work hard and achieve the American Dream. Marco is...

Washington (CNN)Rand Paul isn't endorsing same-sex marriage, but said Sunday that "people ought to be treated fairly under the law." The Kentucky Republican senator who launched his 2016 presidential campaign this week talked about the semantics of marriage equality in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union." He said the decision on whether to allow same-sex marriage should be left to the states, and that he believes in "the traditional religious connotation" to marriage -- which religious conservatives believe should be reserved for one man and one woman. "I also believe people ought to be treated...

If Ted Cruz plays his hand of cards correctly, he could win both Paul libertarians and Bush Evangelicals. His positions on taxation and abolishing the IRS are already in line with most libertarian ideas, and his positions on abortion and other social issues make him a strong choice for Evangelical voters. To get an idea of how strong the GOP's Evangelical base is, we can look at the number of Evangelicals who voted in past Republican primaries. In Iowa, 60% of Republican voters identified as Evangelical in 2008 and 2012. In South Carolina, the numbers are the same. Both Iowa...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz chose a conservative, evangelical Christian university as the setting for his announcement that he was running for president. This underscored his apparent strategic decision to focus relentlessly on the conservative, highly religious segment of his party, both in terms of attempting to become their candidate of preference, and also in terms of maximizing their turnout in the 2016 primary elections. The Republican Party in general has a disproportionate percentage of conservative and highly religious Americans in its ranks, so Cruz's strategy would appear to make numerical sense -- as it would for other conservative politicians, like...

Rand Paul, who launched his presidential campaign on Tuesday, calls himself "a different kind of Republican," which at this point remains an accurate description. But in his eagerness to win primaries, the libertarian-leaning Kentucky senator runs the risk of shedding the differences that make his voice distinctive and worth hearing. Perhaps the most striking example of politically motivated backpedaling is Paul's recent proposal to raise defense spending by $190 billion over two years with money reallocated from other parts of the federal budget. Four years ago, by contrast, he supported cutting defense spending by $164 billion over five years. Paul...

HOUSTON, Texas — About six or seven hundred hardcore conservatives gathered outside the new Houston campaign headquarters for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) last Tuesday, an event at which he showed off his presidential prospects as the first declared candidate for 2016. Cruz, the true Washington outsider, has had a hugely successful first two weeks as the first declared candidate for the White House—raising millions of dollars, hiring key staff, and building a formidable operation, all while sticking true to his aggressive conservatism. Cruz has shaken up Washington, the political class, and the media establishment by essentially proving since his announcement...