Free Republic

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is gearing up to challenge some House Republicans in primary elections, frustrated after much of its agenda has been stymied by a small pocket of conservative GOP lawmakers. The influential and well-heeled business group is already eyeing several races, but the plans are still in their infancy and the targets have not yet been decided upon, according to more than a half dozen Republican sources on K Street and Capitol Hill. Story Continued Below . . The group’s apparent new willingness to engage in hand-to-hand political combat to take out sitting Republicans would represent a...

Donald Trump is making noise about an independent bid for president. If the Republican National Committee doesn’t treat him fairly, Trump says, he’ll be more likely to launch a third-party run. I don’t know if he is at all serious, but I do know two things: History suggests that an independent Trump campaign would crash and fail; polling suggests that even if that happened, Trump could take the Republican candidate down with him. Trump received 20 percent of the vote in a hypothetical matchup against Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Jeb Bush in a newly released ABC News/Washington Post poll....

The Republicans are desperately trying to get hip. Pursuing the latest new thing is not in the Republican DNA, but it's necessary to win elections. They have to tap into the popular culture of social media to woo the younger generation of voters, and that requires a digital strategy. Social media technology comes more or less naturally to the Democrats. Starting with Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, the Democrats demonstrated a winning use of Facebook (back then the new rage), and it was far superior to the opposition's operation. But that's so yesterday, as Marco Rubio likes to say. Republicans...

The Republican Party’s donors have a brand new idea: let’s boycott those we disagree with! Will they never learn? [VIDEO] ... This means that those other candidates and the Republican Party’s leadership have to be smart about the way they deal with Trump. The best strategy is to … take him seriously. Yes, even when he’s bullying everybody else and saying outrageous things about them. You see, Trump’s current popularity isn’t about him, but about conservative anger. Conservative voters are pissed beyond measure: they feel ignored by their party, they believe amnesty for illegal aliens is all but a done...

When Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi ran the Congress, they did as they damn well pleased. They held up legislation they didn’t want debated or voted on, they changed the rules to suit the needs of the Democrat Party and they said and did whatever it took to move theirs and Obama’s liberal socialist agenda forward. You can call them bullies or even tyrannical, but one thing you can’t call them - spineless. So how is that Republican House and Senate majority working for the people that voted them in? Are they on-task putting the country back on the conservative...

I'm sort of breaking my promise here. No news. Why no news? Because the news you read is almost always by uninformed reporters and is totally irrelevant in 99.999% of the cases. Example: Greece has not paid a single debt since Rome took over in 146 BC. And yet, everyone keeps asking me about Greece. News flash: They will borrow more money, and AGAIN they will not pay their debts. Nor should they. Greece is a subsidized beach resort, healthy food, etc but they aren't a real country - (sorry in advance to anyone offended by this) and then in...

...What kind of son were you? Were you rebellious? I was very bad. That’s why my parents sent me to a military academy..... Is it true that you’ve never had a glass of alcohol? I’ve never had drugs and never had alcohol and never had a cup of coffee.... Do you think Trump Tower and your other buildings will bear your name a hundred years from now? No, I don’t think so. Why? I don’t think any building will be here—and unless we have some very smart people ruling it, the world will not be the same place in a...

Roland Windsor Vincent, a liberal activist who runs a blog known as Army of the Revolution, recently wrote a bizarre post that blamed Republican and conservative voters for an “animal holocaust” and proclaimed, “If we were to start shooting Republicans, we would likely not harm a single friend of animals or the environment.” The blog post, which was titled “Protect Animals And The Environment. Shoot Republicans,” ended with another peculiar suggestion, one that said, “In my view, the animals need a massive depopulation of the human race. It may come in revolution, in climate disasters, in pandemics. But it must...

Can Donald Trump merely be an undisciplined bomb thrower driven by a massive ego? Or is there more going on with Trump than most of us would suspect? Is he so ego-driven that he would abandon his prior liberal positions on social issues and link arms with those on the far right? Trump is not an idiot. He knows he can't win with his self-destructive performance. I think what he's doing is preparing a pathway for the person he wants to win, Ted Cruz. It's a brilliant plan really. Trump's attacks bring down the moderate opposition for the Republican nomination...

How worried should Republicans—and everyone else—be about Donald Trump, the man who’s turning the party’s presidential contest into a circus rodeo? Not very. What his popularity blip reveals is just how weak the right has become. Herman Cain was polling as high as 26 percent between October and November 2011. Trump has a long way to go to match last cycle’s comic-relief candidate. The occasionally bankrupt billionaire’s best number so far has been 17 percent. His polling average, even after weeks of hype, is about 10 percent. Bernie Sanders, by contrast, has been routinely polling around 15 percent against Hillary...

Social issues are the key to either destroying or conserving our nation. Any effort in an attempt to preserve this great country will come to nothing if we do not get our moral house in order Almost no one wants to talk social issues. The Tea Party, for all their good work, doesn’t want to bring up social issues. The political establishment avoids the conversation as they would a leper colony. Talk social issues in the GOP and you will get a call from Reince Priebus. Ask Donald Trump. People live in fear of being called racist, bigoted, homophobic, or...

Query: If President Obama's nuke deal with Iran is so wonderful, why do the major parties in Israel oppose it? Why was Obama so excited about making a deal that, based on his previous positions, he would have opposed earlier? This agreement is baffling on multiple grounds, even for Obama. What is the urgency for the United States to enter into such a lopsided deal with a rogue nation that doesn't have a fraction of our negotiating leverage? Why can't Obama deal with Iran's leaders the way he deals with Republicans? Is he trying to validate conspiracy theorists convinced...

Here's Rick Perry on Donald Trump: Rick Perry ✔ ‎@GovernorPerry .@realDonaldTrump-ism not conservatism but a toxic mix of demagoguery and nonsense https://t.co/C5aPaaA13p12:03 PM - 16 Jul 2015 The statement that Perry links to in that tweet goes on to savage Trump's "fundamental misunderstanding of border security" and note: "Mr. Trump has done nothing to prove that he is the president America needs.” Them's fighting words -- or at least that's what Perry and his team have to hope. The reality of the 2016 race for second-tier-and-below candidates like Perry is that Trump is soaking up lots and lots of the...

Trump 18% Walker 15%

Jeb Bush's fundraising totals for the first half of 2015 were eye-popping: $114 million raised ($103 million of which came through his Right to Rise super PAC) with a stunning $98 million in the bank. But, as amazing as Bush's haul was, it's Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's fundraising totals that stood out to me as the most important money number from the June reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. Cruz raised $14 million through his campaign committee and another $37 million through a constellation of super PACs set up to aid his campaign. That total of $51 million raised...

"In the nationwide survey, Trump leads at 17% and former Florida governor Jeb Bush is second at 14%, the only competitors who reach double digits. Trump's edge, which is within the poll's margin of error, is one more sign that his ​harsh rhetoric about immigration and toward his rivals has struck a chord with some voters."

The former head of the Democratic Party says Donald Trump's early success on the presidential campaign trail is rooted in the discontent of conservative voters. Howard Dean, the former Vermont senator who previously headed the Democratic National Committee, said that Republican frustration has fueled Trump's rapid rise, but also predicted it doesn't have the sustaining force to propel the business mogul into the White House. "He's really a candidate who's collecting anger, and the problem with that is at the end of the day people are not interested in electing somebody out of anger, and they almost never do as...

The seemingly inevitable nomination of Hillary Clinton and an already crowded GOP primary field has left pundits and strategists debating the extent to which candidates should “go negative” when campaigning against other Republicans and ultimately, the former Secretary of State. Many Republican strategists are calling for the GOP to abandon or severely limit the negative attacks and focus on their positive vision for America in 2016. If this strategy is adopted, there is no doubt we will soon have another Clinton in the White House. The GOP has a choice in 2016: Lose again with class and dignity or fight...

The slaying of a Bay Area woman by an illegal immigrant who had been deported five times and sought refuge in San Francisco is pushing Republicans in Congress to foment legislative solutions to “sanctuary cities.”According to the city’s sanctuary ordinance, “no department, agency, commission, officer or employee of the City and County of San Francisco shall use any City funds or resources to assist in the enforcement of federal immigration law or to gather or disseminate information regarding the immigration status of individuals in the City and County of San Francisco unless such assistance is required by federal or...

Donald Trump’s statements on immigrants are going to kill the Republican Party, fellow candidate Lindsey Graham says. “Well, I think he said something that has brought people who are frustrated about our immigration system to light, but he also said it in a way that’s going to kill my party,” Graham said in an interview with CNN on Friday. “I would prefer that Donald Trump bring his economic genius and his talents to the table in a more constructive way,” he added, noting the billionaire’s charity efforts with military veterans and their families. Trump’s comments, Graham said, reinforce a narrative...