Free Republic

Hold the hearings. Talk to the guy, ask him questions, give him his day in court. And hold a vote. Up or down. Hold a vote. I’m a conservative. I’m a Republican. I can’t stand Obama. I don’t trust the politicized Supreme Court. But this bull crap out of Senate Republicans that they aren’t even going to talk to this new Supreme Court nominee is insane. Announcing, within hours of Antonin Scalia’s death, that the Senate would ignore a presidential nomination, was about the stupidest thing ever. It disrespected the legacy and family of Mr. Scalia, by moving the subject...

On today's With All Due Respect, NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg broke some news, saying she thought President Obama "got a message from Republicans via backchannels that they would probably move this [Supreme Court] nomination after the presidential election." Let's game-plan this out. If it means that Senate Republicans would move to confirm President Obama's pick of Merrick Garland even if a Republican were elected president, it would be a huge backstab of the Republican base. But if Republicans would only move Garland if a Dem wins, thus depriving Hillary or whomever of the chance to nominate an unreconstruced...

The Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns are weighing whether to ask for a recount in Missouri following results that found them just two-tenths of 1 percent behind Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, respectively. Media outlets have yet to call the race due to the extremely close margins. The Missouri Secretary of State's office said that all results are unofficial until they're certified, which could take up to four weeks. With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Trump leads Cruz by 0.2 percent, and the two are separated by about 1,700 votes. On the Democratic side, Clinton also leads Sanders...

The Republican Party appears to be thrashing about like a wild beast in the final stages of its death throes. For those of us who are repulsed by politicians, political parties, and the odious political process, it’s quite entertaining to watch. (Before proceeding, it’s important to point out that what people think of as the Republican Party is really just a wing of what I have been referring to since 1979 as the Demopublican Party — an oligarchy with two wings, the Democratic wing that sets the agenda and the Republican wing whose main function is to help implement that...

Donald Trump may have benefited from his decision to cancel his rally in Chicago due to protests and threatened violence, a new poll reports.

Siding with the enemy: Even though it inconvenienced a crowd of 25,000 heading for the University of Illinois at Chicago, Friday night’s protest got all the way down to the foggy bottom, cutting for all a highly unexpected and unimaginable break. Next to Barack Obama being caught red-handed as a 20-year-long activist in Jeremiah Wright’s “God damn America” liberation theology-controlled Trinity United Church, Friday night’s Chicago protest went on to become the biggest eye opener in recent American history.

It feels filthy being a Republican. Not because of Trump, but because of the way they're treating Trump. He's not perfect, but he's a hell of a lot more popular than they are, and is drawing substantially more support. And in a majority-rule country, that's what's supposed to count. Yet, in the Republican Party, the largest group of Republicans is being snubbed and condemned. It was one thing dealing with a president who hates you, now conservatives and patriots are finding that their party hates them as well. As the Democrat brown shirts harass and hector Trump rallies and Trump...

Millions of Americans are filing their taxes this month—and getting a good reminder of why they despise the IRS. But thanks to the Republican majority in Congress, the IRS is being forced to start cleaning up its act. When the IRS scandal broke, Congress demanded answers from the agency’s top officials. Were they targeting groups for their religious and political beliefs? No, they said, it was just a few rogue employees in Ohio—if anything at all. Well, what happened to Lois Lerner’s emails? Oh, they were lost in a tragic hard drive crash. Shouldn’t we update our laws to prevent...

Donald Trump can still be beaten if he wins Florida. But there's no way to beat him if Republicans sacrifice 259 delegates for a tiny chance at winning Florida. This is the kind of concrete prediction that comes back to haunt pundits, but I'm going to make it anyway (and if I'm wrong, nobody will be happier about it than me): Donald Trump is going to win Florida, and there's nothing Marco Rubio or anyone else can do about it. The collective obsession with Florida is understandable. It's a purple state with a lot of votes and a lot of...

Former presidential candidate Ben Carson will endorse Donald Trump at a press conference in Florida on Friday morning, multiple sources tell CNN, handing Trump an important boost heading into next week's "Super Tuesday 3." Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, ended his own White House campaign last week after failing to win a single primary contest. Trump is scheduled to hold a press conference Friday at 9 a.m. ET at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach.

Politics Mitt Romney's Ford Field Fumble? February 24, 2012 By MICHAEL FALCONE ABC News' David Muir, Michael Falcone and Emily Friedman report: DETROIT - Standing on the 30-yard line of Detroit's Ford Field, Mitt Romney delivered what was billed as a major economic speech before a crowd of about 1,200 supporters on Friday. In his crucial home state of Michigan, Romney reiterated his new tax plan to applause from an audience dwarfed by the scope of the stadium that seats up to 80,000 spectators. The Romney campaign promised an economic policy speech on filled with major new policy initiatives, but...

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come not to praise Marco Rubio – dear God, never, ever that – but to bury him. And then to salt the earth in the hope that he will never come back. The Rubio campaign is on its last legs, stumbling dehydrated and desperate through the Florida Everglades like the heroine in the second act of a Carl Hiaasen novel, trying to stay one step ahead of the bloodhounds who want nothing more than to drag the Florida senator into the swamp and tear his throat out, or at least convince him...

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BREAKING Ben Carson on Hannity: I support Donald Trump over GOP establishment: #Trump2016 #AlwaysTrump https://t.co/L1o8jKzwVv— Debi #AlwaysTrump (@new_debis) March 8, 2016

There are 34 U.S. Senate seats up for election in 2016. Of those seats, 24 are currently held by Republicans and only 10 are held by Democrats. Use our interactive map and the links below to learn more about each of these races.

Mainstream Republican pursuit of amnesty, open borders, and massive immigration (both legal and illegal) works to destroy the very Constitution they profess to be so concerned about You can tell it’s an election year, because the Republicans are all of a sudden talking about the Constitution again. Not that I mind, of course, but it seems that they only start paying attention to it when the generally more conservative and constitutionalist Republican primary voters start paying attention to them. So suddenly, the political realm is filled with talk about what the Constitution says about every issue, from abortion to xylophone...

Flop. As we’ve discussed previously, Mitt Romney’s attack on Donald Trump was as transparently hypocritical as it was misguided. Here was a two-time failed candidate levying a series of charges against Trump - most of which Harry Reid had previously used against Romney himself. It was the weakest of cheap shots. Within a day it became clear to anyone who was watching the 2016 election that the speech had succeeded only in that it further divided the GOP or strengthened Trump’s position. It was, to be blunt, a grotesque miscalculation. Now we know that what we assumed during that first...

The ultimate result of the 2016 presidential election could yet rest on the likes of Erling “Curly” Haugland, 69, a businessman from Bismarck, North Dakota, who will be one of the 2,472 delegates to the Republican party convention in July. And he isn’t saying what he’ll do. “I wouldn’t know until the day of the first ballot [at the convention in Cleveland, Ohio] because a lot can happen between now and then,” he said. With the Republican party in uproar over the runaway primary lead of billionaire property mogul Donald Trump, the role of convention delegates could be crucial in...

Hawaii · 19 delegates Last poll closes at 11:00 PM CT Idaho · 32 delegates Last poll closes at 10:00 PM CT Michigan · 59 delegates Last poll closes at 8:00 PM CT Mississippi · 40 delegates Last poll closes at 7:00 PM CT

Unless you want a "manifest revolt". As I write this, Ted Cruz has just won the caucuses in Kansas and finished a pretty good overall Saturday in which he inched to within 83 delegates of Donald Trump in the nomination race. The count now stands at 378 for Trump and 295 for Cruz, with Rubio still lagging way behind at 123 and John Kasich barely registering at 34. Strategically, that might explain why Cruz is the only Trump rival who is rejecting any notion of a contested convention to take the nomination away from Trump - if it comes to...