Free Republic

It would be an exaggeration for me to say Rick Perry is my friend, but I can say we are friendly acquaintances. I liked him and I have reason to believe he liked me from the first time we met, when he invited me, the late Andrew Breitbart and others to go shooting with him in Austin back in 2009. (Yes, Perry was one of the first major politicians into new media.) Later, I joined him at the NASCAR races at the Texas Motor Speedway, which was rather like going to the Grand Ole Opry with Johnny Cash.By this time...

Rick Perry needed a second chance. “America is a great place for second chances,” he hinted to late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel in March, before Perry had officially launched his second bid for president. After his spectacular implosion as a candidate in 2012, Perry needed to run a disciplined presidential campaign free from gaffes, less frenzied and slapdash than his last. He needed to show Republicans, to persuade them, that this time could be different. Perry did all that. But he never got that second chance, because no one was watching.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry suddenly announced he was suspending his presidential campaign Friday. As he did so, he made it abundantly clear that he's still not a fan of real-estate mogul Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner in the race with whom he has often feuded. Speaking at an event in St. Louis, Missouri, Perry repeatedly jabbed at Trump's campaign-trail controversies without using his name. "Demeaning people of Hispanic heritage is not just ignorant, it betrays the example of Christ," Perry said, according to his prepared remarks. "We can enforce our laws and our borders, and we can love all...

My buddy John alerted me to Rick Perry’s exit from the race today. He speculated that now Kasich’s numbers might “take off a little, if not big.” In his text was a quip about the remaining candidates: “good-bye before hello.” For me, I never got a chance to say hello to Perry. Donald Trump was immediately more interesting than all of the other candidates put together. He didn’t have to use self-justifying rhetoric to establish his conservative bona fides. He just said amazing true things, bluntly and spontaneously, that we have long wished all rightwing politicians would say. Trump’s remarks...

CRUZ: We wish Governor Perry, Anita, Griffin, and Sydney the very best in what is certain to be decades of continued service to our Nation HOUSTON, Texas — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, today released the following statement in response to the announcement that former Texas Gov. Rick Perry has suspended his campaign for President:“Gov. Rick Perry is a friend and a remarkable public servant. He is a proud veteran who bravely served our nation, and he was an extraordinary governor of Texas. As Texas Solicitor General, it was an honor to serve under him.“Because of his principled leadership as...

One of the most knowledgeable and respected political analysts in the country has changed his mind about Donald Trump, now believing the real estate tycoon is for real and is in it for the long haul. Stuart Rothenberg first thought that “once Iowa Republicans start to see the caucuses as an opportunity to select the next president, rather than an opportunity to express their frustration and anger, they will turn away from Trump (and other outsiders) and toward politically experienced, mainstream contenders.” But with the recent rise in Trump’s favorable rating, and after speaking with GOP strategists in Iowa, Rothenberg...

BREAKING: AP sources: Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to drop out of 2016 Republican presidential race.

Tenth farking place. Three months ago, I would have told you that a midwestern evangelical governor with Scott Walker’s record could stay home in Wisconsin and never campaign and still do no worse than, say, third in Iowa. Remember, this is supposed to be Walker’s must-win early state. Donald Trump has the support of 27 percent of Iowa likely Republican Caucus participants, with 21 percent for Ben Carson and 9 percent for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. This compares to the results of a July 1 survey by the independent Quinnipiac...

Republican Donald Trump isn’t going away anytime soon, I now believe. That assessment doesn’t mean I think Trump is the favorite for the Iowa caucuses or the GOP nomination, but it does reflect a fundamental shift in my thinking. I can no longer say that with any certainty, though it remains the single most likely outcome. Trump’s favorable rating jumped from 27 percent in the May Selzer & Company’s Iowa Poll for the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics to 61 percent in the August 23-25 Selzer survey. At the same time, his unfavorable rating dropped from 63 percent to...

Joining Lou Dobbs earlier this week, Former Texas Governor Rick Perry was asked to explain his stance on illegal immigration and border security. “I think we need to flesh everyone out from the stand point of of just the rhetoric. When somebody says, ‘let’s build a wall,’ then I think it’s appropriate to say, it’s good to have this conversation, it’s good that we are having this conversation that now for thirty years, this border has not been secured. We’ve known it’s been a problem,” said Perry. Dobbs interjected that he doesn’t believe a single candidate talking about immigration issues...

Two Labor Day Polls Portend ‘Splodey Heads For The Anti-Trump Advocates…. Earlier today Gallup released a poll showing that Trump is the most heavily favored candidate (63% Approval Rating) amid Republicans. A devastating defeat for the establishment GOP (GOPe) who are seeking to push their preferred candidate Jeb Bush. Such substantive favorable opinion of candidate Trump puts the RNC/GOPe in a difficult position as they plot to begin their collective assault against the unpalatable frontrunner. But tonight the news for the Vichy Republican crowd is infinite degrees worse. As they plot the best course of Trump’s annihilation – national polls...

Donald Trump will hold a major rally at the American Airlines Center in Dallas on September 14th. aa center The center holds 21,000 for concerts. The Dallas Morning News reported: “ Real estate tycoon Donald Trump is staging what could be an enormous campaign rally at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. “He’s excited about coming to Dallas,” said Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks. “He’s looking forward to it.” The September 14 event is free to the public, and will mark Trump’s first major event in North Texas since he announced his bid for president. Trump, the front-runner for the...

Former governor gets little attention AUSTIN — Former Gov. Rick Perry started out with flair. Not even a felony indictment could keep down his campaign spirit as he went after the presidency. He can boast being the longest-serving governor of one of the largest, most prosperous states in the union, one who called down border guards to address a national crisis, and one with the message that his state’s economic prosperity could be modeled and put into practice for the nation at large. Yet several months after his June 4 presidential campaign launch, he is floundering. A recent Public Policy...

Streets filled with parked cars, rally attendeesTed Cruz, Rick Perry, Tim Scott address crowd COLUMBIA, SC - Thousands of people are on hand at South Carolina’s State House for the We Stand with God, Pro-Family Rally. Former Texas governor Rick Perry and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott have addressed the crowd. Ted Cruz also spoke at Saturday’s event, which began at 11 a.m. Cruz said he would push for a constitutional amendment to protect states’ same-sex marriage bans. He also railed against the Planned Parenthood videos that allegedly show staffers talking about selling fetal tissue. He said on his first day...

In a challenging field of competitors, Fox News Channel’s Andrew Napolitano has a strong entry for the most laughable legal analysis of the Indiana religious-freedom law. In an April Fool’s Day op-ed that he evidently means to be taken seriously, Napolitano argues that state Religious Freedom Restoration Act laws are unconstitutional. Napolitano’s core claim is that the Supreme Court, in its 1997 ruling in Boerne v. Flores, ruled that the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act is unconstitutional. In Boerne the Court ruled that Congress lacked the constitutional power to apply the federal RFRA against the states. Napolitano accurately summarizes...

The Quinnipiac University poll, released Thursday, also shows Donald Trump smashing the GOP presidential competition garnering 28% support from registered Republican voters in the 17-member field. The real estate mogul's closest competitor is retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who tallies 12%. Just 7% said they would vote for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a record low since November 2013. Those results show just how far both Trump -- now the Republican front-runner -- and Bush -- the old one -- have come. Bush led national polls for much of the first half of 2015, but was quickly dislodged by Trump, after...

Republican legislators have gotten their messaging instructions from their top leaders: Tout unpopular free-trade measures during the August recess, ignore popular curbs on the migration that saps Americans’ wages. Breitbart News has exclusively obtained an internal August recess messaging instruction set for Republican legislators produced by Sen. John Thune (R-SD) 52% , who orchestrates the GOP Senators’ PR pitch. This 20-page messaging instruction manual seems to confirm prior reports by Breitbart News that Republican Congressional leadership has no plans to enact popular immigration reforms to curb large-scale migration. Each August, Senators and Congressmen return home to listen to constituents’ concerns...

No one ever assumed the Republican presidential nomination was going to be smooth sailing, with 17 announced candidates ranging from all walks of public and private life vying for the prize. But the candidacy, and we use that term loosely, of Donald Trump has changed the landscape in a way few could have imagined. Trump’s presence thus far has muted the inevitability of establishment star Jeb Bush — a good thing, in our estimation, despite the insistence of some Trump supporters that our criticism of The Donald automatically means we favor the heir to the Bush Dynasty. Unfortunately, it has...

Ben Turner: Yes In the Republican Party’s "autopsy" of why they lost the 2012 presidential election, they noted a need for the party to reach out to minorities and younger voters, two groups they had limited support from. Little did they know, they would have not one but two young Hispanic candidates competing for their party’s nomination in 2016. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are not only the same age and Hispanic — their entire biographies are remarkably similar. Both Cruz and Rubio claim Cuban ancestry, both have law degrees and both served in state politics before running for and...

GOP presidential candidate Gov. Mike Huckabee is doing quite well according to two national polls conducted after the first GOP presidential primary debate. One poll has Huckabee in second place behind GOP frontrunner Donald Trump and another poll has Huckabee listed with the highest favorability rating among 15 GOP presidential candidates; however, former neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson takes the highest net favorability rating when comparing the results in totality. A Reuters-Ipsos poll conducted August 21-25 has Huckabee in second behind Trump – the only two candidates with double digits in that poll: Donald Trump – 30.1 percent Mike Huckabee –...