Free Republic

If you think 2016 will stop being weird come November 8, please look at your calendars: This whole election process actually lasts almost an additional two months beyond then, finally ending (probably) when Congress counts the electoral votes in early January. But just because it’s been a weird year, that doesn’t mean it has to end badly. There’s reason to hope. Consider independent write-in candidate for president Evan McMullin. He has virtually no chance of winning the election on November 8, but he does have a shot at being chosen as our next president.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has never had much to say about Donald Trump. But lately, he has fallen completely silent. As he’s made the rounds in his home state of Kentucky this month, McConnell has either ducked reporters’ questions, or explicitly refused to address the topic he acknowledged was on everyone’s mind: His party’s presidential nominee. […] McConnell’s silence is especially notable in light of Trump’s recent complaints that the election is rigged and he might not ultimately accept the results. Despite a lifetime in public service, McConnell has offered no reaction, passing up the opportunity to defend the...

2016 has been a big year for protest politics -- not just in the United States, what with Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump getting over 40 percent of primary votes, but also all over Europe and Latin America, where voters have been rejecting the advice of their nations' political, financial and media establishments. Two prime examples were in referendums. On June 23, 52 percent of British voters rejected the advice of Prime Minister David Cameron and other parties' leaders and chose to leave rather than remain in the European Union. On Oct. 2, 50.2 percent of voters in Colombia voted...

Former Republican presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich is hitting back against the claim that the election is “rigged” -- an allegation that GOP nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly made in recent days. When asked in an interview with “CBS This Morning” early Wednesday whether he believed Trump’s assertion of a cooked election was correct, Kasich replied with an emphatic “no.” “Look, to say that elections are rigged and all these votes are stolen -- that’s like saying we never landed on the moon, frankly,” said Kasich. “That’s how silly it is.” The Ohio governor further criticized Trump’s position...

For many viewers, this came as no surprise, but for many FOX conservative loyalists, this latest news would have come as a shock. FOX News host Shepard Smith joins other high-profile gay cable news anchors like CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon. A number of high-profile media critics including top-rated talk radio host Michael Savage, have recently raised the alarm that FOX News is undergoing a liberal facelift following the departure of its news head Roger Ailes over a number sexual harassment cases.

New Jersey’s low gas prices are about to get more expensive after Republican Gov. Chris Christie on Friday signed legislation raising the gas tax by 23 cents per gallon, from the 49th highest in the nation to the sixth, to pay for an expired transportation trust fund. The gas tax, though, is still lower than the gas tax in neighboring New York and Pennsylvania. The hike is set to go into effect Nov. 1. Christie also rescinded an order that shut down transportation projects in the state. He first issued the order when the transportation trust fund expired months ago....

John Kasich has a simple message for Republicans who are struggling with how to respond to the 2005 tape that leaked last week of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump boasting about using his celebrity status to grope women. "Lead by example," he told Business Insider in a Thursday interview. The Ohio governor and onetime 2016 presidential hopeful, who was the last Trump challenger to drop out of the GOP primary, released an extended response to the tape over the weekend. In that response, he said the tape was not "surprising to me or many others." "Many people were angry and...

"Paul Ryan Comes to Heel Behind Donald Trump Again, Begins Pushing Trump Campaign Narrative on Hillary Clinton’s Catholic Smears" Trump needs to mend the rift. Swallow his pride and keep the team together. After the elections you can settle the arguments. Show the American people you are bigger then those who betrayed you and that you don't hold grudges.

In a 2013 email published a few days ago by WikiLeaks, Hillary Clinton expressed views wildly at odds with those of the American citizenry: “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.” Most of Donald Trump’s Republican defectors are poised to help her achieve her open-borders dream. As Republican elites continue to defy Republican voters on the crucial issue of immigration, it’s not surprising that the Senate’s open-borders crowd is refusing to back the man who—largely because of his hawkish immigration position — was chosen by Republican voters to be their party’s nominee. While only...

Donald Trump unleashed the fury of his Twitter account on his GOP critics Tuesday, accusing them of being fair-weather backers and insisting that he's better off without their "shackles," and he can now run the kind of campaign he wants. At first glance, though, the new Mr. Trump looked a lot like the old Mr. Trump -- with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Sen. John McCain targeted... "Disloyal R's are far more difficult than Crooked Hillary," he said in another tweet. "They come at you from all sides. They don't know how to win -- I will teach them!"...

Yesterday, Paul Ryan announced he would stop defending Trump and told other GOP members to fend for themselves. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) response: "Despite winning the second debate in a landslide (every poll), it is hard to do well when Paul Ryan and others give zero support!" - 8:16 AM - 11 Oct 2016 "Our very weak and ineffective leader, Paul Ryan, had a bad conference call where his members went wild at his disloyalty." 9:05 AM - 11 Oct 2016 "It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America...

By Christine Todd Whitman  Pundits and politicians — myself included — completely misjudged this election.  I certainly did not think that Donald Trump had a serious shot of being the Republican nominee when he first entered the presidential race.  When he got the nomination, few thought the polls would ever be this close. And far too many have failed to recognize that there is a difference between change and chaos.  The latter is what we will get with a Trump presidency. At a time when the country is facing real issues and many are wondering if they have a future of...

JanicetheElder posted this yesterday, it bears repeating:Unfortunately rather than following Breitbart’s recommendations, RINOs have instead adopted one of the most annoying tactics of the Progressive Left: virtue signaling. Except in RINO-World it’s used to discredit one of their own rather than the enemy – a unique play that generally allows the other team to score while you are still posturing and preening.In case you don’t remember exactly how virtue signaling works here’s a good explanation from Acculturated: it is the popular modern habit of indicating that one has virtue merely by expressing disgust or favor for certain political ideas, cultural...

Republican U.S. Senate Nominee Darryl Glenn called for Donald Trump to step down Saturday after a video surfaced of the presidential nominee using vulgar, demeaning language to talk about women.

House Speaker Paul Ryan was shouted down by chants of “Trump” at his Fall Fest event Saturday in Wisconsin. Ryan, who kicked off the speech talking about the “elephant in the room,” said that Trump’s banter with Billy Bush before taping an Access Hollywood segment in 2005 was “a troubling situation.” The chants for “Trump” start at about the 6:40 mark in the video below. Ryan was joined onstage by Wisconsites Ron Johnson and Scott Walker after the “Trump” shouts began, at the end of Ryan’s speech. Some also shouted, “God bless Trump,” and “See ya, Paul! Jackass!”

A leading #NeverTrump radio host is pulling the plug on his Wisconsin show, citing age and retirement plans to explain his departure from the airwaves by end of the year. “This morning, I announced that I am stepping down from my daily radio show on WTMJ at the end of this year,” Charlie Sykes said on his website. I know that lot of people will assume that my decision has something to do with this current campaign and the rise of Trumpism. But, the reality (as my friends and family know) is that I made this decision a long time...

Daan Roosegaarde reached into the pocket of his suit jacket, pulled out a plastic bag filled with black powder, and waved it around. “This is Beijing smog,” Roosegaarde said, before gesturing to the seven-metre tall, gently humming metal tower we are stood next to in the Chinese capital’s art district, 798. “We collected it from the tower yesterday. Incredibly disgusting.” Dutch designer Roosegaarde’s smog souvenir may be disgusting, but it’s the byproduct of an invention that he has touted as a potential alleviator of China’s pollution problems. His “smog-free tower” sucks air, filters it with ion technology, with Roosegaarde having...

The campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton rolled out another 40 endorsements from prominent Republicans and independents Thursday, the latest play in a bid to lure voters across party lines in her race against Donald Trump. The list includes three former congressmen, a dozen former high-ranking members of Republican administrations — including a White House ethics lawyer, a director of the Situation Room and an undersecretary of transportation — as well as an array of Capitol Hill staffers, local elected officials and fundraisers for GOP candidates. The recruits were trumpeted in an afternoon conference call featuring John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman,...

The South Carolina Republican, who previously went on record to say he's not voting for Trump nor Clinton, has now put himself in a position to play pundit and he used his time onstage to explain the strengths and weaknesses of the two major party candidates. But first, as he started a Q&A with Bloomberg's Margaret Carlson, he told a joke. 'I have the sniffles and I'm not using cocaine. I promise you,' Graham said.

The Senate’s top Republican Thursday warned that legislation enacted over President Barack Obama’s veto to allow families of Sept. 11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia in U.S. courts may have “unintended ramifications” and that lawmakers should discuss fixes to the measure. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the White House was too slow to warn about the “potential consequences” of the measure. Both the House and Senate overwhelmingly overrode Obama’s veto of the measure on Wednesday. McConnell said he told the president recently that the 9/11 victims bill “was an example of an issue that we should have talked about...