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New York (CNN)Donald Trump on Saturday vowed to "never" drop out of the presidential race as a growing chorus of Republicans urged him to do exactly that after sexually aggressive remarks he made in 2005 surfaced a day earlier.Trump's defiance came as his own running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, said he was "offended" by Trump's remarks and canceled plans to represent him at a political event on Saturday. Meanwhile, the third-most powerful Senate Republican, John Thune, a member of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's inner circle, called on Trump to "withdraw" and let Pence top the Republican ticket just...

I previously announced here that I would, with regret, have to vote for Kelly Ayotte if and when she won the GOP Primary, even though she deserved to lose, simply to avoid the shame of Maggie Hassan as my Senator. I hereby renounce that pledge. I will not vote for Kelly Ayotte after her absurd virtue-signaling announcement that she will not vote for Donald Trump. I hope she loses by one vote. And if she does, let it be known that it was me who caused her to lose.

Reaction to the video of Donald Trump using explicit language and apparently describing himself forcing himself on women continues to roll in. And it is not good for the GOP nominee. Prominent Republicans are calling on him to drop out and elected officials are running from him and fast. See the full list of Republicans calling on Trump to step down at the bottom on this post. The candidate isn't backing down, telling the Washington Post's Robert Costa in an interview today, "I'd never withdraw. I've never withdrawn in my life." The Post reports, Trump called from his home in...

More than two dozen former Republican members of Congress released a letter Thursday saying they cannot vote for Donald Trump because he "makes a mockery" of their principles. Though the letter makes no mention of Hillary Clinton, organizer Andrew Weinstein said some of the members will vote for the Democrat, while others will vote for Libertarian Gary Johnson or write in a candidate.

A group of 30 former GOP lawmakers signed a blistering open letter to Republicans on Thursday, warning that Donald Trump lacks the "intelligence" and temperament to be president and urging the party to reject the GOP nominee at the polls on Nov. 8. The group includes several former lawmakers who have openly opposed Trump from the start, including former Sen. Gordon Humphrey (R-N.H.) and former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.).

Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) is predicting that congressional Republicans will be more willing to work with Hillary Clinton than they have been with President Obama, should she be elected president. "She is a known commodity, and I think there’ll be more camaraderie in terms of working together, than there might have been in the early days of Obama," Isakson told the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Isakson, who is running for reelection and has endorsed GOP nominee Donald Trump, added, "I don’t think it will be like the post-Obama election at all." Isakson's comments come as Clinton has narrowly trailed Trump in...

After voting to proceed to a bill that didn’t exist earlier this week, the Senate has finally produced text of the continuing resolution, a short-term government spending bill. The bill, written behind closed doors by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, was brought to the floor late Thursday afternoon, and for the majority of Senate Republicans, represented their first opportunity to see the text. According to McConnell, senators will have four days (two of them on a weekend) to review the bill before having to cast their votes next week. As far as conservative priorities go, the bill is a failure....

RNC chair Reince Priebus is facing backlash after suggesting that former Republican presidential hopefuls considering a 2020 White House bid may face challenges if they refuse to support Donald Trump. “People who agreed to support the nominee, that took part in our process, they used tools from the RNC,” Priebus told John Dickerson CBS News’ Face the Nation. “Those people need to get on board. And if they’re thinking they’re going to run again someday, I think we’re going to evaluate the process…and I don’t think it’s going to be easy for them” In a fiery rebuttal, John Weaver, chief...

The ad has been running all night. A bunch of crybaby republican establishment types saying how awful Trump is: Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney, Sasse, etc. This should prove to all the average folks like us: Trump really is an outsider hated by the establishment.

WASHINGTON — South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said he is pleased Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is holding up against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. “Trump is getting better,” Graham told reporters Tuesday pointing to the recent polling. “You can see a more disciplined message. If he can hold it together for another 8 weeks.” Graham, who ran against Trump in the primary and doubted that the New York billionaire could beat Clinton, appeared impressed that Trump could withstand the amount of political attacks he had taken so far. “He’s had massive political body blows that would knock anybody...

They were defeated in the primaries, failed to stop Donald Trump at the convention, and now the “never Trump” forces within the GOP are having to come to grips with what they’ll actually do when they enter the polling booth in November. Few say they’ll pull the lever for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, but neither Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson nor Evan McMullin, an independent conservative offering himself as the unofficial GOP choice, are earning groundswell support. Some of the anti-Trump forces say they’re so frustrated, they’ll stay home on Election Day — unless it looks like doing so...

Lawmakers return to Washington this week for an abbreviated election-season session in which they will likely do what they do best: the bare minimum. All Congress must do this month is keep the government from shutting down on Oct. 1 and, with any luck, finally provide money for the fight against the mosquito-borne Zika virus. Republicans controlling Congress promise they won’t stumble now, but the weeks ahead could prove tricky. A chief motivation for the September session, especially for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is allowing lawmakers to return to campaigning as soon as possible. Republicans are scrambling to...

Cornell University College Republicans announced this afternoon that they will endorse Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson for president, in a statement that acknowledged the wide spectrum of conservative beliefs that compose the club. “Our organization does not solely represent the Republican Party,” the statement said, “Our first responsibility is to our members.” Club leadership stressed that Cornell Republicans are “libertarians, moderates, neoconservatives and everyone in between.” In an “unprecedented” election year, campus Republicans say they could not tolerate Donald Trump as their party’s nominee. “Mr. Trump should not be the face of American conservatism,” the club’s statement reads, proceeding to call...

Establishment Republicans won’t stop saying or doing stupid things this election season. One after another, they have declared their hatred for Donald Trump or endorsed Hillary Clinton. Those who have not stooped to such unseemliness have little to brag about either, as many of them have repeatedly failed to defend their party’s nominee or undermined him at every turn. Each time, establishment Republicans eagerly proclaim that they are more decent than the man chosen by a record number of GOP primary voters and supported by 83 percent of self-identified Republicans. Yet, while objecting to Trump’s unconventional style and rhetoric, the...

Donald Trump's campaign chairman accused a group of Republican national security officials on Sunday of having close ties to Hillary Clinton after they declared their party's presidential nominee "unfit" to be commander-in-chief in an open letter earlier this week. "A lot of them have connections to the Clinton Foundation and have gotten contracts over the last several years to do work for the Clinton Foundation or some of its subsidiaries," Paul Manafort told New York-based radio host John Catsimatidis. "So it is far from an objective group, it is far from a Republican group and it is part of the...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that GOP prospects for keeping control of the Senate after the November elections are “very dicey,” sounding an alarm amid mounting Republican concerns about presidential nominee Donald Trump. […] Twenty-four GOP-held seats are on the ballot this year, compared with 10 for Democrats, he noted. McConnell was promoted to majority leader two years ago when a Republican surge wrested Senate control from Democrats. McConnell did not mention Trump as being a drag on Republican down-ballot races, but he chided Trump’s campaign tactics. The Kentucky senator said he hopes Trump “settles down and follows...

Mike Murphy — who ran Jeb’s Super PAC — says that “if it came down to just my vote and I had to decide, I’d probably vote for Hillary and then jump in a lake out of massive depression.” Appearing on With All Due Respect, Murphy added that he hopes Trump doesn’t win because he’s “a demagogue and a neo-racist.” Murphy gave Trump a 10% black-swan shot of winning. View the video here.

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After a disastrous week of feuds and plummeting poll numbers, Republican leaders have concluded that Donald J. Trump is a threat to the party’s fortunes and have begun discussing how soon their endangered candidates should explicitly distance themselves from the presidential nominee. For Republicans in close races, top strategists say, the issue is no longer in doubt. One House Republican has already started airing an ad vowing to stand up to Mr. Trump if he is elected president, and others are expected to press similar themes in the weeks ahead. In the world of Republican "super PACs," strategists are going...

'Permission' to vote for Hillary is not based on any policy By: Amanda Carpenter | August 03, 2016 “Permission structure” — It’s a term Obama hands used to describe their strategy to get white voters to support the first black president that’s now being applied to Hillary Clinton. The basic idea is that Republican voters need some kind of cover to vote for a Democrat. Usually, in the form of endorsements. In 2008, the Obama campaign rolled out Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama to persuade GOP-leaning voters. Today, the Clinton campaign has secured and is promoting the endorsement of former...