Free Republic

These events from the first quarter could change the entire race.Ascertaining the magnitude of any political development can be a head-spinning task. A candidate surges in a poll? Bah. Horse-race numbers donÂ’t matter this early. A scandal erupts in Washington? Sigh. Real people in Dubuque, Iowa, arenÂ’t paying attention. Or they donÂ’t care. During the first three months of the year, there have been countless events in the preliminary stage of the 2016 race for the White House. Some gobble up a few hours of cable television news and then evaporate; others fester for days or weeks, propelled by unanswered...

Harry Reid, D-Nev. has no regrets about his 2012 claims that then presidential candidate Mitt Romney paid no taxes for 10 years. The outgoing Senate Minority Leader even bragged to CNN that the comments, which had been described as McCarthyism, helped keep Romney from winning the election. "They can call it whatever they want. Romney didn't win did he?" Reid said ... when Reid directly accused Romney of being a tax dodge, he did so from the safety of the Senate floor. Outside the protection of legislative immunity, Romney was only possibly a tax dodge. Not only does Reid not...

We’ll have a post up soon on the real news associated with former Florida governor Jeb Bush‘s visit to early-voting South Carolina this week, but first we had to address the colossal pooch screw committed by S.C. governor Nikki Haley during his trip. (SNIP) Well, despite wielding an embarrassingly anemic veto pen during her first four years in office Haley managed to cut funding in 2012 to twenty-three rape and domestic violence crisis centers across the state. Among them? Yup, Sistercare … (SNIP) And that, frankly, makes it baffling to us that Bush’s campaign – which is supposed to be...

Matt Rhoades’ vaunted oppo research team was featured on this week’s on Fox News Sunday… (SNIP) To recap, this is fmr. Romney campaign manager and crony capitalist Matt Rhoades… (SNIP) LMFAO @ “And this is the presidential research team…” Literally watching YouTube all day… I know what you’re thinking: "They don’t even look like they’re trying! Matt Rhoades raises millions of dollars! That office looks like it costs twenty grand, tops! What happened to the rest of the money!?" (SNIP) Matt Rhoades and Karl Rove swindle naive, low-information Republicans out of hundreds of millions of dollars under the guise of...

Here is a really great interview by Neil Cavuto with Mitt Romney. Definitely worth the listen. Mitt Romney: 'Hell hath no fury like Obama scorned'

The Republican governor’s political action committee has tapped Matt Hall to serve as director of operations. Hall held a similar position for 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Matt Rhoades has made a name for himself in the Republican ranks, serving as Mitt Romney's campaign manager and the research director for George W. Bush's 2004 campaign before that. As the race for the White House heats up, Chris sits down with Rhoades to discuss his latest venture, heading up the conservative opposition research group "America Rising," as our Power Player of the Week.

Governor moves toward conservatism before presidential campaign announcement.Gov. Scott Walker acknowledged his flip on immigration during an interview on Fox News Sunday this month – a move consistent with his shift toward being a model conservative. The reason behind the change is simple, experts say; Walker is interested in a 2016 presidential bid. Walker recently announced he now supports stricter border patrol and opposes “amnesty” programs which allow certain undocumented workers to stay in the United States. He previously supported creating a path toward citizenship for undocumented immigrants. According to University of Wisconsin political science professor Kenneth Mayer, Walker’s stance...

Sen. Marco Rubio has been cultivating a relationship with Mitt Romney and his intimates, landing some of the 2012 Republican nominee’s top advisers and donors and persistently courting others as he readies an expected 2016 presidential campaign. In a crowded field of contenders, the imprimatur of Romney could help clear Rubio’s path into the top tier. Since Romney announced in January that he would not run for the White House again, he and Rubio have had at least two lengthy phone calls in which Romney encouraged and mentored the 43-year-old Florida senator about the political landscape, according to a Romney...

Signers include former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Sens. Susan Collins and Mark Kirk and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie BakerMore than 300 veteran Republican lawmakers, operatives and consultants have filed a friend of the court brief at the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage late Thursday. The amicus brief, organized by former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, was filed for the four same-sex marriage cases the Court will hear on April 28 that could legalize the unions nationwide. In 2013, Mehlman marshaled a similar effort for the case that overturned California’s Proposition 8, which had banned same-sex marriage...

Is there an inherent danger in electing a freshman Republican senator to the American presidency in 2016? After all, if one of the biggest criticisms then-candidate Obama faced from conservatives in 2008 was that he was too inexperienced, why should Republicans turn around and nominate someone like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio or Rand Paul this election cycle? If we’re being honest with ourselves, are they really any more qualified than he was? As it happens, this is a question some of my colleagues debated last week during a panel discussion at CPAC:(VIDEO-AT-LINK)I agree with Katie that successful governors have a...

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland — In a surprise speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) unloaded on former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush—systematically dismantling Bush’s push for amnesty and a massive increase in guest workers from around the world. “Right now, there are two conferences—one of them in public where candidates are out there having to speak and defend and answer questions on their views and on their positions on important issues facing America,” Sessions said to open up his remarks to the Breitbart News-sponsored meet-and-greet with CPAC activists. “Many people at this conference here and watching...

The United States’ political parties have always been amalgams of factions rather than vehicles for any single interest. Partly because of the pressures of the electoral system and partly because of the republic’s vastness, forging either of the two major parties into a political monolith has been impossible; the need to cater to a wide base of Americans tends to keep the parties broad and relatively inclusive. This embedded pluralism of the U.S. party system has diminished somewhat in the current era of polarization but it has not evaporated entirely. The parties are still relatively broad churches. This is clearest...

A top adviser to Mitt Romney's 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns has backed a likely White House run by former Florida governor Jeb Bush, a Bush aide confirmed to Fox News late Tuesday. Vin Weber, a former Minnesota congressman, has been meeting with and speaking to conservative heavyweights in effort to persuade them of Bush's credentials, a Washington-based GOP operative said.

When Barack Obama pulled the last American troops from Iraq in 2011 after shrugging off advice to keep a significant force on hand, he took credit for ending the war. Obama continued to brag about keeping his promise to get all combat troops out of the country, and during one of the 2012 presidential debate affected offense when Mitt Romney suggested that Obama had wanted to keep troops in the country. By this summer, Obama claimed that he had been powerless to keep troops in Iraq, and that the Iraqis didn’t want US combat forces on the ground in...

Mitt Romney announced on Jan. 30 that he would not run for President in 2016, and immediately the commentariate ordained Jeb Bush the big winner. Bush was Romney’s heir, a thousand wagging tongues proclaimed. The donors would fall to him, and with them would go the Republican establishment, then the voters. The Republicans had a “frontrunner.” If there is a 2016 frontrunner for the GOP, he achieved that status six days before Romney’s announcement. On that day, Sat., Jan. 24, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker delivered a speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit in Des Moines, It vaulted him into the...

A potential candidate no more, Mitt Romney is charting an aggressive course to help shape the Republican presidential field in 2016. The GOP's 2012 presidential nominee will be a keynote speaker at the Republican Jewish Coalition's spring meeting in Las Vegas, one of several high-profile appearances he has scheduled to try and remain relevant in party affairs despite his recent decision not to launch a third presidential campaign. "The thing that Mitt Romney has going for him is he has a microphone," said Spencer Zwick, who led the Romney campaign's massive fundraising operation and remains one of his closest advisers....

Lately, the amount of attention Bobby Jindal is getting seems to be on a level normally reserved for top-tier presidential candidates. Jindal set off a firestorm with his comments in Britain about Muslim “no-go zones” in Europe, and his quip about how the threat from medieval Christians is now under control in response to President Obama’s “High Horse” speech earned him a fresh round of headlines. And of course, in between Jindal’s camp was rocked by a host of stories about his record with Louisiana’s budget that on balance were not helpful to his cause. And that came after his...

They’re coming out of the woodwork And out from under the rocks. For when the Primary season begins, It opens Pandora’s Box. The latest national census establishes the population of the United States as slightly over 325 million. Of this number (excluding Sarah Palin) nearly 170 million are old enough and eligible to be elected President. Why then is the voting population consistently doomed (with the exception of Harry Truman’s contest) to choosing the lesser of two evils? The next election is still almost two years away, but the media is replete with the names, backgrounds and chances of hopeful...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker believes Mitt Romney is a "good man and would have been a good president," but now that the former Massachusetts governor has officially backed out of the 2016 race, Walker would like his support among the list of possible Republican presidential hopefuls. "I would love to have his endorsement," Walker told Fox News Channel's Bret Baier during a segment that aired Friday of an interview that will be running as part of a series surrounding potential 2016 candidates. At the same time, Walker said that he thinks it is "a time for new fresh ideas," and...