Free Republic

Clinton's camp thinks her résumé will be enough to carry her to the White House. No one should be that sure. No matter what you think about Hillary Clinton as the presidential primaries wind down, there is one undeniable fact that lingers in the background. Despite having had enormous advantages from the start of the campaign—no serious competition from within the party, solid support from national party leaders, a massive war chest and a nationwide grassroots network built over the course of decades in national politics—Clinton has struggled to put away a 74-year-old Jewish socialist who has had almost no...

Former National Security Agency technical director and surveillance state whistleblower William Binney has long said 9/11 could have been prevented had the NSA not capitulated to big-money private contractors less than a month prior to the attacks. Mainstream media, perhaps capitulating to its own monied corporate owners, relegated Binney’s explosive claims to the backburner for years. However, on Thursday — two days after the Senate Judiciary Committee began debating whether or not to reauthorize massive and controversial NSA surveillance programs — Salon finally headlined Binney’s damning claim and its backstory. The attacks of September 11, 2001, could have been thwarted...

This is really happening, people. Either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States. Just saying it still feels strange, but then again, pretty much everything about this most shocking and chaotic of election seasons has been deeply surreal.

The responses to Donald Trump’s quickly-retracted comments about punishing women for illegal abortions have shown a diverse array of creative ways pro-aborts can spin the truth. We got “pro-lifers really would punish women no matter what they say.” We got “jailing abortionists hurts women just as much.” In the past, we’ve gotten “you’re not really pro-life unless you’d punish women.” And now Salon brings us another twist on the narrative. Valerie Tarico argues that when pro-lifers say that, should abortion ever become illegal, we should limit the punishment to the abortionist, we’re really saying, “Women are like little children or...

Long before Trump’s arrival on the scene, it was conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage, the idealogical godfather of “Trumpism,” who galvanized this insurgency. Savage gave it a voice and a powerful narrative, one that proved extremely helpful to those, like iconoclastic Senator Ted Cruz, who rose to prominence taking on the very same GOP beltway insiders that Donald Trump is now making so nervous. Years before Trump, Savage had already redefined the nature of the American political landscape when he blew up the Republican Party establishment’s hold on its working class base. Trump can come or go, but...

Even Trump’s most trusted advisors didn’t expect him to fare this well ” the goal was to get The Donald to poll in double digits and come in second in delegate count. That was it. The Trump camp would have been satisfied to see him polling at 12% and taking second place to a candidate who might hold 50%. His candidacy was a protest candidacy. I don’t think even Trump thought he would get this far. And I don’t even know that he wanted to, which is perhaps the scariest prospect of all. He certainly was never prepared or equipped...

Donald Trump lost the Wisconsin primary to Ted Cruz Tuesday night by a landslide. The usually vocal billionaire refrained from giving a speech in defeat, but is campaign did release a statement accusing Cruz of being "worse than a puppet," a "trojan horse" for the GOP establishment and accused him of illegally coordinating with pro-Cruz super PACs.

Wisconsinites just don’t like Donald Trump very much. On Tuesday, Republican voters rejected the loud-mouthed billionaire for the more demure but no less radical Texas Senator Ted Cruz and boy did that make Trump pretty upset. Shrugging off his disastrous performance in recent weeks, the Republican presidential frontrunner predicted a win in Wisconsin a day before voters in the Badger State headed to the ballot boxes, despite polling showing a likely upset by Cruz. Campaigning in the state on Monday, Trump pointed to a key endorsement for one-time rival and also-ran Marco Rubio in the early state of South Carolina....

When is a news story not a news story? That question hung in the air much of the day on Friday, as the major cable news networks laboriously steered around any direct reference to the political bombshell that had set social media aflame since the small hours. Once again the mainstream media had been Trumped, made to look floundering and foolish by the Republican clown-prince even as it wrestled with one of the biggest news days of the year. Belgian authorities had apparently captured a leading suspect in the Brussels attacks, and the United States military had apparently killed an...

I think Paglia on Salon may be unlinkable, so I just pulled up the Wikipedia link, for a word she used in her article, cited on Drudge, today...so here goes... I am a news and political junkie, as most know. I have watched Donald Trump’s rise and been amused by how the masses embrace him, and the Elites fear him. Today, in a web article, I bumped into a word that has fallen out of favor...and is rushing back at us, bigtime: Moxie. A footnote to history, mostly. A soft-drink that modeled itself as being the Zip, the Flash, the...

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...

For months, Trump-fearing Republicans and the Trump-skeptical press have consoled themselves with the idea that there were clear limits to the celebrity billionaire's appeal. But during the Nevada caucus on Tuesday night, Donald Trump gave us all one more giant reason to worry as he wracked up more votes than Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz combined. Trump won a staggering 46 percent of the votes cast in what was a ostensibly a five-man race, far more than his mid-30s peak in the previous three contests and in national polls. The Republican nomination does not yet belong to Trump: He has...

The reports of the Bush dynasty’s collapse are greatly exaggerated; but now that Jeb’s disastrous campaign has finally reached its finale, it admittedly does feel like a distinct era of Republican Party politics is leaving the stage with him. (SNIP) The stump speech was for Rush Limbaugh; the budget was for the Chamber of Commerce. It worked for Poppy in ’88, and Dubya pulled it off twice. (SNIP) A sizable chunk of rank-and-file Republicans are wise to the bait and switch now; pandering to the Birchite wing of the Republican Party with dog-whistles won’t cut it. If you want to...

In July of 2003, the Dixie Chicks, a platinum-selling Texas-based country band, was playing a show in England when lead singer Natalie Maines decided to address the contentious debate over whether or not the United States should invade Iraq. “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all,” Maines told the London audience. "We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas." -snip- The whole incident is worth recounting because here we are, almost 13 years later, and the lead in the Republican primary race, Donald...

Today, conservative talk radio host, Blaze TV host, NRA star, author of Hands Off My Gun, Tea Party activist, and general defender of freedom and liberty Dana Loesch has taken a huge step in the fight being brought to bear against Donald Trump's bid for the GOP nomination. Dana has put together the most comprehensive and authoritative take-down of every myth Donald Trump fans swallow, believe, and perpetuate online and offline that can possibly be constructed, in a blog post and the video below. ... Take yourself seriously. Pay attention to this. It's important. It's the truth. Blog Post: http://danaloeschradio.com/how-i-came-to-my-opinion-on-donald-trump...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Salon.com -- Salon magazine, left-wing extraordinaire -- headline: "Hillary Clinton Just Cannot Win: Democrats Need to Accept That Only Bernie Sanders Can Defeat the GOP." Salon is -- I don't know -- demanding, advocating, editorializing that Hillary get out of the race. They are suggesting that she surrender. She can't win. She can't beat Trump or Cruz or whoever. Only Bernie Sanders can. Salon.com: Wacko, leftist, extreme radicals to you and me; mainstream Democrat thought to them. I'm going to have to make a note because I'm not going to have time to develop this today. But,...

Ted Cruz has pinned his hopes on a big showing in the South. He could still do it, but it's far from certain It's taken a while for the chattering classes to come around to the idea that Donald Trump may actually pull this thing off. It's hard to blame them. It's as if we all went to sleep one night and woke up in an alternate universe. But they do seem to have accepted it. He came close to winning Iowa, a notoriously buttoned up electorate, and won decisively in New Hampshire. All the polling going forward looks good....

.... Steinem’s polished humanitarian mask had slipped, revealing the mummified fascist within. I’m sure that my delight was shared by other dissident feminists everywhere. Never before has the general public, here or abroad, more clearly seen the arrogance and amoral manipulativeness of the power elite who hijacked and stunted second-wave feminism ....

Trump's crafty move on Iraq: His war comments allow conservatives to move past the Bush years while saving face Most of Saturday night's Republican debate held by CBS in South Carolina was more of the same stuff we've seen in the previous eight debates, with Donald Trump insulting people and lots competitive right-wing posturing. But there was one moment that was unexpected, when Trump went after Jeb Bush by attacking his brother, former President George W. Bush. Trump accused the former president of lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and called the war "a big, fat mistake." Trump...

Trump won in dominant fashion and Cruz met expectations as Rubio fell completely apart. This is scary stuff. I've been writing about the Donald Trump phenomenon several times a week for seven months now. As his candidacy evolved from a bizarre spectacle to a serious campaign, it's become clear that this is a pivotal moment in American politics. It's not just that we have a shocking demagogue or a profane performer topping the polls in the Republican presidential race. It's the alarming notion that a crude authoritarian white nationalist is appealing to a very large section of the American people....