Free Republic

The field for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination is as flat as any in modern memory—pretty remarkable for a party that usually has a fight but almost invariably ends up nominating whoever's turn it is. While nomination trial-heat polling tells us very little this early, there are some poll questions that are better measurements of at least where these candidates are starting out, before the campaigning, debates, and advertising begin in earnest.An April 26 to April 30 NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll asked Republican primary voters whether they could or could not see themselves voting for each of 10 different...

The former governor of Florida, John (or as he prefers to be called, Juan) Ellis Bush, doesn't appear to have a lot of support among Republicans, as opposed to Republicans in Name Only (RINOs), who absolutely adore him. But Juan isn't sweating it. He's rolling in dough, and more importantly, he's rolling in opponents. Have you ever heard of a "straw" candidate? When you have a weak front-runner that can't reach 50 percent, often a third, or a fourth, or even a fifth candidate suddenly jumps into the race. If he has a name similar to that of the strongest...

Why Republican candidates are scrambling to court Jeff Duncan, a one-time Clemson benchwarmer and arguably the most right-wing member of the House. Welcome to the Jeff Duncan primary. The what? Exactly. If you’ve never heard of Rep. Jeff Duncan, you’re not alone. The former banker and auctioneer isn’t well known outside his conservative South Carolina district. But Republicans running for president know Duncan as a man who is quietly emerging as an unlikely yet crucial figure in the process to pick the Republican nominee for 2016. In South Carolina this past weekend, more than a dozen Republicans from across the...

The GOP presidential primary is on course to be flooded with super PAC money. But in 2016, candidates will need more than a little dough to win over voters.The GOP could have a dozen deep-pocketed presidential contenders, and they'll all learn next year that when it comes to actual votes, that extra money doesn't buy what it used to. Already, super PACs are arming second- and third-tier candidates with tens of millions of dollars while the supposed GOP front-runner, Jeb Bush, promises a record-setting haul. This combined fundraising guarantees that by the time Republicans have picked their nominee in summer...

Greenville, S.C. — Senator Marco Rubio’s presidential-campaign strategy assumes that he can overcome financial disadvantages by converting voters who see him in person. At the South Carolina Freedom Summit on Saturday, that didn’t happen. “Rubio’s was one of the speeches that was not the best. His was not the worst, either, but, just kind of meh compared to anybody else,” says Hannah Hill, a tea-party activist from nearby Anderson County. “He’s good by himself,” Cheryl Cuthrell, a Greenville County Republican activist who supports Senator Ted Cruz, says of Rubio. “But when you put him up to someone who just goes...

One of the Senate’s leading liberals is borrowing a page from the playbook of Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is pushing to strike out language from the “cromnibus” spending bill unveiled Tuesday that would roll back restrictions on “swaps” transactions included in the 2010 financial regulatory overhaul known as Dodd-Frank. Repealing the “push-out” provision would mean that certain derivatives could again be held in bank units with federal deposit insurance. Using a strategy sometimes employed by Cruz for entirely different policy reasons, Warren said that with the $1.013 trillion spending package first being considered by the...

One of the newly announced South Carolina co-chairs for Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-TX) presidential campaign previously argued that the Utah judge who overturned the state's gay marriage ban should be impeached. That co-chair is state Sen. Lee Bright (R), who challenged Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in the 2014 Republican primary. Bright, in 2014, griped about federal judges being "absolutely out of control on so many different fronts" and went on to suggest that U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby, the judge who struck down Utah's ban on same-sex marriage, should be impeached. In April, Cruz was hosted by a pair of...

Today's Ted Cruz news: "On a day of dueling presidential announcements, conservative neurosurgeon Ben Carson was the clear winner in Facebook engagement, driving nearly three times the traffic of former Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina. ... In relation to other GOP contenders, both fall on the lower end of engagement. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio got about 1.3 million interactions from 695,000 people, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul got about 1.9 million interactions from 865,000 people, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz came out on top with 5.5 million interactions generated by 2.1 million people." Read more from CBS News. Cruz has assembled his...

Gather together 1,000 S.C. Republicans in a room these days, and a few 2016 presidential prospects will come calling. The S.C. GOP’s annual Silver Elephant fundraising dinner on Friday attracted three out-of-state White House hopefuls and a fourth homegrown prospect who made their pitches to hardcore party supporters. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz started his speech by bashing Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. He said she appointed a director of email security – a joke about her use of a private computer server while she was U.S. Secretary of State. “I’m pretty sure Saudi Arabia is not paying for the speakers tonight,”...

The money fueling Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign for president comes in both trickles and torrents. And the sources of much of it are murky. A hedge fund billionaire is reported to have poured $30 million into the cause isn’t talking. So it’s unclear why he picked Cruz and how much he’s willing to spend to keep the Texas Republican’s hopes alive as the race plays out. Nor will Cruz identify supporters who’ve agreed to raise up to $500,000 from their networks of friends and associates — bundlers who’ll be rewarded with special access to the candidate in coming months. “Some...

2016 presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R) spoke to a sold-out Newberry Hall during an Aiken Republican Club luncheon April 4. After the luncheon, The Bell Ringer interviewed Cruz about his views on education, including his wish to shut down the Department of Education. “It is because education is so important that it shouldn’t be governed by unelected bureaucrats in Washington, that it should be instead at the state or local level,” Cruz said. “And what we’ve seen right now is the Department of Education has grown into a bloated bureaucracy where what’s happening is they’re putting red tape, they’re...

Ten months from now, on February 13, 2016, all eyes will be on South Carolina, which will host the first-in-the-South Republican presidential primary. The candidates are already assembling on-the-ground operations in the state, hoping of course, that their campaigns will still be viable after the Iowa caucuses, the New Hampshire primary and contests in the West and Midwest. Here’s an early look at how the Palmetto State campaign organizations are taking shape for the three announced Republican candidates – Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio – as well as the state’s favorite son, Lindsey Graham. Ted Cruz, a freshman...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/politics/2015/04/18/ted-cruz-scott-walker-jeb-bush/25987009/

If Jeb Bush doesn’t win any of the first four GOP contests — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — does that eliminate him from the Republican race? Or does he have the staying power to survive those losses? If Texas Sen. Ted Cruz finishes first in the Iowa caucuses, does that all but eliminate hopefuls such as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Ben Carson from the race? If Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul finishes fourth in Iowa (which would be worse than his father’s third-place showing in the caucuses...

I just love it when a Republican candidate who is currently serving in Congress explains why Republican policies fail. Lindsey Graham did it twice on CNN's State of the Union this morning. First, when asked about Ted Cruz, Graham criticized his decision to shut down the government over Obamacare, saying it "hurt our party." He also intimated that Cruz doesn't have the temperament or experience to bring about consensus on policy issues. He begins by blaming Hillary for everything that's wrong in the Middle East, as though she was a puppetmaster while serving as Secretary of State. When he gets...

Hillary launches her campaign on Sunday – and, some Dems say, it’s about damn time.At long last, the campaign has a candidate. After playing one of the more tedious games of cat and mouse in recent American political history, Hillary Clinton stands now ready to admit that she is what she has been for the last two years: an actual contender for the Democratic nomination for president. The announcement comes as Democrats in DC have fretted that without an organized infrastructure Clinton has been a glutton for Republican attacks, and ill-equipped to respond to the news of the moment, whether...

U.S. Senator Rand Paul is running for president … in fact, he announces his candidacy next week in Louisville, Kentucky. From there he travels to early voting Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina – including a big fundraiser in the Palmetto State the day after he announces. As we write this, money is being collected. Speeches are being vetted. He’s 100 percent in … and not only that, Paul is one of the few candidates in the race with (we believe) a path to victory. And one of the few candidates (we believe) to be worthy of real consideration. Is...

The early bird is getting the worm when it comes to the 2016 Presidential race, as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is reaping the benefits of being the first to officially enter the race. Recent public polling shows a surge of support for Cruz among Republican primary voters. As Breitbart News reported, Cruz launched his campaign with a speech on March 23rd at Liberty University that invited his audience to imagine a future for our country where millions of “courageous conservatives” stood up to “reclaim the promise of America.” The message seems to be hitting home with Cruz’s conservative base, concerned...

Voters in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania question the former secretary of state’s trustworthiness and honesty, according to a new Quinnipiac University survey taken after the controversy surrounding Clinton’s use of a private email server for government communications. Her favorability ratings are down in all three states. Pennsylvania, a key state that has been elusive for Republicans recently, could be competitive this cycle, with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul narrowly topping Clinton, 45 percent-44 percent. Clinton beats Bush by six percentage points, Walker by five and Rubio by four in the Keystone State.

GOP: 'Even Nixon Didn't Destroy the Tapes' 1MAR 28, 2015 • BY DANIEL HALPER Hillary Clinton is worse than Richard Nixon, says the Republican National Committee. "Even Nixon didn't destroy the tapes," RNC chair Reince Priebus says in a statement in response to reports that Hillary Clinton wiped her email server clean. "It's imperative an independent third party review the server immediately. Unless Mrs. Clinton went to extreme lengths to wipe this server, there are ways to recover this data. "Unfortunately it appears Clinton went above and beyond to eliminate email traffic as Secretary of State. There isn’t a separate...