Free Republic

“… Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.” – Martin Niemoller, anti-Nazi pastor Donald Trump set off a firestorm with his recent remarks about Mexico. Good, he’s hit a nerve. At his campaign kickoff announcement at Trump Towers, Trump said, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you (gesturing to audience member), they’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”...

Senator Lindsey Graham has made his position clear in the past that he would lead America to a more direct form of engagement with ISIS should he become president in 2016. During an election event in Des Moines, Iowa on Friday, he promised his attendees that he would say “exactly what I believe” on the issues, which was soon followed by an opportunity to prove it. While Graham said at the event that he’s not shy when it comes to voicing his disagreement, he has not yet suggested that the way to deal with Islamic terror extremists is by prohibiting...

Next in line to denounce Donald Trump? Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). Trump has been the subject of intense criticism from both parties after declaring several weeks ago that Mexican immigrants are "rapists" and drug-runners. On Saturday, Graham told Business Insider that Trump was using needlessly divisive, un-presidential rhetoric. "He's running to be president of all of us," Graham said. "It takes a level of maturity and thoughtfulness and demeanor that's not being exhibited here." The Senator also made several cracks about recent decisions by businesses like NBC and NASCAR to cut ties with the real estate mogul. "As a...

WEST COLUMBIA, S.C. — Nearly two weeks after canceling a campaign event scheduled the morning after the deadly attack on a South Carolina church, Jeb Bush on Monday called the Confederate battle flag a “racist” symbol, reflecting the new Republican normal in a Southern primary state vastly altered by the racially motivated killings. The flag was one of “the symbols that have divided the South in many ways, the symbols that were used in most recent modern history, perhaps not at the beginning of the time, but the symbols were racist,” Mr. Bush told an interracial crowd of about 200...

Today we are here in a moment of unity in our state without ill will to say it is time to remove the flag from our capitol grounds,” said Haley, who is the state’s first non-white governor. WASHINGTON – Growing outrage against a slavery-era Confederate flag, artfully channeled by South Carolina’s governor Nikki Haley, nee Nimrata Randhawa, following last week’s racist-terrorist attack in Charleston, has pitch-forked the Indian-American politician into being talked up as a potential Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2016. The flag, seen by many as a symbol of the slavery-supporting confederate states that were defeated in the American...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Sen. Lindsey Graham told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd that the Republican party needs to finally hang it up when it comes to keeping a proposal for a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in their party platform, but that he made it clear they're not going to let it go as a wedge issue any time soon. As long as they can keep the religious right whipped into a frenzy over whether their "liberties" are being violated by not being free to discriminate against a group of people they don't like, they're going to keep going after those...

The media is really covering itself in glory these days. Just yesterday the Washington Post well full on racist against Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and today The Hill ran with this nonsense from an obvious black racist who clearly hasn’t been able to comprehend what’s gone on the past few days. It’s the capture-the-flag you never saw coming.In a shrewdly mapped play, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s (R) call to remove the flapping Confederate rebel jack from state capitol grounds suddenly prompted an entire party to reverse course on the issue. And after years of happily whistling political Dixie as...

Lee Bright, a local lawmaker who is serving as the South Carolina co-chair for the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), compared the calls to remove the Confederate flag from the capitol building in his home state to a "Stalinist purge." According to a spokesperson for Cruz, those comments don't conflict with the candidate's position on the issue. "What Senator Cruz has said is that this is an issue for the state of South Carolina and South Carolinians to sort out and I think that's what you're watching happen," Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler said in a conversation with...

"We are not going to allow this symbol to divide us any longer," South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) said Monday afternoon, in a televised address to the nation, of the soon-to-be-retired Confederate flag that has flown on the state capitol grounds for decades. And so long as GOP state legislators follow their governor and their party, after 150 years, South Carolina will no longer endorse the Confederate battle flag, but will consign it to a museum to recognize, as Haley emphasized in her address, its place in the state's history.

Don’t count Lindsey Graham among the Republican Presidential hopefuls who think that mass shooting in Charleston was about something other than race. He spoke out this weekend to address the murders, and his statement differs sharply from what some of his colleagues are saying. Unlike Rick Santorum and Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham isn’t pretending the murders were about religion or insisting that we can’t tell yet what motivated the attack. Instead, Graham openly recognizes that this attack was racially motivated — and says that America has a long way to go in the racial relations department. “There can be no...

Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the funding arm of the political network backed by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, wants a lot more hard information from the crowded field of presidential contenders before deciding what to do with its considerable resources. The group is pressing every 2016 candidate to detail on the record their plans for economic growth, deficit reduction, entitlement reform, criminal justice and even foreign policy. The tax-exempt entity, a key node in a constellation of conservative entities that aims to spend $889 million before the next White House election, distributed a detailed survey Thursday to...

Ted Cruz said Saturday that the Confederate flag flying in front of their statehouse is “a question for South Carolina” to decide. He is not alone. Marco Rubio said the same: “This is an issue that they should debate and work through and not have a bunch of outsiders going in and telling them what to do.” Scott Walker and Carly Fiorina also feel it is an issue for South Carolina alone to decide. Funny. I seem to recall South Carolina trying to decide that issue in 1861, when on April 12 they opened fire on Fort Sumter, inaugurating the...

The fatal shootings this week at a historic black church in South Carolina has sparked a feud between the presidential campaigns of Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton. Clinton suggested Thursday that Trump’s comments about Mexicans, during his campaign announcement speech three days earlier, could incite racial hatred like that which led to white male Dylann Roof on Wednesday evening allegedly killing nine black people attending a bible study inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Charleston, S.C. “The people who do this kind of dastardly, horrible act are a very small percentage,” Clinton said in Nevada on...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) When it comes to dealing with the Confederate flag, Jeb Bush isn't leaving much room for interpretation in his stance on the issue. The former governor recalled Saturday how he ordered the removal of the flag from Florida state grounds in 2001, adding that he believes South Carolina will do "the right thing" as the state decides what to do about the controversial symbol that flies at the capitol in Columbia. His comments come as 2016 presidential candidates face questions over how to handle the racially sensitive debate that follows the massacre of nine African-American parishioners by a white...

JOHNSTON, Iowa – Sen. Ted Cruz says whether or not South Carolina removes the Confederate flag from a state house memorial is an issue for the state to decide and that he sees “both sides” of the debate. In an interview with The Washington Post on Saturday, Cruz (R-Tex.) said that he understands why people equate the flag with both racial oppression and historical traditions. “I understand the passions that this debate evokes on both sides,” the GOP presidential hopeful said. “Both those who see a history of racial oppression and a history of slavery, which is the original sin...

Sen. Ted Cruz outlined how he would fix Social Security, striking a balance between candidates who propose immediate cuts and those who wish to leave it mostly in place.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Cruz said he’d keep benefits the same for seniors and those close to retirement in a June 4 interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto. For everyone else, he’d propose gradually increasing the retirement age, limiting the increase in benefits to the inflation rate and allowing workers to keep some of their tax payment in a private account. Cruz makes strong impression on conservative non-profit The Council for National Policy–a secretive, conservative non-profit...

America is in deep trouble. And it’s all Sean Hannity’s fault. So says newly minted GOP presidential candidate and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. Said Senator Graham in an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd, as reported here in the Washington Examiner. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, thinks he knows why the country is increasingly divided on ideological lines, and it has a lot to do with MSNBC and Fox News. In an interview Tuesday with NBC, Graham said the current media environment makes it difficult for lawmakers to accomplish anything. He envisioned what...

GREENVILLE, S.C. — If Chris Christie runs for president, there's little doubt people will see plenty of the town halls the New Jersey governor is known for. That anything-goes format is his comfort zone, and voters tend to like it. Christie spent hours answering questions at two town hall-style events during the past week in South Carolina — one planned, the other an impromptu session in the back room of a bar. He'll be doing the same in Iowa in the days ahead....

* Iowa Senator Joni Ernst and co. are taking off from a Harley-Davidson dealership this morning in Des Moines for a 39 mile ride to Boone * Ride honoring the nation's veterans attracted only one candidate for the White House: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker * Perry will also ride with a group of veterans to Ernst's first annual 'Roast and Ride' but he's starting in Perry, Iowa * Will keep the spotlight on Perry, who is making the journey with Taya Kyle, wife of 'American Sniper,' and Marcus Luttrell, the 'Lone Survivor' * A half a dozen current and presumed...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) took a shot at former Gov. Jeb Bush's (R) prospects of clinching the 2016 Republican nomination for president on Thursday by wondering (rhetorically) if Bush could win any of the three crucial early primary states —New Hampshire, South Carolina, or Iowa. "If you look historically since World War II no one has ever won the nomination without winning at least one of those first three," Cruz said Thursday afternoon in an interview with Neil Cavuto on Fox News. "That has certainly been history. I think it's an interesting challenge for a number of other of these...