Free Republic

Perhaps nobody on the planet knows more about intelligence protocol than Edward Snowden. If Snowden says it's "completely ridiculous" to believe that Clinton's emails were safe, then yes, it's fair to include his viewpoint in any critique of Hillary Clinton's latest controversy. In addition, since I believe Senator Bernie Sanders is desperately needed at this point in U.S. history, and electing Clinton or a Republican would essentially be nominating the same president on war and foreign policy, it's important to address relevant analysis of the email controversy. There seems to be a bizarre paradigm of thought among some Democrats that...

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) - With two weeks to go until Iowans head to the polls in the first vote of the 2016 primary season, Republican front-runner Donald Trump ramped up his attacks against rival Ted Cruz on Friday, while Jeb Bush scored a key endorsement for his White House bid. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham announced he is backing Jeb Bush for the Republican presidential nomination, praising the former Florida governor's approach to national security. "I have concluded without any hesitation, any doubt, that Jeb Bush is worthy to be commander-in-chief on day one," Graham said Friday at a...

A U.S. Muslim woman who was ejected from a Donald Trump rally in South Carolina while engaging in a silent protest said on Saturday she wanted to make the Republican presidential candidate's backers recognize they are supporting "hateful rhetoric."

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/politics/2016/01/06/get-grahams-endorsement-presidential-candidate-must-challenge-trump-cruz/78361142/?from=global&sessionKey=&autologin=

The South will play a crucial role in the 2016 presidential contest, both in the nominating process and in the General Election. For the Republicans, Dixie's plethora of primaries come quickly after the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary and will probably determine the nominee. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton's strong support among African Americans in the Southern primaries should cement her already commanding lead for her party's nomination. And in the General Election, at least three Southern states are likely to be competitive and may well determine the outcome of the race for the White House. Until...

Armstrong Williams, a close confidant and business manager for Dr. Ben Carson, told Breitbart News exclusively on Friday that Carson is confident he will re-emerge as a formidable candidate, place top three in Iowa, and win South Carolina--and eventually win the GOP nomination in 2016. "He remains in control," Williams said in a phone interview. "He made the changes that were necessary to give him the best chance to surge again to place first, second or third in Iowa, to win South Carolina, and establish the necessary momentum to win the GOP nomination." Both Carson campaign manager Barry Bennett and...

Forty-five minutes late, Jeb Bush hurried onto the porch of a crowded barbecue restaurant where more than 100 people waited for the Republican presidential hopeful earlier this week. The former Florida governor - hoping to revive his struggling campaign and become the third Bush elected president - launched into a stump speech before taking questions at Hudson's Smokehouse, a favorite stop for GOP candidates. "Donald Trump's not going to get the nomination. He's not going to be president," Bush said of the GOP front-runner near the end of the hour, the crowd clapping and cheering in agreement. Bush's Wednesday visit...

HILTON HEAD, S.C. (Reuters) - Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump filled a hotel ballroom with over 2,000 people for a rally on Wednesday, attracting die-hard supporters as he has in other cities, but was dogged by a rival who is also very popular in South Carolina: Ted Cruz. A dozen people interviewed by Reuters said the Texas senator offered a strong alternative to the loud-mouthed New York businessman, though more than half still planned to vote for Trump. "If he doesn't drop out of the race, I'm definitely going to vote for him," Daniel Barrett, 48, said of Trump. When...

He’s the GOP’s strongest candidate, right? But what if he can’t win a single early primary? The Rubio problem no one is talking about—yet. Everybody I know, I mean everybody, thinks Marco Rubio is the strongest Republican candidate. Yes, there’s a debate about how strong. Some say he’d beat Hillary Clinton, some say that what with some of the extreme positions he’s taken so far in this race, he’d be hard-pressed to do much better than Mitt Romney’s 206 electoral votes plus maybe his own Florida. So there’s a debate about that. But there ain’t much debate that he’s the,...

Could Mitt Romney and John McCain turn out to be the hidden arrows in Marco Rubio's political quiver in New Hampshire?[continued]

Sen. Lindsey Graham admitted on the same day he dropped out of the 2016 presidential race that the more moderate wing of the Republican Party is a thing of the past. "What's happened here is sort of my lane of the party has collapsed," Graham said in an interview with CNN's Kate Bolduan, when asked why he isn't holding out until the South Carolina primary on February 20th. "At the end of the day, I'm not going to be competitive in my state if I'm not competitive outside my state," Graham said, noting that he was once a front-runner in...

Breitbart News has confirmed that Senator Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) will address the 2016 South Carolina Tea Party Coalition Convention on Saturday Jan 16 at 2:20pm. The convention, seen by analysts as “a seminal event” in the run-up to the state’s “first in the South” primary, runs daily from January 16th – 18th, from 8:30 AM to 6:00 PM. Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum are also scheduled to speak....

I haven’t seen anyone really go out on a limb yet and make predictions about the Republican primaries. So it's time to engage in some wildly premature political punditry. This, of course, is risky. There are so many variables. What happens if one candidate drops out and scrambles things? What is more, factors in the political universe - say, God forbid, another terrorist attack - can quickly swing public opinion. (Remember how Ben Carson’s numbers declined after the Paris attacks?) It is with all these caveats disclosed that I boldly present my picks. The good news is that these predictions...

He also calls the GOP frontrunner a "loser" and a "demagogue."EXETER, N.H. -- As he continues to find new ways to rip into Donald Trump over the Republican front-runner’s proposal to ban Muslims from traveling to the United States, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham may have finally unleashed the ultimate insult to denigrate his rival in the context of a GOP presidential primary. Graham, who has struggled to gain traction in his own long-shot White House bid, said that what makes America great is its religious tolerance, and that Trump’s plan undercuts outreach efforts to Muslim nations and communities in...

While Hillary Clinton talks about Donald Trump on the trail, her allies are going after the GOP contender Democrats see as the real competition — Ted Cruz. David Brock, one of Clinton’s most important allies and fundraisers, is preparing a campaign against the Texas conservative that will attack his character as well as his policy positions....

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Monday challenged Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to take a stand against Donald Trump's proposal to ban Muslim immigrants from entering the United States. When asked if he would support such a ban on Monday, Cruz replied, "No, that is not my policy," but did not criticize Trump, according to the Texas Tribune. "I believe the focus should focus on radical Islamic terrorism, and we need to be directly focused on threats to the United States," he continued. "We need a commander in chief that perceives what the threat is and that targets all of our...

While moderates languish in the polls, Ted Cruz and his ilk are doing just fine.It would be easy to dismiss Lindsey Graham as a sore loser even before the contest has been decided. In the Republican presidential campaign, his support has hovered between the negligible and the nonexistent. “I’m at 1 percent,” Graham quite honestly admitted to the Republican Jewish Coalition last Thursday. “The election is still long away. Help me stay in the race.” But it is precisely because Graham is doing so poorly that he offers some valuable insights on the outcome of a battle within the GOP...

Presidential candidate Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) took a bold step away from many in the pro-life camp Thursday when taking aim at his rival for the White House, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), over his allegedly extreme stance against abortion.The South Carolina senator indicated that taking a hardline pro-life stance, in essence, will preclude any presidential candidate from winning the 2016 election. “You can be pro-life and win an election, but if you’re going to tell a woman who’s been raped she has to carry the child of the rapist, you’re losing most Americans,” Graham argued. The 60-year-old GOP member took specific...

Lindsey Graham on Thursday delivered a scathing rebuke of Republican candidates — especially Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump — for alienating Hispanic and female voters with “hard-ass” policies and hateful rhetoric. “How many of you believe that we’re losing elections because we’re not hard-ass enough on immigration?” Graham asked during his speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington, D.C. A few people in the room clapped, and Graham responded: “Well, I don’t agree with you. I believe we are losing the Hispanic vote because they think we don’t like them.”(continued)

With Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s comments about immigration Sunday, the top two Republicans in Congress have now declared dead the prospects of an overhaul before the 2016 elections. In the aftermath of 2012, when Latinos made up 10 percent of the electorate and President Barack Obama was re-elected resoundingly, Republican lawmakers and strategists predicted the GOP’s White House ambitions were directly tied to the passage of comprehensive immigration legislation. Many of those voices haven’t changed their tune. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of the four “gang of eight” Republicans who successfully navigated an immigration overhaul through the Senate in 2013,...