Free Republic

It was not much more than a week ago that Republican insiders were having animated public discussions about how Donald Trump could be deprived the GOP nomination. The consensus was straightforward. Unlike the consensus a few weeks earlier--that Kasich and Cruz needed to drop out of the race to clear the field for a Trump-Rubio death match--the new consensus was that that they should all stay in the race. This time, the goal was not finding someone who could beat Trump to the 1,237 delegates needed for a first ballot victory in Cleveland in July, but instead simply to deny...

In a press availability last night in Chicago, Ted Cruz laid it all out there. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) We need to learn to have disagreements without being disagreeable. To have disagreements while respecting human beings on the other side. Earlier today over thirty people were arrested at one rally. And then tonight, as violence broke out, the rally was canceled all together. Now, the responsibility for that lies with protesters who took violence into their own hands. But in any campaign responsibility starts at the top. Any candidate who is responsible for the culture of the campaign. And when you have a...

In theory, Ted Cruz's best states are behind him. But at the Detroit debate, Cruz was clearly the class of the field and it's clear that no one should count him out as the delegate race moves into its next phase. The delegate math is complicated, but the basic gist goes something like this: Donald Trump has a commanding lead at the moment, but it is not a given that he will reach the 1,237 threshold he needs to clinch a majority. Simply put, Trump has failed to break through the ceiling of support he's held since New Hampshire even...

The results of last night's Super Tuesday primary elections would have, in a normal Republican Primary cycle, made Donald Trump the presumptive Republican nominee for President and most certainly driven the also-rans, Dr. Ben Carson and Ohio Governor John Kasich from the race. But in case you hadn't noticed, this isn't a normal Republican Primary election cycle. Normally in Republican politics the stronger a candidate for the nomination gets the more the self-interested powerbrokers in the professional political class come around to supporting him. However, this year the GOP appears to be fracturing into three segments: the "vote for Trump...

BATON ROUGE - After a poor showing in the Super Tuesday primaries, Marco Rubio quietly canceled his plans for a Baton Rouge event scheduled for Friday. Individuals who signed up for tickets to see Rubio received an email Wednesday that the event was canceled. "In order to use Marco's time as efficiently as possible before Saturday's contests, Marco will not be making a stop in Louisiana Friday night," the email read. Rubio originally announced he would visit the capital city on Feb. 29. The event was planned for 5:45 p.m. at North Boulevard Town Square. The Rubio campaign's Eventbrite page...

Yep, says Philip Klein. I hope he's right, but I'm not sure the takeaway from a blowout win for Trump in New Hampshire is that it's now Ted Cruz's race to lose. Though Trump's victory in New Hampshire was no doubt impressive, the electorate of independent voters and super high turnout was tailor-made for him, whereas Cruz didn't put substantial effort into winning the state -- where very conservative candidates don't typically do as well. He is currently in position to win third here, with votes still outstanding. As the race moves to South Carolina, however, Cruz has a ground...

New York businessman Donald Trump won Republican primaries Tuesday from the Deep South to New England, but Texas Sen. Ted Cruz took his home state and Oklahoma, ensuring that the race for the GOP nomination will stretch into the spring...

A new CNN/ORC national poll (full pdf below) is being highlighted in the media discussion based on the top-line results: Donald Trump 49% ! However, that’s not the real headline in the data. The real lead story should be the damage Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have done to themselves as they continue a scorched-earth campaign. The first signals of a backlash appeared over the weekend’s polling when it became clear Senator Rubio and Senator Cruz where losing support at an exponential rate the longer they continued to make unfounded accusations. Donald Trump and Ben Carson are benefactors of the...

Link only: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-12-22/why-trump-and-cruz-aren-t-forbes-or-cain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vExmqVkv1ds

Bangor Daily News ‏@bangordailynews 1h1 hour ago BREAKING: LePage, Christie endorse @realDonaldTrump for president http://bdn.to/xzxr #mepolitics Michael Shepherd ‏@mikeshepherdME 2h2 hours ago LePage calls Rubio and Cruz "two of the people who create the gridlock" in Washington. #mepolitics 23 retweets 14 likes

At an unhinged moment in the 2016 presidential primary season, the Republican candidates turned in a fine set of unhinged performances at Thursday night's critical debate. Let's begin with Donald Trump, far and away the strongest contender, be it in Ted Cruz's backyard or Marco Rubio's home state. For the first time, he met his rhetorical match in a surprisingly vitriolic Rubio. The Florida senator devoted himself to going shout-for-shout with Trump, dragging out old scandals and unseemly details that put the mogul's present-day promises in an unflattering light. But even when Trump visibly ground his gears, he stayed characteristically...

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham thinks his party has gone "bats---" crazy, and joked Thursday that it's possible to get away with murdering Ted Cruz if it happened in the Senate. "If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you," the former presidential candidate said at the Washington Press Club Foundation's 72nd Congressional Dinner, referencing the Texas senator's unpopular reputation on Capitol Hill. CNN has reached out to Cruz's presidential campaign for comment. While Graham teased Democrats and other politicians in the room -- at one...

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are set to huddle in private in New York City on Wednesday, but Trump claims that he’s not sure why he even agreed to the meeting. “I don’t know why I’m meeting him, to be honest, but I do have respect for him,” the real estate mogul said of his fellow White House hopeful during an MSNBC interview Wednesday. “I respect the fact that … he came out and he came out very strongly and agreed with what I said on illegal immigration. And he came out very strongly and he came out early, and...

The Miami Young Republicans, one of the more active GOP groups in South Florida, gathered Tuesday night for a straw presidential poll ahead of Florida's March 15 Florida primary. Though the organization is a Marco Rubio bastion -- it's run by Jessica Fernandez, a Rubio Miami-Dade County campaign chairwoman -- Ted Cruz supporters made sure to show up. The night ended with a Rubio-Cruz tie...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has boosted his lead over GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump in a new survey of Texas primary voters. The Dixie Strategies Poll taken Monday, and released Wednesday, shows Cruz ahead of the real estate billionaire by more than 8 percentage points statewide. At the end of January, Cruz was leading by 5 percentage points. Here's the latest breakdown: Cruz: 33 percent Trump: 25 percent Florida Sen. Marco Rubio: 15 percent Ohio Gov. John Kasich: 8 percent Retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson: 6 percent Undecided: 13 percent....

Republican campaign veteran Ed Rollins calls Trump an "asset" to the party who is "energizing voters who haven't traditionally voted." However, Rollins said, Trump needs to define what he means when he calls himself a "commonsense conservative." "I think he carries every state right today that Republicans have been traditionally carrying, which is what Romney did," Rollins aid on FOX News this morning. "He probably puts Michigan in play, which we haven't in a long, long time. Certainly Ohio is the key. Again, he's ahead of a very popular governor we see in the polls. My sense is that Donald...

This is already the most fascinating Republican presidential primary campaign since the fabled Ford-Reagan fight of 1976, But at the moment it looks like it won't turn out as well from the establishment's perspective. Back then, the establishment managed to put their candidate over the top against his right-wing challenger. That's not likely to happen this year. That's because the Ford-Reagan race was essentially a two-man race. But the Trump-Rubio-Cruz race has three men in it. One is likely to keep getting around a third of the vote while the other two split up most of the remainder. The hope...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.kens5.com/story/news/2016/02/23/ted-cruz-marco-rubio-super-tuesday-states-fundraising/80802330/

Progressives angry about the extensive amount of free, sympathetic coverage Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gets on Fox News may have found an unlikely ally in former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. During Monday's episode of Fox & Friends, Gingrich took the hosts to task for giving Trump a massive platform to spread his views -- likely referring to the network's wall-to-wall coverage of his campaign as well as Fox & Friends' regularly scheduled Monday segments featuring Trump as a pundit, which ran from 2011 to 2015. "This time the billionaire is spending the least amount of money and running...