Free Republic

Starting Saturday at 10 a.m. ET, the Iowa Freedom Summit will be livestreamed in its entirety. Speakers include: Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT), former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR), former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Steve King (R-IA), real estate mogul Donald Trump, former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and many others.

The Donald doesn’t think much of Mitt or Jeb. Donald Trump came out guns blazing at a high-profile GOP event in Iowa on Saturday — blasting possible presidential contenders Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush. “It can’t be Mitt, because Mitt ran and failed. He failed,” Trump bellowed, drawing cheers from the riled-up audience at the Freedom Summit. “He choked. He had that election won.” Trump was equally blunt in assessing former President George W. Bush’s younger brother. “You can’t have Bush,” Trump said. “The last thing we need is another Bush.”

In an effort to improve air quality across Utah during the winter season, the Utah Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has proposed a seasonal wood burn ban, much to the chagrin of many locals. The ban would eliminate solid fuel burning in fireplaces and wood/coal stoves from Nov. 1 to March 15, except for homeowners whose homes are heated solely by wood. The proposal comes after Gov. Gary Herbert requested the the Air Quality Board explore options for improving wintertime air quality along Utah's Wasatch Front and Cache Valley. The region suffers from winter temperature inversions, which occur when a...

As Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney battle behind the scenes for big money donors, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz is working to portray himself as the presidential candidate of the conservative base. Speaking to tea partiers in South Carolina over the weekend, Cruz cautioned that Republicans will lose the White House in 2016 if the nominee is insufficiently conservative. “If we nominate a candidate in that mold, the same people who stayed home in 2008 and 2012 will stay home in 2016 and the Democrats will win again,” Cruz told the crowd. His comments come as the Texas senator —...

If you're not familiar with the following website, you need to. These guys have systematically all of the data concerning the delegates and nomination process for the parties and how delegates are selected, what counts, and what doesn't count. I've reviewed the list and am currently working on an IA projection map of the caucus and potential vote but waiting until the straw poll when I can start filling in candidates. Yet, when I review the total states, I find it difficult to see how the Establishment loses if they are unopposed by other Establishment candidates. Red States for the...

There are now 51 confirmed cases of the highly contagious virus across California, three other states and Mexico, and the Orange County Health Care Agency said the reports of new cases “indicate the measles outbreak will continue to spread.” Health officials had hoped to contain the outbreak to Disneyland visitors who were at the park between Dec. 17 and 20, when the virus spread from perhaps a single infected person or an ill family. But Orange County is now reporting six new cases of measles involving people who did not visit the Anaheim attraction during that period. State officials said...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush appears poised for a presidential run and is currently leading the polls among potential Republican candidates for 2016, but the comments he made in 1994 during his first run for Florida’s highest office may come back to haunt him.The Associated Press reports that Bush described himself then as a “head-banging conservative” and used fiery rhetoric — such as claiming he would do “probably nothing” for African-Americans if he became governor — in his ultimately unsuccessful bid. Bush made that statement in response to a question on what he would for African-Americans if elected to office.“It’s time...

A former Utah high school teacher had sex with an underage student after she was arrested in October 2013 in another sex abuse case involving that boy and two others, prosecutors said this week. Brianne Altice, 35, was arrested again Wednesday on four new sex abuse charges and released from jail after posting $10,000 bail, court documents say.

Republican lawmakers closed ranks Sunday behind the No. 3 House GOP leader, Steve Scalise, as the party aimed to move past the controversy over his speech 12 years ago to a white supremacist group. Scalise has said the speech was a mistake he now regrets, and party leaders, including House Speaker John Boehner, have backed him. Several incoming rank-and-file lawmakers added their support Sunday, including Utah’s Mia Love, the first black female Republican elected to the House. …

The repeal of ObamaCare is the priority of the Republican party, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said on Sunday. “There will be a vote on repeal. The president, in the White House, will veto that,” he said of the symbolic gesture offered by GOP lawmakers still unsatisfied with the healthcare legislation. However, Barrasso told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” that there would also be other bills that strike at other parts of the Affordable Care Act – some of which have gained bipartisan support – including a repeal of the medical device tax and the employer mandate. There is...

I told you last night, there was only one way for this year to end on Hot Air. May one word ring in your ears as the ball drops, my friends: Romneymentum.Hopefully you’re all already liquored up sufficiently to dull the pain. “I know exactly what Mitt’s going to do,” [Ken] Gardner, a real estate developer who helped bring Romney to Utah to lead the 2002 Winter Olympics, told the Deseret News. “I think over the next few months, a lot of things will happen.”…“If it’s Ted Cruz that’s the candidate, he’s in. If it’s Jeb Bush, he’s probably not,”...

The best news is the straightforward fact that in 2013 the fewest number of women in Utah had abortions than at any time since 1977. These encouraging results came about even though the number of women in their childbearing years has doubled in the intervening 36 years. Utah Department of Health’s Maternal and Infant Health Program reported that 2,893 women had abortions last year–only 4.6 abortions in every 1,000 women. While generally a confirmation of longstanding trends, the results also raise some intriguing questions. Among other pro-life provisions on the books, in 2012 Utah was the first state in the...

Since forming a presidential exploratory committee earlier this month, Jeb Bush is being considered a serious Republican candidate for president. But as George Will astutely pointed out last week, Bush has two significant hurdles; his support for Common Core and immigration reform. Will correctly points out that his support for the latter is far more nuanced than people understand. Bush does not advocate for more immigration through family reunification, which is the agenda of radical immigration activists, but instead for meeting employment needs, and he supports a path to legal status instead of citizenship. However, his support for Common Core...

On Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Daily Beast contributor Kristen Soltis Anderson made an amazing statement. She said Republicans “understand that they need to start cultivating new and fresh talent.” Fascinating. Because the GOP has been cultivating new and fresh talent for years now and is — finally — poised to look to a whole new generation of Republican leaders, quite possibly starting with the 2017 occupant of the White House. The past few election cycles have been grim. The Republican Party went with Sen. John McCain because, well, it was his turn (just like in 1996 with Sen. Bob...

Many readers are scratching their heads over my endorsement of Ron Paul last week. One writes: Let me add a few more reasons to vote for Ron Paul: If you want all federal student aid eliminated, vote Paul. If you want the Department of Energy, Commerce, Interior, Education and Housing & Urban Development eliminated, vote Paul. If you want the department of Transportation Security Administration eliminated (meaning security is the sole responsibility of private property owners), vote Paul. You can't just ignore Paul's "nuttier policy proposals". These proposals are Paul. If you endorse Ron Paul, you're endorsing his proposals. There...

In a new poll of likely Republican primary voters nationwide by Zogby Analytics, 2012 GOP nominee Romney leads the pack with 14%, followed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush (12%), Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (10%), New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (8%), former Arkansas Governor and now Fox News Host Mike Huckabee (7%), Florida Senator Marco Rubio (7%), Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (5%), Rep. and former Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan (4%), Texas Governor Rick Perry (4%), Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (3%), Texas Senator Ted Cruz (3%), South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (2%), former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum (1%), and both...

s Jon Huntsman headed the way of Charlie Crist? When the 2016 Dem convention rolls around, will we see the also-ran GOP presidential nomination-seeker on the podium, seconding Hillary's nomination? You've got to wonder after Huntsman's toadying performance today as he made the MSNBC rounds. After appearing on Morning Joe earlier, Huntsman turned up on Andrea Mitchell's show. Mitchell posed a laughably-loaded question, bashing Mitt Romney's response to the Obama administration's handling of the embassy attacks. The haughty Huntsman was only too happy to play the useful idiot, concurring that there was "a lot to the criticism" and ripping Romney...

To think, we’ve spent two years believing it was Romney that had the nastiest, most relentless seek-and-destroy oppo operation on the GOP side. Now I feel like Frank Drebin discovering the missing evidence in the Kelner case. My god — he was innocent. If you believe the sources in “Double Down,” Team Huntsman feeding a mega-smear of Romney to Harry Reid was the tip of the iceberg. 1994, his wife Cheri left [Mitch] Daniels for a married man, but then the couple reconciled and remarried. “In the years since, she had never spoken publicly about the turmoil, and Mitch had...

Was Bill Kristol kidding—just throwing a sop to the not-inconsiderable ego of his host—or could he have been serious? On today's Morning Joe, unveiling his line-up of the nine Republicans he sees running for president in 2016, Kristol included none other than Joe Scarborough himself. But in an unkind cut to someone prospectively facing the famously conservative GOP primary electorate, Kristol described Scarborough as "filling the Huntsman lane" and representing a "Morning Joe conservatism." Ouch! As interesting as were Kristol's nine [which included Sarah Palin] were the names he left off his list, including Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio. View...

Last week Jon Huntsman encouraged a little speculation when he said he was "open" to running for the presidency again. After his last showing — in which he didn't even come close to winning a single state in the Republican primary — this announcement did not come with the same breathless fanfare as his last one. Still, I think he should go for it. My advice: Get petty and vindictive. In the last election cycle I was assigned to profile Huntsman, and I thought I would stick a few pins in him. I wanted to dislike him, in some way....