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A number of prominent Republicans who bashed Donald Trump during the election campaign have now come out in support of the President-elect. Despite dozens within the party stating prior to election day that Trump was fit to be president, most of those critics seemingly fell in line behind their new leader on Wednesday. Some of Trump's most vocal opponents were among the Republicans to publicly back him in the wake of his stunning triumph - including many who had been beaten to the presidential nomination by the Donald.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is "apoplectic" over Donald Trump's refusal to back House Speaker Paul Ryan or Sen. John McCain, a top Republican source said. Priebus called several Trump staffers, including campaign manager Paul Manafort, to express his "extreme displeasure" with Trump's comments, the source with knowledge of the conversations told NBC News. Trump, in an interview with The Washington Post published Tuesday, said of Ryan "I'm not quite there yet" — echoing language used by Ryan when he was reluctant to endorse Trump in May. Ryan eventually endorsed the GOP nominee. A spokesperson fro Ryan said Tuesday...

The “Never Trump” campaign met its end this week when Donald Trump accepted the GOP nomination for president at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. But one of the movement’s most prominent leaders, delegate Kendal Unruh of Colorado, said she’d do it all again.

CNN couldn't stop Donald Trump. Neither could Fox News. Some of the nation's most influential conservatives, from Glenn Beck to Bill Kristol, were powerless. Karl Rove and the Bush family had no effect. Scandal after scandal failed to put a chink in his armor. And the 16 other GOP contenders, comprising some of the party's brightest and budding stars, proved to be impotent. But some observers say that one man may have had the power to prevent Donald Trump's accession within the Republican Party: Matt Drudge. "If Drudge had come out really negatively against Trump and had supported someone who...

Trump-resistant and election battling Republicans including two former Presidents, two former Republican nominees, and several former 2016 presidential hopefuls are offering up excuses for why they will not attend the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next week, notably among them a break with a history of former Presidents attending their party’s convention. Here are ten of the most prominent Republicans who say they’ll skip out on the convention and a few more who will or maybe won’t.

Sen. Mike Lee on Wednesday cited Donald Trump's use of a baseless tabloid report that Ted Cruz's father helped conspire to kill President John F. Kennedy as a reason he has yet to endorse the presumptive Republican nominee in a heated exchange.

A group of anti-Donald Trump Republican delegates is making one final do-or-die stand at the Republican convention in Cleveland from July 18-21. The #NeverTrumpers are a mix of conservative-movement Ted Cruz supporters and Republicans who backed Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and other candidates. They want to stop Mr. Trump, the winner of the GOP primaries, by peeling off enough of his pledged delegates on the first ballot to keep him below a majority, which would force a second ballot.

After a rocky start to his general-election campaign, a sizable number of GOP insiders want the party to change the rules to short-circuit Donald Trump’s nomination at the July national convention. Nearly four-in-10 Republican members of The POLITICO Caucus — a panel of activists, operatives and strategists in 10 key states — would like to see changes that could deny Trump the party’s nod after the presumptive nominee began the November campaign without a credible campaign structure, in addition to making a series of erratic and inflammatory comments. Among the comments was a recent suggestion that an American-born judge presiding...

Ann Coulter is not happy with Donald Trump. “I am a little testy with our man right now,” Coulter said in an interview with political commentator, and fellow Trump supporter, Milo Yiannopoulos. A staunch and vociferous supporter of Trump’s presidential candidacy, Coulter admitted she was disturbed by Trump’s retweet of a picture suggesting Ted Cruz‘s wife is ugly, or at least not as beautiful his wife Melania, a former model. “Our candidate is mental. Do you realize our candidate is mental?” Coulter said. “It’s like constantly having to bail out your 16 year old son from prison.” Saying she’s been...

Just as GOP front-runner Donald Trump continued to shore up delegates, winning several Super Tuesday states, some top Republican strategists and donors began to line up behind a new effort to halt the Trump campaign's momentum. Jeb Bush's former communications director, Tim Miller, announced Tuesday that he would be joining the Our Principles PAC, an anti-Trump effort. Miller will focus on opposition research that will go to expanding the PAC's advertising campaigns - including research targeting endorsers and surrogates like Chris Christie. Other strategists and big name donors - like technology executive Meg Whitman, billionaire Todd Ricketts, and hedge fund...

Jeb was supposed to be the guy who could win the election because he could win Hispanics. And then Trump turned that asset into an albatross. In jujutsu, one uses an opponent's weight against him. And, in the version most often seen in politics, a candidate turns his opponent's strength into a weakness. In political jujutu, assets can become liabilities. In 1992, Bill Clinton faced off against George H.W. Bush. The latter had been a Congressman, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee, special envoy to China, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Vice...

These are troubled times for the two Republican golden boys from Florida. Former governor Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio are seeing their prospects for winning their party’s presidential nomination crumble as billionaire Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson lead the polls. Bush, 62, the scion of a powerful political family, has seen his once promising prospects and fundraising prowess fade after he repeatedly failed to find a voice that could animate his party, show he was truly his “own man” and transcend his ties to the GOP political establishment. Rubio, 44, the quintessential young man with strong ties...

Christie has become such an also-ran that the Associated Press and the New York Times recently reassigned reporters dedicated to covering Christie ... “We’re all living in Trump world,” said Kean. “And Trump world is something none of these political gurus or any of these guys conceived of when they [started] running their campaigns.” ... Trump’s dominance of the news cycle is a major factor holding Christie down

I have a question for you FReepers. In a Primary debate in late January, 2012, Romney tried to get to the right on illegal immigration by proposing that we make conditions so difficult for the illegals that they pack it up and go home on their own (i.e., self-deportation), rather than rounding them up and deporting them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObVnA0nIx_s A Google search finds many columns on this topic, but only immediately after that debate. Then Obama brought it up in an October debate, just before the election and blasted Romney on it. After the election, the Republican 'advisers' (most of them...

We are now 467 days from the next presidential election on November 8, 2016, to elect the 45th president of the United States. In just 7 days, on August 6th, Fox News will be holding the first debate for Republican presidential candidates – in Cleveland, Ohio. Politico reported that there will actually be two Fox News debates on August 6th: a 5PM debate for all 16 announced candidates and a 9PM “main event” for “the 10 candidates with the highest average in national polls.” In preparation for the upcoming debates, we asked some Oregon Republican political insiders to give us...

... 1. We are not “The Establishment” or “RINO’s”, and you are not “The Base”. We are THE Republican Party founded in 1854. The Tea Party is a MOVEMENT that began inside our party sometime between 2007-2009, and if anyone must be referred to as a “RINO”, it’s the members of this movement, because they seemingly have a strong dislike for most of what occurs within our party. In 1854, the Whigs that were against slavery didn’t solve the problem by calling the others WINO’s, they courageously founded the Republican Party. That is what a Republican does. We don’t run...

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, in again throwing previous Republican presidential nominees Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney under the bus of his own White House ambitions, needs to brush up on his political history. The freshman senator took occasion on CNN the other day to dismiss growing talk of a 2016 presidential bid of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush by tossing Bush under the wheels along with that trio of losing party standard-bearers, as a means of advancing his own Oval Office fantasies. After insisting he is “a fan” of the son of the 41st president and brother...

"...Take note: Instead of working to get out the vote, educate voters, and advance Republican and conservative principles in key states, and fire up the base, the establishment has already thrown in the towel. They are trying to shape a narrative about why their candidates lost instead of making sure their candidates win. Their narrative is that tea partiers are… what were those words you used, David? Oh yes. Tea partiers are naïve, sophomoric, and stupid, and this trifecta of character flaws will cause us to behave like petulant children."

Silver doesn’t quite go so far as to say that it makes a brokered convention or a late-breaking establishment candidate likely, but I’m willing to go that far. There’s just no way the Republican establishment lets Gingrich become their nominee. As Andrew Sullivan pointed out today, you’re already seeing the anti-Gingrich mobilization among conservative thought leaders: Here’s George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Tom Coburn and Ann Coulter, just for starters. There’s this Politico story about all the Washington Republicans who hate Gingrich. Now, I think it’s more likely that this mobilization leads to a Romney win then...

Palin: “there’s room for more” (audio) September 2, 2011 By O.Kay Henderson 4 Comments As former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin walked in the front door of The Machine Shed restaurant in Urbandale, Iowa, this evening, a reporter asked Palin what she thought about the current field of GOP presidential candidates. “Happy with the field of candidates. I always think that there’s room for more, though, because spirited debate and more competition will allow an even better discourse and a more rigorous discourse that the public deserves,” Palin said.