Free Republic

Delivering the commencement address at Rutgers University in New Jersey today, President Barack Obama told the graduates that "the good old days weren't that good" and that both America and the world are better than they were "even eight years ago." "When you hear someone longing for the good old days, take it with a grain of salt, take it with a grain of salt," Obama said in his address. "In fact," he said, "by almost every measure, America is better and the world is better than it was 50 years ago or 30 years ago or even eight years...

Vice President Joe Biden says he “would have been the best president” if he had mounted a successful campaign in the 2016 election, but that forgoing the race was the right decision for his family. Speaking with “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts in an exclusive interview that aired today, Biden said he had planned to run but changed course only after his eldest son Beau died last May. “No one should ever seek the presidency unless they're able to devote their whole heart and soul and passion into just doing that,” he said. “And, Beau was my soul. I...

As the media seeks to keep a story alive, with the help of Republican establishment figures, and the likes of Mark Levin, the odds of a “Brokered Convention” are evaporating as more analysts show Trump is on track to get 1310 delegates, making him the nominee, regardless of who is on the second ballot. Even if Trump fails to hit 1237, his team and John Kasichs are now blocking Ted Cruz, and other groups are destroying any chance of a brokered convention. Ohio Gov. John Kasich got fewer votes than Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the state’s presidential primary last...

Sen. Ted Cruz was projected to win the Wisconsin primary Tuesday, delivering a stunning blow to GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump and resetting the race as it heads east later this month.

Why Donald Trump Is Poised To Win The Nomination And Lose The General Election, In One Poll By Philip Bump March 23 Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but a new poll from Quinnipiac University suggests that the most likely outcome of this presidential race is the following: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump face off in the general election, and Hillary Clinton wins. Standard polling caveats apply, not the least of which is that the campaign hasn't started and that polls taken well in advance of an actual election are often not predictive. But reading this poll on...

Plans by Russia to pullout forces from Syria delivered a strong message to Bashar Assad, who recently took a major hardline position. Moscow announced an end of its military intervention in Syria as a success story from its own point of view, not Assad's. This, and other important factors, have accelerated peace efforts in Geneva, posing Assad as the "persona non grata", even for Russia. Not In It For The Long Run Undeniable is the fact that Russia, along with Iran's proxies, helped relieve Assad of definite overthrow at the hands of Syrian opposition forces closing in fast. Russian...

The conventional wisdom is that the GOP candidate who poses the far greater peril than Trump can't possibly win the GOP presidential nomination, and would have absolutely no chance in a general election. The result is that few have actually taken the time to closely scrutinize Ted Cruz's actual record. Now that the race for the GOP presidential contest is effectively a two-man race between Trump and Cruz, and the GOP establishment is mounting a furious, all-out full court press to stop Trump, it's time to take the hard look at Cruz that should have been done long ago. In...

Can Rubio, Kasich and Carson give their delegates to Cruz?

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...

Now that we have the results from Super Tuesday a weakness is starting to show in Donald Trump's support. He seems to be mainly an East Coast Candidate. There have now been seven states that have voted west of the Mississippi. Of these seven elections Trump has only won two (Nevada, and Arkansas) while he has lost five (Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Minnesota, and Alaska).

<p>Watching presidential candidates Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz this week was like watching the bully's punch painfully hit the book the nerd had hidden in his jacket. It was fun to see.</p> <p>Bully in chief Donald Trump likes to throw litigious punches, and a lot of people are scared of them, understandably. Getting sued hurts. A lot. (Come to think of it, any form of bullying is pretty painful.) But we learned this week that Cruz can't be bullied by Trump.</p>

Lately, I feel more and more like we are.... Trump: "No more Muslims, no more Spics, no more Jews with their dirty tricks!"The crowd cheered last night at the Raleigh Convention Center when Donald Trump strode on stage with his arms held high and shouted, "No more Muslims, no more Spics, no more Jews with their dirty tricks!" The crowd went wild cheering and clapping.Trump: "Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends are Jews." He hesitated, "but you know, enough is enough!"Crowd: "Enough is enough!"Trump: "And as far as the Indians go, you know, the ones with the...

America and the world have been stunned by the success of Donald Trump. His dangerous, eccentric rhetoric has been extremely controversial and divides opinion within media circles and the general public. Some attribute his success to his campaign’s core anti-establishment, nationalist message while others say his campaign is merely a personality cult – full of supporters who only support him because he intrigues and entertains them....

Senator Ted Cruz raised questions on Wednesday at a private fund-raiser about whether Donald J. Trump, his bombastic rival for the Republican presidential nomination, has the "judgment" to be president and mused about "strength," according to two people who attended the event in Manhattan The remarks from Mr. Cruz came as he has studiously avoided public criticism of Mr. Trump, who is handily beating the rest of the Republican field in opinion polls. Mr. Cruz has positioned himself to be the beneficiary of any erosion of support for Mr. Trump. While he has said he doesn't agree with Mr. Trump's...

Donald Trump told Fox News after the last debate in Milwaukee that he was in a "diplomatic" phase of his campaign. No longer. This Washington Post report of Trump's rally in Iowa last night is a must read. Trump's popularity has always been based in part on his entertaining qualities. But apparently his audience wound up seeing a darker side last night.

Our prehistoric forebears are often portrayed as spear-wielding savages, but the earliest human societies are likely to have been founded on enlightened egalitarian principles, according to scientists. A study has shown that in contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, men and women tend to have equal influence on where their group lives and who they live with. The findings challenge the idea that sexual equality is a recent invention, suggesting that it has been the norm for humans for most of our evolutionary history. Mark Dyble, an anthropologist who led the study at University College London, said: “There is still this wider perception...

My last post on this subject got a little pushback, so I decided to look at some other data points to see if Trump voters are likely to switch to Ted Cruz if they start to see their American Idol as more of a political apprentice. So far, these data confirm the initial thought: Cruz will pick up his share of Trump supporters, but nowhere near the majority. Three recent national polls asked respondents who their second choice is. Two helpfully provided tabulations for the percentage of each second choice by the person’s first choice (i.e., the percent of Trump...

A little noticed event earlier this week brought ominous tidings to the Trump 2016 campaign, which spent most of the summer riding high on a wave of triumphalism and defiance against the GOP establishment machine. Donald Trump held a campaign event in Iowa, and CNN didn’t even acknowledge that it was happening. Indeed, while the assembled crowd waited to hear the latest Trump Brand Pablum in person, even CNN’s chryon blared on about the huge crowds that were at that moment being drawn by … Bernie Sanders.

This one too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iuj7VMB48o

Donald Trump is not going to be the leader of the free world. That was the reality check delivered to the reality TV star when he was subjected to a pounding in last week’s Republican debate at the Ronald Reagan presidential library. A summer of bombast from the bumptious billionaire had led to his anti-immigration rhetoric and populist demagoguery lifting him to the top of all the Republican party polls. The debate in Simi Valley, however, brought him crashing back to earth. By the time the dust had settled, Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard and the widely...