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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...

When it comes to hunching over while breathing through the mouth, he surely knows a thing or two. . . If you’re the perviest creep in politics, you probably shouldn’t insult decent Americans in the most denigrating terms. But hey, you’re disgraced ex-congressman Anthony Weiner, wife of close Hillary aide Huma Abedin. Appearing on today’s With All Due Respect, Weiner, slumped in his chair in T-shirt and jeans, said that Donald Trump “appeals to that mouth-breathing, hunched over, one-tooth person that is the primary voter for Republicans.” For good measure, Weiner said “I will eat Heilemann’s shoes” if Hillary doesn’t...

HOME 2016 ELECTION POLITICS POLICY MAGAZINE OPINION WATCHDOG BELTWAY CONFIDENTIAL MEDIA VIDEO NEWSLETTERS PODCASTS EMPLOYEE RIGHTS ACT ABOUT US SCROLL DOWN FOR NEXT STORY "They say it was the roughest campaign ever in the history of Republican politics, but what you do is you go to sleep for a couple of days and you wake up and you honor [the pledge]," Donald Trump said. (AP Photo) Trump unloads on former GOP opponents who refuse to back him By GABBY MORRONGIELLO (@GABRIELLAHOPE_) • 6/29/16 5:26 PM SHARE TWEET SMSMore Donald Trump railed against several of his Republican primary opponents on Wednesday...

Donald Trump railed Saturday against efforts by some frustrated Republicans planning a last-ditch effort to try to thwart him from becoming the party’s nominee, threatening at one point to stop fundraising if Republicans don’t rally around him. Speaking at a theater at the Treasure Island hotel on the Las Vegas strip, Trump referred to “an insurgent group” trying to deny him delegates at the party’s July convention.

http://abcnews.go.com/video/embed?id=33571619

On Friday afternoon, at an exclusive Republican donor retreat here hosted by Mitt Romney, frustration boiled over. During an off-the-record question-and-answer session with House Speaker Paul Ryan, Meg Whitman, the billionaire Hewlett Packard chief executive officer, confronted the speaker over his endorsement of Trump. Whitman, a major GOP giver who ran for California governor in 2010, compared Trump to historical demagogues like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and wanted to know how the speaker could get behind him. At another discussion session during the day, which featured top Romney alumni Stuart Stevens and Matt Rhoades, Ana Navarro, a Republican contributor...

Donald Trump called for the Republican Party to fall in line behind his presidential bid Saturday during campaign swings through Florida and Pennsylvania, attacking skeptical members of his own party along with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. “We have a war to win against a very crooked politician. The Republican Party really should get their act together,” Trump said here Saturday. “They have to come together. We have to win. And if for no other reason, the Supreme Court, remember that.”

Donald J. Trump has some advice for panicked Republicans in Washington who are melting down over his most incendiary statements: Man up. “Politicians are so politically correct anymore, they can’t breathe,”Mr. Trump said in an interview Tuesday afternoon as fellow Republicans forcefully protested his ethnically charged criticism of a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit against the defunct Trump University. “The people are tired of this political correctness when things are said that are totally fine,” he said during an interlude in a day of exceptional stress in the Trump campaign. “It is out of control. It is gridlock with their...

Out of curiosity, I compared GOP and Dem turnout in the primaries and the general election in the last dual contested primary year, 2008 with this year primary results. While this is not a true statistical model, and relies on incomplete Wikipedia data, it provides a sense of enthusiasm gap between the two parties. 2008 GOP Primary Vote 20,039,034 (36.12% of turnout) Dem Primary Vote 35,442,193 (63.88% of turnout) In the General election, Obama won 53.65 over McCain's 46.31%. 2016 GOP Primary Vote 28,836,337 (50.67% of turnout, an increase of 8.7M voters) Dem Primary Vote 28,072,793 (49.33% of turnout, a...

Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich (KAY’-sik) says he wants to see unity, healing and leadership this presidential election cycle. The Columbus Dispatch reports (http://bit.ly/1Y9mVYl ) Kasich told guests at the Ohio Republican Party’s annual state dinner on Saturday that he did not know how the election would go or what his plans would be.

It’s looking to be a long hot summer, full of violence against Trump supporters, exposure of Clinton wrongdoing, and continued loathsome behavior by the president, academics, and the media. To its shame, at this crucial juncture many of the once-respected members of the right’s commentariat are failing their readers and proving to be America’s biggest losers. Space constraints prevent me from detailing all the wrongdoing of Hillary Clinton and her aides and allies, but here are just some turned up this week.

As a political scientist, I feel I owe you an apology. To say my discipline has been behind the curve this electoral season would be putting it too charitably. We haven’t missed one curve yet. We’re speeding through all of them—backwards. At the beginning of this year’s U.S. presidential campaign, we confidently assured you that the Trump phenomenon wouldn’t last, that the Republican base was just having a little summer fling. We told you we knew how presidential primaries worked. We’d studied them for years, knew the incentives, the structural dynamics, the statistical patterns. Been there, analysed that.

Never-Trumper Bill Kristol Is Eyeing This Conservative Lawyer For a Third-Party Run May. 31, 2016 5:35pm Tré Goins-Phillips Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, a prominent leader seeking to block Donald Trump from becoming president, is working to recruit conservative attorney David French, according to two Republicans familiar with the Never-Trumper’s efforts. French, a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, is a constitutional lawyer, the author of several books and the recipient of the Bronze Star, according to his biography at National Review, where he serves as a staff writer. French lives in Columbia, Tenn., with his wife, Nancy, and three children.

<p>If the ‘high IQs’ of the establishment have let America down, where is a voter to turn?</p> <p>Donald Trump seems to have offended almost every possible identity group. But the New York billionaire still also seems to appeal to the working classes (in part no doubt precisely because he has offended so many special-interest factions; in part because he was seen in the primaries as an outsider using his own money; in part because he seems a crude man of action who dislikes most of those of whom Middle America is tired). At this point, his best hope in November, to the extent such a hope exists, rests on turning 2016 into a referendum on class and a collective national interest that transcends race and gender — and on emphasizing the sad fact that America works now mostly for an elite, best epitomized by Clinton, Inc.</p>

Donald Trump might have written The Art of the Deal, but the title he should peruse today is Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. His more vocal supporters, and by that I mean those who act out on the internet precisely as Donald does on the stump, should pick up a copy as well. Both the candidate and his hard-core supporters have missed the idea that it is the job of the winner to unite a party. Oddly the Trumpists defend their offensive and insulting demeanor by saying that neither John McCain nor Mitt Romney reached out...

WASHINGTON — Marco Rubio apologized privately to Donald Trump in person backstage before a Republican debate for crude remarks he made about Trump’s appearance, the Florida senator said in an exclusive CNN interview.

Neoconservative political operative Bill Kristol announced Sunday that an independent candidate will enter the presidential race to challenge both Donald Trump and the Democratic Party nominee. Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, has been trying for months to find a third-party challenger since his preferred candidates lost in the Republican primaries to Trump. Now, just weeks after meeting with Mitt Romney to talk about a third-party run, Kristol hinted Sunday that his plot is coming to fruition.

With a triumphant pile of delegates in hand, Republican Donald Trump on Thursday claimed support from “almost everybody” in his party and turned his attention to his likely Democratic presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton, who is still locked in a divisive primary contest. “Here I am watching Hillary fight, and she can’t close the deal,” he told reporters. “We’ve had tremendous support from almost everybody.”

Delegates to the Republican National Convention will gather in less than two months and are expected by most to nominate businessman Donald Trump for president. But it's not quite so simple or certain – Trump will still have one last sales job ahead of him, persuading the delegates to choose him at the convention before he can claim the nomination. This is because each and every delegate has complete freedom to vote their conscience at the convention, including who the party's nominee should be. This may come as a surprise to many, particularly those who are reading about Trump's recent...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump reached the number of delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination for president Thursday, completing an unlikely rise that has upended the political landscape and set the stage for a bitter fall campaign.