Free Republic

GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina told the Hugh Hewitt show on Tuesday that it was “inappropriate” for a Kentucky clerk to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. “Given the role that she’s playing, given the fact that the government is paying her salary, I think that is not appropriate. Now that’s my personal opinion,” said Fiorina. Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, an elected official, vowed not to resign Tuesday under threat of fines and jail time after deciding not to issue marriage licenses to any couples - straight or gay - rather than be forced to comply with...

Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders told the host that “unarmed black people” getting ”dragged out of cars” or getting shot “is happening too often.” Sanders said this after Tapper showed him video of Ron Hickman, the sheriff of Harris County, Texas, responding to the murder of a deputy sheriff at a gas station, declaring, “This rhetoric has gotten out of control.  We have heard black lives matter, all lives matter.  Well, cops’ lives matter, too.  So why don’t we just drop the qualifier and just say lives matter and take that to...

Lindsay Graham, as part of the taunt-war he’s having with Donald Trump, says that if Trump wins the GOP nomination, it will mean the end of the Republican Party. He’s right, but Trump means the end of the Republican Party even if he doesn’t get the nomination. I wrote a few weeks ago that Trump represents the Jump the Shark moment of the party. The GOP has been a rickety, unsustainable contraption of policy prescriptions that don’t add up, don’t really represent the coalition’s actual members, and is based on a backward-looking set of views appealing to an ever-shrinking demographic....

The Dow Jones opened down over 1,000 points Monday to the consternation of most investors — but to the likely political benefit of one Donald J. Trump. Those once again predicting we’ve reached “peak Trump” may need to reevaluate that position if the market continues to slide. Trump is the type of candidate who will only benefit in a period of economic uncertainty, or even calamity. Trump’s whole campaign pitch is that he is the billionaire businessman who will save America from the rapacious special interests, greedy investors and “cunning” foreign actors that have combined to sell America’s middle class...

Over 2,500 Iowans Rally for Religious LibertyHOUSTON, Texas — Last night, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, hosted a Rally for Religious Liberty in Des Moines, IA, calling attention to the religious persecution of Christian business owners and employees who have been sanctioned by their government because of their religious beliefs. Joining Sen. Cruz at the rally were: Dick and Betty Odgaard, Barronelle Stutzman, Aaron and Melissa Klein, Blaine Adamson, Senior Master Sergeant (Retired) Phillip Monk, Former Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran, and Naghmeh Abedini. Video of the rally is available here. A roundup of press coverage of the rally appears...

It has come to this: The GOP, formerly the party of Lincoln and ostensibly the party of liberty and limited government, is being defined by clamors for a mass roundup and deportation of millions of human beings. To will an end is to will the means for the end, so the Republican clamors are also for the requisite expansion of government’s size and coercive powers. Most of Donald Trump’s normally loquacious rivals are swaggeringly eager to confront Vladimir Putin but are too invertebrate — Lindsey Graham is an honorable exception — to voice robust disgust with Trump and the spirit...

Given the "failures" of the Obama election, Republicans can only lose in 2016 if "they out-extreme the far-left" On “The O’Reilly Factor” Thursday night, host and new favorite Coulter punching bag Bill O’Reilly expounded on the difference between “Trumpians” and Democrats, and warned Republicans that the real estate mogul’s brand of undisciplined extremism could hurt the party whose nomination he currently seeks. After rattling off the predictable litany of Republican complaints about Obama’s economic and foreign policies — the suggestion being that Democratic party is weak on both fronts because of the president’s reckless, ignorant actions — O’Reilly claimed that...

It's no secret that Bernie Sanders hates Uber. So does Hillary. As Huffington Post's Jenny Che reports:Politicians are grappling with how to approach the ride-hailing app and the "on-demand economy," also referred to as the "sharing economy." In her economic policy speech Monday, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton seemed to distance herself from Uber, focusing instead on the implications for the labor market and the risks faced by drivers who aren't shielded by benefits and job security. “This ‘on demand’ or so-called ‘gig economy’ is creating exciting opportunities and unleashing innovation, but it’s also raising hard questions about workplace protections...

America’s next president could be eased into office not just by TV ads or speeches, but by Google’s secret decisions, and no one—except for me and perhaps a few other obscure researchers—would know how this was accomplished. Research I have been directing in recent years suggests that Google, Inc., has amassed far more power to control elections—indeed, to control a wide variety of opinions and beliefs—than any company in history has ever had. Google’s search algorithm can easily shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20 percent or more—up to 80 percent in some demographic groups—with virtually no one...

Aug 19, 2015 For Hispanic Conservatives, Alarm Over Immigration Debate By AARON ZITNER Concern over the tone adopted by some GOP candidates in the latest immigration debate has turned to alarm among some Hispanics. Pictured, Donatila Diego, left, and Juana de Leon, originally from Guatemala show their support for the Obama administration’s immigration reform plan on July 9 in Homestead, Fla. Getty Images When Donald Trump used the word “criminals” to describe illegal immigrants from Mexico, the Republican National Hispanic Assembly called his comments “extremely counterproductive.” Now, listen to the more personal language that Gonzalo Ferrer, the national chairman of...

One of my working hypotheses this year is the possibility that partisan polarization has made a hash of traditional “electability” arguments for this or that “moderate” presidential candidate for the simple reason that swing voters are harder to find and harder to sway than in the past. The data are a bit unclear on the subject just yet, and the cycle is still young. But new CNN/ORC poll findings today should provide a very rude shock to those who think Republican voters will finally wake up and realize Donald Trump would be a disaster as a general election candidate and...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Wednesday that he "absolutely" supports ending birthright citizenship, suggesting that has been his position for years. "Absolutely. We should end granting automatic birthright citizenship to the children of those who are here illegally," Cruz, who is running for president, said during an interview with the Michael Medved Show. "That has been my position from the very first day of my running for the Senate." Cruz's comments come after Donald Trump's immigration proposal has sparked a debate among Republican presidential candidates and forced the issue into the media spotlight. A proposal, released by Trump on Sunday,...

Jeb Bush doesn’t want birthright citizenship to go away, but he is calling for stronger enforcement for people who abuse it. “If there’s abuse, if people are bringing — pregnant women are coming in to have babies simply because they can do it, then there ought to be greater enforcement,” Bush said on Bill Bennett’s conservative radio show, “Morning in America” Wednesday. “That’s [the] legitimate side of this. Better enforcement so that you don’t have these, you know, ‘anchor babies’, as they’re described, coming into the country.”

Scott Walker and some others say we should overturn the Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling by amending the Constitution. But that's tremendously difficult to do, and frankly, not very likely to happen. But Ted Cruz has suggested a solution which is quite doable, and very possible to carry out, if he is elected President. Cruz, an experienced Constitutional scholar and former Solicitor General of Texas, has suggested that Congress pass legislation to limit the jurisdiction of the federal courts Forgive me for once again quoting Wikipedia, but it's relatively concise and to the point: Congress has the power to make...

Donald Trump is not only expanding his lead in the Republican presidential race. According to a new CNN/ORC poll out Tuesday, the real-estate tycoon has built out a dominating lead on two of the issues most important to Republican voters. A walloping 45% of respondents said Trump was the best candidate to improve the US economy. The next closest contender was Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, who had a mere 8% say the same about his potential stewardship. The core of Trump's campaign platform is based off of his opposition to illegal immigration and his heated — and sometimes...

Bobby Jindal Hits Scott Walker: ‘It Is Frankly Shocking That a Republican Candidate for President Would Author a Cradle to Grave Plan Like This’ Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal strongly criticized Scott Walker’s health care proposal on Tuesday, accusing his GOP rival of endorsing the “fundamental underpinning of Obamacare.” “In a health care plan that is light on specifics, Governor Walker endorsed the fundamental underpinning of Obamacare – the notion that America needs another entitlement program,” Jindal said in a statement. Jindal argued that Walker’s plan “In Governor Walker’s plan creates a new “entitlement” for “every single American human being from...

Donald Trump would reverse President Obama's executive orders on immigration and deport all undocumented immigrants from the U.S. as president, he said in an exclusive interview with NBC's Chuck Todd. "We're going to keep the families together, but they have to go," he said in the interview, which will air in full on NBC's "Meet the Press" this Sunday. Pressed on what he'd do if the immigrants in question had nowhere to return to, Trump reiterated: "They have to go." "We will work with them. They have to go. Chuck, we either have a country, or we don't have a...

Forget the Twitter blog for emoji responses to how millennials feel about student debt. As the New York Daily News’ Alejandro Alba notes, the condescending approach didn’t generate much respect from Hillary Clinton’s target audience. The beleagured Democrat tried to shift attention to policy from the e-mail scandal, focusing on her $350 billion proposal to overhaul higher-education finances, which is in a shambles largely due to federal government intervention in the first place.Mission not accomplished: While some users thought the question was “relatable,” others believed the question was offensive and condescending.Many users began to reply to the tweet with...

This can’t be a tweet that Jeb Bush is going to like. Daniel Pfeiffer, a former senior advisor to President Obama for strategy and communications, expressed the White House’s gratitude to the former two-term Florida governor on Thursday, the day of the GOP presidential contender debates were held in Cleveland. For what? For supporting the Common Core State Standards and even helping them to persuade states to adopt them. Here’s the tweet Dan Pfeiffer ✔@danpfeiffer When I worked in the White House, we were always grateful to @JebBush for his efforts to help us urge states to adopt Common Core...

GOP Gov.: "Time To Move On" From Same-Sex Marriage Possible Republican presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich believes it's "time to move on" from the same-sex marriage issue in the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark ruling. "I do believe in traditional marriage and the court has ruled and it's time to move on," Kasich said on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday, adding that there's "so many other things now that we have to focus on." Same-sex marriage opponent: conservative beliefs need to be respected Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention told CBS' "Face the Nation" that people...