Free Republic

Lindsey Graham playing politics and flip-flopping in his effort to stay in the center has come to light again as new audio recorded on Jan 6 is highlighted in a book by Reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, who write for the New York Times. Martin and Burns obtained the audio, and discuss it in their book which they discussed on Anderson Cooper’s show Tuesday night. Graham has been all over the place with his stance on Trump. The four-term senator from South Carolina called the president ‘uninformed’ and said he would be an ‘absolute, utter disaster’ for the party...

Vice President Kamala Harris has been taking political advice from MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, according to the authors of This Will Not Pass, a new book about the Biden administration in which New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns document the general consensus among Democrats that Harris's tenure as vice president has been "a slow-rolling Greek tragedy." The authors note that by the end of President Joe Biden's first year in office Harris was "as politically isolated as she had ever been," and "few Democrats had confidence" in her ability to be the party's standard bearer in 2024....

The Society of Professional Journalism’s code of ethics is apparently unknown to, and easily dismissed by, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. On “Andrea Mitchell Reports” Monday, the anchor introduced Politico’s Jonathan Martin after playing a clip of former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain suggesting some reporters at an event in Texas check the Society of Professional Journalism’s “code of ethics.” “Jonathan Martin is the senior reporter for Politico and broke the original story,” she said. “I assume you read the journalistic code of ethics, whatever that is.” Martin replied by saying he had his copy “well-thumbed.”

UPDATE -Mayor Emanuel is denying he is involved in anyway with the exchange of information regarding Cain's sexual harassment accusers. Herman Cain's campaign is revealing suspicions about who is behind the story regarding the former unidentified employees who accused Mr. Cain of sexual harassment in the late 1990's. According to a source who is friends with the Cain campaign, not only is the Rick Perry campaign involved but also the Mayor of Chicago and former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is likely involved with the sexual harassment accuser attacks. A friend of the Cain campaign believes a...

If former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is going to run for president in 2016, his campaign is going to have to run through the Forza coffee shop in Parkland, Wash. That’s where one of Huckabee’s many parolees, Maurice Clemmons, assassinated four Lakewood police officers in 2009, depriving nine children of a parent and setting a national perception that Huckabee abused his powers of clemency. Huckabee told The New York Times’ Jonathan Martin (the other Jonathan Martin) that he views a 2016 presidential bid as “a real opportunity for me.” The Washington Post quickly called Huckabee “a long shot” because he...

When Franklin D. Roosevelt established Social Security, he created generations of loyal Democrats. When Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law, he built on that legacy, particularly with older Americans. And when George W. Bush instituted a new prescription drug benefit for Medicare, it helped reclaim elderly voters for Republicans. But President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the $1.4 trillion effort to extend health insurance to all Americans, is challenging the traditional calculus about government benefits and political impact. Even as Mr. Obama announced that eight million Americans had enrolled in the program and urged Democrats to embrace the law, those...

Americans are more fearful about the likelihood of another terrorist attack than at any other time since the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, a gnawing sense of dread that has helped lift Donald J. Trump to a new high among Republican primary voters, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. From Our Advertisers In the aftermath of attacks by Islamic extremists in Paris and in San Bernardino, Calif., a plurality of the public views the threat of terrorism as the top issue facing the country. A month ago, only 4 percent of Americans said terrorism was the most...

The Republican Party is facing a historic split over its fundamental principles and identity, as its once powerful establishment grapples with an eruption of class tensions, ethnic resentments and mistrust among working-class conservatives who are demanding a presidential nominee who represents their interests. At family dinners and New Year’s parties, in conference calls and at private lunches, longtime Republicans are expressing a growing fear that the coming election could be shattering for the party, or reshape it in ways that leave it unrecognizable. While warring party factions usually reconcile after brutal nomination fights, this race feels different, according to interviews...

Republican leaders are growing alarmed by the ferocious ways the party's mainstream candidates for president are attacking one another, and they fear that time is running out for any of them to emerge as a credible alternative to Donald J. Trump or Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Leaders of the Republican establishment, made up of elected officials, lobbyists and donors, are also sending a message to the mainstream candidates, such as former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, that they should withdraw from the race if they do not show strength soon. The members of the party establishment are growing impatient...

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Frustrated and flailing as his candidacy threatens to slip away, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is embarking on a scalding effort over the next week to discredit Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the man he blames for undermining his campaign and whose ascendancy he deeply resents. And Mr. Christie has a secret ally: Jeb Bush. Mr. Christie, whose White House hopes hinge on a strong showing in New Hampshire, is unleashing the kind of cutting and personal attacks that brought him renown in New Jersey but that pose a far greater risk in a presidential campaign,...

... [I]n a campaign that has seemingly tested every political rule, Mr. Trump’s opponents hope his latest provocation will be too much for well-mannered voters in this heavily evangelical Christian state to bear: his use of a pungently vulgar word this week to describe one of his rivals, Senator Ted Cruz. Mr. Trump’s raunchy language has become unsurprising at his rallies. And the slur against Mr. Cruz was largely overshadowed by the coverage of the next day’s New Hampshire primary. But in voicing the crude term, Mr. Trump has further polarized a Republican Party already deeply divided about his candidacy,...

Senator Ted Cruz scored a hard-fought and decisive win in the Kansas caucuses on Saturday, demonstrating his enduring appeal among conservatives as he tries to reel in Donald J. Trump’s significant lead in the Republican presidential race. Mr. Cruz’s victory illustrated the doubts about Mr. Trump that still linger among the sort of traditional Republicans who attend time-intensive party caucuses. With results still being tallied, Mr. Trump appeared to finish well behind Mr. Cruz, with Senator Marco Rubio of Florida taking third.

From Michigan to Louisiana to California on Friday, rank-and-file Republicans expressed mystification, dismissal and contempt over the instructions that their party’s most high-profile leaders were urgently handing down to them: Reject and defeat Donald J. Trump. Their angry reactions, in the 24 hours since Mitt Romney and John McCain urged millions of voters to cooperate in a grand strategy to undermine Mr. Trump’s candidacy, have captured the seemingly inexorable force of a movement that still puzzles the Republican elite and now threatens to unravel the party they hold dear. In interviews, even lifelong Republicans who cast a ballot for Mr....

From Michigan to Louisiana to California on Friday, rank-and-file Republicans expressed mystification, dismissal and contempt regarding the instructions that their party’s most high-profile leaders were urgently handing down to them: Reject and defeat Donald J. Trump. Their angry reactions, in the 24 hours since Mitt Romney and John McCain urged millions of voters to cooperate in a grand strategy to undermine Mr. Trump’s candidacy, have captured the seemingly inexorable force of a movement that still puzzles the Republican elite and now threatens to unravel the party they hold dear. In interviews, even lifelong Republicans who cast a ballot for Mr....

Donald J. Trump routed Senator Marco Rubio in Florida on Tuesday, driving him from the Republican presidential race, and easily won the primaries in Illinois and North Carolina, amassing a formidable delegate advantage that will be exceedingly difficult for any rival to overcome. But with a victory in Ohio, his home state, Gov. John Kasich denied Mr. Trump one of the night’s biggest prizes and made it considerably harder for him to clinch the nomination outright. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas finished second in Illinois and North Carolina and was locked in a tight race with Mr. Trump in Missouri,...

Republican leaders adamantly opposed to Donald J. Trump’s candidacy are preparing a 100-day campaign to deny him the presidential nomination, starting with an aggressive battle in Wisconsin’s April 5 primary and extending into the summer, with a delegate-by-delegate lobbying effort that would cast Mr. Trump as a calamitous choice for the general election. Recognizing that Mr. Trump has seized a formidable advantage in the race, they say that an effort to block him would rely on an array of desperation measures, the political equivalent of guerrilla fighting. There is no longer room for error or delay, the anti-Trump forces say,...

Ted Cruz was naming friends. Seated for an interview inside a stately Midtown Manhattan library, just south of Trump Tower, the Texas senator leaned forward in his chair, ticking off the unlikely coalition drifting his way. There was Jeb Bush, who announced his endorsement in a terse predawn news release, and Mitt Romney, who initially said his support applied only to his voting preference in Utah. Mr. Cruz had swung Mike Lee, his greatest ally in the Senate, nearly a year after his campaign began, and Mark Levin, a conservative radio host who recently made his longstanding admiration on the...

Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy has stunned the Republican Party. But if he survives a late revolt by his rivals and other leaders to become the party’s standard-bearer in the general election, the electoral map now coming into view is positively forbidding. In recent head-to-head polls with one Democrat whom Mr. Trump may face in the fall, Hillary Clinton, he trails in every key state, including Florida and Ohio, despite her soaring unpopularity ratings with swing voters. In Democratic-leaning states across the Rust Belt, which Mr. Trump has vowed to return to the Republican column for the first time in...

Outwardly, Donald J. Trump called it a “unity meeting” — a closed-door session in Washington on Thursday involving his own inner circle and the Republican National Committee’s high command. Inside, however, it was more of a clearing of the air, according to three people briefed in detail on the discussion. And the candid remarks included some by Mr. Trump directed at his own team. There was plenty of tension to defuse: For months, Mr. Trump has denounced the party’s major donors, and only this week he went back on a written pledge to support whoever becomes the Republican presidential nominee...

Electoral Map Is a Reality Check to Donald Trump’s Bid By JONATHAN MARTIN and NATE COHN APRIL 2, 2016 Donald J. Trump is so negatively viewed, polls suggest, that he could turn otherwise safe Republican states into tight contests. Credit Eric Thayer for The New York Times Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy has stunned the Republican Party. But if he survives a late revolt by his rivals and other leaders to become the party’s standard-bearer in the general election, the electoral map now coming into view is positively forbidding. In recent head-to-head polls with one Democrat whom Mr. Trump may...