Free Republic

But in recent years, conservatives have found playing the victimhood card to be equally profitable for their own causes. ... Donald Trump is a successful businessman. His residences and modes of transit are plated with gold. He has married three gorgeous women. He claims to have a multibillion-dollar net worth. He has mocked the disabled, women, Asians, Hispanics, Muslims, even prisoners of war.... Yet he constantly rationalizes his bad behavior and political setbacks as the inevitable consequence of unfair systems and anti-Trump persecution. Disapprove of his pro-violence rally rhetoric? He’s just protecting his beleaguered voters against those “big, strong, powerful”...

Whenever Donald Trump and his followers are confronted with his evidence of his abysmally terrible polling numbers on personal favorability and versus Hillary Clinton, they typically respond with a pair of deflections. First, they say that Trump "hasn't even started" attacking Hillary yet. Setting aside the fact that Trump has taken many hard jabs at Mrs. Clinton over a span of months, this line of thinking requires a logical leap: That once he does train virtually all of his fire on her, it will both hurt her and help him. American voters have been subjected to endlessTrump coverage since last spring, over...

With the prospect of a contested convention looming over the Republican presidential primary, Donald J. Trump on Sunday complained about the party’s rules requiring a candidate to have a majority of delegates to clinch the nomination outright. Asked by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” why he should be “guaranteed the nomination” if he failed to amass the 1,237 delegates needed to win it on the first ballot, Mr. Trump said that he might be unable to clear that threshold. But he blamed the number of contenders in the Republican field. “If I’m a little bit short – and one...

Media Bias: When Michelle Fields, a reporter at the conservative news site Breitbart, accused Donald Trump’s campaign manager of accosting her, it was a story that seemed tailor-made for the Drudge Report.

NumbersUSA has announced to the media that we have downgraded Donald Trump on our Worker-Protection Immigration Grade Cards based on his statements in the last two debates that suggest the country has a labor shortage in a couple of categories that he indicates need foreign workers.Since we began issuing the grades last spring, we have encouraged all of you to use them to push your favorite candidate(s) to improve their immigration positions.For those of you who are Trump supporters, I urge you to use the information provided in this newsletter to push Trump to improve and to stop slipping on...

It would appear Trump fever has broken. It would seem the down, dirty, and ugly attacks by Rubio particularly, but also Romney, Cruz and others have kicked in. I sense that Trump has become a figure of ridicule, and no politician survives that. Plus his latest flip flops, like on torture, have weakened him as a serious person, although that may not have been obvious at the time. I think the teflon has worn off. If true, Chris Christy gets the bad timing of the year award

Amid the sparring and free-flying insults of Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate, Donald J. Trump said he wanted to expand the number of visas available for highly skilled immigrants. His remarks caused shock among some supporters who have seen Mr. Trump as a bulwark against an influx of foreigners taking American jobs. In an immigration blueprint he released in August, in the early days of his surprising charge toward the Republican nomination, Mr. Trump said the visas for highly skilled workers were part of what he called “disastrous” immigration policies that had “destroyed our middle class.” He gave detailed proposals...

It's America's favorite pander. Pledging to abolish the Internal Revenue Service is only slightly less attractive than promising unlimited, consequence-free sex with the partners of our choice. Nobody likes the IRS, and eliminating it entirely will surely resolve many, many sleepless nights for too many Americans, especially at this time of year. So, it's no wonder why Ted Cruz is promising to abolish the IRS. It's such a crucial aspect of his platform that he mentioned it twice during his Super Tuesday victory speech in Texas because, for middle-aged Republican voters, it's way better fapping material than naked pics of...

Donald Trump Reverses Position On Torture, Killing Terrorists' Families By Ryan Browne March 4, 2016 His position seems to have shifted dramatically in less than 24 hours During Thursday night's debate, Trump reaffirmed his willingness to target the families of terrorists Washington (CNN)Republican front-runner Donald Trump said Friday that he would not order the U.S. military to violate international laws to fight terrorism, a stark reversal from his statements at Thursday's Republican debate. Trump said in a statement that he understands "that the United States is bound by laws and treaties" and said he would "not order our military or...

UPDATE: FBI agents took custody of Delemus on 9 charges including conspiracy to commit an offense against the U.S., threatening, obstructionthe Federal Bureau of Investigation has taken custody of Jerry DeLemus, a New Hampshire Tea Party activist who previously made trips to Nevada to take part in the Bundy Ranch stand-off and the federal forestry building seizure in Oregon two months ago, according to reports. DeLemus faces nine federal charges including conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, threatening a federal law enforcement officer, obstruction of justice, attempting to impede or injure a federal law enforcement officer and...

Through a verified Twitter account Friday, the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) announced, that at the last minute, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump dropped out of his scheduled Saturday appearance. “Very disappointed @realDonaldTrump has decided at the last minute to drop out of #CPAC,” CPAC tweeted, “his choice sends a clear message to conservatives.” The Trump campaign released a statement: The Donald J. Trump for President Campaign has just announced it will be in Witchita, Kanasas for a major rally on Saturday prior to Caucus. He will also be speaking at the Kansas Caucus and then departing for Orlando, Florida...

CPAC ‏@CPAC Very disappointed @realDonaldTrump has decided at the last minute to drop out of #CPAC -- his choice sends a clear message to conservatives.

Short version: at last night’s debate the topic of H-1B visas* came up.  Last night Megyn Kelly asked Donald Trump at the debate how he felt about temporary work visas now.  Trump said that he loved them to death, and was softening the position found on his website.  Somewhere out in the political wilderness, Senator Jeff Sessions (an H-1B visa restrictionist who is endorsing Trump solely because of Trump’s position on immigration, supposedly) immediately suffered a nosebleed from the psychic shock of this sudden, yet inevitable betrayal**.  The Trump campaign had to go out and send around an email saying, No, really, forget...

Republican front-runner Donald Trump said Thursday he is softening his stance on visas for highly-skilled workers. “I’m changing. We need highly-skilled people in this country,” Trump said during the Fox News Republican debate in Detroit. “If we can’t do it, we will get them in.” Trump’s stance toward awarding H1-B visas is different from the one he takes on his campaign website, which argues that more visas for highly-skilled foreigners would “decimate American workers.” “One of the biggest problems we have is people go to the best colleges … as soon as they’re finished, they get shoved out. They want...

In theory, Ted Cruz's best states are behind him. But at the Detroit debate, Cruz was clearly the class of the field and it's clear that no one should count him out as the delegate race moves into its next phase. The delegate math is complicated, but the basic gist goes something like this: Donald Trump has a commanding lead at the moment, but it is not a given that he will reach the 1,237 threshold he needs to clinch a majority. Simply put, Trump has failed to break through the ceiling of support he's held since New Hampshire even...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump inexplicably changed his position on the H-1B visa program in Thursday’s Fox News debate, saying Silicon Valley actually does need to import tech workers for jobs instead of hiring Americans. “We need highly skilled people in this country,” Trump told Megyn Kelly in the debate, when she questioned him about statements he’s made that contradict the policy of reducing access to the visas outlined on his website. “I changed my mind,” he added. The reversal comes on the heels of a huge endorsement from Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions  80% of Alabama, who is leading...

Donald Trump has claimed  he has the "world's greatest memory," but when it came time this winter to give testimony in fraud cases filed against him and a real estate training program known as "Trump University," he displayed a repeated inability to recall names and faces of instructors he had claimed to have hired personally. "I can't remember that," he said on Dec. 10, when asked by trial lawyers in one of the class-action cases whether he had met one of the instructors in a program that provided training in building wealth through real estate. "The name sounds familiar but...

In his remarks today at a rally in Fort Worth, Tex., Donald Trump knew he’d make news. “I’ve never said this before,” he declared. We’ll await the word of the Washington Post Fact Checker on the integrity of the statement, but Trump did appear to be veering into a new talking point. A media-law talking point, that is: One of the things I’m going to do, and this is going to make it tougher for me…but one of the things I’m going to do if I win…is I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely...

Shortly after he claimed to be a “unifier” during his Super Tuesday press conference, Donald Trump was at it again, lambasting “so-called conservatives” who don’t share his liberal position on Planned Parenthood, continuing to insist he applauds the group because it allegedly “does a lot of good of good things” for women’s health. Similar logic applies to his position on ObamaCare. He loves the coercive freedom- and job-killing individual mandate, which is the heart of ObamaCare, because he doesn’t want to see bodies in the street, a classic liberal rhetorical scare tactic. Planned Parenthood may do the occasional mammogram referral,...

The difference between Donald Trump and Barack Obama amounts only to whatever difference may exist between each emperor’s set of cronies.The Obama years have brought America to the brink of transformation from constitutional republic into an empire ruled by secret deals promulgated by edicts. Civics classes used to teach: “Congress makes the laws, the president carries them out, judges decide controversies, and we citizens may be penalized only by a jury of our peers.” Nobody believes that anymore, because no part of it has been true for a long time. Barack Obama stopped pretending that it is. During the twentieth...