Free Republic

Donald Trump is running riot in the GOP china shop and gleefully tearing the place up. Consider the strength of Trump’s position: If he wins South Carolina by a big margin, he goes into Nevada with momentum, and the latest poll there has him leading by 26 points and pushing 50 percent. If he enters Super Tuesday a week later having won three out of the past three states — and with Cruz diminished by a South Carolina loss and Rubio having won nowhere — he could easily win, say, 10 contests that day. It might still be possible to...

MSNBC's choice to host Donald Trump in an exclusive town hall on Wednesday did not result in a ratings win against competitors CNN or Fox News. During the 8pm hour, when MSNBC's Trump town hall was up against CNN's GOP town hall (which kicked off with Ben Carson), it was actually Fox News that had the highest total viewers, with 2.3 million, despite the fact that "The O'Reilly Factor" was helmed by a guest host, Eric Bolling. MSNBC's Trump town hall had 1.4 million total viewers, while the first hour of CNN's three-part town hall had 2.05 million viewers. CNN...

Trump earns support from Americans who think he has a Midas touch and will use his business skills to fix the mess President Obama has created. But a closer look at Trump’s record reveals his success story is just that -- a story. How many of his supporters know about Trump University? Trump Air? Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump ties, or the United States Football League? Trump's business history reveals someone skilled at making money at the expense of other Americans while his businesses fail, and a man who will say almost anything about these failures. And his legacy of...

Unbelievable how lame some of this stuff is...  seems infatuated people will believe anything. And the instant mob lynching of whomever  Trump tells them to is a bit scary, even Orwellian: Nice Photoshop uglifying... and psychopath now too? Goebbels -surely an inspiration- would have loved this one- just add greedy Jew nose Funny because Trump has such great hair, never any infantile tantrums More at Reaganite Republican

As a military pilot and veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, I am proud that this week Ted Cruz showed us again why he is the candidate best qualified to be commander-in-chief. Yesterday he laid out a serious, detailed plan for a Reagan-style rebuild of our military that will enable us to utterly defeat the radical Islamic terrorists who have vowed to destroy us. Senator Cruz understands that the essence of "peace through strength" is having the strength to maintain peace, and he's ready to do this hard work. I am proud to have endorsed him and will be...

It has become increasingly clear that the "self-funded" candidate in the Republican presidential primary, Donald J. Trump, will destroy the GOP's chances to win in November if he is not the nominee. Leftist groups are ecstatic over Trump’s "Bush lied, people died," mantra over the Iraq war. Internet trolls for Vladimir Putin are firmly behind Trump, saying he has the right recipe for accommodating Russia. ... How did this happen? Conservatives who should know better went beyond praising his attacks on political correctness to welcoming him as a legitimate conservative candidate for president. Last year, Matt Schlapp, the chairman of...

This is from January 2015. He's for abortion for all the garden variety exceptions liberals love to spout but then when pinned down further and asked if a woman is pregnant and not by reason of any of his exceptions should she have have an abortion and he said 'depends on when (in the pregnancy she is)'.... If anyone on this site is holding tight to the idea that Trump is pro life in any shape, matter or form, this should finally disspell it for you. Donald knows EXACTLY what to tout and claim to get the conservative vote and...

Heidi Cruz said Wednesday that her husband, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), was showing America "the face of the God that we serve" through his faith-based Republican presidential campaign. Cruz said in an interview with South Carolina radio host Vince Coakley that she would support her husband's campaign even if she weren't married to him because of his religious values.

(CNN)Ted Cruz will launch his most forceful attack yet against Donald Trump in a TV ad that accuses Trump of buying political influence "in a pattern of sleaze stretching back decades." The 60-second spot, shared first with CNN, is part of a six-figure ad buy that will hit voters' TV screens across South Carolina starting as early as Thursday. It centers around Vera Coking, an elderly widow who faced the threat of losing her home in Atlantic City when the city tried to seize it through eminent domain — in order to allow Trump to build a casino parking lot....

Heidi Cruz misstated her husband's vote on a key and controversial trade provision last year in a radio interview this week. The issue of trade has become a hot one for both parties this cycle. Donald Trump's made the case that the United States is getting screwed on free trade -- that U.S. policies have ruined the wages for the American worker. In a radio interview on South Carolina's Vince Coakley Radio Program, Heidi Cruz argued free trade is a powerfully good force and that presidents should have increased powers to negotiate trade deals -- a policy that has become...

(CNN)The national spokesman for Ted Cruz's presidential campaign is calling the Donald Trump campaign "the Seinfeld candidacy," because as he puts it, "The whole campaign is about nothing." Rick Tyler told CNN's Erin Burnett that Trump says "nothing about immigration, nothing about job creation, nothing about what's going on in North Korea, nothing about ISIS. I mean this is amazing." Tyler said Cruz is running a campaign about conservative issues and that Trump fails to discuss the issues because he isn't a true conservative. Both Trump and Cruz are eying key primaries in southern states starting with South Carolina, which...

One of the most surprising comments this year came from a closed session on fintech where I sat next to someone in policy circles who argued that we should move quickly to a cashless economy so that we could introduce negative rates well below 1% – as they were concerned that Larry Summers' secular stagnation was indeed playing out and we would be stuck with negative rates for a decade in Europe. They felt below (1.5)% depositors would start to hoard notes, leading to yet further complexities for monetary policy.

Business mogul Donald Trump returned to the debate stage Saturday night and emerged victorious, but his first-place finish was largely by default. Days before the New Hampshire primary, Trump looked like a winner simply because Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, well, didn't... Trump then told the television audience that the debate crowd was full of Bush donors who were unhappy that Trump wouldn’t take their donations. Still, Time.com readers named Trump in an unscientific online poll as the debate winner...

Manchester, New Hampshire (CNN)A super PAC spending millions of dollars to bash Ted Cruz's Republican rivals is shielding the names of many of its top donors and strategists, accepting and directing donations through a particularly high number of hard-to-trace companies, new documents reveal. Stand for Truth, Inc., an emerging player in the orbit of often clashing constellation of pro-Cruz super PACs, recently pledged to air more than $4 million in television ads to back Cruz in Iowa and South Carolina. Super PACs can accept unlimited contributions but are required to disclose their financial backers. The twist here is that Stand...

There is a boisterous Oath Keeper leaking alcohol from every pore sitting three seats away from me in a Nashua, New Hampshire, middle school auditorium hosting a Ted Cruz town hall. I'm wondering if it's too late to change seats. The guy is wearing a camouflage jacket that doesn't quite hide the bulging middle-age belly straining at the faded Patriots T-shirt underneath. He's carrying a sign that reads "Like a Cruz missile, Ted will destroy ISIS" on one side and "Cruzin West" on the other, a plea for the Texas senator to pick former Florida congressman Allen West as his...

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...

I know there are some of you who are willing to do what it takes to win but you want to make sure you do so with character and integrity. There’s a line you don’t want to cross. You are fine going up to that line and doing whatever you can that is within bounds but you don’t want to cross that line and I am totally with you on that. I am going to walk you through this faux outrage story regarding Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. I’m going to walk you through a timeline but before I do,...

This year's Davos summit was attended by political leaders, business executives, intellectuals and celebrities. Notable politicians who attended included U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. Prominent business leaders included Bill and Melinda Gates, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman. Celebrities included Kevin Spacey, Leonardo DiCaprio, Emma Watson and will.i.am.

Don't choose your candidate based on who you'd prefer to have a beer with, but whom you trust most to remain aligned with your principles. For me, that's Ted Cruz. Earlier in the primary season, when the frontrunners were just beginning to emerge, I expressed concern that Cruz was untrustworthy. It wasn't just my vaguely bitter recollection of Cruz's actions in the government shutdown fiasco, but something about his personality--the inflection of his voice, the way he too often lowered it to a whisper, the way he paced back and forth across the stage like a fired-up Baptist preacher going...

Presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) continues to rack up the endorsements, picking up four more in the past 24 hours. They include Dr. Chuck Harding and Pastor Michael Creed, leaders of a Christian ministry committed to the education, engagement and encouragement of the nation, particularly among Independent Baptists. Also, he's been endorsed by U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Eddie Calvo, the governor of Guam....