Free Republic

In the last month of the presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump is doubling down on his promise to carry out the largest mass deportation effort in American history. In Reading, Pennsylvania, last week, Trump drew fervent applause from a rally crowd after saying he would "get these people out" and "deport them so rapidly." In Aurora, Colorado, on Friday, Trump told rallygoers he would "rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered." Immigration researchers, lawyers, and economists have pointed to immense constitutional, humanitarian and economic problems posed by Trump's oft-repeated pledge. But beyond the anticipated damage...

Tax cuts and pandemic relief measures enacted during the Trump administration added $8.4 trillion to the national debt over the 10-year budget window, according to a study released Wednesday by a top budget watchdog group. Discretionary spending increases from 2018 and 2019 added $2.1 trillion, Trump’s signature Tax Cuts and Jobs Act added $1.9 trillion and the 2020 bipartisan CARES Act for pandemic relief added another $1.9 trillion, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a Washington think tank, found in a study released earlier this month. “Of the $8.4 trillion President Trump added to the debt, $3.6 trillion...

In 2016, the polling averages showed Hillary Clinton with a three-point lead over Donald Trump. She ended up winning the popular vote by two points but losing the Electoral College. This year, the polling averages give Joe Biden a much bigger advantage—7 percentage points. My polling for JustTheNews.com over the past month has also consistently shown the former Vice President with a 7 or 8 point advantage.The strength of Biden’s position is also evident in my Battleground State polling here at PoliticalIQ.In the three midwestern states that shocked the world and put the president over the top in 2016, my...

On Monday, Nov. 5, 2012, Henry Olsen posted on the National Review Online his final prediction for the election on Tuesday, in which he said that Mitt Romney would lose to President Barack Obama by one point and a little less than one hundred electoral votes. In the end, Romney lost by a little bit more than that. But the reason Olson gave was correct: Romney could not get enough votes from working-class whites in the Midwest and elsewhere, who were sympathetic to much in the GOP's message, but could not relate to his laissez-faire theme. Still in pain from...

In the beginning, Donald Trump’s candidacy was treated as an outlandish publicity stunt, as though he wasn’t a serious candidate and should be treated as a circus act. But television executives quickly made a surprising discovery: the more they put Trump on the air, the higher their ratings climbed. Ratings are money. So news shows started devoting hours and hours simply to pointing the cameras at Trump and letting them run. As his rallies grew, the coverage grew, which made for an odd dynamic. The candidate nobody in the media took seriously was attracting the most people to his events...

A new study by the Wesleyan Media Project has found that the 2016 presidential campaign run by Hillary Clinton is without a doubt one of the worst-run political operations in years. Interestingly, the directors of the study dispute the argument that “advertising doesn’t matter” in elections. Clinton’s failure to advertise in certain key states, they argue, was the biggest reason for her defeat by Donald Trump.