Free Republic

Trump is draining the swamp —Rebuilding government may be impossible In the 2013 novel “A Delicate Truth,” John le Carré presents the “deep state” as a moneyed, cultured élite — the “non-governmental insiders from banking, industry, and commerce” whose access to information allows them to rule in secret. Trump’s conception is quite different. A real-estate baron, Trump is at war with the clerks — the apparatchiks who, he claims, are seeking to nullify the election by denying the prerogatives of his Administration. This attack on “bureaucracy” is really an attack on the State Department, the intelligence community and ordinary bureaucrats...

Ted Cruz has pinned his hopes on a big showing in the South. He could still do it, but it's far from certain It's taken a while for the chattering classes to come around to the idea that Donald Trump may actually pull this thing off. It's hard to blame them. It's as if we all went to sleep one night and woke up in an alternate universe. But they do seem to have accepted it. He came close to winning Iowa, a notoriously buttoned up electorate, and won decisively in New Hampshire. All the polling going forward looks good....

Trump won in dominant fashion and Cruz met expectations as Rubio fell completely apart. This is scary stuff. I've been writing about the Donald Trump phenomenon several times a week for seven months now. As his candidacy evolved from a bizarre spectacle to a serious campaign, it's become clear that this is a pivotal moment in American politics. It's not just that we have a shocking demagogue or a profane performer topping the polls in the Republican presidential race. It's the alarming notion that a crude authoritarian white nationalist is appealing to a very large section of the American people....

Over the past several days, GOP hopefuls looked to curry favor with hardcore culture warriors. Here's what happened.Last week was one for the political books. The Pope brought his message about the need to help the poor and deal with climate change to America, apparently leading Catholic Supreme Court Justices Scalia, Alito and Thomas to boycott his historic speech to a joint session of Congress. At the same time, the evangelical activist community held its annual Values Voter Summit featuring many of the GOP presidential candidates who once would have been excited to celebrate the pope’s visit but were instead...

... [Ann Coulter] was riding high, perhaps the most famous polemicist of her day, the scourge of liberals everywhere and the fantasy of young conservative men's dreams. And then suddenly, she was nowhere. After having been relegated to a "debate" with her friend Mickey Kaus the year before, she was excluded from CPAC in 2015 where she'd been featured for 17 years. It seems that conservative organizations have been trying to have her dropped for a while but friends in high places had intervened. But the planners had had enough. She was very bitter about it, telling the Washington Examiner,...