Free Republic

The results of the first statewide poll for Indiana’s upcoming primary show a small lead for party front runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, with a tight race on both sides of the aisle. The WTHR/HPI Indiana Poll has Trump with a 6-point lead over his closest challenger Ted Cruz. The poll indicates a record turnout will favor Trump over the other candidates. The results prove just how pivotal Indiana's primary race is going to be nationally. Republican Presidential Primary Donald Trump 37% Ted Cruz 31% John Kasich 22%

It’s very rare that a campaign commercial is memorable enough to be talked about as a work of art as it is an attempt at propaganda. In 1964, the “Daisy Ad” which depicted a little girl at ground zero before being obliterated by a nuclear blast only ran once, but it helped Lyndon Johnson drive home the message that Barry Goldwater was too dangerous to be president. The “Bear in the Woods” ad that President Reagan ran against Walter Mondale was subtle but effective in imparting the message that the former vice president would be weak against the Soviets. Now,...

I have been writing about Donald Trump’s powers of persuasion for months and yet many of my readers are still persuasion doubters. I get that. We like to think of ourselves as creatures of reason. But we are not creatures of reason. We aren’t even close. Science has known this for a long time. For example, here’s a story about an experiment that changed men’s votes (from Clinton to Trump) just by priming the men with a gender-related question. The effect was dramatic and immediate.

Even as he says those words, you know he hopes deep down they aren't true -- because if this election really does boil down to trustworthiness, his widely-distrusted serial liar of a boss is in some serious trouble: Mook: This Election Is All About Trust. NOTE 57% Of People Don't Think Clinton Is Trustworthy Note how Couric prefaces the question with a reference to a national poll showing Clinton underwater by 20 points on the honesty metric, a vulnerability that has consistently hurt her even among her own party's electorate.  Faced with that data, Mook deflects, blaming Republicans for "trying to dust up this email...

Blunders on Israel abound in the Bernie Sanders camp. On April 14, Sanders suspended his new national Jewish outreach communicator, Ms. Simone Zimmerman, after just two days on the job. Her sacking followed discovery of her calling Benjamin Netanyahu “an arrogant, deceptive, cynical, manipulative a[**]hole,” accusing him of “sanctioning the murder of over 2,000 people,” and presiding over a “brutal military occupation” of the West Bank (a canard I debunk here). In an April 1 interview with the NY Daily News, Mr. Sanders stated that Israel killed over 10,000 Gazans in the 2014 conflict between Israel and Hamas. He later...

President Barack Obama will host a Passover seder this year, but not on either of the nights it is required according to Jewish custom. A spokeswoman told JTA that Obama will host the seder next week following his return from travel overseas. Obama will be in Saudi Arabia on the first and second nights of Passover, Friday and Saturday, attending a regional cooperation summit.

Just when you think once-prestigious Harvard could fall further from grace, Harvard students hurled anti-Semitic epithets at Israel's former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni during her recent talk at the University. Last Thursday, Harvard Law School hosted a panel discussion with guest speakers Dennis Ross and former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. During a question and answer session a president of a student organization mocked the Israeli leader, asking her, “How is it that you are so smelly?” When his question drew stunned silence, he clarified his "question." “A question about the odor of Ms. Tzipi Livni, she’s very smelly, and I...

A lot of ink has been spilled, and a lot of bandwidth has been occupied discussing endlessly how the #NeverTrump and the #NeverCruz forces threaten to tear the Republican Party apart. But little has been noted about the civil war that has broken out in the Democratic Party between the supporters of Hillary Clinton and the followers of Bernie Sanders. The Clinton people regard Sanders as a weird, radical upstart who has no practical way to win or having won put his socialistic policies into effect. The Sanders people look upon Clinton as a corrupt captive of Wall Street, who...

In a recent Democrat debate, Hillary Clinton lied about the death of Sean Smith and about a video being the cause. She claimed it was the “fog of war” that made many different scenarios possible. I watched as the bodies of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith and CIA contractors Ty Woods and Glen Doherty were brought back to the United States, their flag draped coffins set in places of honor. Front and center were our President and Muslim in Chief, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton acting the part of Secretary of State and others who also...

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX)said Wednesday morning that a contested Republican convention is certain and that supporters of Donald Trump are ultimately helping Hillary Clinton reach the White House. During a radio interview for a Philadelphia morning show, Cruz predicted with certainty that the Republican Party is “headed to a contested convention.” He suggests Trump supporters “might as well put a Hillary sticker on your car.”

I interrupt my Les Enfants Terribles series to report on the results in the New York primary: Clinton won.  Trump won. No surprises. Here are a couple more interesting takes on the results:Patrick Buchanan is taking a victory lap alongside Trump. He notes that The Donald’s thus far successful campaign has vindicated his own 1992 presidential platform of opposition to globalization, unfettered immigration, and the move away from social conservatism. Actual vindication however would require a majority of Americans to climb aboard the Trump bandwagon which isn’t a given at this point. And even if they do, Mr. Buchanan tells...

When a presidential candidate, having been as beaten as thoroughly as Bernie Sanders was by Hillary Clinton in the New York Primary eschews campaigning to return to his home state, he is usually signaling that he is about to suspend his campaign and bow out of the race. Team Bernie is vehemently denying that their guy is about to throw in the towel. However, the delegate math suggests that Sanders has no chance of gaining the Democratic nomination. Hillary Clinton has all be clinched the prize.

In 8 out of 10 national polls, Hillary Clinton’s favorability ratings are negative by 15 points or more. According to recent CBS and NBS/WSJ polls, Clinton holds negative favorability ratings by 23 and 24 point margins, respectively. A progressive said to “get things done” won’t be able to win the White House with such negative national ratings. In contrast, Bernie Sanders is the only leading candidate with positive favorability ratings, and this has nothing to do with Clinton being more “vetted.” Bernie doesn’t need private servers and speaks to millions of people in open forums; Clinton is the antithesis of...

NOTE: Today begins a series of posts in which I will attempt to explain where the Special Snowflakes came from. Future posts will provide a multi-part analysis of everything that’s wrong in the world and how the cultural morass has given us an education system that has resulted in the end of history, the end of science and ultimately the end of Western civilization. Doesn’t that sound better than primary coverage? I will begin at the end and work my way forward. Today’s installment examines what happens when the Snowflakes finally make their way out of the cocoon and...

When Hillary Clinton revealed that she carries a bottle of hot sauce in her purse, some understandably speculated that she was pandering. Beyoncé, after all, made a reference to hot sauce in her latest single “Formation.” But, as Time Magazine suggests, the revelation is a very rare example of authenticity coming from the former secretary of state

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – As Donald Trump looks poised for victory in New York, he continues to lead with Republican voters on this side of the Hudson as well, according to the latest Rutgers-Eagleton Poll. Breaking the 50-percent mark in New Jersey for the first time since announcing his candidacy last summer, Trump was named by 52 percent of registered Republican voters as their first choice if they had to cast their primary vote today. Ohio Gov. John Kasich has ascended to a distant second in the Garden State, with 24 percent. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz comes in third at...

Hillary Clinton’s wardrobe is not the only thing that isn’t necessarily working in her favor these days. Even less flattering is the popularity of Bernie Sanders, whose campaign -- according to conventional wisdom -- should have been suspended long ago. And now, instead of promoting her vision for America and the world, Hillary finds herself sidetracked into defense mode over the high fees and undisclosed lowdown in her speeches to Wall Street moguls. She’s under threat of an FBI investigation over possible e-mail and server abuses. She’s even had to dodge the protesting rabble at her outrageously pricey celebrity fund-raisers....

Her mixing of official work with Yunus and others is reportedly the focus of a FBI public corruption investigation, according to the report.The Daily Caller News Foundation says its investigation revealed that the tax funds were given to Yunus through 18 separate USAID award transactions listed by the federal contracting site USAspending.gov.Yunus is a long-time friend of Clinton, and was managing director of the Grameen Bank before Bangladesh Bank forced him to leave office on the grounds that he had crossed the official age limit.He had challenged his dismissal in the Supreme Court but lost and has been at loggerheads...

Vice President Biden is pictured above reacting to the revelation by Hillary Clinton that the Democratic Party's super-delegates are, unlike them, just regular old human beings. While agreeing that their sole purpose for existing is to heroically protect her from losing the nomination, super-delegates do not, in fact, have super-powers such as: Tax-ray vision, mainstream media invisibility, abortion claws, a magic red tape lasso, debt deflectors, terrorist noise cancelers, tyranny empathizers, and a logic shield made out of laminated race cards. Clinton then went on to clarify that any Democrat has all of those things, but they are actually perks...

Sexist Democrats for Bernie! According to a recent Wall Street Journal and NBC News poll, Hillary Clinton is currently laboring under a hefty 56% unfavorable rating. Please be aware that this is not her fault. The fine panel at CNN’s New Day with Chris Cuomo wants you to know that the problem lies not with Hillary, but with you. Whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, or Independent, you should be “ready for Hillary.” If you’re not, there’s a good chance you simply don’t like Mrs. Clinton it’s because you’re sexist. As CNN political commentator Errol Louis points out, it’s not decades...