Free Republic

The idea was floated over the weekend by Jon Karl on ABC, as you’ll see below, and started some conservative tweeters chattering. I think there’s more upside to it than downside, but there are downsides. Cruz needs media oxygen in the next week, a way to have the story not just be Trump's NE sweep. Not a lot of ways to get that.— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) April 25, 2016 Picking a running mate now could limit his dealmaking options at the convention. But first you gotta get to the convention.— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) April 25, 2016 Cruz is going to...

Since the debate over what he said yesterday is still raging, it’s only fair that you get to hear his latest comment about it. Skip to 8:35 of the clip below from last night’s interview on Trump TV.His response to Hannity’s question about North Carolina is a dodge but it’s a dodge with a conservative pedigree. If you’re a Republican who’s been put on the spot about a hot-button social issue, you can’t go wrong saying, “Leave it to the states.” Even righties who disagree with you on the merits will tip their caps at your nod to federalism....

Via Red State, not a huge deal but worth flagging in case there’s another poll this weekend showing his numbers dipping a bit in New York on the eve of the primary. That would suggest a trend, and that would be a big deal given what’s at stake. To be clear: Trump’s going to romp in NY on Tuesday night, winning by 25 points or better, and will pick up something like 75 delegates even in a worst-case scenario. But since his path to 1,237 is so difficult, it matters a lot whether he ends up with 75 in New...

Via Breitbart, the key bit below starts at 6:30. When he says “set the country on fire,” does he mean people literally setting things on fire in rage over how much they hate a Trump/Cruz ticket? Because I can sort of see that. Trump’s numbers are flaming garbage, as you know, but check out Cruz’s numbers from the same poll:What should we call that? Smoldering garbage? I’m a Cruz backer but I’m also under no illusion about how popular he is and isn’t among the general electorate. (Although the AP data here is from a poll of adults, not...

An Associated Press-GfK Poll released Thursday finds Donald Trump’s “unfavorable” numbers are nearing 70 percent. The AP reports: Seven in 10 people, including close to half of Republican voters, have an unfavorable view of Trump, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. It’s an opinion shared by majorities of men and women; young and old; conservatives, moderates and liberals; and whites, Hispanics and blacks — a devastatingly broad indictment of the billionaire businessman.Even in the South, a region where Trump has won GOP primaries decisively, close to 70 percent view him unfavorably. And among whites without a college education,...

In order to get to 1,237 delegates before the convention, Donald Trump needs to sweep both New York and California primaries. That may not be much of a problem in New York, as Trump dominates the field in the RCP average by 32 points, and gets the majority he needs for a winner-take-all haul of the statewide delegates in all four recent polls. With that kind of lead, it’s difficult to imagine Trump losing any of the delegates from Congressional districts in New York, so he should get all 95 delegates. California, however, looks like a much different story. It...

After several high profile incidents involving Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, the candidate continued to stand by his man, insisting that he was in the right and wasn’t going anywhere. And true to his word, Lewandowski was not fired, remaining by his side at events and on the campaign plane. But in the days which followed, according to some sources, Corey may be on the scene but his role is slowly diminishing as others take over key duties. (Politico) In public, Donald Trump is standing behind embattled campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as he faces battery charges for grabbing a reporter....

By this time, everyone with a television, a smart phone or a computer has already seen the MSNBC town hall exchange between Chris Matthews and Donald Trump where the abortion question came up. (Even if you lack all three of those modern devices, you may have caught wind of it via the screams of horror emanating from the windows of your neighbors, both Democrat and Republican.) But on the odd chance that you were in a coma for the past sixteen hours and happened to turn to Hot Air before doing anything else this morning, here’s the short but brutal...

Via RCP. My headline’s misleading, as I’ll explain in a sec, but it does capture the newsiest soundbite from this clip. Standard operating procedure when a politician’s caught in a sex scandal is for his close allies to rally around him. It was a regrettable lapse, he has much to atone for, but we all make mistakes and in the end it’s a private matter — you know how the script goes. Beck’s having none of that. If Cruz is guilty of what the National Enquirer’s accused him of, he says, I’m done. I heard that sentiment repeatedly from Cruz...

Until late yesterday, polling in Wisconsin’s primaries showed Donald Trump in a tight battle with … Marco Rubio. It had been over a month since anyone polled the next big battleground in the Republican primary until Emerson College filled the gap late yesterday. Instead of Trump having a ten-point lead over Rubio, though, the survey found that Ted Cruz had edged out in front 36/35 over Trump, and putting himself in position to take most of the state’s 42 delegates on April 5th: As establishment Republicans look for ways to slow Donald Trump’s relentless march toward the party’s presidential...

 Rubio wanted a fight with Cruz over national security. Well, he's got one. Boy, that escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast. "Senator Rubio emphatically supported Hillary Clinton in toppling [Muammar] Qaddafi in Libya. I think that made no sense," Cruz told Bloomberg Politics in a wide-ranging and exclusive interview during a campaign swing through Iowa. He argued that the 2011 bombings that toppled the Libyan leader didn’t help the fight against terrorists. "Qaddafi was a bad man, he had a horrible human rights record. And yet, he had become a significant ally in fighting...

The best line from any Trump stump speech this year is “Everyone wants Washington to change, and that means changing everyone in Washington.” No, wait — I’m mixed up. Trump didn’t say that. It was Tom Coburn, announcing his retirement from the Senate, who did. Coburn was raging against a corrupt establishment in D.C. back when Trump was still firing people on “The Apprentice.” Such was his despair at what he encountered in the capital that he spent the last few years calling for a convention of the states to fix Washington. He’s a perfect choice in many ways for...

A confirmation hearing for Merrick Garland is still far from a sure thing (Mark Kirk’s comments aside) and there still may not be a vote regarding his nomination to the Supreme Court until after the next election. But he may have one friend in an unexpected place no matter how the presidential race shakes out… John Kasich. Apparently unaware of Garland’s record of open hostility to the Second Amendment, the Ohio Governor went on Face the Nation this week and not only criticized his party’s stall tactics regarding the next SCOTUS justice, but admitted that Garland had such overwhelming...

Yeah, as much as we’re all enjoying these fantasy scenarios in which the RNC wrests the nomination from Trump through some procedural chicanery and banishes him to the island of third-party losers, I think in the end they’ll convince themselves that they can ride the tiger. Crown Trump as the duly elected nominee once he has a majority of delegates, be good soldiers for him in the general election, and if he loses as badly as the smart set thinks he will, cross your fingers and hope that some of your new nationalist voters will stick around for the...

How many times can one remember where the National Rifle Association and the New York Times agree on an issue? One count them on the fingers of one hand, and have a few left over. However, when it comes to Barack Obama’s pick to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, an unexpected synchronicity occurs … of sorts, anyway.The NRA’s legislative arm accused Obama of showing “utter contempt for the Second Amendment and law-abiding gun owners” with the nomination of Merrick Garland: “With Justice Scalia’s tragic passing, there is no longer a majority of support among the justices for...

If this poll accurately reflects the US electorate, get ready for the mother of all gender gaps (so to speak) in November if Donald Trump wins the Republican presidential nomination. The frontrunner has a major problem with women, according to this Reuters-Ipsos poll conducted over the first half of March, and it has gotten worse rather than better over the last six months. Half of all women have a “very unfavorable” view of Trump, in an election that could pit him against the first female major-party nominee: Real estate billionaire Donald Trump’s coarse rhetoric has won him some fans,...

Sometimes the two parties just aren’t that far apart during campaign season, and in a populist moment such as the one we’re experiencing right now that axiom is being proven true on the subject of free trade and job outsourcing. Currently, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders seem to be in a battle to see which one of them can sound the most like Donald Trump when it comes to offshoring American jobs, but Clinton is being hit with yet another vignette from her long history of paid speeches. Fox News dredged up an old clip of her from 2005 speaking...

You guys thought my previous 8,000 posts speculating about a “Romney 2016” campaign were just an elaborate goof, huh? As Bruce Campbell said to his severed hand in “Evil Dead II,” who’s laughing now?

Marco Rubio had a rough Super Tuesday until the end of the night, at least in the W column, and in two interviews he got pressed on whether he had a realistic chance of prevailing for the Republican nomination. After having come in a close second in Virginia, where Rubio had hoped to perhaps score an upset victory, and falling off the pace elsewhere, Jake Tapper had a question for Rubio. "Is there a certain amount of denial that you're in?"(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Rubio makes the argument (shown in brief here) that this Super Tuesday isn't about wins and losses but simply tallying...

An Open Letter to Virginia Republicans: Trump Victory Catastrophic for our Republican Party Never before have I grabbed a word like catastrophic to make a political point. It's like pulling a fire alarm; if you do it, there had better be a fire. There is a fire and it's raging within our Republican party. I am convinced that if Donald Trump becomes our nominee, the harm done to our party would be nothing short of catastrophic. I reject Trump as our nominee based on his judgment, temperament and character, all of which point to a reckless, embarrassing and ultimately dangerous...