Free Republic

Now that a Jew has won a presidential primary, how far behind can a Muslim be? Well, not that close--but not as far as you think, either. It doesn't matter if Bernie Sanders gets crushed in Saturday's South Carolina primary. He has already achieved something truly astounding. He has made it much more likely that a Muslim American will one day be president of the United States. (That shrieking sound you're hearing is from Trump supporters.) How? Simple, Sanders is the first non-Christian to win a presidential primary in American history when he took the New Hampshire primary. (It's actually...

Conservative donors have engaged a major GOP consulting firm in Florida to research the feasibility of mounting a late, independent run for president amid growing fears that Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination. A memo prepared for the group zeroes in on ballot access as a looming obstacle for any independent candidate, along with actually identifying a viable, widely known contender and coalescing financial support for that person. The two states with the earliest deadlines for independent candidates, Texas and North Carolina, also have some of the highest hurdles for independents to get on the ballot, according to the...

GOP voters are in a fighting mood. They aren't much interested in business-as-usual, political niceties, or even conservative purity. They want someone who will take it to Washington--someone who will go there and fight for change. Unfortunately for the rest of the Republican field, the candidate who voters overwhelmingly think will bring change to Washington is Donald Trump. South Carolina exit polling found that, among the large subsection of GOP voters who most want a candidate who "can bring change," a whopping 45 percent supported Trump, compared with only 19 percent for Ted Cruz and 16 percent for Marco Rubio....

At an unhinged moment in the 2016 presidential primary season, the Republican candidates turned in a fine set of unhinged performances at Thursday night's critical debate. Let's begin with Donald Trump, far and away the strongest contender, be it in Ted Cruz's backyard or Marco Rubio's home state. For the first time, he met his rhetorical match in a surprisingly vitriolic Rubio. The Florida senator devoted himself to going shout-for-shout with Trump, dragging out old scandals and unseemly details that put the mogul's present-day promises in an unflattering light. But even when Trump visibly ground his gears, he stayed characteristically...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/02/25/rubio-trump-would-selling-watches-if-not-inheritance/80960194/

I called it - as soon as Rubio rose to second place, Trump would cast doubt(VIDEO-AT-LINK)About a month ago, when Donald Trump was claiming that Ted Cruz probably was not eligible to be president, Trump was questioned by Jake Tapper about whether Marco Rubio was eligible. Trump exhibited some legal understanding of the issue, citing an op-ed written by Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe. Trump's conclusion was that he had no doubts Rubio was eligible: "It's a different [than Ted Cruz], very different thing because he was born here. He was born on the land."(VIDEO-AT-LINK)As the attacks on Cruz's eligibility rose...

There is? Perhaps Hillary Clinton's copy of the US Constitution has bleed-over from a page containing the Declaration of Independence. Pick this up at the 2:12 mark for an interesting lesson in American civics (via Twitchy):(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Hillary Clinton ✔ ‎‎@HillaryClinton Joining @IAmSteveHarvey today to continue the conversation he's been having on guns in America. Don't miss it! "We've got to say to the gun lobby, you know what, there is a constitutional right for people to own guns. But there's also a constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that enables us to have a safe country....

The clock is ticking down for Ted Cruz. After March 1, Hillary's dream opponent may be unstoppable. Here are the two things Cruz can do to save his candidacy, the party, and the country. 1. Pledge to end Affirmative Action It's a matter of principle. Affirmative Action is simply wrong. It's especially egregious in the case of Hispanics. Why should the son of a doctor and lawyer who emigrated from Buenos Aires, and may be of Italian or German descent, get precedence over the son of an immigrant from Bratislava who is a single mom cleaning offices for $25,000 a...

There has been some confusion about statements made by Ben Jealous, former president and CEO of the NAACP, on his February 10 appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show. Here is the video clip and text transcript of that night's appearance. MADDOW: In the Democratic presidential field, as the two Democratic candidates are about to leave states where the electorate was 91 percent and 93 percent white respectively, they're headed into much more diverse states. The Democratic candidates now are fighting tooth and nail not only to try to appeal to minority voters and specifically to African-American Democratic voters, they are...

Panicked Republicans question whether Mr. Trump will be able to unite a Republican-controlled Congress that would normally be expected to promote and promulgate his agenda, an internal crisis nearly unheard-of in a generation of American politics. On nearly every significant issue, Mr. Trump stands in opposition to Republican orthodoxy and his party’s policy prescriptions — the very ideas that Mr. Ryan has done more than anyone else to form, refine or promote over the last decade.

Coming off a distant second-place finish in Nevada's Republican caucuses, Marco Rubio joined "CBS This Morning" to discuss his campaign future and to take a jab at the recent immigration proposals of his closest rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. "Bottom line is I don't think this country supports -- and I do not -- military-style tactics," Rubio said early Wednesday. He also slammed Cruz's proposals as "a change of position" for the senator because Cruz is "under duress in this campaign." Rubio was referring to Cruz's statements earlier this week where the Texas senator insisted that he would send Immigration...

Three-time candidate for president Ron Paul said Wednesday he does not like any of the remaining GOP candidates in the 2016 race, and would not support Donald Trump if he were to win the Republican nomination. Trump has been able to tap into the anger and fear of a large "minority" of voters, Paul told CNBC's "Squawk Box." He said the billionaire businessman acts like he has all the answers but "zero" realistic solutions to the problems facing the nation. "I hear the ability of politicians to capitalize on the worries," the libertarian Republican continued. "They're able to use the...

Chris Christie has crashed, John Kasich is ghettoized, Scott Walker self-destructed and nobody bought the idea of Jeb Bush, and now all the king's horses and all the king's men -- and Fox News -- are trying to shove Marco Rubio down the throats of the Republican electorate. But they'll never make the sale. The fundamental fault line that runs through the middle of the Republican and Democratic parties is that which separates the establishment from the true believers. And nothing is clearer than the fact that nobody will cross that line unless there is absolutely no other option. The...

In case you missed it over the weekend, I published two posts yesterday showing that Marco Rubio has said different things about amnesty in English and in Spanish. In Part One, I showed that Rubio has promised in English that there would be border security before anything happens on legalization, while in Spanish he told Univision that legalization happens first, and border security second. In Part Two, I showed that Rubio has suggested in English that he would eliminate all of Obama's illegal amnesty measures on day one, while in Spanish he assured Univision watchers that DACA -- the amnesty...

With Donald Trump looking increasingly likely to actually be the Republican nominee for President, it's long past time for the Democrats to start working on a pragmatic strategy to defeat him. Months of complacent, wishful insistences that Trump will disappear have proven false, and with a firm commanding lead in polls and several major primary victories, predictions are increasingly favoring Trump to win the nomination. If Democrats honestly believe, as they say they do, that Trump poses a serious threat to the wellbeing of the country and the lives of minority citizens, that means doing everything possible to keep him...

How best to respond to the dramatic rise of outsiders like Donald Trump or the demise of the Bush dynasty? These conservative Americans share their thoughts.Emily Zanotti The 2016 Republican campaign has been unlike anything I've experienced in my time working in or covering politics. Since the early 2000s, I have thought that partisan politics and reality television-style entertainment have been heading for a collision course, but few could have predicted they would intersect so quickly and with such a dramatic impact on the Republican field. Certainly, the Republican party has always been trying to reach beyond its borders to...

Ted Cruz is trying to drum up support in rural Nevada from Republicans angry at the federal government's control of most of the state's land. Marco Rubio wants to lay claim to the Mormon vote that drove Mitt Romney's two big victories in presidential caucuses here. Jeb Bush's exit from the Republican presidential race Saturday in effect turned Nevada into a three-man brawl, with Cruz and Rubio scrambling to break Trump's winning streak after victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Over the weekend, Rubio's team started cajoling Bush's huge pool of big-money donors. The senator from Florida is the...

Why would Ted Cruz, who has a well-stocked campaign, more delegates than Marco Rubio, and a strong ground game, give that up for a snowball's chance at a SCOTUS confirmation? Following the Donald Trump blowout in South Carolina, pundits are calling for Ted Cruz to get out of the GOP presidential race to make room for Marco Rubio, even though Cruz won Iowa, came in third in New Hampshire, and essentially tied with Rubio in South Carolina. The reasoning is sound if you don't want a Trump nomination. As long as Rubio and Cruz are in the race, they'll split...

Pahrump, Nevada (CNN)--A Bernie Sanders supporter was escorted out of a Ted Cruz rally Sunday, after a scuffle that included the man interrupting the Texas senator and another attendee grabbing his throat. In a dusty town halfway between Las Vegas and Death Valley, a municipality where prostitution is legal and citizens recently voted to remove most of the Town Board's power, it's a part of the Old West where Cruz hopes to consolidate his party's libertarian wing. The heckling started in full when Cruz delivered a standard line in his stump speech about repealing Obamacare. Craig Bohannon, a 50-year-old Sanders...

For the last several days, I’ve spent a lot of time spreading the following paragraph around the Internet: Donald Trump is a biblically-illiterate, adulterous, strip-club owning, casino magnate. He has been on every side of almost any political or moral issue you can imagine. Yeah, he's said some things that people like to hear, but what is there in his life that reveals that he will actually do what he says? He is "wise in his own eyes" and we should not be swayed by his cunning, craftiness, and deceitful scheming. Even the shallowest of political observers knows well that...