Free Republic

As I suggested when I gave readers a rest from me five weeks ago, the Republican convention successfully celebrated the complete rejection of the Post-Reagan Republican party: The Bushes, Senator McCain, and Governor Romney weren’t present or mentioned, or much missed. Senator Cruz, as I wrote in my last piece here, and the otherwise amiable Governor Kasich made asses of themselves, and opinion has moved on. (It was not entirely sane for Mr. Kasich, who did not utter a negative word about any other Republican during the primaries, and on his one winning night advised his countrymen to “hug a...

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump told CNBC on Monday the Federal Reserve is doing what President Barack Obama wants by keeping interest rates low. Fed Chair Janet Yellen and central bank policymakers are very political, and Yellen should be “ashamed” of what she’s doing to the country, Trump said, adding the Fed is not even close to being independent. By keeping interest rates low, the Fed has created a “false stock market,” Trump argued in a wide-ranging interview in which he also talked about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s health problems . Trump said rates are being kept lower to bolster...

New York Republicans and even some Democrats called Hillary Clinton’s characterization of Donald Trump’s backers as a bigoted “basket of deplorables” a major blunder that will badly damage her already-faltering campaign. “It’s Exhibit A of her political incompetence,” a prominent Democratic operative who strongly supports Clinton told The Post. “I think a lot of Democratic strategists are in a state of disbelief at how clunky Hillary’s campaign has been. “It’s been a year-and-a-half and she still can’t answer the goddamn email question, and despite outspending Trump by huge amounts, she’s losing ground to him every day and the race is...

During my writing this election, I’ve warned Democrats and voters afraid of Donald Trump that Bernie Sanders was the only way to defeat the GOP nominee. My advocacy for Bernie in over 200 articles in The Hill, Salon, and The Huffington Post was fueled in large part by my admiration for his honesty and message. As a result of being an inspiration to millions, polls showed Vermont’s Senator consistently beating Trump by over 10 points. In contrast, Hillary Clinton was only up by 2.7 points over Trump the other day. Furthermore, time is no longer on Clinton’s side. She’ll need...

Scheduled campaign stops may also be dropped by the presidential candidate as she modifies her scedule following doctor's orders. The 68-year-old was rushed out of a 9/11 commemoration service today suffering from a “medical episode”, according to a law enforcement witness. A video later emerged of the Democratic presidential nominee, showing the dramatic moment when her "knees buckled" and she nearly crumpled to the pavement while waiting for a car to collect her. Now sources have claimed Democratic Party insiders are rushing to consider a replacement candidate in light of Mrs Clinton's poor health. Emmy Award winning New York Journalist...

Physical weakness caught on camera turns health conspiracy into a legitimate campaign concern. Hillary Clinton’s health – long the obsession of conspiracy theorists – emerged Sunday as a legitimate campaign issue after Clinton nearly swooned and stumbled at a Sept. 11 commemoration, underscoring the sense that that summer’s sure-thing candidate is teetering at the worst possible moment. The incident, captured on cellphone video showing the wobbly Democratic candidate being lifted into the vehicle by her aides after leaving a memorial service at the site of the World Trade Center attack, comes after two weeks of tightening polls that have seen...

How badly will this hurt her in the polls? There’s an unwritten law in American politics that you can attack your opponent but lay off your opponent’s constituency. The people, after all, are sovereign in our republic, and it is well understood that you can’t ridicule or dismiss a sizable segment of the people without attacking the entire American system. Most politicians understand this instinctively, though lapses inevitably occur. One of the most amazing lapses occurred Friday night when Hillary Clinton’s attacked what she calculates as half of the Donald Trump constituency. At a LBGT fundraiser in New York, she...

I agree with Ed that the “basket of deplorables” comment is a dumb thing to say, even as a gloss on Clinton’s alt-right speech a few weeks ago. It’s especially dumb to quantify the critique by categorizing “half” of Trump’s supporters that way. Mock your opponent all you want, a Times reporter noted, but you mock the electorate at your peril. The fact that she said it at a fundraiser, not a public rally, also makes it smell like a screw-up. Romney was at a fundraiser in 2012 when he uttered his line about the 47 percent; Obama was at...

Federal convicts told a judge they were forced to watch Hillary Clinton’s convention speech at the federal prison where they’re being held — but said the prison imposed a blackout on Donald Trump’s speech, tuning the facility’s televisions to other channels. The felons are trying to join the federal case against President Obama’s 2014 deportation amnesty, saying that Mr. Obama is discriminating against U.S. citizens caught breaking the law by punishing them, even as he attempts to grant work permits and taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal immigrants.

This is what it’s come to. I published at my site earlier this week a post containing a video from a medical doctor who makes the case that Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president and a narrow favorite, according to the polls, to win the election in November, is suffering from advanced-stage Parkinson’s Disease. The case made in the video, by Dr. Ted Noel, an anesthesiologist from Orlando with 36 years’ experience in medicine, is a strong one. The various health-related issues which have pierced the cloak laid around Clinton the “short-circuits,” the coughing fits, of which there was...

During a fundraiser in New York City Friday evening, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton described half of the Americans supporting Donald Trump as a “basket of deplorables” made up of “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” people. “You know to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables,” she said as the crowd laughed and applauded. “They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.”

U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton reflected on her religious faith on Thursday during the first of a series of speeches her campaign said would focus on her values and vision rather than those of Republican opponent Donald Trump. The shift comes as opinion polls tighten between Clinton, the former secretary of state and U.S. senator, and Trump, a New York businessman, ahead of the Nov. 8 election. Clinton has focused many of her public remarks on criticism of Trump, including his provocative comments on illegal immigrants, Muslims and women. Trump has criticized Clinton's record in public office and questioned...

She’s working the refs, and, since most of them are in the bag for her, it’ll probably work, especially since the majority are already defending Coughing Hillary against any charges or “just wonderings” regarding her health. (The Hill) Hillary Clinton’s campaign is working the refs hard when it comes to reports about her health. While Clinton responded to a fit of coughing this week with humor, saying she was “allergic” to GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, her aides and surrogates played the role of bad cop. Campaign spokesman Nick Merrill took to task an NBC reporter who wrote about the...

"What is Aleppo?" It is many things, but let's hope among them that it is the turning point in a presidential campaign that has until now been dangerously dismissive of the crucial decisions the next US president will face the second they step into the Oval Office. In a campaign season where shocking moments have come all too frequently, the Aleppo question was another stunner. It happened Thursday morning, on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." It was a shocking exchange between the Libertarian presidential candidate, Gov. Gary Johnson, and one of the show's panelists, Mike Barnicle. Barnicle: "What would you do if...

NBC's "Commander in Chief Forum," held Wednesday night aboard the USS Intrepid in New York, was the closest thing to a debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton until the real thing on Sept. 26. And it showed an advantage Trump might have when the two meet face-to-face: she has a record in government to defend, while he doesn't. On that score, Trump, at 70 a newcomer to politics, seems new, while Clinton, at 68 a veteran of decades in public life, seems, well, not new. The format of the NBC forum, in which the two candidates were separated by...

Iran may have received an additional $33.6 billion in secret cash and gold payments facilitated by the Obama administration between 2014 and 2016, according to testimony provided before Congress by an expert on last summer’s nuclear agreement with Iran. Between January 2014 and July 2015, when the Obama administration was hammering out the final details of the nuclear accord, Iran was paid $700 million every month from funds that had previously been frozen by U.S. sanctions.

As Trump continues to aggressively court the black vote, I hope to see this video go viral. It may be from 2014, but it rings true. I have said it before and I will say it again, if there ever was a time for a GOP candidate to get a larger than normal share of the black vote, this is it. As more blacks support Trump (and they will), the next battle will be black Trump supporters vs. black Democrat politicians (i.e. aldermen) determined to see Clinton win.

Shades of 1968 and 2000: Facing sinking polls and a wily opponent, Clinton boosters blame the left and the media At least when Hubert Humphrey lost the 1968 presidential election, nobody tried to pretend that the Democratic Party didn’t have a problem. Humphrey’s defeat came at the end of perhaps the most disastrous campaign season experienced by any political party in the modern era. (We will have to wait a bit longer before measuring it against this year’s Republican primary campaign.) Under the circumstances, it’s remarkable that election was as close as it was: Richard Nixon beat Humphrey by barely...

Fox Business Network host Stuart Varney interviews RCP cofounder Tom Bevan about STUART VARNEY: Tom, this is the start of the fourth week of what I am calling the New Trump. He appears to be narrowing the gap. According to RCP is that accurate? TOM BEVAN: Absolutely. Clinton left her convention and recieved a bounce, and in both of our averages -- the two way and the four way -- She was ahead by over 7%. She got up to a 7.5, almost 8% lead over Trump. And that lead has now -- that lead has been whittled down to...

In what is no doubt a brilliant tactical step, the Donald goes for broke and holds out for the participation of Johnson The Donald Trump for President 2016 campaign will pull out of the scheduled September 26th debate between Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Trump, unless third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are also allowed to participate.