Free Republic

Don't politicize the Parrot. That's the sentiment of some on social media who are upset the Pirate Parrot appeared along with team President Frank Coonelly at the Republican Committee of Allegheny County's annual Spirit of Lincoln Dinner on Thursday night. Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Donald Trump, headlined the event in Green Tree, which drew more than 500 people. Before it started, Washington Post reporter James Hohmann posted an image to Twitter of the Pirate Parrot standing in a hallway outside a ballroom at Green Tree's DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel. The Parrot was giving a thumbs-up.

THE BIG IDEA: Paul Ryan calls it “a publicly stunt.” That may be true. But it is proving to be a darn effective one. Republicans, unsure about how to deal with a sit-in that started on the House floor yesterday at 11:30 a.m., tried to talk over Democrats and hold routine votes. Then, around 3:30 a.m., they adjourned the chamber until after July Fourth – two days earlier than planned. In so doing, they’ve guaranteed that the debate about gun control will roil the congressional recess and remain a dominant storyline for the next two weeks. Democrats continue to occupy...

Americans, collectively, are not as angry as watching cable TV would lead you to believe. But many poorer, less-educated folks who have been left behind in the 21st century—the ones who have seen their wages stagnate, their opportunities for upward mobility disappear and their life expectancies shorten—are looking to disrupt a status quo that has not worked for them. That’s what Sanders and Trump are both promising to do. And that’s the main reason why Bernie beat Hillary Clinton in yesterday’s West Virginia Democratic primary by 15.4 points. He carried every single county in the Mountaineer State, which by every...

GREENVILLE, S.C.—As Donald Trump studied the crosstabs of a recent poll, his favorite hobby since he started leading in all of them, he was pleased, he said, to see that GOP primary voters perceive him as better equipped than his rivals to handle the economy, national security and even social issues. But one nugget in the survey nagged at the New York billionaire. “The only thing I did badly on was: Is he a nice person? I was last in terms of niceness,” he said. Campaigning deep in the Bible Belt yesterday, the businessman spun this as an asset, not...

PHOENIX—Bernie Sanders is unaccustomed to being heckled by protesters. The self-identified democratic socialist was caught off guard here Saturday when African-American and Latino activists jeered him at Netroots Nation. Sanders’ inability to control the audience – he tried to shut them up and then he tried to yell over them – underscores his broader struggle to expand his appeal and highlights why his summer surge is unlikely to last. The huge crowds Sanders draws are overwhelmingly white, and polling consistently shows that virtually all of his support comes from whites. After Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two contests on...

Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the funding arm of the political network backed by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, wants a lot more hard information from the crowded field of presidential contenders before deciding what to do with its considerable resources. The group is pressing every 2016 candidate to detail on the record their plans for economic growth, deficit reduction, entitlement reform, criminal justice and even foreign policy. The tax-exempt entity, a key node in a constellation of conservative entities that aims to spend $889 million before the next White House election, distributed a detailed survey Thursday to...

The Walker surge in Iowa, Hillary’s Obama problem and other news from Week One of our yearlong insiders’ survey from the ground in 2016’s first-in-the-nation races.Most Iowa insiders believe Scott Walker would win their state’s Republican caucuses if they were held this week. But they’re not this week, and virtually none of the most influential thought leaders in the Hawkeye State believe that the Wisconsin governor will sustain his recent bounce in polls. This is one of several intriguing findings in the debut survey of The POLITICO Caucus. More than 100 of the most plugged-in activists, operatives and elected officials...

Jeb Bush and Bobby Jindal appear in a commercial that will air Sunday to promote NewRepublican.org, a project focused on outlining a positive GOP agenda for the future. The former Florida governor and the current Louisiana governor, both potential 2016 presidential candidates, support a super PAC that is the brainchild of Republican strategist Alex Castellanos. “If you believe that every parent ought to be able to choose their child’s school, and that the economy should be driven from the bottom up, not the top down from Washington, then you’re thinking like a New Republican,” Bush says to the camera at...