Free Republic

LIVINGSTON COUNTY, Mich. - Livingston County Sheriff Mike Murphy has posted a video discussing why he will not enforce the Executive Orders put in place by the Governor and the Civil Liability associated with them.

A former adviser to 2016 GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush is pushing House Democrats to impeach President Trump and force Republican senators to vote on Trump's fitness for office. Republican political consultant Mike Murphy called out Democrats in an op-ed for the Washington Post published on Tuesday. Murphy said the time has come to force the impeachment question because of recent revelations of Trump's dealings with Ukraine and the president's asking a foreign government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a political opponent. "The new sins are too big and too obvious," Murphy writes

GOP strategist Mike Murphy appeared on Meet The Press today to discuss the current state of Donald Trump's presidency and the issue of trust. The self-described "infuriated," "TV blabbermouth" slammed President Trump for fomenting "chaos." The panel breaks down whether distrust is becoming the norm in the Trump era - "We are living through the first screwball presidency in American history," @murphymike says on #MTP“We’re living through the first screwball presidency in American history, where there’s careening from one side to another, you don’t really know who is in charge, the internal politics are crazy," said Murphy. "The Republicans I’ve...

The Clinton campaign's wobbly performance over the past 72 hours has set off a rash of behind-the-scenes handwringing among professional Republicans as they confront an unnerving new possibility: What if their nominee actually wins the White House? For months, the prevailing wisdom within GOP political circles has been that Donald Trump stands little chance to win in November — and a large number of the party's consultants, fundraisers, and operatives privately preferred it that way. Though many of them are reluctant to say so in public, they argue that a Trump presidency would fracture their party, decimate the conservative movement,...

Mike Murphy — who ran Jeb’s Super PAC — says that “if it came down to just my vote and I had to decide, I’d probably vote for Hillary and then jump in a lake out of massive depression.” Appearing on With All Due Respect, Murphy added that he hopes Trump doesn’t win because he’s “a demagogue and a neo-racist.” Murphy gave Trump a 10% black-swan shot of winning. View the video here.

Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple, was famously criticized for his ability to convince others to believe anything he said through a combination of hyperbole and bravado. One Apple employee called the effect a “reality distortion field” in 1981 and the term persisted ever since. It’s quite clear by now that conservative philanthropists and grassroots donors have been living in a reality distortion field as well, the creation of a cadre of political consultants who have failed repeatedly at their jobs and yet manage not only to survive but thrive. The ineffectiveness of television advertising and junk mail at...

The most disturbing part of the Donald Trump phenomenon is the abysmal reaction of others on the right and across our political-media landscape. It is not merely left-wing protesters who turn violent or Trumpkin racists and anti-Semites on social media who should alarm us. Rather, it should concern us when so many wake up to say, "Let's do the wrong, cowardly thing." Imagine if: • Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus never went on bended knee to Trump with his worthless pledge but instead routinely denounced his utterances. • Republican candidates with no real chance to win chose not to...

"Trump is not a strong general election candidate. He's showing surprising strength in the Republican primaries. But that's only 20 million people," said Murphy, who ran the $100 million Jeb Bush super PAC Right to Rise. "The regular election is 128 to 129 million people; different planet, not Trump friendly." Murphy told CNBC's "Squawk Box" he would not support for Trump, even if the billionaire were to get the GOP nomination. "Personally, I'd never vote for Donald Trump. I'll write in somebody better. But that's just me. The party will support him if he's the nominee."

The man who ran a super-PAC backing Jeb Bush's unsuccessful White House run says electing Donald Trump as president would be "like putting a chimp in the driver’s seat of a tractor." "He doesn’t understand the presidency," Mike Murphy said in a Weekly Standard interview published Monday.

There is an old axiom in marketing: Good advertising makes a bad product fail faster. If you doubt that, may I submit Exhibit A: The 2016 campaign for the Republican nomination for President of Jeb Bush. It now joins the likes of the Ford Edsel and Coca-Cola's "New Coke" as a bona-fide marketing flop of an enormous magnitude. In each case, be it Edsel, New Coke or Jeb!, logic dictated a winner. Research for all three concluded a marketplace that was theirs for the taking. All three were rooted in strong family brand equity and even carried the brand name...

Mike Murphy, who helmed the Right to Rise super PAC backing Jeb Bush's presidential run, will lead seminars on the race for the White House as a University of Chicago Institute of Politics fellow, the school announced Monday. . . . Murphy, who is based in Los Angeles, spent more than $100 million through Right to Rise in his attempt to boost Bush's White House run

Right to Rise, the super PAC political committee supporting Jeb Bush is preparing to refund about $12 million in unspent money to donors who gave at least $1,000. -snip- It touts, "No open ended commissions. All vendor contracts included fee caps," though cynics about how the money was spent will note that contractors and vendors built their compensation directly into the prices they charged.

Murphy, who also writes screenplays in an office on Paramount's Hollywood lot, said he earned in the mid-six figures for his work with Right to Rise. He dismissed the criticism, saying it comes from unnamed sources and rivals. "The truth is I don't care. There's nothing lower in my book than second-guessing," he said in an interview. "There are a lot of people in the cheap seats with a lot of opinions. What have they done?" . . . To make the wealthy corporate chief more relatable to average voters, Murphy had Romney embark on "work days," when he would...

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)97% says that eight former national finance committee members for Jeb Bush’s failed presidential campaign have joined Cruz’s finance committee.

OP consultant Mike Murphy - who was last seen flying the well-funded Jeb super PAC Right-to-Rise USA into a mountain - has some thoughts on Marco Rubio's chances against Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. First up, don't use the Nevada results showing a blowout victory from Donald Trump "as a model" for the rest of the Republican primaries coming up:

Karl Rove believes there is still time for Republicans who don't want Donald Trump to be the 2016 GOP nominee to get behind a candidate - but it's running out. In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal out Wednesday night, the former senior adviser to President George W. Bush took stock of Trump's recent string of victories. -snip- Before the op-ed was published on Wednesday, Trump was already going after Rove on his favorite medium of attack. "Big defeat last night in Nevada for Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. @KarlRove on @FoxNews is working hard to belittle my victory....

With apologies to Winston Churchill, the tale of the Jeb Bush campaign might be summarized as "Never before have so few spent so much to achieve so little." -snip- Although the vast majority of this money - more than $100 million - went to purchase air time on local television stations, the advertising barrage probably generated several million dollars in consulting fees and commissions Why did Bush spend so much on ads, especially given how little it seemed to help his ill-fated campaign? One reason may be because the super PAC Right to Rise was run by Mike Murphy, a...

One Bush bundler told CNN's Dana Bash that when it came to Murphy, "strong knives are out." "He made minimum of $14 million," the bundler said, requesting anonymity to speak freely about campaign strategy. The details of Murphy's compensation package at Right to Rise are not publicly known.

For Jeb Bush's campaign, August was a cruel month. Donald Trump's attacks on the former Florida governor as a "low-energy" politician were beginning to stick, and the two were bickering over immigration. The issue before the Bush team was what to do about it. -snip- Mike Murphy, the chief strategist for Bush's super PAC, Right to Rise, explained what had happened this way on Sunday. "Our theory was to dominate the establishment lane into the actual voting primaries," he said. "That was the strategy, and it did not work. I think it was the right strategy for Jeb. The problem...

Jeb Bush, the Republican establishment’s last, best hope, began his 2016 campaign rationally enough, with a painstakingly collated operational blueprint his team called, with NFL swagger, “The Playbook.” On page after page kept safe in a binder, the playbook laid out a strategy for a race his advisors were certain would be played on Bush’s terms – an updated, if familiar version of previous Bush family campaigns where cash, organization and a Republican electorate ultimately committed to an electable center-right candidate would prevail. Story Continued Below The playbook, hatched by Sally Bradshaw, Mike Murphy and a handful of other Bush...