Free Republic

His support among Republicans at this early stage of the primary cycle puts him in rare company.Is Ron DeSantis the next Scott Walker? It’s a question I’ve been hearing a lot lately.The premise is that there’s an important similarity between the two: They both earned the affection of conservatives by “owning the libs” as governors, rather than by giving soaring speeches or otherwise demonstrating the skills to win a presidential nomination.In the end, Mr. Walker’s success in Wisconsin did not translate to the national stage; the implication is that Mr. DeSantis’s success in Florida might not translate either. A wave...

At the beginning of this year’s midterm campaign, analysts and political operatives had every reason to expect a strong Republican showing this November. President Biden’s approval rating was in the low 40s, and the president’s party has a long history of struggling in midterm elections. But as the start of the general election campaign nears, it’s becoming increasingly hard to find any concrete signs of Republican strength. Tuesday’s strong Democratic showing in a special congressional election in New York’s 19th District is only the latest example. On paper, this classic battleground district in the Hudson Valley and Catskills is exactly...

As Donald J. Trump weighs whether to open an unusually early White House campaign, a New York Times/Siena College poll shows that his post-presidential quest to consolidate his support within the Republican Party has instead left him weakened, with nearly half the party’s primary voters seeking someone different for president in 2024 and a significant number vowing to abandon him if he wins the nomination. By focusing on political payback inside his party instead of tending to wounds opened by his alarming attempts to cling to power after his 2020 defeat, Mr. Trump appears to have only deepened fault lines...

Results from the Iowa Democratic caucuses were delayed by “quality control checks” on Monday night. Days later, quality control issues have not been resolved. The results released by the Iowa Democratic Party on Wednesday were riddled with inconsistencies and other flaws. According to a New York Times analysis, more than 100 precincts reported results that were internally inconsistent, that were missing data or that were not possible under the complex rules of the Iowa caucuses. In some cases, vote tallies do not add up. In others, precincts are shown allotting the wrong number of delegates to certain candidates. And in...

President Trump’s approval ratings are under water in national polls. His position for re-election, on the other hand, might not be quite so bleak.

You’ve heard of the “margin of error” in polling. Just about every article on a new poll dutifully notes that the margin of error due to sampling is plus or minus three or four percentage points. But in truth, the “margin of sampling error” – basically, the chance that polling different people would have produced a different result – doesn't even come close to capturing the potential for error in surveys. Polling results rely as much on the judgments of pollsters as on the science of survey methodology. Two good pollsters, both looking at the same underlying data, could come...

Electoral Map Is a Reality Check to Donald Trump’s Bid By JONATHAN MARTIN and NATE COHN APRIL 2, 2016 Donald J. Trump is so negatively viewed, polls suggest, that he could turn otherwise safe Republican states into tight contests. Credit Eric Thayer for The New York Times Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy has stunned the Republican Party. But if he survives a late revolt by his rivals and other leaders to become the party’s standard-bearer in the general election, the electoral map now coming into view is positively forbidding. In recent head-to-head polls with one Democrat whom Mr. Trump may...

Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy has stunned the Republican Party. But if he survives a late revolt by his rivals and other leaders to become the party’s standard-bearer in the general election, the electoral map now coming into view is positively forbidding. In recent head-to-head polls with one Democrat whom Mr. Trump may face in the fall, Hillary Clinton, he trails in every key state, including Florida and Ohio, despite her soaring unpopularity ratings with swing voters. In Democratic-leaning states across the Rust Belt, which Mr. Trump has vowed to return to the Republican column for the first time in...

Despite his loss in Ohio, Mr. Trump is positioned to make a serious run at earning an outright majority of delegates and avoid a contested convention. His success in winner-take-all Florida — worth 99 delegates — was enough to push Marco Rubio out of the race. The consequences of the departure are not too significant: Mr. Rubio was already reduced to around 10 percent of the vote, or maybe less, by the time he lost his home state, Florida, by a 19-percentage-point margin. It was the scale of Mr. Trump’s win that was impressive and telling. He won 46 percent...

Among the country's better pundits, it's an annual tradition to break out the figurative cat-'o'-nine-tails and indulge in a little ceremonial self-flagellation. For readers, there's sometimes little more satisfying than watching prognosticators and opinion-mongers publicly confess their sins of analysis. So this year, some of the braver ones have copped to underestimating Donald Trump - not just as a media magnet, but as a bona fide political force in the race for the Republican nomination. You won't be getting that from me. And Ted Cruz is the reason why. We'll get to why in a moment. First, as a separate...

That’s odd. What could Democrats possibly see in a lifelong true conservative like Donald Trump? There’s something for everyone in Nate Cohn’s new post. If you’re a Trump fan, here’s the smoking gun that he really is a new Reagan, the guy who’s going to broaden the tent and sweep to victory in November by bringing centrist Democrats into the GOP. If you’re a Trump critic, here’s further proof that he’s the RINO of RINOs, a man who’s blended nationalism, center-left economics, and Jacksonian foreign policy into something that tastes better to members of the other party than it does...

  The New York Times declared that Christianity in America is declining and I say “Amen to that!” Actually, the article’s title is “Big Drop in Share of Americans Calling Themselves Christian” and that’s why I’m happy it’s true.  The Times piece is based on a Pew Research Center survey, which shows that people are abandoning the moniker of Christian religious identity in favor of post-modern nihilism. The biggest declines are in Mainline Protestant and Catholic denominations.  If you’re a Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian (PCUSA), Episcopal, Congregationalist, or Disciple of Christ, you’re becoming a rarer commodity.  And that’s a good thing....

We’re back at Camp Donkeyland peeking in as kindly old Uncle Democrat is once again scaring his Republican children with campfire ghost stories. This time Uncle Democrat tells his naïve little children Marco, Kelly, Bob, John and Lindsey that global warming is real and if they don’t support Uncle Democrat’s “fix” for it they will be labeled “Enemies of the State.” He asks, “You don’t want to be labeled an ‘Enemy of the State’ do you children?” Little Marco, the most reliable of the Republican children, proudly...