Free Republic

A county clerk in Kentucky who was briefly jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples said on Friday that she and her family have switched to the Republican Party because the Democrats no longer represented them. Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, 50, who has said her beliefs as an Apostolic Christian prevent her from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, said they had changed parties last week. She was a long-time Democrat in eastern Kentucky. "My husband and I had talked about it for quite a while and we came to the conclusion that the Democratic Party...

Diamond and Silk will vote for Donald Trump in the primaries, we want him as the nominee and the front runner for president. Since the GOP and the media is against Donald Trump then we the American people will stand with Donald Trump #stump4trump.

As the truth about Planned Parenthood is revealed to those who believed it was simply a women’s healthcare organization, people are turning away, disassociating themselves with a baby parts trafficking business which even harvests organs from born alive infants. Today, Arkansas State Representative Mike Holcomb joined the list of defectors by leaving the Democratic Party and joining the Republican Party. Holcomb, from Pine Bluff, a two-term legislator, said: "I’ve chosen to join the Republican Party because I firmly believe that the conservative values they represent best align with my own personal beliefs and convictions. I believe in the sanctity of...

"The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act" isn't living up to its promise. Also known as Proposition 47, the California ballot initiative, which was approved in November 2014 with 60 percent of the vote, downgraded drug possession and many property crimes from a felony to a misdemeanor. Proponents argued that lesser punishment for low-level offenders would enhance public safety. San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon was the rare prosecutor who pushed for its approval. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, "What we have been doing hasn't worked, frankly." Gascon spokesman Alex Bastian told me, "The voters indicated that possessing small amounts...

Republicans are debating whether their path to the presidency in 2016 runs through the blue-collar Rust Belt states, or the demographically changing new South and Sunbelt states. For Democrats looking to retake the Senate, however, the formula is more clear-cut: Win back white working-class voters, or be consigned to a longer-term minority. Most of the Senate battlegrounds run through the Midwest—Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio—along with New Hampshire, which carries demographic similarities with those older, whiter Great Lakes states. To defeat the vulnerable Republican incumbents, Democrats have a challenging task ahead: Making inroads with blue-collar voters, who have been stubbornly resistant...

The values that are pre-eminent for Republican Party voters are probably freedom, independence, autonomy, limited government and self-reliance, and a strong belief in the powers of capitalism and a free market,” Cross said. “We see them in the South: the calls or less government, the call for people to take personal responsibility, the inveighing against the dependent class.” And in Louisiana and other energy-producing states, he said, the perceived antipathy of national Democrats for the oil and gas industry helps swell Republican ranks. “We’re looking at something more than just a bad year,” said Charlie Cook, the Shreveport native who...

With Mary Landrieu exiting the Senate, the usual rounds of finger pointing and recriminations have already begun. In the eyes of her supporters, the reasons are numerous and obvious. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the unpopularity of the President or the issues she espoused. No, the only reason that a Republican will occupy that seat next year is that the South is full of hateful, bigoted, stars and bars waving racists and homophobes. This, they will claim, is the result of an ongoing process which began simmering after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,...

It’s not just the United States Senate that switched political parties on Election Day. Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon and conservative phenomenon who rocketed to fame when he challenged Barack Obama at a prayer breakfast last year, also officially changed his political affiliation, moving from independent to Republican. The step is another indication Carson may run for president in 2016. Carson, whose career was spent as a doctor at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Maryland, filed the paperwork in his new home county of Palm Beach, Florida, a traditional Democratic Party stronghold. “It’s truly a pragmatic move because I have to...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — While a student at the University of Arkansas in 1985, Sen. Mark Pryor (D) wrote his college thesis on the state of Arkansas’ two-party system. “The state’s Republicans have traditionally failed to produce politicians that Arkansas would elect,” he wrote. “The Democratic party, as a result, has thrived on a sort of perpetual motion.” That perpetual motion came to an end Tuesday night. Voters chose Republican Tom Cotton over Pryor, and for the first time in 141 years, there will be no Democrats in Arkansas’ congressional delegation. Republicans also won the gubernatorial race and every other...

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with the Democrats, will decide after the midterm elections whether to switch sides and join the Republicans. He is leaving open the possibility of aligning himself with the GOP if control of the upper chamber changes hands. “I’ll make my decision at the time based on what I think is best for Maine,” King told The Hill Wednesday after voting with Republicans to block the Paycheck Fairness Act, a measure at the center for the 2014 Democratic campaign agenda.

South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Matt Moore shares some striking political data when visiting local party meetings: In a state where the GOP holds most statewide offices and congressional and state legislative seats, Democrats still hold the counties. Democrats also outnumber Republicans as sheriffs, coroners and auditors. But that could change in 2014. Moore says his goal in next year's elections is to flip the local offices to Republican control, completing a transformation that started nearly 50 years ago when then-Democrat Sen. Strom Thurmond went on statewide television and announced he was switching to the GOP — in a state...

I grew up in a blue collar, Democratic family. We have been Democratic on both sides of the family, at least since the beginning of the 20th century. I never questioned what decisions my party representatives made as a very young man, say 18 years old. I presumed (wrongly) that these elected officials would always do what was right. I also accepted as indisputable fact that , well of course the Republicans were always, always in the wrong. The republicans were greedy and 'keeping us down'. You can imagine my surprise when, as a college freshman in 1975, I heard...

He credits Sandler for nudging him to the political right, and he is not shy about voicing his disdain for California’s current path. Schneider told WND he is frustrated that red tape in the policies of Gov. Jerry Brown forced him to move his vitamin business out of California. It became too expensive and time consuming for him to comply with state regulations. Although the best production staff, hair and makeup people are in California, he has not done a film in the Golden State in seven years. Brown and the supermajority of Democrats in the legislature, Schneider said, have...

State Sen. Rick Ward III of Port Allen has formally announced he is switching political parties, the third state lawmaker to defect to the Republican Party in as many months. With his move, the GOP now holds a supermajority in the state senate. "Overall, I feel like the Democratic Party has left where I'm at," Ward said Tuesday. "I'm conservative. My voting record shows that." Ward added that "based on the feedback" he's had in his two years in the state senate that his district would be better represented by a Republican. "Based on the direction that both the national...

The chairman of the powerful House budget-writing committee has become a Republican, a move that continues to widen the gap between the two parties in the Louisiana Legislature.

WOW, what huge news this is! Senator Elbert L. Guillory, who represents Louisiana Senate District 24, made an announcement today that will certainly rock the State of Louisiana for weeks to come. In the face of what happened a couple of days ago with Karen Carter Peterson speaking about how those who oppose Obamacare are racist, today’s breaking news was a breath of fresh air from a common sensed individual. Guillory showed up to the @Large Conference this weekend and gave a speech. With each passing day, I have become disappointed in the Democratic Party. What would be the impact...

Senator Guillory explains what the Republican Party stand for and why he switched. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwBaR5bLZc8

Anyone who doubts that the Republican Party can attract black voters needs only look south to Louisiana. At a conference held in Baton Rouge at the end of May, called @Large and aimed to attract black conservatives, black Democrat Elbert Guillary, a member of the state legislature, announced that he was switching party and becoming a Republican. Less than two weeks later, just up the road in Central City, Louisiana, black Democrat city councilman Ralph Washington – who attended this same @Large conference, made the same announcement – he’s becoming a Republican. It’s really not such a mystery. The mystery...

I by-and-large agree with the thrust of Jamelle Bouie’s recent American Prospect article, which argues that Republicans badly misapprehend the reason(s) African-Americans generally vote for Democratic candidates. Too many conservatives assert that African-Americans have developed a “false consciousness” and simply need to be shown the error of their ways before they’ll start supporting Republicans. Asking “What’s the matter with black people?” simply isn’t going to get the GOP very far in its minority outreach efforts. But in the course of this argument, Bouie makes the following statement: “White Southerners jumped ship from Democratic presidential candidates in the 1960s, and this...

A tradition after each national election, presidential or midterm, is for the pundit class to pontificate on whether and how the results point to a realignment. This exercise dates back at least to the publication of The Emerging Republican Majority by Kevin Phillips in 1969, and it continues to this day. Now, of course, the hot topic is the so-called emerging Democratic majority, dominated by young people, nonwhites, and upscale social liberals. Pundits across the political spectrum are offering free advice to the Republican party on how to change its ways lest it face extinction at the hands of this...