Free Republic

A new book—tweeted out by the president himself—argues that America is in the midst of a populist realignment. For two years, the American media has been stuck in the movie Groundhog Day, replaying the 2016 election over and over in the hopes of extracting some new insight about an outcome it didn’t see coming. While some of this work comes from an earnest place—national reporters sense they got the story wrong, and now they’ve been to the heartland to see what they missed—in aggregate, they’re easily caricatured: the Trump voter as blue-collar Baby Boomer, out of a manufacturing job, a...

HUNTINGTON, W. Va. — While it is highly unusual for a sitting governor to change political parties while in office — as West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (D) announced he would do during a rally with President Trump on Thursday night — the process of crossing over was familiar to many in the crowd that night. Kimberly Barrington, a 46-year-old stay-at-home mother of two from Virginia’s rural Wise County, voted for Democrats for years, including former president Barack Obama ahead of his first term — but as she watched him and the Democratic Party drift away from her values and...

Early Thursday morning, President Trump teased a big announcement that would be made at his campaign rally in West Virginia later in the day. Like many things in Washington lately, the announcement leaked early and it was one liberals couldn’t stand: Jim Justice, the governor of the state, was changing his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. It’s rare for sitting governors to change their party affiliation, but that didn’t matter to ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News who ignored the news altogether. CBS was the only network in the Big Three to give the story any time....

West Virginia governor Jim Justice announced Thursday that he is switching his party registration to Republican, but ABC and NBC ignored the major news. Justice’s announcement was teased throughout the day and ultimately came true during a Trump rally in Huntington, West Virginia. “Today, I will tell you, with lots of prayers and lots of thinking, today I tell you as West Virginians, I can’t help you anymore being a Democrat governor,” Justice said. “So tomorrow, I will be changing my registration to Republican.” Not only is it incredibly rare for a sitting governor to change their party affiliation, but...

Sifting through the wreckage of the 2016 election, Democratic pollsters, strategists and sympathetic academics have reached some unnerving conclusions. What the autopsy reveals is that Democratic losses among working class voters were not limited to whites; that crucial constituencies within the party see its leaders as alien; and that unity over economic populism may not be able to turn back the conservative tide. Equally disturbing, winning back former party loyalists who switched to Trump will be tough: these white voters’ views on immigration and race are in direct conflict with fundamental Democratic tenets. Some of these post-mortem conclusions are based...

Yesterday, the heads of leading unions met with Trump and came out praising him. These are Democrats. They have been for generations. They were supposed to vote for Hillary Clinton but in real life, union states like Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin went Republican for the first time in decades. How about us up here in Canada? Today Trump said he’s going to push through the pipeline in North Dakota that Obama handed over to violent protesters, and the Keystone XL pipeline, that Obama and Hillary Clinton delayed to death. In that stroke of a pen, he’ll do more for Canada’s...

Eight years ago, Wisconsin Democrats were in the catbird seat; they held the Governor's office, the majority in both chambers of the state legislature, two U.S. Senate seats, five of the state's eight congressional seats and handed Barack Obama a rousing victory in the presidential election. So it's no wonder that Wisconsin's winning election night results for Republican president-elect Trump and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson were a bit of a jolt to most pundits' sensibilities; for years they have believed that Wisconsin was a deeply blue state, powered by the public sector unions, that traditionally supports Democrat candidates in a...

Donald Trump’s presidential victory not only helped preserve the Republican Party’s majority in the Senate, but it also buoyed the GOP’s control of state legislatures. Republicans now hold an all-time high of 68 out of 99 state legislative chambers, The Associated Press reported. Republicans also have control of both chambers in 33 states, up from 31. In Kentucky, Democratic House Speaker Greg Stumbo was ousted along with 15 other Democratic incumbents, effectively ending 95 years of control of the state house. -

Donald Trump’s presidential victory not only helped preserve the Republican Party’s majority in the Senate, but it also buoyed the GOP’s control of state legislatures. Republicans now hold an all-time high of 68 out of 99 state legislative chambers, The Associated Press reported. Republicans also have control of both chambers in 33 states, up from 31.

Governor Matt Bevin and incoming Speaker Jeff Hoover speaking at GOP victory rally. Taking majority including defeat of Dem House Speaker Greg Stumbo in his House district.

Full title:Pat Caddell: 2016’s ‘New Paradigm’ – ‘Mainstream America’ Versus ‘Arrogant’ Political Class ‘Who Usurp Democracy’ Pat Caddell told Breitbart News Daily SiriusXm host Alex Marlow Tuesday that he believes Donald Trump voters “are much more motivated” than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s supporters. “I think he’ll win today’s voting by a large margin,” added Caddell, while acknowledging that he could not predict if it would be enough to beat early voting totals in some areas... Caddell said Tuesday on Breitbart News Daily, “Look, we are in an insurgency, a revolt, an uprising, as I call it. The American people have...

During the Sunday broadcast of New York AM 970 radio’s “The Cats Roundtable,” former New York City Democratic Mayoral Candidate Andrew Stein endorsed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, ... “I think the country’s in trouble. ... Our military is being decimated by Obama’s cuts,” ... He’ll cut taxes like JFK and Reagan did and stimulate the economy.” Stein later added, “He’s a real doer. Hillary exemplifies the status quo.”

Diamond & Silk break down their view on what's to come after the RNC and why blacks are leaving the democratic party in favor of the trump movement.

The way we think of left and right is a relic of the Cold War. Reality is catching up I wouldn’t be the first to observe that Donald Trump never uses the words “freedom” or “liberty”. In the United States, a Republican presidential candidate who avoids those terms – someone who doesn’t gloss every speech with talk of shining cities on hills – is like a baker who doesn’t use flour. Trump also rarely talks about “left” and “right” and those movements’ foot soldiers, “liberals” and “conservatives”. Odd, isn’t it? Left and right are the defining concepts of American...

Today I have made the most decision in my life. Never before would I have ever thought this day would come. As a lifetime Democrat, I have always voted and fought for the candidate who espoused my beliefs and defended my rights as a homosexual. Never again will I support the Democrat party, because at a time when the gay community needed them the most, they have turned their back on us. A piece of my heart died this past weekend when a Muslim entered the pulse nightclub in Orlando with the expressed purpose of killing gay people. In the...

Mary Matalin, a high-profile political pundit and veteran strategist for the Republican Party, changed her party registration to Libertarian from Republican, she said on Thursday. But in an interview with Bloomberg, which reported on the switch, she emphasized that her decision was not connected to Donald J. Trump’s being the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. She described herself as a voter as a “provisional Trump” and a “never Hillary,” referring to the leading Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton. Pressed on Thursday about why she switched political parties, Ms. Matalin told Bloomberg Politics that she was a Republican in the “Jeffersonian, Madisonian sense.”...

During his victory speech Tuesday night after the Indiana primary, Donald Trump emphasized a region that could be ground zero for support: Appalachia. “The miners in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, Ohio and all over, they’re going to start to work again,” Trump said. “We are not going to be like Hillary Clinton,” he said, taking aim at her ill-timed remarks last more for which she ultimately apologized. Once upon a time in coal country -- states stretching along the Appalachian Mountains and the Marcellus Shale, a formation rich in underground resources like natural gas and coal -- the Clinton...

House Oversight Chairwoman Karen MacBeth announced Monday she's leaving the Democratic Party and becoming a Republican since she thinks the GOP is more aligned with serving the public interest of Rhode Islanders. "I think it's time that the average person like me stands up and says, 'Enough,' and while I've been a voice down here, I want to be a stronger voice," she said. "And I want to be a stronger voice for the people, and if I can do this, then there's other people out there that can do it, too, because this is the only way we're going...

Former Democratic California Rep. Joe Baca is running for a seat in the House, this time as a Republican. Baca previously served in Congress as a Democrat from 1999 to 2013, before losing to fellow Democrat Gloria Negrete McLeod. In 2014, Baca ran for a seat in California’s 31st district but failed to make it out of the primary. California has a top-two primary system, where voters can choose any of the candidates in any party and then the top two candidates square off in the general election. Baca will be facing the eventual winner of the 2014 race, Rep....

Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, a longtime Democrat, says she is switching to the Republican Party because she feels abandoned by Democrats in her fight against same-sex marriage. Davis' made the announcement while in Washington, D.C., to attend the Family Research Council's Value Voters Summit, said Charla Bansley, a spokeswoman for Liberty Counsel, which represents Davis in her legal battles. "I've always been a Democrat, but the party left me," Davis said, according to Bansley.