Free Republic

I’ve heard a lot of predictions about the outcome of the GOP primary this week, but to say that there’s some sort of consensus forming would be a bit of an exaggeration to put it mildly. Echoing the sentiments of some of the guests on the cable news morning shows, Lawnewz said that Trump still wins the whole thing once he gets to wrangle for a few missing delegates coming into Cleveland. At the same time, Ted Cruz backer Scott Walker said that the Texas Senator is now set up to take it on the second ballot. And of course...

Some of the guys who are tempted to mock Hillary Clinton's bad hair days are about to feel some of the lady's pain, beginning Thursday night in the first debate of the presidential nominating season. Bad hair days, and Clinton has a lot of them, aren't funny. Ask any woman. A website called Grooming Lounge, which grandly calls itself "the nation's premiere resource for men's grooming," offers a few tips to the contestants in Thursday night's debate, the first of the presidential primary season. With a little help from their friends, the candidates can see themselves, a la Bobby Burns,...

WARWICK, England -- When it comes to debates the Oxford Union, which bills itself as the "world's most prestigious debating society," remains the gold standard. Begun in 1823, The Union, in modern times, has hosted debates that have included such luminaries as Ronald Reagan and the Dalai Lama. The Oxford Union debates produce useful information. The same cannot be said for U.S. presidential debates. Next week, 10 Republican presidential candidates will gather on a stage in Cleveland, Ohio, behind podiums like "Jeopardy" contestants. With so many candidates having so little time, little useful information will be dispensed. More likely the...

"My sole focus is to run as a Republican," Donald Trump told my Washington Examiner colleague Byron York last week, "because of the fact that I believe that this is the best way we can defeat the Democrats." He went on, "Having a two-party race gives us a much better chance of beating Hillary and bringing our country back than having a third-party candidate." But when York asked if he would definitively rule out running as a third-party candidate, Trump said, "It's not something I'm thinking about right now." And as John Fund pointed out in National Review, it is...

On the left and the right, he's called a buffoon and a blowhard, and occasionally Donald Trump lives up to those descriptions (see his presidential announcement speech). And despite covering him constantly, most in the media insist Trump's candidacy is unserious and his viewpoints are dangerous. And yet -- and yet -- he is doing well in public opinion polling -- so well that more than one headline has referred to his "momentum." He is leading among Republican primary voters in North Carolina, according to a recent Public Policy poll. A CNN/ORC poll has him trailing only Jeb Bush among...

It’s sad to say, but yes he is. In the past few days we have seen the once reliable Matt Drudge make an all-out no pretenses dive into Willard Romney’s tank. The man who once typified the anti-establishment drive for balanced reporting has abandoned us. He has stooped to quoting The Politico’s “considered” opinion that Willard will win the Republican nod in Iowa as if this was next Wednesday morning. Drudge apparently thinks we don’t know The Politico is the extremely pro Democrat site that savaged Herman Cain and pushed him out of the race with an avalanche of empty...