Free Republic

On the menu today: The cover piece in the newest issue of National Review has Ron DeSantis fans grumbling that it’s far too early for such a gloomy assessment of his campaign because not a single vote has been cast yet. Fine, but to believe that DeSantis has a shot of winning Iowa, we need to believe that his support is at least 15 percentage points higher than his highest numbers in recent polling and that Donald Trump’s support is at least 15 percentage points lower than his lowest numbers in recent polling. (If you simply take DeSantis’s best number...

Rob Smith, a Black and gay conservative influencer, was the target of vile homophobic and racist harassment at an event that took place alongside Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona over the weekend. The harassment was caught on tape and Smith joined CNN’s Abby Phillip on Tuesday night to discuss it and what it says about the larger Republican Party. “Well, the first thing that I want to say is that anybody that thinks that this is somehow in some way fake or staged, I wanted to tell them that the hate crime that happened to Jussie Smollett was...

How far can gratitude for what former President Trump accomplished — and rage against the Deep State/Democrats — take you in an election? That's the existential question Republicans need to be asking right now. Is it worth going down with the ship to send a message to those persecuting Trump? What should be our goals at this pivotal moment in history? Avenging Trump or winning the 2024 election at all costs — even if Trump has to take one for the team? Radio talker Steve Deace warned yesterday that if Republicans don't start living in reality, there won't be a...

Vice President Mike Pence is a principled man of faith who has worked tirelessly to advance the conservative cause. Casey and I appreciate Mike and Karen for their willingness to put themselves forward in this campaign and wish the Pence family well in their next steps. Oct 28, 2023

For reasons mysterious to the rational human mind, Fox News and the Republican National Committee decided to subject Americans to the most bizarre public spectacle in recent memory. It was stupid. It was strange. It was the second Republican presidential primary debate, which began with British-American Stuart Varney having a seizure while attempting to introduce his Univision cohost Ilia Calderón and concluded with Dana Perino asking the contestants who should be “voted off the island.” “Leading the charge, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis dismissed the question outright,” The Independent reported. “I’m not going to do that, with all due respect, we’re...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who's been trailing Donald Trump in 2024 GOP primary polls, doubts that the former president can be re-elected if he's convicted of a felony. “I think the chance of getting elected president after being convicted of a felony is as close to zero as you can get,” DeSantis said in an interview with CBS News. Anchor Norah O'Donnell asked DeSantis if he agreed with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, another Republican presidential candidate, who said Americans won’t vote for a convicted criminal. She also asked DeSantis if he believes voters will elect someone who is...

Journalist Megyn Kelly interrogated former President Donald Trump this week over his elevation of the controversial Dr. Anthony Fauci during the COVID-19 pandemic — noting that the 45th president formally honored Fauci before departing the White House. “Not only did you not fire Fauci, who is loathed by many — millions of Republicans in particular, but also some Democrats — you made him a star,” Kelly said during an interview that aired on SiriusXM. “This is the criticism of you, that you made him the face of the White House Coronavirus Task Force — he was out at every presser...

Donald Trump skipped the first Republican debate in Wisconsin last month, and the GOP frontrunner has indicated he will not join his party’s second debate in California on Sept. 27. Republican primary voters are split over whether this strategy will help or hurt ... ... The former president reinforced his debate-skipping strategy on his social media site Truth Social writing, "The public knows who I am & what a successful Presidency I had. I WILL THEREFORE NOT BE DOING THE DEBATES!" It is an approach Trump explained in a June interview with Fox News host Bret Baier in which he...

......" In the lead-up to the 2020 election, an Emerson poll suggested that Trump was poised to win one out of every five Black voters, only to secure a mere 8 percent of the Black vote that year." ...So, why do some on the Right insist on peddling this pipe dream? Beyond the allure of clicks, this narrative distracts Republicans from far more compelling evidence showing Trump losing support among White voters.... Our team analyzed every poll with publicly available crosstabs featured in RealClearPolitics in the month of August. Seven out of the nine studies showed Trump performing well below...

Corporate media outlet Newsweek has been caught failing to disclose that an opinion editorial attacking former President Donald Trump was written by two employees of a polling firm whose founder and CEO is the chief pollster for the pro-DeSantis SuperPAC Never Back Down. The authors, Byron Allen and Amanda Iovino, are both employees of WPA Intelligence, and used their op-ed column to claim Trump is losing white voters, passing off Never Back Down talking points as thin analysis. Newsweek makes no mention of WPA Intelligence’s affiliation with Never Back Down.Chris Wilson, the founder and CEO of WPA Intelligence, serves as...

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW), a Washington-based watchdog group, on Wednesday filed a lawsuit on behalf of a handful of voters seeking to bar former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot in Colorado under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment based on his alleged involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The suit -- quickly dismissed by Trump's team -- marks one of the first serious challenges to his qualifications as a presidential candidate based on a 14th Amendment argument. Section 3 states that someone isn't eligible for future office if, while they were previously...

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said Tuesday on “CBS Mornings” that he believed the indictment of former President Donald Trump on federal charges would make him unelectable in 2024. Co-host Gayle King asked, “He’s getting support from a lot of fellow Republicans. Are you one of those going Trump is my guy?” Ryan said, “No, I’ve been a never Trumper for some time. We’re not going to win if we nominate Trump, we’re going to lose. He hasn’t won since 2016. We lost the House in 2018. We lost the presidency in ’20. We lost the Senate. We would...

With Conservatives point finger at Trump after GOP’s underwhelming election results: 'He's never been weaker' Many conservatives say Tuesday's election results show it's 'time to move on' from Trump. (Fox News'', November 9, 2022), as well as the Wall Street Journal - what do Freepers think?

In 2015, Donald Trump burst on the scene with a megaphone, a populist message, an army of grassroots supporters — and not much else. If he runs for the Republican nomination again, as seems likely, it will be different. Early in his first presidential campaign, he had to be grateful for every small crumb of support from Republican officialdom — an endorsement from then-U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, or former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Now, Trump is a former president of United States who looms incredibly large over his party. He and his loyalists have forged a new establishment —...