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After my last two columns on Donald Trump, several people have written to ask what I think about some of the other Republican presidential candidates. So I thought I’d address that question this week. Hey, I’m nothing if not responsive to my readers. Please excuse me if I don’t mention everyone. I’ve only got 500 words. Ben Carson. No question, Dr. Carson is manifestly the smartest person in the race, on either side. His slogan should be, “It’s just politics, folks. Not brain surgery.” I don’t necessarily agree with him on every issue, but I believe he’s a man of...

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign on Wednesday announced that it has named a chairman in all 171 counties that comprise the first four early states – 99 Iowa counties, 10 New Hampshire counties, 46 South Carolina counties, and 16 Nevada counties. “The only way we will turn our country around is through a grassroots uprising of the American people, and I’m grateful for the many courageous conservatives in the early states who have stepped forward to lead that grassroots movement,” Cruz said. “I’ve always known we would have a great organization, but having a leader the 171 counties that...

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul could be on the chopping block and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham may not even make the undercard debate under criteria released Wednesday by CNBC ahead of its Oct. 28 GOP presidential debate. The rules would limit the prime-time debate to any candidates polling above 3 percent. That's of an average of national polls released between Sept. 17 and Oct. 21. Surveys from NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox News, CNN and Bloomberg will be used to make the determination. To quality for the undercard debate, candidates must pull in at least 1 percent support in any of...

The Fox News Channel’s efforts to promote the presidential candidacy of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) are not working out so well, according to the Fox News Channel’s own polling. Rubio is at just nine percent, according to the latest Fox News poll, trailing GOP frontrunner billionaire Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson by a significant margin. Trump has 26 percent according to the new Fox News poll, and Carson has 18 percent. Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is tied with the struggling Rubio’s nine percent, while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) comes in next with eight percent. Former Florida Gov....

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has been criticized by his rivals over his comments about minority groups, said on Wednesday he is the rare Republican who could win a sizable portion of the black vote. Trump, the Republican front-runner, spoke in South Carolina at a meeting of the Greater Charleston Business Alliance, which supports minority businesses and is affiliated with the South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce. He cited a recent poll from the firm SurveyUSA that showed him getting support from 25 percent of black respondents in a match-up against Democratic front-runner...

(PHOTO-AT-LINK) Matt Moore ‎@MattMooreSC .@realDonaldTrump has officially filed for the @scgop 2016 presidential primary! 5:04 PM - 23 Sep 2015 On Wednesday, Donald Trump filed papers and paid the $40,000 fee to qualify for South Carolina's Republican presidential primary ballot, a spokesperson for Trump's campaign confirms. The payment — made a week before the September 30 deadline — is the latest sign that the poll frontrunner has no plans of wrapping up his presidential bid anytime soon. The $40,000 fee to get on the ballot, split between the state election commission and the state GOP, is an unusually expensive one,...

In South Carolina, he confronts a changing Republican Party trying to bury its past.Donald Trump is campaigning Wednesday in a South Carolina where the Republican Party has been turning the page on a divisive racial past: The state boasts the first black Republican U.S. senator elected to Congress from the south in over a century, an Indian-American Republican governor, and a Republican-controlled legislature that voted in July to remove a Confederate flag from the grounds of its State House. So much for all that. As Trump prepared to attend events with Sen. Tim Scott and the state’s African American Chamber...

Madison (WKOW) -- A new national poll shows Governor Scott Walker polling at 0 percent in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. The CNN/ORC poll released Sunday shows there were five candidates who received less than one percent of support from likely Republican voters. Walker was among them, joined by former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and former New York Governor George Pataki. Less than one percent equates to zero percent, statistically. The results show Donald Trump is still the front-runner with 24 percent, but has lost ground from earlier in...

The Lindsey Graham show turned up in Simi Valley, California, during tonight's CNN Republican presidential debate. After a flat performance in August at the first GOP debate, the South Carolina senator lit up the crowd at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library during CNN's undercard debate, lashing his opponents with sharp barbs and dropping zingers that brought roars of approval. "That's the first thing I'm going to do as president: We're going to drink more," he said. Graham also trashed Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton in eyebrow-raising terms. "Where the hell were you" during the Benghazi, Libya, attacks, Graham fumed when...

With Ben Carson still on his tail, Donald Trump nonetheless holds his lead in Iowa, while opening up commanding leads in New Hampshire and South Carolina. According to a new poll out from CBS News/YouGov, Trump leads Carson 40-12 in New Hampshire, 36-21 in South Carolina, and 29-25 in Iowa. Ted Cruz comes in third in Iowa and South Carolina with 10 and 6 percent, and John Kasich comes third in New Hampshire with 9 percent of the vote, in a poll of likely Republican primary votes. In perhaps a telling sign of why Trump, who leads the Washington Examiner's...

GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump will never win the White House because he is playing to aging white voters and turning off blacks and Hispanics, U.S. Sen. John McCain said. “I don’t think he could win the White House because we have to attract voters,” McCain said on Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” show yesterday. “We have an aging white population in America and a growing Hispanic and African-American population and we have to reach out to them.” McCain said the Hispanic vote, particularly in a border state such as his home state of Arizona, is especially important. “The Hispanic voter...

Tenth farking place. Three months ago, I would have told you that a midwestern evangelical governor with Scott Walker’s record could stay home in Wisconsin and never campaign and still do no worse than, say, third in Iowa. Remember, this is supposed to be Walker’s must-win early state. Donald Trump has the support of 27 percent of Iowa likely Republican Caucus participants, with 21 percent for Ben Carson and 9 percent for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. This compares to the results of a July 1 survey by the independent Quinnipiac...

COLUMBIA — Most S.C. Republican primary voters want a president with no prior elected political experience, according to a new poll released Tuesday to The State. A Public Policy Polling survey found Donald Trump would win 37 percent of the vote from S.C. Republicans and Ben Carson would pick up 21 percent. The rest of the crowded GOP field of 17 candidates was struggling in the single digits. Trump dominated other GOP candidates in one-on-one match-ups — except for Carson. The soft-spoken, retired Maryland neurosurgeon edged the outspoken New York real-estate mogul and reality-TV star by 1 percentage point –...

If we've learned one thing from Donald Trump during his meteoric rise in the GOP presidential sweepstakes, it's that he likes to win. He never wants to be seen as a "loser" — the pungent term he has used to describe some of his challengers, including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. So why would Trump agree to rally tea party, pro-Israel, and other conservative forces seeking to kill the Iran agreement when the outcome is basically foreordained in favor of President Obama? Unless there is a sudden change in plans, Trump has agreed...

Friday on Newsmax TV’s “The Steve Malzberg Show,” Republican presidential candidate Sen. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said ISIS loves his rival, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s idea of “seize oil for the benefit of America” because it would be a huge “recruiting opportunity.” Graham said, “Well number one, Donald Trump’s plan to destroy ISIS is the most ill-conceived, insanely dangerous idea I have ever heard. Worse than Obama. I never thought I would hear myself say that there is a Republican running for office that’s got a worse idea when it comes to radical Islam than Obama. So here is...

GREENVILLE, S.C.—As Donald Trump studied the crosstabs of a recent poll, his favorite hobby since he started leading in all of them, he was pleased, he said, to see that GOP primary voters perceive him as better equipped than his rivals to handle the economy, national security and even social issues. But one nugget in the survey nagged at the New York billionaire. “The only thing I did badly on was: Is he a nice person? I was last in terms of niceness,” he said. Campaigning deep in the Bible Belt yesterday, the businessman spun this as an asset, not...

GOP presidential contender Lindsey Graham told a campaign rally Tuesday that he can’t support a government shutdown over Planned Parenthood, because it would endanger national security. In a speech on foreign policy in South Carolina, Graham said he is opposed to federal funding on Planned Parenthood but warned a government shutdown would impair “our military, our intelligence community, the people we rely upon to protect us.” The South Carolina senator’s stance puts him in line with Senate leadership but at odds with the majority of the 2016 field, who have backed the hard-lined approach advocated by fellow Sens. Ted Cruz...

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC) said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday that fellow candidate Donald Trump has tapped into the "dark side" of the GOP. Graham was explaining how his rival has managed to dominate the Republican presidential race, polling as high as 35 percent depending on the survey. Graham said the support still represented a minority of the GOP. “Twenty-five percent of our party that probably thinks Obama was born in Kenya or wants to believe that. There’s 25 percent of our party wants him to be a Muslim because they hate him so much,"...

Attending Congressman Jeff Duncan's 5th. annual Faith and Values BBQ/fund raiser this evening.Scheduled speakers include: Dr. Ben Carson, Scott Walker, and my personal favourite; Sen. Ted Cruz. I more than likely will not receive any one-on-one time with these gentlemen but if given the chance to ask any or all of these a question, I respectfully ask my much more learned FReeper colleges what best and poignant question(s) to ask?

Both presidential nomination contests having been scrambled by recent events — the FBI taking control of Hillary Clinton's private email server and a raucous, roiling GOP debate — the third edition of the Racing Form is herewith rushed into print. Legal disclaimer: This column is for betting purposes only. What follows is analysis — scrubbed, as thoroughly as a Clinton server, of advocacy. (Unless I simply can't resist.) Hillary Clinton: Ever since her disastrous book-launch performance, I've thought her both (1) a weak candidate and (2) the inevitable Democratic nominee. No longer. She has fallen from her 95-percent barring-an-act-of-God perch....