Free Republic

Go read this right now. I have seen the data from the Ted Cruz Super PAC Army. Not only that, I've seen data from Cruz's own army. It is amazing and impressive. The number of people they have connected with on the ground, converted, and are prepared to mobilize is one of the most impressive feats in modern Republican politics. I don't mean that hyperbolically. I mean that seriously. The Democrats are always far better organized with ground games while the GOP has offset inferior ground games with advertisements and robocalls. The Cruz camp is going toe to toe with...

Internal polling by the Jeb Bush campaign showing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is within 2 points of GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump in South Carolina is leading to speculation that it might be the reason Trump is going after Cruz so hard. Fox News media reporter Howard Kurtz tweeted about the Bush internals on Sunday and Politico reported on them. Howard Kurtz Internal poll for Bush PAC shows much tighter SC race: Trump 26, Cruz 24, Jeb 12, Rubio 11--while public surveys give Trump a huge lead Internal polling by the Jeb Bush campaign showing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is...

Donald Trump has led every reliable public poll of voters in the South Carolina Republican Primary for the past 200 days. To say that he is the frontrunner in the Palmetto State is an understatement. Like New Hampshire, where Trump scored a resounding victory last week, the many Trump supporters who are not Republicans are welcomed into the GOP primary. Trump has held many events in South Carolina and even recruited one of the leaders of the state's political establishment, Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster, to the Trump train. While South Carolina is slightly more challenging for Trump given its higher...

The South Carolina debate is over, and for those of you who are following the nuance – now the endorsement game begins. In order to understand what is being evidenced, you must step back in time and remind yourself what is going on behind the political curtain – The bigger ‘big picture’. All the way back in February of 2014, the RNC rules committee decisions for the 2016 presidential race were constructed in Washington DC. Almost every player in the 2015/2016 were either present (mostly splitters), or had a representative present on their behalf. Republican party officials, party consultants, party...

A super-PAC backing Jeb Bush is aiming to bolster its efforts in South Carolina by adding a GOP strategist well-known in the state to help out in the final days of a "tight, volatile" primary race, Politico reports. Richard Quinn -- a longtime adviser to primary race dropout Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- is taking on the role of conducting polling for Right to Rise ahead of Saturday's vote in the Palmetto State. "This is clearly a tight, volatile race that could produce most any result over the next six days," Quinn wrote to Mike Murphy, the head...

Rush Limbaugh blasted the moderator of the CBS Republican debate, John Dickerson, arguing "he is a Democrat Party hack, he is liberal through and through" in reference to Dickerson's attempted take-down of Ted Cruz. Monday, on "The Rush Limbaugh Show," Limbaugh said, "Cruz was a millimeter away from launching on this guy and kept it back. He did not do it. But this guy went Candy Crowley on him." Limbaugh said, "John Dickerson, you can't get more Democrat operative, this guy is George Stephanopoulos without a job at the Clinton war room. John Dickerson is the son of a drive-by...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz may not have had the most memorable moments from Saturday night's GOP debate in South Carolina, but that may be a good thing for his campaign. As Donald Trump spent minute after minute personally attacking former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and the entire Bush political dynasty, Cruz just sat back and enjoyed the show (as evidenced from the photo below). [copyrighted photo at link] But why would it be an advantage for the freshman senator to not be the center of attention in the debate? Well, let's look at the numbers. 15:38 Fifteen minutes and 38...

The senator's super PACs have launched an unprecedented ground effort in South Carolina and seem intent on going where few super PACs have gone before--door knocking. We all know super PACs have permanently changed the face of American politics. But in South Carolina, right now, we're getting a preview of the unprecedented ways they can alter a campaign. South Carolina, as you may know, is kind of a big deal. It has a large population--4.8 million people--and a bad reputation because it's a place where candidates love to break out their dirtiest tricks. Or, in the case of Ted Cruz's...

If the Republican establishment wants to slow Donald Trumps momentum, it has its work cut out for it in South Carolina. The first poll there since Trumps dominant performance in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary on Monday shows that he has extended his lead in the Palmetto State ahead of its primary scheduled for Feb. 20. The poll, conducted on behalf of the Augusta Chronicle, Fox News 5 Atlanta and Morris News Service, showed Trump with 36.3 percent support among likely voters in the GOP primary, up from 32 percent that last time the poll was in the field...

A mysterious Super PAC with links to Rubio and Romney promises to "kill off" Donald Trump in South Carolina. DC Whispers reported: This mysterious, Mitt-Romney-linked Super PAC is letting it be known they are prepared for all-out war to ensure Mr. Trump gets nowhere near the GOP nomination. The name of the "anyone but Trump" multi-million dollar effort calls itself the, Our Principles PAC and is headed by former Mitt Romney deputy campaign manager, Katie Packer. One of Packer's oft-repeated complaints against Donald Trump is that he is a RINO. That's right, the former Deputy campaign manager for MITT ROMNEY,...

Trump won in dominant fashion and Cruz met expectations as Rubio fell completely apart. This is scary stuff. I've been writing about the Donald Trump phenomenon several times a week for seven months now. As his candidacy evolved from a bizarre spectacle to a serious campaign, it's become clear that this is a pivotal moment in American politics. It's not just that we have a shocking demagogue or a profane performer topping the polls in the Republican presidential race. It's the alarming notion that a crude authoritarian white nationalist is appealing to a very large section of the American people....

As much of the political world shifts its attention towards the South Carolina primary, MSNBCs Steve Kornacki checked in this morning with Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), the states former governor. Sanford noted he’d heard from a lot of locals that supporting Donald Trump would help send a message to Washington. The Trump candidacy, the congressman added, has tapped into Republicans frustrations. Sanford’s troubles were understandable. There were plenty of Republicans who effectively, if not literally, ruled out Trump as a possibility in 2015, when they still assumed the New York developer’s support would collapse. But many of those same GOP...

Thursday's latest endorsement for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz was a two-for-one deal for the Republican presidential candidate's campaign. In South Carolina, where Republican voters will make their choice for their party's presidential nomination a week from Saturday, there are two major voting blocs. Christian conservatives make up one, while active-duty military and veterans make up the other. U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin (ret.) bridges both groups. He retired after 36 years in the military, and is also an ordained with a passion for spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. And, as of Thursday afternoon, he was firmly with the...

Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio turned up the heat on his opponents -- proactively calling them out by name -- while campaigning in South Carolina on Thursday. Rubio touted his international affairs record on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, while taking aim at the experience of Ohio Governor John Kasich, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and the GOP frontrunner, Donald Trump -- all of whom won more votes than him in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary. "We'll have a debate on Saturday. Who on that stage has more experience or has shown better judgment or a better understanding of the foreign...

Texans start voting in the presidential election in eight days....

(CNN)--How much does Lindsey Graham dislike Ted Cruz? Count the ways. On the question of foreign policy, the Texas senator is "just as wrong as Obama, if not worse," Graham told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Thursday. "In Ted Cruz's world, dictators do very well," he continued, comparing his colleague's foreign policy to that of Ron Paul, the former congressman, Republican presidential candidate and long-time leading libertarian. Asked why his fellow senators are reputed to have such a distaste for Cruz, Graham accused the winner of the Iowa GOP caucuses of being an "opportunist" to his core -- one who "gets...

SC GOP leaders discuss potential impact on party of an outsider winning Four former S.C. Republican Party chairs and the current chairman give their take on what it would mean to the party if one of the GOP presidential front-runners considered political outsiders, New York billionaire Donald Trump or U.S. Sen. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, wins the state's Feb. 20 primary: * Barry Wynn (chair, 1990-93): "It shows the new coalition that's different than the coalition that elected Carroll Campbell, Jim DeMint, Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott. There's nothing wrong with that. It creates a new energy and new...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)'s campaign has cancelled almost $1 million worth of TV-advertising in the Hawkeye State, just one week prior to the state's first-in-the-nation caucus. Rubio also cancelled around $125,000 in paid advertising in New Hampshire, which votes on February 9th, eight days after Iowa. Rubio has been advertising extensively in both states since December. In Iowa alone, Rubio has already spent around $3 million on paid advertising. He also still has advertising-slots booked in both states, but his campaign's decision to scale back his buys suggests a change in strategy, just as voters are preparing to cast their...

Perhaps nobody on the planet knows more about intelligence protocol than Edward Snowden. If Snowden says it's "completely ridiculous" to believe that Clinton's emails were safe, then yes, it's fair to include his viewpoint in any critique of Hillary Clinton's latest controversy. In addition, since I believe Senator Bernie Sanders is desperately needed at this point in U.S. history, and electing Clinton or a Republican would essentially be nominating the same president on war and foreign policy, it's important to address relevant analysis of the email controversy. There seems to be a bizarre paradigm of thought among some Democrats that...