Free Republic

If you think the arguments between the Republican candidates have been bad, well, you ain't seen nothing yet. Pundits, reporters and political analysts are going to really have at it. Two competing theories about the Republican race are about to come to a head, and both of them can claim a victory of sorts after South Carolina. The first theory is simple. It can be summarized in one word: Trump! The more detailed version would argue the following: * Trump has easily won two of the first three states. * Trump is ahead in the polls in pretty much every...

An aide to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's (R) likely presidential campaign resigned late Tuesday night just a day after her hire was announced. Liz Mair, who was a digital strategist for Walker, came under a storm of criticism for her advocacy for some relatively liberal policy positions and colorful tweets that critics claimed were insulting to Iowans. "In other news, I see Iowa is once again embarrassing itself, and the GOP, this morning. Thanks, guys," Mair wrote about a January event hosted by conservative Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), according to the Associated Press. "The sooner we remove Iowa's front-running status,...

Trump will win most -- and likely all -- of the state's delegates. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has never won a presidential primary. That didn't change on Saturday, when Rubio lost the South Carolina Republican primary, finishing behind angry rich guy Donald Trump for the third time this primary season. When Rubio finished third in Iowa, his campaign -- and many members of the media -- acted as if he had won. His fifth-place finish in New Hampshire made that spin even harder to believe. Just a few weeks ago, Rubio's campaign was telling reporters he'd finish second in New...

Donald Trump comfortably defeated his Republican presidential rivals on Saturday in South Carolina's GOP primary. Trump's resounding victory isn't simply a boon to his prospects for winning the Republican presidential nomination, an outcome once thought impossible that is looking increasingly more plausible. It is also an embarrassing repudiation of conservative orthodoxy that has dominated Republican politics for decades. It suggests that the party's intellectual leaders, who organized the base around the National Review/Weekly Standard consensus -- small government, free trade, pro-Israel, deregulation, low taxes, social conservatism and an aggressive foreign policy -- have been generals of a phantom army. The...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.expressnews.com/business/eagle-ford-energy/article/Cruz-is-big-oil-s-new-crush-as-donors-cool-to-6843524.php

Well then, you must like losing your job to someone in Mexico who will make $3/hour. Union leaders at an air conditioner factory in Indianapolis threatened with losing 1,400 jobs to Mexico said on Tuesday the plants owner expects to pay Mexican workers $3 an hour compared to an average of more than $20 an hour for the U.S. workers. "We have not given up the fight yet," said Chuck Jones, president of the United Steelworkers union local that represents workers at the Carrier Corp plant. "But Carrier has pretty well indicated that the wage differential is too great and...

Augusta Chronicle 2/18 - 2/19 780 LV MOE 3.5 Trump 27 Rubio 24 Cruz 19 Bush 11 Kasich 7 Carson 8

We've been inundated with polls: South Carolina polls, Nevada polls, national polls, general election polls. In fact, there are so many polls that you can tell yourself pretty much any story you like about the Republican presidential primary. Is Ted Cruz surging? There's a poll for that. Is Cruz stalling out? There's a poll for that too. Have you heard about the poll showing a Ben Carson comeback? OK, I made that one up. But earlier this week, you could find a poll with John Kasich in second place in South Carolina, even though he was polling at about 2...

Is Trump losing his one big lead in South Carolina? Just days before the South Carolina primary, some polls have shown Trump's once-huge lead in Palmetto State is shrinking. But now, hours before voters head to the polls, FOX Business' Charles Gasparino is hearing it from inside sources that both Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are seeing surges in support. On Friday's show, Gasparino told Tom Sullivan the campaigns and the "big money" behind them are seeing private poll numbers that suggest both Republican Senators may do better than the pundits expect and even top Donald Trump....

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. -- Speaking just six miles apart on Friday morning, Donald J. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas renewed their bitter personal feud, while their supporters echoed the candidates' language and themes - a sign that the bitterness between the two men has now seeped deeply into the feelings of voters. Mr. Trump called Mr. Cruz "the biggest liar I've ever seen," a line he has been pushing all week. Trump supporters, some of whom said they had once considered supporting the Texas senator, largely agreed with Mr. Trump's harsh assessment. "I'm very disappointed in Ted Cruz...

Charleston, S.C., As Sean Hannity stood onstage Friday with Ted Cruz before a packed audience at the College of Charleston's Sotille Theater, the Fox News host announced that "a few special guests" were backstage. "Moments before we came out here, you got a big endorsement," Hannity said. With less than 24 hours until the South Carolina GOP primary, Congressman Mark Sanford, the state's former governor, emerged from behind a velvet curtain. The crowd went wild, and Sanford then spoke for one minute about why he was supporting Cruz. Sanford mentioned the importance of upholding the Constitution and how impressed he...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.wltx.com/story/news/politics/2016/02/19/ted-cruz-south-carolina-like-iowa/80629886/

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/02/18/cruz-continues-wooing-upstate-voters/80583894/

Ted Cruz has pinned his hopes on a big showing in the South. He could still do it, but it's far from certain It's taken a while for the chattering classes to come around to the idea that Donald Trump may actually pull this thing off. It's hard to blame them. It's as if we all went to sleep one night and woke up in an alternate universe. But they do seem to have accepted it. He came close to winning Iowa, a notoriously buttoned up electorate, and won decisively in New Hampshire. All the polling going forward looks good....

There's no magic formula to winning the South Carolina GOP primary, but for the best shot at victory February 20, candidates will have to navigate three key groups of Republican primary voters. They must do this while being mindful of something else: South Carolina Republicans are fiscally and socially conservative and often display a strong distrust of government, particularly the federal government. So, first, they need to connect with evangelical Christians. South Carolina is the buckle of the Bible belt, and according to the 2012 exit polls, evangelicals made up 65% of the state's GOP primary voters. Evangelicals propelled Ted...

For Christians, the stakes couldn't possibly be higher in the 2016 elections, and presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) believes he can be the leader the nation needs to help turn things around. To do that, though, he knows he needs the support of a broad coalition--the former "Reagan Coalition"--of which evangelical voters make up a big voting bloc. And, as a result, his campaign has aggressively courted evangelical voters in South Carolina. "I believe we need to reassemble the Reagan coalition, to unite conservatives and libertarians and evangelicals and women and young people and Hispanics and blue collar...

SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- Ted Cruz's campaign is trying to make the most of Gov. Nikki Haley's endorsement of Marco Rubio days ahead of the South Carolina primary: driving sky-high his political expectations here. "If he doesn't finish first, this is a massive loss," Jason Miller, a senior Cruz adviser, said hours after news reports began circulating that Haley would endorse Rubio at a rally Wednesday evening. "Rubio has to win here." Earlier this week, Jeb Bush had called Haley's endorsement "the most powerful, meaningful one in the state." Haley's backing of Rubio comes on top of the support of Sen....

Two things about this. One: Cruz is entirely right that Trump's lawsuit would be frivolous. Watch the allegedly "defamatory" ad below. It's Politics 101: My opponent may say X now but he said Y before, so how can you possibly trust that X is his true opinion? Trump seems to think that using old footage of him stating his own position on abortion constitutes defamation unless the viewer is also told that he's since changed his mind. It would be like Rubio suing over an ad that showed him touting comprehensive immigration reform in 2013 because he no longer believes...

Pro-Jeb Bush Super PAC Right to Rise has conducted an internal poll in SC that finds Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in an extremely tight race. The results list Trump at 26 percent, and Cruz at 24 percent, with Bush and Marco Rubio coming in a distant third and fourth with 12 and 11 percent respectively, according to a report by Politico. Right to Rise polling is now being conducted by South Carolina veteran political strategist Richard Quinn. In the Politico report Quinn states: "This is clearly a tight, volatile race that could produce most any result over the next...

The event will take place at the same time as a CNN town hall featuring fellow GOP presidential candidates Ben Carson, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. CNN announced its event Saturday. Scarborough had harsh words for CNN last week, after the network reported that the "Morning Joe" hosts were giving favorable treatment to Trump, and that MSNBC officials were concerned about the trend. MSNBC also responded by issuing a statement that denied some of the accusations put forth by CNN, including that Brzezinski and Scarborough celebrated the New Hampshire primary results with Trump in his hotel room. It should be...