Free Republic

Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio is looking to outpoll rival Ted Cruz in Nevada's caucus on Tuesday to help bolster his position as the establishment favorite for his party's nomination for the Nov. 8 election. Looming over the tight race between the two first-term Cuban-American U.S. senators is Republican front-runner Donald Trump, the billionaire businessman who has won two of the first three state nominating contests and is expected to dominate the field in Nevada. With Trump, a blunt-spoken political outsider, commanding a double-digit lead in a handful of Nevada polls, political strategists in the state said Rubio and Cruz...

In the days since Friday's horrific attacks in Paris—the most deadly act of terrorism on European soil in more than a decade—something approaching a consensus has emerged among politicos, pundits, and the political press corps in Washington: The fear-inducing violence in France could bring order to what has been a chaotic Republican presidential campaign here at home. The New York Times reports that the attacks have "thrust national security to the heart of the presidential race, forcing candidates to scramble and possibly prompting voters to reconsider their flirtations with unconventional candidates." Bloomberg Politics calls it "an important gut-check moment for...