Free Republic

"He's got the right personality," Bob Dole said of billionaire Donald Trump, "and he's kind of a deal-maker." Dole was the Republicans' Senate leader in the 1990s, and was the party's presidential candidate in 1996. Dole today is a corporate lobbyist. Dole's view - that Trump is fine, but conservative Sen. Ted Cruz is unacceptable - is the standard view in the Republican parts of K Street. Lobbyists prefer Trump to Cruz for many reasons, but the core of the issue is this: Trump will preserve the lobbyists' incomes and power, while Ted Cruz might crimp K Street's style. "We...

For months, Donald Trump’s core supporters have told the nation that they do not care if Donald Trump offends anyone. Everyone is so fixated on being liked, they’ve become politically correct unwilling and unable to offend anyone.Suddenly, however, the Washington political class is attacking Ted Cruz for being unlikable and the very Trump supporters who love that Trump offends the politically correct now think it is a reason to vote against Ted Cruz that Washington hates him.Are you people not paying attention?Former Senator Bob Dole, who ran against Ronald Reagan declaring Reagan would be the death of the GOP, has...

Ted cruz vs Hannity Full Interview 1/20/2016 (Video)Sen. Ted Cruz on Wednesday cast front-runner Donald Trump as an establishment candidate who's already positioning himself to cut deals with Democrats. "Donald is publicly bragging about how all the big establishment players are getting behind him, and his criticism of me is he said I went to Washington and actually stood up and fought in Washington and Donald has said, well, the problem he has with me is that I won't go along to get along in Washington," the Texas senator said in an interview Wednesday night with Fox News' Sean Hannity....

Why doesn't the establishment get behind Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) to stop Donald Trump? I've been asking this question for months. As I wrote back in December: The establishment can't stand Cruz because they believe he unfairly rips establishment Republicans for insufficient ideological purity. They think Cruz doesn't understand the necessary deals that must be cut in politics in order to "get things done"-they think he's more interested in posturing than in achieving practical policies to help Americans. They will have to put such concerns aside if they want to defeat Trump. It's clearer now than it was then that...

The idiot governor of Iowa has come out today saying he wants Ted Cruz defeated because he doesn’t support ethanol subsidies: DES MOINES REGISTER – “Ted Cruz is ahead right now. What we're trying to do is educate the people in the state of Iowa. He is the biggest opponent of renewable fuels. He actually introduced a bill in 2013 to immediately eliminate the Renewable Fuel Standard. He's heavily financed by Big Oil. So we think once Iowans realize that fact, they might find other things attractive but he could be very damaging to our state,” Branstad said.Branstad added that...

Donald Trump is increasingly attacking Ted Cruz from an establishment perspective, just like he did in December when he called Cruz a maniac for taking on McConnell and the Republican establishment. Well here he goes again, today saying Ted Cruz has a ‘rough temperament’ for calling McConnell a liar on the Senate floor and suggesting that’s not the right way to ‘curry favor’ to ‘get the positive votes’:Donald Trump on Ted Cruz temperament (Video)If The Donald is so interested in currying favor to get the positive votes, then there’s no telling what he will compromise to make that happen. We’ve...

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad would like to see Ted Cruz defeated, he said on Tuesday. The Iowa governor, whose powerful network of supporters is a prized political commodity, was speaking to reporters at the Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit. Branstad's son Eric is leading efforts to portray the Texas senator as hostile to ethanol, a narrative Cruz has been trying to stifle in recent weeks. Asked if he'd like the Texas senator to lose, Governor Branstad said, "Yes." "I think it would be very damaging to our state," he continued, according to Iowa's Channel 13 news. "I believe it would be...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump doubled down on his attacks on Sen. Ted Cruz, saying, “Everybody hates Ted.”Appearing on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” on Monday, Trump said “it is true, he [Cruz] is very unpopular in Washington.”...“I have to do what I have to do,” he said, referring to his attacks on Cruz. “You know, I want to make America great again. I have to get things done. When you have somebody that can’t get along with anybody in Washington, you’re not going to get deals done. I mean, you have to get deals done. We can’t always keep...

This is really damn amazing. I mean really amazing. I told you guys the Republican Establishment was coming to terms with Donald Trump because they hate Ted Cruz so much. This is another data point.Follow this story from the Politico. A leading Republican pollster privately told Speaker Paul Ryan and his leadership team Sen. Ted Cruz would be the biggest drag on House Republicans should he win his party's nomination, according to multiple sources who attended a small meeting of senior GOP lawmakers earlier this month.During the gathering in Annapolis, Maryland, Dave Sackett of the Tarrance Group reviewed a recent...

LONDONDERRY, N.H. - Texas Sen. Ted Cruz outlined his own vision for the country Tuesday night, miles away from the nation's capitol where Congress and members of the political elite - the "Washington cartel" in Cruz's words - have gathered for President Obama's final State of the Union address. "Tonight the State of the Union is strong and the state of the American people is we are waking up," Cruz, who's second in the Washington Examiner's latest presidential power rankings, told hundreds of voters packed like sardines into a middle-school cafeteria. The Texas senator spent most of his speech Tuesday...

Here is a recurring frustration during election season: Candidates who seem attractive before the race begins suddenly sound squishier or change their positions once they hit the campaign trail.On the issue of cronyism, there is one noticeable exception during this year's campaign. In spite of what could be perceived as a political risk, one candidate has remained true to his opposition to (and his commitment to end) the terrible renewable-fuel standard, which requires blending ethanol and other biofuels into the gasoline supply, thereby driving food prices up and creating all sorts of distortions in the energy market: That's Senator Ted...

MASON CITY, Iowa -- "He stood up for what he believes in, even though everybody in Washington hates him," said Toni Hagen, of Mason City, as she waited for Ted Cruz to address a full house at the Praise Community Church Friday morning. Hagen wasn't alone. Talk to people who come to see Cruz as he travels the state on a six-day, 28-county tour, and you'll hear from many who like the idea that Cruz is hated in Washington. And not just Cruz supporters; a lot of Republicans here are drawn to a candidate who is disliked by the GOP...

“If any candidate you're considering won't go to Iowa and tell Iowans that Big Corn's special status needs to end, why do you think he or she will go to Washington and tell the other ten thousand special interest groups that their special goodies need to come to an end?”Are you completely, totally, thoroughly repulsed, disgusted, furious, mortified, mystified, and aghast at how special interests seem to control Washington while ordinary Americans like you and I pay for their goodies on a seemingly endless basis? To paraphrase the late, great Jerry Reed – they get the goldmine and we get...

It’s the ethanol, Sherlock....For if he wins Iowa, he will have defeated the ethanol lobby. And beating Big Corn on its home turf is what can propel him to a win in New Hampshire.People in New Hampshire hate ethanol. Ethanol is corrosive, it destroys engines. If ethanol-laced gasoline is more than a couple months old, it can't be used in high performance small engines. It is hydroscopic, attracting water, another problem with performance.A lot of guys have a personal problem with ethanol. Go to any tavern in New Hampshire and you'll hear an earful. There's nothing worse than getting all rigged out with your chain saw, ready to...

Most senators can't stand him, but a collection of House conservatives is going all out for Ted Cruz in 2016. Not a single U.S. senator has endorsed Ted Cruz for president. But over in the House, a dozen activist conservatives are going all out to catapult the first-term Texan into the White House.Call it the Cruz caucus: a small but committed collection of likeminded rebels who've bonded with Cruz in their recurring, often quixotic clashes with GOP leaders. Lawmakers like Reps. Steve King of Iowa and Mo Brooks of Alabama are attending campaign rallies with Cruz. Others are serving as...

The Republican political class is wholly unaware that its brand is tarnished because it has at best pandered to and more often scoffed at and vilified its most critical and energized supporters - the grassroots conservative base.This should have been evident from the conclusions it drew from the post-mortem it conducted after Mitt Romney's loss in 2012: namely, that the party's key weakness is its inability to appeal to political blocs that typically vote Democratic, and more importantly that the antidote is to advocate policies antithetical to conservatism. Rather than heeding the call of its conservative base to make a...

Read these two quotes carefully: The first: “Cruz cannot win because the Washington elites despise him.” The second goes: “[T]here are a lot of good candidates – I like nearly all of them… …except Cruz.” Which one of the similar quotes is from a pro-Cruz Super PAC and which is from a former Republican nominee for president?  The first quote is from an ad from Keep the Promise I, a Cruz Super PAC.  The second is from Bob Dole, the 1996 Republican nominee and war hero, who got trounced by Bill Clinton. Both purport to highlight a negative of Senator...

Released just three days before Christmas, presidential candidate Ted Cruz has a new three-minute video entitled “2015: A Year Fighting for Freedom, Texas and America,” in which he powerfully explains how to “break the Washington Cartel.”In the new video, Cruz explains that in Washington, D.C., it’s much easier for politicians to take the “path of least resistance.” “There’s a reason so many politicians talk about standing up to Washington and yet, so few actually do it. Because it’s far easier to take the path of least resistance. “How do you break the Washington Cartel? You make the political price of...

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz speaks at a campaign stop at a Pizza Ranch restaurant in Newton, Iowa November 29, 2015. REUTERS/Mark Kauzlarich KNOXVILLE, Tennessee - Four hours before Ted Cruz was expected to arrive at Farragut High School, Tammy Purcell exclaimed cheerily, "I want to make sure I get in there. I want to give him this birthday cupcake," she said, explaining why she was the first person in line to see Cruz. She had come at 6 a.m., wielding a cupcake in one hand and a sign reading "Happy Birthday Ted" in the other as she waited...

Why I won't support the latest last-minute $1.1 trillion spending bill. By SEN. TED CRUZ December 17, 2015 It's Christmastime in Washington, D.C., and that can mean only one thing: Congress is once again playing Santa Claus. The names at the top of its list are the Washington Cartel: The big businesses and lobbyists who get in bed with career politicians to do nothing but grow government. And left off the list: the American taxpayer. Thanks to last year's landslide elections, Republicans now control more seats in Congress, more governorships and more state legislative seats across the country than at...