Free Republic

The group of Ron DeSantis’ top donors and supporters gathering in Palm Beach, Fla., this weekend includes some longtime backers of former President Donald Trump. The Florida governor’s three-day retreat at the Four Seasons hotel — just four miles down the road from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate — kicked off Friday evening with a cocktail reception and dinner for the approximately 150 attendees. The event, billed as a celebration of the “Florida blueprint,” precedes a likely DeSantis presidential bid that would pit him against Trump. And the roster of people there shows that the governor is appealing to major GOP figures...

As former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley crisscrosses the country ahead of an anticipated 2024 presidential bid, she is also fixated on defending her home turf — from an incursion led by her onetime boss, former President Donald Trump. Haley is putting her political muscle behind South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, a freshman congresswoman who blamed Trump for the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot — and who is now facing a Trump-endorsed opponent, Katie Arrington, in next week’s Republican primary. Haley, a former South Carolina governor, has appeared in Mace’s TV ads, headlined a fundraiser that raised six figures, and is...

One of the Republican Party’s biggest donors is working to defeat Arkansas Sen. John Boozman in next year’s GOP primary. Dick Uihlein, a prominent conservative megadonor, is giving $1 million to a newly formed super PAC aligned with Republican Jake Bequette, according to a person familiar with the contribution. Bequette is an Iraq war veteran and retired NFL player who is challenging Boozman. Uihlein, an Illinois shipping and supply company executive, has a long history of giving to anti-establishment causes. Earlier this year, he cut a $2.5 million check to a super PAC bolstering Missouri Senate hopeful Eric Greitens, a...

Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney’s primary challenger landed former President Donald Trump’s endorsement before she even officially launched her campaign. Now, she’s cashing big checks from Trump’s biggest donors — including tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Thiel has contributed the maximum-allowed, $5,800 check to Harriet Hageman, the Trump-endorsed attorney running against Cheney in next year’s Republican primary. The former president has made Cheney, an outspoken critic who voted for his impeachment in January, his top target in the 2022 election, and now big-money benefactors like Thiel are piling into the race.

The president's troubles in the Rust Belt state are a potential warning sign for his reelection prospects. MACKINAC ISLAND, Mich. — Donald Trump has long heralded Michigan as the crown jewel of his 2016 victory. But the president's campaign team is increasingly grim about a repeat performance in the traditionally blue Rust Belt state. After a midterm election that decimated the ranks of Michigan Republicans, Trump's campaign is looking to other battlegrounds he lost last time — such as Minnesota and New Hampshire — that they see as more promising. The assessment illustrates how Trump’s support in the Rust Belt...

President Donald Trump’s Thursday evening rally in Manchester, N.H., is ostensibly about ginning up support for his reelection campaign. But the state’s establishment GOP class is worried he’ll use the event to do something else: Talk up Corey Lewandowski’s potential 2020 Senate bid. Republican Gov. Chris Sununu has relayed concerns about Trump's controversial former campaign manager to party leadership. Tom Rath, a former New Hampshire attorney general and a prominent Republican in the state, says he’s “not a Corey fan.” Former GOP Sen. Judd Gregg took to the pages of New Hampshire’s biggest newspaper to deride Lewandowski as a “thug.”

<p>Republicans worry that the NRA and two other groups that have long formed the core of their electoral infrastructure will be effectively on the sidelines.</p> <p>The National Rifle Association aired an avalanche of TV ads and pushed its 5 million-plus members to the polls for Donald Trump in 2016, propelling him in the Rust Belt states that delivered him the presidency.</p>

President Donald Trump’s political team has concluded that shutting down the government hasn’t damaged his 2020 prospects — if anything, they’re convinced it’s bolstered his standing in key electoral battlegrounds. Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale commissioned a survey taken during the final days of the shutdown that was conducted by respected GOP pollsters Neil Newhouse and Robert Blizzard. The poll, surveying 10 GOP-leaning House districts that Democrats won in the 2018 midterms, found that a plurality of voters blamed Trump for the shutdown. But a plurality of voters also supported his push for a border wall. Trump is expected to...

FENTON, Mo. — As GOP Rep. Ann Wagner prepared to introduce candidates in a Republican Senate debate here Friday, she took a pointed jab at one contender who didn’t make it — front-runner Josh Hawley. “I try not to tell candidates how to run their races. I don’t know where some of the other candidates are,” she told POLITICO before taking the stage in a high school auditorium, referring specifically to Hawley. “Perhaps they have conflicts. But you gotta show up to win. And I’m going to tell that to the crowd tonight.” Moments later, Wagner followed through, declaring to...

On Friday afternoon, at an exclusive Republican donor retreat here hosted by Mitt Romney, frustration boiled over. During an off-the-record question-and-answer session with House Speaker Paul Ryan, Meg Whitman, the billionaire Hewlett Packard chief executive officer, confronted the speaker over his endorsement of Trump. Whitman, a major GOP giver who ran for California governor in 2010, compared Trump to historical demagogues like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and wanted to know how the speaker could get behind him. At another discussion session during the day, which featured top Romney alumni Stuart Stevens and Matt Rhoades, Ana Navarro, a Republican contributor...

Anti-Donald Trump forces are expanding their offensive against the Republican front-runner, releasing a TV advertisement in Florida just days before the state's primary that spotlights a former Trump University salesman who says he was "ashamed" to work for the online school. In the 60-second ad, the employee, named Cliff, describes receiving "nonstop calls with complaints" from customers unhappy with Trump University services. He also talks about the school's low ratings from the Better Business Bureau. "I think I walked away from the job because I couldn't sleep at night," Cliff says. "With Donald Trump, you always have to read the...

A member of the Republican National Committee rules panel accused his own party leadership of “institutional tyranny” on Monday, another escalation in the growing internal battle over the party’s arcane parliamentary procedures. Solomon Yue, the Oregon committeeman and member of the RNC’s Rules Committee, sent a more than 1,300-word email, obtained by POLITICO, to members of the rules panel on Monday morning, charging that RNC Chairman Reince Priebus and his allies had improperly tried to scuttle Yue’s proposal to change the underlying rulebook for what could be the party’s first contested convention in 40 years this summer. Yue is the...

MANCHESTER, N.H. - An internal poll conducted on Sunday suggests that Marco Rubio's fumbled debate performance has damaged his prospects heading into the New Hampshire primary. The poll, conducted by the pro-John Kasich New Day for America Super PAC, shows Rubio plummeting to fourth place in the primary here, with 10 percent of the vote. Most of the polling conducted in the immediate days before the debate showed Rubio in second place. The survey, which was based on phone calls to 500 likely voters (margin of error plus or minus 3 percent), was conducted Sunday, the day following the latest...

The next Republican debate will feature an undercard stage before the main event, the forum's host CNBC said Wednesday, assuaging some of the fears and complaints from lower-tiered presidential campaigns. Candidates polling at an average of 3 percent in the five weeks before the event will make the primetime debate at 8 p.m. EDT Oct. 28. A 2.5 percent average will be rounded up to 3 percent.  Candidates with a 1 percent average will appear in a forum at 6 p.m. EDT. The polls being used for the averages are from NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN and Bloomberg released...

If he doesn't land punches tonight against Donald Trump, some warn, 'it might be over.'Nobody is more nervous about this week's debate than Jeb Bush’s top fundraisers -- and no audience will have more to say about his future viability as a candidate. New York Jets owner Woody Johnson knew it. He recognized the group assembled at his Rockefeller Center office in Manhattan last Wednesday was in need of some reassurance after Bush’s unimpressive performance in last month’s GOP debate, so Bush’s national finance chairman, recalled one attendee, gave a personal pledge: Jeb would be “well prepared” for the second...

Three top Jeb Bush fundraisers abruptly parted ways with his presidential campaign on Friday, amid internal personality conflicts and questions about the strength of his candidacy, POLITICO has learned. There are different versions of what transpired. The Florida-based fundraising consultants — Kris Money, Trey McCarley, and Debbie Alexander — have said that they voluntarily quit the campaign and were still working with Bush's super PAC, Right to Rise Super PAC. Others said the three, who worked under the same contract, were let go because they were no longer needed for the current phase of the campaign. None of the three...

Nearly a year ago, tea party agitators in Arizona managed to get John McCain censured by his own state party. Now, he’s getting his revenge. As the longtime Republican senator lays the groundwork for a likely 2016 reelection bid, his political team is engaging in an aggressive and systematic campaign to reshape the state GOP apparatus by ridding it of conservative firebrands and replacing them with steadfast allies.

<p>Screaming constituents, protesters dragged out by the cops, congressmen fearful for their safety — welcome to the new town-hall-style meeting, the once-staid forum that is rapidly turning into a house of horrors for members of Congress.</p> <p>On the eve of the August recess, members are reporting meetings that have gone terribly awry, marked by angry, sign-carrying mobs and disruptive behavior. In at least one case, a congressman has stopped holding town hall events because the situation has spiraled so far out of control.</p>