Free Republic

2,600 people at $15/hr is $39,000 per hour. Anticipating 1,000 hrs per campaign worker, that’s $39 million. At $25/hr that’s $65 million. At $40/hr that’s $104 million. This is the scale of spending that Ken Cuccinelli and Jeff Roe have for the Never Back Down SuperPAC to support Governor Ron DeSantis in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada on behalf of the Sea Island billionaires who want to manipulate the 2024 election. That’s just payroll for new hires. Overall, the New York Times is reporting a campaign support spending plan of more than $200 million. Essentially, these are payments...

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump .3h Rob DeSanctimonious and his poll numbers are dropping like a rock - I would almost be inclined to say, these are record “falls.” The question: Is “Rob” just young, inexperienced and naive or, more troubling, is he a fool who has no idea what he is doing. We already have one of those in office, we don’t need another one. MAGA! May 14, 2023, 10:38 AM

Ron DeSantis always makes a big deal about signing all of the Florida laws that stem from new legislation the people behind his administration submit from his office. However, when he signed the new law that sealed all his travel records [Previously Discussed Here], he did so quietly. .... Snip.... Ron DeSantis ’24 is 100%, guaranteed to be an absolute construct of the billionaires, multinationals, and hedge fund managers who must stop Donald Trump and the America First platform. Look backward at the professional Republican outcomes in 2018, 2020 and 2022 to see the background of what this is all...

Some of the biggest Republican donors, who collectively have contributed tens of millions of dollars to shape the presidential race, are tightening their purse strings out of frustration with their inability to boost their favored candidates, or to slow Donald Trump. Rather than continuing to write huge checks to support the cluster of establishment candidates jockeying to emerge as the leading alternative to Trump, a billionaire real estate showman roundly despised by the GOP elite, these donors have mostly retreated to the sidelines. They're watching anxiously, hoping that the field sorts itself out, according to interviews with a half dozen...

Billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump has not faded in the fall, as Republican professionals hoped, but has his biggest lead yet and support from more than a third of GOP voters, according to a CNN/ORC poll released just 58 days before the Iowa presidential caucuses. Trump has 36 percent support, 9 percent higher than he had in October more than double the 16 percent backing for ultraconservative Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, his closest competitor. In particular, Trump is a runaway choice of GOP voters surveyed who do not have college degrees, his support rising above 40 percent. Ben Carson...

Britain's Tories fail to reform costly tax credits for the middle class.David Cameron's government last week abandoned its plan to reform Britain's expensive working-family tax credits. U.S. politicians who think this kind of "pro-family" tax policy is a good idea-hello, Marco Rubio might take note. The centerpiece of Mr. Rubio's tax plan is an increase in the child tax credit to $2,500 from $1,000, despite its cost and lack of growth incentive. Such ideas may have a short-term political appeal, but eventually they become entitlements that benefit the left.

Three things about Donald Trump have now become clear to the Republican establishment: 1) He might not implode before people start voting for president next year. 2) He could actually wind up as the Republican nominee for president. -snip- Right to Rise raised more than $103 million in the first six months of this year. It spent - as I mentioned above - $28 million on ads. Let's say the organization has spent another $15 million on fundraising, consulting fees and other miscellaneous costs. And let's assume, just for the sake of this argument, that Right to Rise hasn't raised...

As Donald Trump leads yet another national poll, the New York Times' Jonathan Martin asks a question that has consumed the political world: Can anyone inside the Republican Party -- via negative TV ads or a scorched-earth campaign -- stop Trump? And if so, do they even have the will do it? "Almost everyone in the party's upper echelons agrees something must be done, and almost no one is willing to do it," Martin writes.*snip* The campaigns and allies for three establishment presidential candidates -- Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and John Kasich -- have spent a combined $47.5 million in...

Republican strategist Karl Rove arranged a meeting between fundraisers for GOP candidate Ben Carson and casino tycoon Steve Wynn, Bloomberg reports. Wynn is a sometimes-business competitor of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, whose campaign is viewing the meeting as an attempt by the GOP establishment to help Carson topple his chief rival in the primary race. "Karl Rove is at the center of the GOP establishment — fearful of what real leadership in Washington D.C. will accomplish," Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told Bloomberg in a statement. "Mr. Trump continues to expose the all-talk, no action politicians propped up their dark...

THE vice president of the United States was unhappy. In 1983, a "Conservative Digest" poll of conservatives found that 64 percent of right-leaning party leaders wanted George H.W. Bush replaced on the 1984 Reagan ticket. "Light reading," Bush scribbled across a cover sheet as he sent a copy to his friend James Baker - adding a frowning face. Reagan would have none of it - he liked and appreciated Bush. But the gulf between establishment and insurgent Republicans has only grown in the ensuing decades. The elder Bush's struggles through the years with a restive right shed light on the...

Business interests want to expand the supply of cheap labor. Republican leaders want a magic bullet that’ll supposedly start to make them competitive again with Latino voters. No one but no one wants the party’s biggest young Latino star to have his presidential hopes dashed before he’s even begun to run — except of course for the handful of jerks like me who think lying bald-faced to your constituents on a key issue to get elected is a dealbreaker. It’s time for the Republican establishment to say, “Thanks, Marco.” Fox News viewers in Florida will see a new commercial in...