Free Republic

While many GOP primary voters are looking for a stalwart conservative behind whom to throw their support, electability will almost certainly play a large role in how people choose their candidates in the upcoming primaries. So, just who would perform the best in a potential head-to-head matchup against Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton? According to a recent Fox News poll, all of the top candidates would defeat Clinton in a national contest:

Donald Trump has captured a double-digit lead in the first voting state of Iowa a little over a week before the caucuses there, according to a CNN/ORC poll released Thursday. Trump is supported by 37 percent of likely GOP voters in the Hawkeye State, followed by Ted Cruz, at 26 percent, and Marco Rubio at 14 percent. That represents at least a 3-point rise for each of those candidates from the same survey conducted in late November and early December. All other candidates remain in single digits in the latest survey, with Ben Carson at 6 percent, Jeb Bush at...

... Washington (CNN)Republican Party leaders and prominent senators are sharpening their knives against Ted Cruz, expressing growing alarm over his candidacy as he continues to mount a serious threat in Iowa. In interviews with CNN, a growing number of Republicans are beginning to echo remarks made by the likes of former Sen. Bob Dole and Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, warning that the party would suffer deep losses down the ticket and risk electing a Democratic president if the Texas senator wins the nomination. "I think we'll lose if he's our nominee," said Orrin Hatch, the most senior Republican in the...

As former Florida Governor Jeb Bush struggles to rise in the polls, blame has begun mounting on the spending tactics of the man in charge of Bush Super PAC Right to Rise, Mike Murphy. Of the more than 22 million dollars spent on ads attacking Sen Marco Rubio since the start of December, $20 million has come from Right to Rise. The Super PAC has also spent money on iPad-style video mailers and a 47-page magazine sent out to supporters in NH.

For months, the press and the Republican establishment alike have been expecting the Trump bubble to implode. Now that it's clear Trump isn't going anywhere, we're seeing stories about a long slog of a campaign or even a brokered convention. But there's a very real possibility that, far from those kinds of days of reckoning, Donald Trump could actually "run the table." Ironically, Trump not only could win -- he could win more decisively than any non-incumbent Republican contestant for the nomination since the dawn of the modern primary system. Let's see how that might happen. New Hampshire First, let's...

When Jeb Bush and his allies began helping the "super PAC" supporting him raise more than $100 million last year, his bid for the Republican nomination seemed like a safe bet. But as Mr. Bush's campaign continues to lag, his backers are increasingly turning their frustrations over his foundering candidacy on the group, Right to Rise, and its inability to influence the race. Some donors quietly worry about how the cash-rich group is spending its money, confounded by how few tangible results the tens of millions it has pumped into the race so far have yielded. Others have expressed dismay...

A former marketing executive for textbook publishing giant Pearson Education reveals the anti-American agenda behind Common Core and the Advanced Placement U.S. History framework in the third video of a series produced by Project Veritas and focused on the corporate cronyism behind the education reform known as Common Core. Kim Koerber, a former Pearson executive who now works as a sales consultant for National Geographic – another Gates Foundation-funded Common Core publisher – tells the Project Veritas undercover journalist that “conservative voters are afraid of everything,” and proceeds to say why Common Core is important in her view. She explains...

They think he wasted money on everything from an iPad-sized video mailer to direct mail for donors in states that don’t yet matter. They think his attacks on Marco Rubio are doing more harm than good. And they worry that, at the end, all he will have accomplished is the destruction of the Bush family brand. The big-money supporters fueling Jeb Bush’s super PAC have found their boogeyman: Mike Murphy, a sharp-witted, Twitter-obsessed veteran GOP ad man who runs Right to Rise.

Wednesday on CNN’s “The Situation Room ,” while discussing a new CNN poll that shows him tied for third in New Hampshire, Republican presidential candidate former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) said it’s a “tragedy” if his opponent Donald Trump becomes the GOP nominee because Hillary Clinton will beat him in a general election.

A new Florida FAU poll (full pdf below) shows candidate Donald Trump extending his lead and nearing the 50% threshold. At 48% Trump has increased his lead by 11 points since the same poll was conducted a month ago.

Languishing Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush took a swipe at frontrunner Donald Trump in the billionaire's home town Tuesday, accusing him of "talking trash" and saying he would be demolished in a general election. "I'm the only guy confronting this," the former governor of Florida, the son and brother of two former presidents, told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "Because people are anxious about their future they've latched onto the large personality on the stage, but the reality is he's not a serious candidate and he'll get wiped out in the general election."

Sarah Palin is wrong to call Donald Trump a conservative, Jeb Bush said Wednesday. -snip- "Rush Limbaugh and others are now questioning his conservative credentials, and I think they're right," he said. -snip- Bush, who has climbed into a tie with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for third place in New Hampshire, behind Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, according to a new CNN/WMUR poll, said Trump's attacks come because he knows Bush is a threat. "He's scared of me. He's insecure. He doesn't believe that he can take me on," Bush said.

Jeb Bush's campaign is out with a new ad painting a presidential nomination for Donald Trump as a death knell for the Republican Party's chances of defeating Hillary Clinton in November. The ad imagines an Election Day match-up between Trump and Clinton, showing doctored news footage reporting on Trump's election night concession to Clinton after an "unprecedented victory not since Reagan in 1984." It also includes the voices of CNN newscaster Wolf Blitzer and MSNBC's Chris Matthews announcing the Democrat's victory. After footage of Clinton thanking an audience, from her kickoff address this summer, the footage rewinds before the warning...

He may still be down in the polls, but the latest reminder of GOP presidential contender Jeb Bush's financial prowess arrived on Monday. Right to Rise USA, the super PAC backing the former Florida governor's presidential bid, said it has reserved roughly $10.8 million in advertising time in seven states holding primaries or caucuses in March. The group has raised more than $100 million to back Bush's bid and is already spending nearly $18 million on television, radio and Internet advertising in the first four states holding contests.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush slams Donald Trump as a "junkyard dog" in a new interview, casting his Republican presidential rival as not conservative. Bush was asked about recent comments from conservative radio hosts Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh criticizing Trump for going after Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), their mutual rival, as a "nasty man." "He's a junkyard dog, that's for sure," Bush said of Trump in an interview with Newsmax TV. "I seem to be the target of most of his attacks. I don't know why he's so worried about me," Bush continued. "Maybe he thinks I'm a real...

GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush said Tuesday that when voters reflect on the policy proposals from Donald Trump there's going to be a "reality check." "Crazy talk isn't going to get us out of the mess we're in," Bush told CNBC's "Squawk Box." He said he has a "more credible message" than Trump, who's leading the Republican primary race by a wide margin, according to an aggregation of national polls. "Either Trump will change his mind on these subjects, which I doubt, or he's going to pay a price," Bush said, citing as an example the recent controversy over what...

GOP elites have blown $65 million on Jeb Bush so far this campaign cycle and have another $30 million to blow on his failed campaign. Roll Call reported: The spectacular bust of Jeb Bush's campaign for president so far is as much a story about Bush himself as it is about the failure of Right to Rise, the shock-and-awe super PAC that was supposed to launch him into the lead and keep him there. Right to Rise raised $103 million in 2015 and has spent more than $65 million so far. But nine months after he got into the race,...

From almost the first day he entered the 2016 race, Jeb Bush has cast himself as the cerebral, wonky adult in a room full of colorful, bombastic Republican candidates. After the rise of Donald J. Trump, and the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., Mr. Bush doubled down on that strategy, using Mr. Trump as a foil to try to show that he was a serious candidate for serious times. On Tuesday, Mr. Bush will take his message of national security and somber foreign policy to New York and the Council on Foreign Relations, where he will give...

This is at least one campaign mailer that won't go straight into the recycling bin. Pro-Jeb Bush super PAC Right to Rise USA is mailing voters in Iowa and New Hampshire digital video players loaded with a biographical documentary about the former Florida governor....

When Donald Trump first announced that he was running for president, many political pundits, myself included, wrote his campaign off as a joke. While it may have been a publicity stunt to begin with, it is becoming more and more apparent that Trump intends to become the GOP nominee and face off against Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. Conventional wisdom was that Jeb Bush would represent the establishment GOP in the primaries, and that Ted Cruz would be the Tea Party insurgent candidate. Just a few months ago, many writers lamented the “dynasty” of the Bush and Clinton families in...