Free Republic

The old conventional wisdom was that Ted Cruz was too disliked by official Washington, too hard-lined conservative, to get the support of the Republican establishment. The new conventional wisdom has the Republican Party movers and shakers turning to Cruz and saying, in effect, “Help us, Senator Ted Cruz. You’re our only hope.”

Silicon Valley has little in common, politically, with either branch of the Republican Party, establishment or tea party. Executives at Apple, Google, and Facebook may run their companies with the ruthlessness of robber barons, but they also support Democrats such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and adhere to trendy environmental causes. But the two groups are united in one belief, that being that Donald Trump must be stopped. So, Republican movers and shakers from both the House and Senate as well as operatives such as Karl Rove met people like Apple’s Tim Cook and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon...

Hillary Clinton’s promise to regulating hydraulic fracking out of existence during the recent presidential debate in Flint, Michigan would be alarming if anyone took it seriously. However, according to Fortune Magazine, neither the energy companies and energy independence advocates nor environmentalists believe her.

Friends of both Nancy and Ronald Reagan would often remark about how deeply and passionately they loved each other, even after decades of marriage, a rare thing indeed in a world where half of all marriages end in divorce. The love story of the greatest president of the 20th Century and the actress and dancer whom he met in the early 1950s would make a great subject for a movie if Hollywood cared to make it. But the romance of Nancy and Ronald Reagan also changed the world. Without her, there might not have been him.

The best that can be said about Sunday night’s debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders is that it was more decorous than the Republican one the previous Thursday. Nothing about anatomy came up. However, things said during the debate were actually more frightening. An example occurred when Bernie Sanders, the venerable socialist from Vermont, said, "When you are white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto, you don’t know what it’s like to be poor.”

Just when all hope seemed to be lost, Jesse Ventura has suggested that he might mount a third party run for the presidency if his favored candidate, Bernie Sanders, does not get the Democratic nomination. Ventura, a one term governor of Minnesota, is famous for being a pro-wrestler and action movie star. He is most familiar to audiences for being the chain gun welding, tobacco chewing mercenary in the 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger tough guy vs. alien film “Predator.” Contrary to popular belief, Ventura was never a Navy SEAL, but did serve in Vietnam as a member of the U.S. Navy...

While the Republican presidential candidates who are left standing battled it out in Houston, Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose quest for the Oval Office never quite caught fire, addressed the Washington Press Club Foundation Dinner and said some pretty alarming things. He demonstrated how much he detested his fellow senator Ted Cruz by joking about him being murdered. "If you kill Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody could convict you.” One wonders if that is a breach of Senate etiquette. Cruz has said some pretty raw things about his fellow senators,...

The Washington Times is reporting that Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas has forced the Justice Department to crack down on so-called sanctuary cities. Sanctuary cities are places where the local government has forbidden its police department to cooperate with Homeland Security and ICE where illegal aliens are concerned. Thus far the Obama administration has taken a laissez faire attitude toward the practice.

Donald Trump appeared on the Sean Hannity Show the night before the Republican Nevada Caucus and made a campaign promise that should endear him to a lot of people, but make him a few enemies. Trump suggested that, were the people of America to allow him to serve as president, he would look into prosecuting Hillary Clinton for her various alleged crimes surrounding the unsecured email server.

Back when Obamacare was just a threat in the form of legislation, it contained a provision called “the public option.” The idea was that anyone seeking health care insurance would be able to opt for a government run, single-payer system similar to what prevails in Canada and Great Britain. The public option never made it into the final product because it was a change too far. Most people believed, correctly, that the option was a ploy to cause private insurance to wither and die. Now Hillary Clinton has revived the public option as part of her reform of the health...

When a campaign runs into trouble, as Ted Cruz’s seems to have, one of the ways to staunch the bleeding is to toss someone overboard in hopes that the circling sharks (i.e. the media and opposing campaigns) will be sated. The Cruz for President Campaign has committed a number of slip ups that has allowed rival campaigns and some in the media to paint it as being dirty and underhanded. These mistakes began with suggesting that Ben Carson was quitting the race when he was not and ended with the accusation that Marco Rubio denigrated the Bible when he had...

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has been relying heavily on African American voters to fend off the stiff challenge that she is getting from Bernie Sanders. So far the strategy has been working. Clinton won the Nevada Caucus thanks, in part, to support from that state’s African Americans. She is favored to win in South Carolina and across the South for the same reason. Bernie Sanders, her chief rival, has been trying to court the black vote, but thus far not enough to overcome Clinton. A new ad from the Republican National Committee may give Sanders some ammunition,...

Donald Trump, the mercurial businessman who is running for president, has been given to saying alarming, crazy things. He has gone birther on President Barack Obama, suggesting that he was really born in Kenya. He has claimed that one of his chief political rivals, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas is ineligible to be president for having been born in Canada, albeit by an American mother. He has accused former President George W. Bush, brother of Jeb Bush, of lying about WMDs in Iraq and of knowing about the 9/11 attacks in advance. Trump is now turning his full, crazed birther attack...

Donald Trump, with his characteristic bombast, has been claiming during stump speeches that he was always against invading Iraq. The claim is a way to strike at former President George W. Bush and, by extension, former Florida Gov. Jeb. Bush, who is running to be the third of that esteemed family to become president. But, Politico found out that in 2002 Trump expressed support for invading Iraq while on the Howard Stern show.

Usually, a presidential candidate welcomes the endorsement of a group of – shall we say – independent businesswomen, especially if said candidate is Hillary Clinton. However, Clinton, who is locked in a neck and neck race with Bernie Sanders for the Nevada Caucus, may not know what to think about her election being touted by “Hookers 4 Hillary,” a group of sex workers who ply their trade at the Moonlight Bunny Ranch, a legal brothel near Carson City, Nevada, and similar establishments, including the Alien Cat House located near Area 51.

President Barack Obama has announced that he intends to visit Cuba on his next international trip in March. The announcement has elicited expected a harsh reaction from Cuban Americans, including presidential candidates Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio. The prospect of an American president clinking glasses with the Castro brothers while the machinery of the Cuban police state continues unabated, filling prisons with political dissidents, is proving to be unedifying to many Americans who love freedom. But that disquiet is part of the reason Obama is going. He revels in i

n what must seem to be a little glimmer of hope for those people who fear a Donald Trump presidency, CNN reported that the first national poll taken since the famous Trump debate meltdown that Ted Cruz has edged ahead of the mercurial real estate tycoon in a national survey. Cruz enjoys the support of 28 percent of Republicans, with Trump just behind with 26 percent. Marco Rubio comes in third with 17 percent. Trump is still far ahead in the South Carolina poll in advance of the primary and a number of other states.

One of the quirks of the primary calendar is that the Democrats have their South Carolina Primary a week after the Republicans. Democrats are concentrated on the Nevada Caucus, which takes place on February 20. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have been campaigning out west, therefore. Since a recent poll suggested that Clinton and Sanders are essentially tied, Team Hillary has been rolling out the expectations game, suggesting since the Democratic electorate is 80 percent white, Sanders has the advantage, just like in New Hampshire. The stance has backfired because it has gotten Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid angry at...

A truism has developed during the 2016 election campaign that Donald Trump can say the most outrageous things and not have it affect his poll numbers. That principle may be put to a severe test as a result of Trump not only claiming that President George W. Bush lied about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction to justify the Iraq War but also blaming him for 9/11. These claims certainly livened up the debate in South Carolina where George W. Bush is regarded with some reverence

As the battle for the Republican nomination for president shifts to South Carolina, all wings of the GOP, establishment and tea party conservative, are wrestling with the existential problem of how to stop Donald Trump. Trump, who won a convincing victory in New Hampshire, threatens to run the table by racking up enough wins to quickly amass enough delegates to lock down the nomination. The Club for Growth, an economic conservative group, has launched one of the first shots with an ad that attacks Trump’s conservatism and his character.