Free Republic

GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump will never win the White House because he is playing to aging white voters and turning off blacks and Hispanics, U.S. Sen. John McCain said. “I don’t think he could win the White House because we have to attract voters,” McCain said on Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” show yesterday. “We have an aging white population in America and a growing Hispanic and African-American population and we have to reach out to them.” McCain said the Hispanic vote, particularly in a border state such as his home state of Arizona, is especially important. “The Hispanic voter...

A federal judge has upheld part of Arizona’s contentious immigration law, rejecting claims that the so-called “show your papers” section discriminated against Hispanics. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton on Friday was on the last of seven challenges to the 2010 law. The section she upheld allows police in Arizona to check the immigration status of anyone they stop. Bolton ruled that immigration rights activists failed to show that police would enforce the law differently for Hispanics than other people. …

GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Saturday said conservative commentator Meghan McCain has no future in television following her appearance on Fox News the day before. “@MeghanMcCain was terrible on @TheFive yesterday,” Trump tweeted. “Angry and obnoxious, she will never make it on T.V. @FoxNews can do so much better.”

GOP presidential contender Lindsey Graham told a campaign rally Tuesday that he can’t support a government shutdown over Planned Parenthood, because it would endanger national security. In a speech on foreign policy in South Carolina, Graham said he is opposed to federal funding on Planned Parenthood but warned a government shutdown would impair “our military, our intelligence community, the people we rely upon to protect us.” The South Carolina senator’s stance puts him in line with Senate leadership but at odds with the majority of the 2016 field, who have backed the hard-lined approach advocated by fellow Sens. Ted Cruz...

By Roger Stone The continued attacks on Sarah Palin by campaign Aides to Senator John McCain are almost beyond belief. Continued attacks on Palin, and on her performance as the Vice Presidential candidate by McCain Aide Steve Schmidt, are particularly ridiculous given Schmidt's track record of incompetence and missteps by the senior McCain aide during the Presidential campaign. Schmidt is, after all, part of the gang that had McCain suspend his presidential campaign and rush back to Washington to take the exact same position as Barack Obama on the first Federal bailout bill which in the end, only bailed out...

Former CIA Director James Woolsey says a report that Iran will be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate a site where it may develop nuclear arms is so mind-boggling, it's almost like watching "Saturday Night Live." "I thought it was a 'Saturday Night Live' skit. I mean not seriously but I couldn't believe it that they would let the Iranians inspect themselves," Woolsey said Thursday on Newsmax TV to J.D. Hayworth, host of "Newsmax Prime." "What do they have to do? Take a trip to the photo shop on the way to the data exchange so they can...

Arizona State Senator Kelli Ward, challenging U.S. Senator Sen. John McCain, leads the five-term Washington insider for the first time in a new poll. Her lead stands at nine percent. Ward was the choice of 45 percent of the registered Arizona voters polled, while McCain only garnered 36 percent. 1,271 of the more than 1,400 voters polled say they intend to vote in the 2016 primary election. Approximately one fifth remained undecided at this early stage of the race. Independent polling company Gravis Marketing conducted the August 15 poll. It surveyed 844 Republican primary voters and 427 Democratic. These new...

DERRY, N.H. — What was once flippantly deemed the Summer of Trump has evolved into something much bigger: a singular moment in American political and cultural history. (snip) Trump’s candidacy will be a moment that today’s voters will have to explain to their grandchildren. “What is happening with Trump is not a fluke,” said Harvard government and sociology professor Theda Skocpol, author of “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism.” “Yes, he is a great entertainer, but he is able to take advantage of a number of dynamics in American politics as they exist right now. This is...

By far the biggest story of the summer is Donald Trump's surging candidacy for the U.S. presidency. It's obvious why. Hate him or love him, Donald Trump knows how to captivate the public's attention. He seems immune from being hurt; I want to examine why. What is it about Donald Trump that allows him to survive any occurrence that no conventional political candidate could? And, not only that, but to use these instances to further galvanize his base of supporters, while growing it? This summer, we have seen example after example of this. People were horrified when he questioned Sen....

I know it’s still early, but it’s beginning to appear this election cycle that conventional wisdom may not hold. The pundit class and the establishment politicians inhabiting the insular bubble that is the District of Criminals are flummoxed. They can’t fathom why the hoi polloi will not fall in line behind establishment-approved candidates (and there are several, but particularly they are Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton). Some pundits are even offering to turn in their “pundit license.” For example, The Washington Post’s Charles Lane told Brett Baier on Fox News’ Special Report last week: “I think I’m going to have...

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sen. Al Franken endorsed the Iran nuclear deal, becoming the fifth of nine Jewish senators to back the agreement. “Many have expressed reservations about the deal, and I share some of those reservations,” Franken, D-Minn., wrote in an Op-Ed on CNN’s website. “It isn’t a perfect agreement,” he said. “But it is a strong one. This agreement is, in my opinion, the most effective, realistic way to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon anytime in the next 15 years.”

As PJM’s D.C. Editor Bridget Johnson reports, Donald Trump once again hurled a personal insult at a rival for the nomination that questions the candidate’s intelligence.He said that Jeb Bush was “not a smart person” and Marco Rubio was “foolish and stupid.” He called John McCain a “dummy.” He said that Rick Perry should “take an IQ test.”Now he comes out and says Rand Paul is “a spoiled brat without a properly functioning brain.”What is it with these sandbox epithets? Five year olds shout “stupid” and “dummy” at one another, not grown men seeking the most powerful office in...

Ted Cruz eats up all his time playing word games with Secretary Kerry and making Secretary Moniz trip over his own words, and then gets cut off by John McCain before he can ask Kerry to clarify what he meant by this unbelievable remark: John Kerry Explains Why Iran Deal Is Not Legally A Treaty: "You Can't Pass A Treaty Anymore" TED CRUZ: General Sulemani, the commander of Iran's Quds Forces has more American blood on his hands than any living terrorist. Under this agreement, the sanctions on Gen. Sulemani are lifted. Sec. Kerry said to the families of those...

People are again predicting his demise. The widely admired Megyn Kelly is definitely a riskier target for him than John McCain was. But since an enormous amount of his appeal is based on saying outrageous things and not apologizing for them, it’d be foolish to think that anything that has transpired since Thursday will sink him. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if the debate and its aftermath check or reverse the progress he’d been making in the internals of the polls (higher favorable ratings, fewer Republicans saying they’d never consider voting for him, etc.). I basically only have one barometer...

This week on “Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace ” Republican presidential candidate former Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) said he will “not be quiet” when it comes to criticizing his rival Donald Trump. Perry said, “I’m not going to be quiet, when Donald Trump shoots a bullet through Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)43% and hits veterans particularly those that have been captured. I’ll challenge Donald trump. You go tell Marcus Luttrell who was captured by the Taliban that he doesn’t like being around people that have been captured. That is one of the low moments of this campaign from my perspective....

* Trump said Sunday that 'black people 'are worse now than just about ever' * Claims Obama has done nothing for low employment rates * Weekend poll showed Trump has his greatest support yet nationally He has a 24.9 percent vote among Republicans, according to poll Days after assuring that he has the support of Hispanic voters, Donald Trump has now claimed that African-American people are also on his side - and that Obama has let them down. In yet another round of bashing the President, the billionaire said Obama has done 'absolutely nothing' for the black community. He gave...

Chris Rock summed up the black experience in the United States kind of perfectly during his HBO special Never Scared more than a decade ago: “If you’re black, you got to look at America a little bit different,” he joked, stone-faced. “You got to look at America like the uncle who paid for you to go to college but who molested you.” Since then, that “generous” uncle has moved from molesting to killing, with the list of victims growing by the day: the Charleston 9. Freddie Gray. Michael Brown. Rekia Boyd. Eric Garner. Tamir Rice. John Crawford III. Yuvette Henderson....

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the Family Leadership Summit. Donald Trump is still the clear front-runner of the 2016 GOP presidential field. A new Economist/YouGov poll released on Friday actually showed Trump gaining support in the last week, despite a controversy over his comments questioning Sen. John McCain's (R-Arizona) status as a "war hero." According to the poll, the number of registered Republican primary voters who responded that Trump is their first choice jumped from 15% at the beginning of July to 28% last week. Another 10% of voters pick him as their second choice. That puts the real-estate...

A day after Donald Trump announced the formation of “Veterans For Trump,” a small New Hampshire-based coalition that supports the bellicose business mogul’s bid for the White House, at least two of the veterans named as supporters distanced themselves from team Trump. The announcement of the veterans group came five days after Trump said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is only considered a war hero because he was captured by the enemy during the Vietnam War. “I don’t know anything about it,” said Ernie Fusi, a World War II veteran whose name was still listed among the 51 veteran supporters on...

RUSH: Today is Thursday. Last weekend was four days ago. Depending on which day of the weekend you go back to, it could be five days ago. And if you have wishful thinking about weekends it could be six days ago, all the way back to last Friday. What happened last weekend? Donald Trump supposedly took himself out of the presidential race with one sentence about John McCain. I mean, that's what the conventional wisdom told us. From the moment it was reported that Trump said he wasn't impressed with McCain because he's not impressed with people that get captured,...