Free Republic

Free Republic stands for God, family, country! America! "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United State of America." Securing the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity is our mission on FR. We cannot secure the blessings of liberty with Hillary in the White House. When Trump wins the lion's share of the primary votes, states and...

The Washington Examiner’s Byron York notes that it has been two weeks since Donald Trump has done or said something particularly outrageous, such as attack his opponent’s wife. He ascribes this to the inclusion of Paul Manafort, a seasoned political professional who helped Gerald Ford beat back a challenge by Ronald Reagan at the 1976 Republic National Convention. Of course, Manafort started his tenure as part of Team Trump by Godwin sizing himself when he accused the Ted Cruz Campaign of using “Gestapo tactics” in winning delegates to his side, especially in states like Colorado and now Wyoming. Cruz has...

Washington Post (and others) sitting on video. We've indy confirm video looks bad, showing multiple hotel encounters According to person who worked for Rubio campaign. Cruz video shows *multiple* hotel encounters with non-spouse females. Just entry & exits

GOP frontrunner Donald Trump’s new hire Paul Manafort, who recently joined the campaign to help organize delegate and convention strategy, will be heading Trump’s Washington, D.C. office. Manafort, who has worked for 40 years as a lobbyist and political consultant, hasn’t lived full-time in Washington D.C. for years, according to the Washington Post. He instead travels between Alexandria, Virginia; Florida; and New York, where he has an apartment in Trump Tower. “But despite his low inside-the-Beltway profile, no one underestimates Manafort as a formidable opponent who is unafraid to go to the mat for controversial, polarizing clients,” the Post reports....

Election 2016 -- Republican Delegate Count Election 2016 -- Democratic Delegate Count

Mitt Romney holds a solid lead in delegates over his competitors for the GOP presidential nomination, according to a new count from the Republican National Committee. Wins this week by Romney in three primaries pushed him past the halfway mark in the delegate count, although his nearest competitor, Rick Santorum, contests the way the delegates are being awarded. Romney leads all contenders with 573 delegates, more than double his closest rival, Santorum's 202, out of a total 1,144, according to the RNC. Newt Gingrich, who has dialed back his campaign to making phone calls to delegates, has 132 while Ron...

JACKSON, MISS ....Hours before Mr. Gingrich arrived in Jackson, Mississippi’s capital, on Wednesday night, Mr. Santorum brought his own campaign there, calling on a vociferous crowd of several hundred to force out Mr. Gingrich and make it a two-man race with Mr. Romney. “You have an opportunity here in Mississippi to narrow this race, narrow this race to a conservative versus the insider moderate,” Mr. Santorum said. “If we win Mississippi, this will be a two-person race. And if it is a two-person race, we will nominate a conservative as president of the United States.” .....Mr. Gingrich, who canceled plans...

A new official delegate count being kept by the Republican National Committee reveals that Newt Gingrich has won more "bound" delegates in the presidential primary than Rick Santorum. Gingrich has won 107 delegates compared to Santorum's 95, according to the RNC's count, which was made after Super Tuesday. That effectively puts him in second place behind front-runner Mitt Romney. But the RNC does not count delegates from states like Iowa in its total, according to the Huffington Post, which first reported the story. The Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses did not officially allocate any of the state's 28 delegates to the...

Newt Gingrich stands to gain more than 50 delegates in the Republican presidential race, thanks to his overwhelming victory in Tuesday’s Georgia primary. .....If the totals hold, Rick Santorum would fall about 3,500 ballots shy of reaching 20 percent of the statewide vote. Failing to meet that threshold means Santorum was shut out of a share of 34 delegates awarded based on the statewide vote. Only Gingrich and Romney met that minimum percentage. Based on his vote total alone, Gingrich stands to win 16 statewide delegates; Romney 8. Under the state GOP rules, the remaining 10 statewide delegates are awarded...

One of the reasons to be skeptical that Rick Santorum could win the Republican nomination is that we now have a pretty good idea of how the vote will play out from state to state — and the coalition that he is building seems short of a majority. It is not that Mr. Santorum’s delegate deficit is mathematically insurmountable. But he’s behind, and he is very unlikely to win states like New Jersey and California that either have a lot of delegates or use winner-take-all rules to award them. That might not leave enough fertile opportunities for him to gain...

Newt Gingrich has a double-digit lead over the rest of the GOP field in his home state of Georgia, according to a Landmark-Rosetta Stone poll released late Friday. Gingrich took 38 percent, followed by Rick Santorum at 25 percent, Mitt Romney at 19 percent, and Ron Paul at four percent, the poll found. Gingrich held a nine-point lead in the same poll taken earlier this month. The poll could be an outlier – Gingrich leads by only two points in Georgia according to the latest Insider Advantage survey and leads by five points according to Rasmussen. Both of those polls...