Free Republic

Donald Trump is not a fascist––probably. His ex-wife Ivana once claimed he kept a volume of Hitler’s collected speeches in a cabinet by his bed, and read from time to time the fuhrer’s vision of human life as a pitiless war of all against all. “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them,” he told Vanity Fair in 1990. But consider something the architect of Trump Tower, Der Scutt, once said on how to evaluate the truth value of Donald Trump claims: “divide by two, then divide by four, and...

<p>McCarthy's demise comes hard on the heels of Boehner bowing out of the speakership as a sort of human sacrifice to the tea party right. And it happens as Donald Trump is in the midst of his fourth consecutive month as the Republican front-runner for the party's presidential nomination -- and with Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, two other people who have never held elected office before, running in second and third place, respectively.</p>

A group of hard-line conservatives threatened to upend the Republican race to succeed outgoing House Speaker John A. Boehner, announcing on Wednesday it will throw its support behind a little-known Florida lawmaker to become the next speaker. The House Freedom Caucus’s backing of Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) ahead of a crucial internal party vote Thursday deeply complicates Majority Leader Kevin O. McCarthy’s bid to succeed Boehner. The group counts enough members — about 40 — to deny McCarthy the majority of the whole House he would need to claim the speaker’s chair. But in an opening for the California Republican,...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is not leading the race nationally or in any state polls. Yet many political onlookers are convinced he has the best chance to win the nomination. For reasons I have discussed elsewhere, that may be true, but it is too early to say. Aside from predicting the fall of Donald Trump and Ben Carson, on what is the Rubio rise predicated? There are at least a dozen factors: 1. He is the candidate most adept at fencing with the media. He turned ridiculous New York Times pieces on traffic tickets and a fishing boat into fundraising...

MSNBC reported Tuesday morning that aides to Donald Trump estimate that the real estate mogul has spent roughly $2 million on his 2016 presidential campaign to date. That's consistent with a Wall Street Journal report from over the summer that Trump had loaned his campaign $1.8 million and raised another $100,000 for the effort. That's stunning. And brilliant. Trump has been the dominant force in the Republican presidential race for, at least, the past four months. (He officially became a candidate June 16.) On any given Sunday, he is appearing on or phoning into some -- if not all --...

Searching comments on presidential candidates’ Facebook pages in search of grammatical errors, typos, misplaced or missing apostrophes, unnecessary capital letters and redundant exclamation points bears fruit in seconds: Amid this flawed, headache-inducing verbiage, there is a pattern. So says Grammarly, a private, San Francisco-based company behind what’s billed as “the world’s leading automated proofreader.” The company analyzed comments on 19 presidential candidates’ Facebook pages and found that: 1) supporters of Republican candidates make more mistakes than supporters of Democrats; 2) supporters of Republican candidates use fewer unique words than supporters of Democrats; and 3) Donald Trump supporters made the most...

Even though it's a stance not especially popular with some Republicans, Donald Trump continued to support eminent domain in an interview on Tuesday, calling it "a wonderful thing" that has unfairly received a bad rap.Trump, a billionaire known for his major real estate development projects, described eminent domain as a useful tool that local governments can use to prevent greedy homeowners from derailing major projects that could create thousands of jobs or provide a public good. Trump said that some conservatives don't fully understand how eminent domain works and don't realize that homeowners are usually paid "four, five, six, ten...

--regarding the repeated, misleading claim that Planned Parenthood ‘provides’ mammograms We uphold the rating we gave to the president in 2012, and award Three Pinocchios to Planned Parenthood supporters’ continued use of misleading language to suggest that it directly administers mammograms. ......................................................... “All of the signatories [of a letter in support of defunding Planned Parenthood] are men. None of whom will get pregnant, or need a cervical screening for cancer, or a mammogram, or a pap smear, or other life-saving services that are provided by Planned Parenthood.” –---Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on...

In this recent USA Today op ed, I explain how the unexpected success of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is in large part the result of widespread political ignorance: Despite some recent stumbles in his campaign, the most dramatic development of the 2016 presidential race has been the meteoric ascent of Donald Trump to the status of front-runner for the Republican nomination. Trump’s rise is a particularly blatant example of a much deeper problem at the heart of modern democracy: widespread voter ignorance. Trump’s success so far is in large part the result of an almost perfect storm of political ignorance....

I never expected to write these words, but I miss Mitt Romney. Last Wednesday, the day the front-runner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination was in New Hampshire alleging that Syrian refugees fleeing for their lives may actually be clandestine terrorists, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee was in Washington, talking sense. "Donald Trump will not be the nominee," Romney told a group of business-school students at Georgetown University. And why won't Trump, who when he isn't besmirching Syrian refugees as terrorists is maligning Mexican immigrants as rapists, get the nod? Because, Romney said, "when all is said and done, the...

When David Lipton, a promising economist, was finishing his graduate work at Harvard in the early 1980s, he faced one of those potentially life-changing choices. He had one job offer from the International Monetary Fund in Washington, the multinational institution that for 70 years has served as a lender of last resort and dispenser of orthodox economic advice to countries that get into financial trouble. There was also an offer of a teaching job from the University of Virginia. Unsure of which path to take, he turned for advice to an intellectually restless and charismatic assistant professor, a Frenchman named...

The conventional wisdom is that Vladimir Putin has blindsided Barack Obama in the Middle East, catching the U.S. off-guard. It’s another Obama “failure,” we’re told. “Obama administration scrambles as Russia attempts to seize initiative in Syria,” is how a Washington Post headline described it. A popular cartoon shows Putin kicking sand in the faces of Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry on a beach. - snip - Here’s how her story began: “Moscow’s rapid military buildup in Syria is a result of the ‘reset’ in relations forged with the Russian and Iranian governments by the Barack Obama administration. The...

Several hours after posting a news story with several errors, including in the headline—about a CNSNews.com reporter asking Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) a question about human life—The Washington Post fixed the errors in the story by reporter Kelsey Snell but only noted one “correction” at the story’s end in the changed copy. On Thursday, Oct. 1, CNSNews.com reporter Sam Dorman attended Pelosi’s weekly press conference at the U.S. Capitol and asked her, “In reference to funding for Planned Parenthood, is an unborn baby with a human heart and a human liver a human being?” […] In Kelsey Snell’s story posted...

CNS News' Sam Dorman peppered House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Thursday afternoon with several questions about abortion, and a few unimpressed reporters responded quickly by assuming that he was either a conservative activist or just some protester. "A conservative journo asked Pelosi [about] what constitutes a baby being alive," MSNBC's Luke Russert tweeted, making an assumption about Dorman's political affiliations. The Washington Post's Kelsey Snell took it a step further, and initially identified Dorman in an article as a pro-life "protester." The Post has since updated its story to reflect that Dorman is, in fact, a reporter. CNS News...

<p>The news that Hillary Clinton is expected to appear on "Saturday Night Live" represents a clear recognition by her campaign that she has an image problem with the American public that needs fixing — and fast.</p> <p>In order to appear, Mrs. Clinton turned down the chance to give the keynote address to the influential Human Rights Campaign, the country’s most powerful lesbian and gay rights group, which will allow her to make the debut SNL appearance of her 2016 campaign, said several people with knowledge of her schedule who could not discuss private planning for attribution.</p>

How do you spell hypocrisy? W-a-s-h-i-n-g-t-o-n P-o-s-t. The Washington, D.C., paper of record has spent the past year filling bird cages and landfills with stories about income inequality – 156 in print alone and another 404 in blogs or 560 total. Subtract one of those (listed twice in LexisNexis) that included the name of billionaire Post owner Jeffrey Bezos. The remaining 155 print and 403 blog mentions didn’t have any discussion of the newspaper’s fat cat owner. Yet, Bezos is now the fourth-richest American with a fortune of $47 billion, according to Forbes. He purchased the Post for $250 million,...

GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush, who was at one time considered a shoe-in for the party nomination, is now facing a do-or-die warning from senior fundraisers who say he needs to correct his sinking poll numbers in October or face losing key supporters. The former Florida governor over the weekend downplayed his dwindling poll numbers, telling Fox News Sunday the "polls don't really matter," reports The Washington Post, and he and his super PAC are readying an aggressive ad campaign, but a recent national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll put him in fifth place with just 7 percent of the...

Republican Eric Cantor on Saturday addressed the inaugural gathering of a group formed after grass-roots activists helped Dave Brat topple the former majority leader in last summer’s GOP primary. The day-long meeting of the Virginia Conservative Network featured a who’s who of establishment Republicans in the mold of Cantor, many of whom are frustrated with the party’s loss of all five statewide offices in recent years. According to organizers, Cantor gave an invitation-only crowd of more than 100 people tips on how to frame their message to voters as Republicans prepare to defend their slim majority in the state Senate...

Up to 200,000 people will be attending a climate change rally on the National Mall on the same day that the Pope will be speaking to Congress. Wow! Such was the bold prediction reported by Washington Post reporters Juliet Eilperin and Michelle Boorstein on August 25. So what happened when Pope Francis did arrive at the Capitol last Thursday? Before we get to that sad reality, let us join Eilperin and Boorstein joyously prognosticating yuuuuuge numbers back in August: Several environmental groups are planning a major climate rally that will draw hundreds of thousands to the National Mall on Sept....

“What I hear everywhere when you say Jeb’s name is, ‘If you want to lose the general election, nominate Jeb,’ ” the fundraiser added.