Free Republic

John Sears, Ronald Reagan’s one-time campaign manager, once said “discipline is nine-tenths of politics.” And, as Tevi Troy reminds us: Candidate Reagan put Sears’ dictum into action, running a relentlessly focused communication operation that kept to its message of the day, often to the consternation of the reporters following the campaign. This approach continued into Reagan’s presidency. As the authors of All the President’s Spin put it: “Ronald Reagan’s administration broke new ground with its message discipline and image control.” The same was true of George W. Bush. Troy, who worked in the Bush administration, recalls Bush’s chief-of-staff Andy Card...

He has been called a “Whacko Bird” by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other establishment Republicans in the U.S. Senate. He has been called an “extremist” and a Tea Party Republican that likes to hang out on the far right fringe of the GOP. Detractors, especially those who support his amigo in the Senate, Senator Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) , make fun of his voice and appearance, as well as how he delivers his message. Haters from the Rubio camp and those Democratic Party talking points-spewing armchair quarterbacks, who think they can accurately foretell the future when it comes to...

With Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s comments about immigration Sunday, the top two Republicans in Congress have now declared dead the prospects of an overhaul before the 2016 elections. In the aftermath of 2012, when Latinos made up 10 percent of the electorate and President Barack Obama was re-elected resoundingly, Republican lawmakers and strategists predicted the GOP’s White House ambitions were directly tied to the passage of comprehensive immigration legislation. Many of those voices haven’t changed their tune. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of the four “gang of eight” Republicans who successfully navigated an immigration overhaul through the Senate in 2013,...

Wednesday on “The Alan Colmes Show,” Alan spoke with Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL), who offered to argue with the conservative family member of a donor’s choice this Thanksgiving. Rep. Grayson, who is running for the Senate seat Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is vacating to run for president in 2016, held nothing back as he went after the entire GOP field and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in particular: COLMES: What are some of the other items on your hit list right now in terms of arguing with the other side? GRAYSON: Honestly, it’s the appalling choices that they have among their...

Clyde Fabretti, a white-collar criminal, holds a key position in Rubio's presidential campaign.Earlier this month, when Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) named his top campaign representatives across Florida, he tapped a conservative activist named Clyde Fabretti as one of the leaders of his presidential effort in Orange County, a key district that includes Orlando. But Fabretti, the co-founder of the West Orlando Tea Party, has a sketchy background that might not reflect well on Rubio's campaign: He is a convicted white-collar criminal with a history of questionable business dealings and associations with fraudsters. Most recently, Fabretti's name surfaced in an ongoing...

With a world on edge after the coordinated terror attacks in Paris, and as criticism grows louder of the Obama administration’s handling of adversaries such as Iran and Syria, tough talk and defiance have become strong currencies in the presidential race. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson’s mild-mannered, soft-spoken demeanor – which helped endear him to many voters in the first place – now appears to be working against him, while Sen. Ted Cruz’s tell-it-like-it-is, in-your-face style is now raising his stock. In the crucial state of Iowa, which holds closely-watched caucuses, the event in Paris on Nov. 13 changed many conservatives’...

Trump's racism is bad for Republicans now, but the eventual wild-eyed nominee will only look moderate in comparison.Since the Donald Trump campaign kicked off with demagoguery about Mexican immigration, political watchers have been on quiet but alert fascism watch, carefully monitoring Trump to see if he steps over the line. You can feel in your bones that Trump and his supporters long for to give into the sweet oblivion of balls-out racism, rather than dealing with the tedious process of carefully measuring the lines so you can toe them without stepping so far over that liberal journalists are freed up...

For all of the candidates, all of the debates and all of the unpredictability, the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 has taken a clear shape over the past month or so. There is a four-candidate top tier that has separated itself from the rest of the pack. There is then a trio of “if/then” candidates who would need a major mistake or collapse from one of the top four to have a realistic chance at winning. Everyone else running has a puncher’s chance — at best — at being relevant in the nomination fight. Below are my...

#TeamJeb won't let The Donald walk this one back Jeb Bush is not joining his fellow Republican, Donald Trump, in arms in the age-old tradition of conservative combat against biased media reporting, and instead, Jeb and his campaign team are piling on The Donald’s latest absurd suggestion that there should be a database to track and monitor Muslims in the U.S. A bit of a mini-media controversy erupted Thursday afternoon when headlines blasted news of Trump suggesting the mandatory registration of Muslim Americans: “Trump won’t rule out database, special ID for Muslims in US.” But, Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum quickly...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/editorials/2015/10/06/editorial-ted-cruz-wrong-syrian-refugees/73486846/

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) _ Texas Senator Ted Cruz has come into the home state of two rivals and made a case to win its Republican presidential primary. Cruz received a more enthusiastic reception than Sen. Marco Rubio during the Florida Republican Party's presidential summit....

Former US congressman, founder of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, and many-time presidential candidate Ron Paul discusses the 2016 presidential race on the Russian government's English-language propaganda station. RT HOST: I first asked Dr. Paul what he thinks it says that the three candidates from the private sector are doing the best, does that mean the economy is the foremost issue on the minds of most Americans? RON PAUL: Well probably yes, but if you look at the Democrat side, you have someone like Bernie Sanders, who has been in nothing else except politics. And he's doing...

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Tuesday that fellow candidate Chris Christie’s “oppo research guys” got their facts wrong when the New Jersey governor attacked Cruz during a Fox News appearance. Christie, addressing comments Cruz made about not believing in “Republican-on Republican violence,” said on Fox News Monday that he didn’t “need to be lectured by Ted Cruz.” Cruz made those comments when asked to comment on Donald Trump’s controversial remarks on Mexican immigrants. “I find it ironic that Ted Cruz is giving lectures on Republican-on-Republican violence,” the New Jersey governor said on Fox News Monday. “The guy who put...

At the Florida Democratic Party Convention, held October 30-November 1, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz claimed, “The Florida Democratic Party is back and better than ever.” Also back, it would seem, is the national party’s misguided emphasis on gun control. Speaking at a convention event held at the Walt Disney World Yacht and Beach Club Resort, Wasserman Schultz launched into an anti-gun screed aimed at getting members of her party to more fervently pursue gun control. According to the Orlando Sentinel, Wasserman Schultz demanded, “Democrats! We must close the gun show loophole! Democrats! We must require background checks...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is the latest GOP presidential candidate to jump on 2016 frontrunner Ben Carson's theory that the pyramids were created by the biblical figure Joseph to store grain. "I'm really big into conspiracy theories, so I think they were probably built by the aliens as grain silos, don’t you think," Paul joked, when asked about Carson's idea on 1110AM WBT, as reported by Buzzfeed. Carson has defended the idea that the pyramids were built for grain storage -- not as pharaohs' tombs, as modern archaeology holds -- since Buzzfeed recently unearthed a video of the neurosurgeon making...

A leading GOP fundraiser and donor, who has used his money to urge GOP politicians and lawmakers to support LGBT-inclusive laws in the past, is ignoring Marco Rubio's HRC rating of 22 and is officially backing the Florida senator's bid for president.CNN reports. Paul Singer, who has a gay son, according to LGBTQ Nation, lauded Rubio and said he is "one of the best communicators the modern Republican Party has seen," in a letter sent out Friday to his donor network, as reported by the New York Times. "Marco Rubio can appeal to both the head and the heart. He...

Former Bush family advisor Mary Matalin says she was “flummoxed” by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s performance at Wednesday’s GOP presidential debate. The veteran GOP strategist said Bush’s decision to go after Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for missing votes in the Senate was an example of “political malfeasance.” “I love Jeb and I know Jeb, and I’m flummoxed by that,” she told host John Catsimatidis on “The Cats Roundtable” on New York’s AM-970, in an interview set to be aired Sunday. “It’s a violation of debate 101: Never ask an opponent or never address to an opponent something you know...

DES MOINES – It is a portrait of deep frustration. Jeb Bush’s campaign has 10 paid staff members in Iowa, it has made 70,380 phone calls to state Republicans and it has collected 5,000 email addresses. For all that, it has recruited just four volunteers statewide and has identified only 1,260 supporters. The metrics were shown to campaign donors in Houston this week and revealed on Thursday as part of a detailed strategy memo obtained by U.S. News & World Report.Upbeat excerpts from the briefing, which called Senator Marco Rubio of Florida “a G.O.P. Obama” and Mr. Bush’s chief rival,...

Donald Trump's shock slide from Republican presidential front-runner to second banana behind Dr. Ben Carson can mean only one thing — the billionaire developer's shot at the GOP nomination is cooked, former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay tells Newsmax TV. "Trump is on his way out. People have had enough of him, he has no substance, and he's on his way out. That's what I'm seeing," DeLay, a Texas Republican who now hosts a Washington Times radio show, said Wednesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show." But could Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon who has never been elected to public...

On Saturday, Jeb Bush complained that he had “a lot of really cool things” to do other than run for president. He didn’t want to “sit around, being miserable, listening to people demonize me and me feeling compelled to demonize them.” Gone, it seems, was the “joy in my heart” he had planned to campaign on. The next day, he traveled to Texas to assure donors that he was doing just fine. CNN reports that the previous day’s crowd had been raucous and receptive, but these old family donors have good reason to be worried. Despite their amassing the largest...