Free Republic

“Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer said that he is ” finding some interesting, compelling things” in his investigation of Jeb Bush on Tuesday’s “Hugh Hewitt Show.” Schweizer reported, “We’re about four months into the research project, obviously not as global in scope as the Clintons, but you know, as governor of the state of Florida, you have a lot of things that you can do. So we’re following the money. We’re looking at land deals. We’re looking at an airport deal. We are looking at some of the educational reforms that were instituted, and some of the big corporate winners...

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who in recent months has moved closer to running for president, will provide a "very important update" on his plans Monday morning, he told supporters on Sunday. "Tomorrow morning I will be giving a very important update on my 2016 plans and I want to make sure you are able to hear it," Graham wrote in an e-mail to his supporters. He said he will appear on CBS's "This Morning" at 8 a.m. Eastern time. "As an announcement draws near, I need to know you stand with me," Graham continued, linking to a page where...

Sen. Lindsey Graham will run for president, he told CBS This Morning Monday. “I’m running because I think the world is falling apart,” the South Carolina Republican said. “I’ve been more right than wrong on foreign policy.” He added that his top priorities will be working with Democrats to “go after [radical Islamists] before they come back here again.” Graham joins an increasingly crowded Republican field, which includes Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, and Rand Paul.

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Monday that he will announce his decision about whether to run for president on June 1 in his hometown of Central, S.C., but left little doubt about his intentions by saying “I’m running.” “I’m running because of what you see on television, I’m running because I think the world is falling apart, I’ve been more right than wrong on foreign policy,” he said on “CBS This Morning,” when asked if he was running because he was unimpressed with the rest of the field (and appearing to dispense with the pretense that he hasn’t decided whether to...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)The road to the White House goes through downtown Oklahoma City this week as hopefuls in the crowded Republican field audition on a stage ideally suited for their messages about military power, religious liberty and energy independence. Eleven Republicans with presidential aspirations — including some who have not officially declared their candidacy — will speak at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, which begins at the Cox Convention Center on Thursday and ends Saturday with the release of a straw poll. “This is a huge event for Oklahoma City,” said Gov. Mary Fallin, who will address the conference and introduce some...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) applauds the passage of the FY 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) by the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) on Thursday after a week of debate and consideration by both parties. Sen. Cruz introduced or cosponsored more than a dozen amendments that were successfully adopted by the committee. “Congress’ first priority is to provide for the national defense and ensure our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have everything they need to defend our freedom,” said Sen. Cruz. “I am grateful for the committee’s support for my amendments, including measures that will ensure...

The field for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination is as flat as any in modern memory—pretty remarkable for a party that usually has a fight but almost invariably ends up nominating whoever's turn it is. While nomination trial-heat polling tells us very little this early, there are some poll questions that are better measurements of at least where these candidates are starting out, before the campaigning, debates, and advertising begin in earnest.An April 26 to April 30 NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll asked Republican primary voters whether they could or could not see themselves voting for each of 10 different...

With oral arguments at the Supreme Court concluded in Obergefell v. Hodges, 2016 candidates are starting to weigh in on how they would handle a potential Supreme Court ruling that leads to nationwide marriage equality. This week, Republican Carly Fiorina said that she would not fight a ruling in favor of marriage equality. Fiorina joins Lindsey Graham, another potential 2016 candidate, who issued a similar statement. On the other side, Ted Cruz, who has been a consistent opponent of LGBT equality, has said he will introduce a constitutional amendment to fight marriage if the Supreme Court rules in favor of...

The former governor of Florida, John (or as he prefers to be called, Juan) Ellis Bush, doesn't appear to have a lot of support among Republicans, as opposed to Republicans in Name Only (RINOs), who absolutely adore him. But Juan isn't sweating it. He's rolling in dough, and more importantly, he's rolling in opponents. Have you ever heard of a "straw" candidate? When you have a weak front-runner that can't reach 50 percent, often a third, or a fourth, or even a fifth candidate suddenly jumps into the race. If he has a name similar to that of the strongest...

One of the Senate’s leading liberals is borrowing a page from the playbook of Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is pushing to strike out language from the “cromnibus” spending bill unveiled Tuesday that would roll back restrictions on “swaps” transactions included in the 2010 financial regulatory overhaul known as Dodd-Frank. Repealing the “push-out” provision would mean that certain derivatives could again be held in bank units with federal deposit insurance. Using a strategy sometimes employed by Cruz for entirely different policy reasons, Warren said that with the $1.013 trillion spending package first being considered by the...

Likely Republican presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham predicted Thursday that the GOP will lose the 2016 presidential election unless they win over Hispanic voters by supporting a “long, hard path to citizenship.” “If I were president of the United States, I would veto any bill that did not have a pathway to citizenship,” the South Carolina Republican told USA Today. “You would have a long, hard path to citizenship … but I want to create that path because I don’t like the idea of millions of people living in America for the rest of their lives being the hired help....

Lindsey Graham is telling donors that June 1 is the likely date for his presidential announcement, according to several sources familiar with the conversations. The announcement would likely take place in South Carolina, possibly near his home base of Seneca, according to the sources, which would enable the GOP senator to highlight a compelling personal story not widely known outside his home state.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is expected to announce a presidential bid, says if the Supreme Court rules same-sex marriage bans unconstitutional, then it will be time for Republicans to move on. Graham told Boston Herald radio on Monday that society is changing and a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and woman is no longer possible. “Well, can you be for traditional marriage? Yes. Am I for traditional marriage? Yes, I believe marriage has stood the test of time between a man and a woman, ordained by God, and that’s — most societies have been organized...

Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz will attend events in South Carolina Friday and Saturday along with state GOP leaders and former presidential candidates Rick Perry and Rick Santorum.All three men are expected to speak at the SC Republican Party's 48th Annual Silver Elephant Dinner in Columbia Friday night,Governor Nikki Haley and U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott are also expected to speak at the event.The dinner, which is advertised as the largest and most prestigious Republican gathering in South Carolina will be held in honor of the late Gov. Jim Edwards, who served as the 110th governor of South...

Gather together 1,000 S.C. Republicans in a room these days, and a few 2016 presidential prospects will come calling. The S.C. GOP’s annual Silver Elephant fundraising dinner on Friday attracted three out-of-state White House hopefuls and a fourth homegrown prospect who made their pitches to hardcore party supporters. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz started his speech by bashing Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. He said she appointed a director of email security – a joke about her use of a private computer server while she was U.S. Secretary of State. “I’m pretty sure Saudi Arabia is not paying for the speakers tonight,”...

Senators on Wednesday blocked a Republican push to tie Iran's support of terrorism to a final deal on the country's nuclear program. Senators voted 45-54 on the amendment from Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), which would have required President Obama to certify as part of a diplomatic deal that Iran hasn't carried out or directly supported an act of terror against the United States or a U.S. citizen. Republican Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Dan Coats (Ind.), Bob Corker (Tenn.), David Perdue (R-Ga.), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Orrin Hatch (Utah) and John McCain (Ariz.) voted with Democrats against the amendment....

CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin had choice words for President Obama last night when she appeared on “The Lead” with Jake Tapper. ...“Both Mayor Rawlings-Blake and President Obama, today, using the word “thug,”” Tapper said after showing a clip of Mayor Rawlings-Blake speaking. “Sunny, you take issue that?” “I do,” Hostin responded. “It’s not a word, certainly, that I’m comfortable with. It’s not a word that I use. I think that we can all agree that that word, that term has been racialized, and I think what I saw during the riots was, I saw a lot of crimes being...

Specific proposals to end the appalling violence in Syria, Yemen, and territories controlled by the Islamic State group are scarce in the nascent presidential campaign. That is about to change. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- who tells Yahoo Finance he’s “92-and-a-half percent sure” he’s running for president -- wants to send U.S. troops back to the world’s most volatile region to stamp out vicious terrorism and remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “Assad has to go,” he says in the video above. “We’re going to have to send some of our soldiers back into the Middle East.”

For the two Texans eyeing the presidency, Iowa is king. Following this weekend's trip to the Faith & Freedom Coalition forum, Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. Rick Perry have logged 13 trips a piece to the state since 2013, outpacing every other Republican White House aspirant, according to the U.S. News Presidential Tracker. The repeated trips demonstrate the importance of the state to both Cruz and Perry, who are both vying for the evangelical voters who dominate caucuses. It shouldn't be a surprise that the two past caucus winners – former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick...

It certainly seems so. This week has been very revealing in terms of what conservatives actually think and what progressives imagine we think. The “big” question that kicked it all off was “would you attend a gay wedding?” This was, apparently, supposed to separate the knuckle-dragging haters on the right from the sophisticated and pious leftists. John Nolte writes: "Another Republican presidential hopeful, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, made all kinds of headlines when he said something that would not surprise anyone who has spent any amount of time with a conservative Christian — that he would attend a same sex...