Free Republic

While the crowded GOP presidential field fixates on every polling boom and bust in the early primary states, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is running a different kind of race. Cruz and his team are not chasing states — they’re chasing delegates. Instead of betting his campaign on his February finishes in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, Cruz is aiming to vacuum up as many delegates as possible on March 1, when a swath of mostly Southern states, including Texas, host their nominating contests. "We’re working ... to do everything possible to bank those 155 [Texas] delegates on March...

MOUNT PLEASANT, South Carolina (CNN) —The campaign for Jeb Bush, anticipating a competitive primary season, is forming an aggressive presence in states beyond the four that will vote in February -- Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. He stepped into Rand Paul country on Thursday afternoon, for example, to headline a fundraiser for the Kentucky state GOP and became the first Republican presidential candidate to pay the filing fee for the March 5 caucus. Bush's campaign views the stop as an example of their "robust" operation, not only in Kentucky but across the southern region that will host a...

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, chats with Hannah Armentrout, a Drake University student and independent voter from Colorado, who was on hand Saturday when the 2016 GOP presidential candidate held a grand opening for his Iowa campaign office in Urbandale.URBANDALE | Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said Saturday the "volcanic frustration with Washington" is helping him build a "grassroots army" in Iowa and around the nation that he is convinced with lead him to victory in his quest for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. "The grassroots that we are seeing in Iowa is incredible. It is electric. We have passion on...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/azdc/2015/09/23/gop-state-lawmakers-join-ted-cruz-arizona-team/72675552/

In March, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) told a 3-year-old girl that her world was on fire, and the Internet went nuts. Now the girl's mom has joined Cruz's campaign. Cruz, speaking in Barrington, N.H., said President Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's foreign policy had set the world on fire. "The world is on fire?" then-3-year-old Julia Trant immediately asked. "Yes, the world is on fire," Cruz said, looking at the girl. "Your world is on fire." He then told the girl that her mom is here and that everyone was trying to make the world a better...

s the press guilty of inflating Donald Trump’s political fortunes? Or, from the beginning, did the press seek to undermine his candidacy? The answer to both questions is “yes.” As our friends in academia like to remind us, voters don’t wake from a deep sleep one morning and tell pollsters that they’ve decided that a novice politician like Trump should be the next president. Voters rely on the press to keep tabs on the entry of new candidates into races, and the press obliged them in its coverage of Trump. Boy, did they oblige them. The fullness of the media’s...

Richard Viguerie and Bobby Jindal have both referred to the Republican Party as the “Party of Stupid” and they’re correct. There are times the GOP can’t get out of its own way when it comes to alienating voters or just being plain petty towards dissent. House Speaker John Boehner has wrongly kicked conservative and libertarian Republican Congressmen from committees, while Jason Chaffetz briefly removed Mark Meadows from a committee in June. The American Conservative Union wouldn’t allow the Log Cabin Republicans into CPAC this year, until inviting LCR Executive Director Gregory Angelo to be on a panel. This isn’t just...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Friday on The Chad Hasty Show, Nitra Barnes, President of the Lubbock Area Republican Women (LARW) joined guest host Steve Evans in the KFYO studio to provide lots of exciting information about their upcoming state-wide convention for the Texas Federation of Republican Women. The convention begins Wednesday, November 4th with the LARW golf tournament at the Rawls Course, and continues through Saturday November 7th with the President’s Dinner at Silent Wings Museum. The complete convention schedule is available here. The convention is not just for women: Men and young adults strongly encouraged to attend this fantastic gathering, meet candidates, and...

It's the start of a new school year, and C.J. Pearson is a busy guy. The conservative social media star from Georgia is enlisting fellow teenagers across the country to help Sen. Ted Cruz win the Republican presidential nomination. He's also running for re-election as student council president and just started eighth grade. Coreco JaQuan Pearson, 13, is the chairman of Teens for Ted. His mission: persuade high schoolers to spread the gospel of Cruz to eligible voters who care about them -- and in some cases, take care of them. "The internet allows really anyone to have a voice...

Jeb Bush gets far more attention from television news than the public polls would suggest is warranted, as Ted Cruz keeps getting more love from Twitter than the mainstream media. With the second GOP debate coming Wednesday night, it’s a good time to look back on the last month of coverage since the candidates gathered for the Fox News debate in Cleveland. A lot has happened in those four weeks: Carly Fiorina got a bounce, Ben Carson surged and Rick Perry folded. But television news producers do not necessarily see the race that way. Via our analytics partners at Zignal...

PHOENIX — Heidi Cruz, investment banker and political spouse, stood outside a ballroom here, shaking hands and making small talk, working to close her most ambitious deal yet: getting her husband elected president. Cruz, 43, is a potent weapon for the presidential campaign of her husband, Sen. Ted Cruz. He relishes fighting with Democrats and Republicans; she is quick with a hug. He tries to galvanize voters; she spends hours on the phone, trying to persuade them to max out their donations. "Stylistically, I can soften him a little bit," Cruz, clad in navy leggings and black flats, Roberto Cavalli...

It's been a long-standing tradition at the Iowa State Fair, but now you can cast your kernels for presidential candidates at the Minnesota State Fair. The early front runners in the unscientific poll at the Minnesota Republican Party booth are Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina. "Anybody can stop by our booth and and cast a vote for whoever their favorite candidate is," GOP Party Chair Keith Downey said. If you make a donation or sign up to support the GOP, voters get a small cup full of corn kernels they can distribute among as many of the candidates...

I'm shocked that he's shocked, and I do not mean that as a joke. He is a professional. He is a focus-grouper and high consultant. I imagine he reads a lot of polls too, and probably runs some. And yet he didn't know the anger brewing at the Establishment.I am truly shocked. No matter how low my estimations of our political class, they keep failing to meet my expectations. I complained on Friday that the vaunted consultant class does not know the most elemental things about the "constituency" they're paid to advise clients about. I put "constituency" in quotes because...

Who are the leaders in this crowded race for the GOP nomination? If you look at national polls, the top three are Trump, Bush, and Carson. If you look at New Hampshire, it's Trump, Kasich, and Bush. If you look at Iowa, it's Trump, Carson, and Walker, though I don't know how proud Scott Walker can be to be third in a state that should almost be giving him a home-state advantage. But these polls by themselves don't show who the leaders are in the race. To know the answer to that question, you have to look at all the...

Olive Branch, Mississippi (CNN)—Ted Cruz gushes about his wife, Heidi, on the campaign trail, telling an audience here that she is "beautiful, brilliant and my very best friend in the whole wide world." She's also something else: The best fundraiser in the Republican presidential candidate's corner. The senator's wife, a top executive at Goldman Sachs who is taking a leave to work at campaign headquarters, is effectively leading her husband's fundraising operation, running some weekly finance calls and pushing major donors to give the maximum they're allowed under federal law. It's a far cry from the caricatured profile of the...

Some people want to vote for Hillary; others want to vote Jeb. Still, there are others who prefer Carly, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson or The Donald. But when it comes to the 2016 Presidential Election, this much we can all agree on: We want more Jon Stewart. Now, there’s a new petition making the rounds that might just make that American dream come true. And if this Change.org movement has its way, the recently-retired “Daily Show” host will moderate an upcoming Presidential debate. “Jon Stewart is more than qualified to tackle the moderating job,” says the petition. “Mr. Stewart has...

Cruz Picking Up Money and Support According to the Dallas Morning News, Ted Cruz isn’t making things any easier for Rick Perry. Cruz has raised close to $900,000 from some of the same donors who donated to Perry’s 2012 campaign. Those same people have only donated a little over $370,000 to Perry this time. Cruz isn’t just raising money though, he is connecting with a lot of potential voters. With $14 million, Cruz’s campaign has raised more than any other Republican–he was the first candidate to officially declare, which gave him a head start on fundraising–and he’s dominated the market...

Guam Republican party can send 9 delegates to Republican National Convention to participate in selection of Republican presidential candidate Guam - Guam matters in the U.S. presidential election. Although we don't get to vote for president Guam's respective political party's do have a say in the nomination for president and right now Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz has sent a representative to Guam to seek support. Although individuals on Guam can't vote for president our Democratic and Republican party's can and do participate in their national nominations for presidential candidates. In fact Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz has...

DES MOINES, Iowa — For five days, the royal-blue bus rumbled through miles of cornfields alongside a popular annual bicycle trek across Iowa. It showed up at a country music concert in Cherokee and at a bacon festival in Ottumwa. And when the hulking vehicle with thick white block letters that spell T-R-U-M-P pulled into a Wal-Mart parking lot in Fort Dodge this week, people flocked to it. It didn’t matter that Donald Trump wasn’t inside. The bus alone — with the “Make America Great Again” slogan extending across its sides — created an irresistible oasis of celebrity politics amid...

I was there for the “peasants with pitchforks” speech. Pat Buchanan was holding forth in a crowded room at the Sheraton Hotel in Nashua, N.H., a couple of days before the 1996 GOP primary. The Republican Establishment’s favorite for the nomination was Bob Dole, but Dole, for all his solid credentials and admirable history as a war hero and congressional leader, was never someone to incite a political fever, never one to tap the more visceral emotions of the rowdy electorate. So here came Buchanan, the TV pundit and unapologetic nativist, and in the icy environs of the New Hampshire...