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In a sign of just how much the Republican presidential primary has turned the party on its head, Sen. Lindsey Graham will host a fundraiser on Monday in support of Sen. Ted Cruz. A draft of the invitation, obtained first by CNN, invites guests to "honor and support a great friend of Israel and the Jewish people," at a meet-and-greet event that will take place during the AIPAC policy conference in Washington next week.

"Try not to hurt 'em. If you do, I'll defend you in court. Don't worry about it." [Cheers]. This past Sunday when Trump was confronted with similar questions on Meet the Press, he suggested he was seriously considering covering the legal bills for a man who punched an African-American protester in the face at a rally over the weekend.  The assailant later said that perhaps next time, he'd kill the protester.  “I'm going to take a look at it,” Trump told host Chuck Todd.  “I've actually instructed my people to look into it, yes.”  Forty-eight hours later with Stephanopoulos, Trump made the following two...

The notion that Donald Trump is some new phenomenon on the political scene is sadly mistaken. Would that he were. His type has been seen before -- all over Latin America, which may explain why the United States has prospered, and even remained a republic, while much of the rest of the continent has seen dictatorships come and go. Just abandon the foundations of republican government -- like the rule of law under an independent judiciary -- and there's little to prevent our becoming a banana republic too. Our current president toys with ruling by executive decree every time Congress...

In actual elections, Ted Cruz has outperformed polls by an average of at least 12 points. While national polls had put him down to Trump by ten to 33 points, he's only behind 6 points in the popular vote. That's despite the not-Trump vote being split 3 to 4 ways and the caucuses being under-represented by popular vote tallies. Most of Trump's victories have been in the Southeast, and that region will be entirely finished voting after Tuesday. Here's some good news: ABC poll says that Cruz has cut Trump's lead from 16 to 9 points, but even better Cruz...

If we’re ultra-conservative w/ proportional contests, and assume Trump loses a number of states that he currently leads, he still gets ~1,300… Delegates Guesstimate March 12 Wyoming (UNBOUND) 29 / 0 March 15 Florida (WTA) 99 /99 Illinois (WTM) 66 /40 Missouri 52 /15 North Carolina 72 /40 Ohio (WTA) 66 /0 March 22 Arizona (WTA) 58 /58 Utah 40 /0

Hollywood is going to vote for Donald Trump, said Donald Trump this morning at a news conference. Networks Feast On Ratings After Favoring Donald Trump's Steaks Over Hillary Clinton Trump says his Hollywood pals have told him, “Everyone out there is voting for you, but they’re not going to admit it.” “I say, ‘Why? Aren’t you proud? I have a tough stance on crime. I have a tough stance on borders.’ They all know I’m right. But they’re liberal people, and they don’t want to admit it.”“But, you know what? They’re going to vote for Trump,” the GOP frontrunner boasted.

Attacks On Trump Didn't Slow Him Down In The Primaries. America's Another Story By David Lauter Last night, after his triumphs in more GOP primaries, Donald Trump reveled in the ineffectiveness of the attacks against him. “I don’t think I’ve ever had so many horrible, horrible things said about me in one week … but that’s OK,” Trump said in his news conference from his Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Fla. “I want to thank the special interests and the lobbyists, because they obviously did something to drive these numbers.” There's no question that he's right about the primaries...

Every politician games the news media, but few play better ball control than Donald Trump. Because he’s shameless and because he’s brilliant, Trump has run the court with journalists this campaign season. Even this late in the cycle, reporters seem unaware of how he continues to get the better of them. There’s no better place to start than Trump’s demonstration Tuesday night. He had just fanny-whacked the Republican field in Michigan and Mississippi and called a post-victory “press conference” that went on for 40-plus minutes. There has never been a moment in American politics like it. The press conference—likened to...

It is time for conservatives to come together to stop Donald Trump. It is time to unify around Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) . I say this as someone who has refrained up to this point in supporting a specific Republican candidate for President. To my friends who support Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) this is not an easy time. You supported your candidate for all of the right reasons. Conservative. An optimist. Someone who arguably is best positioned in a match-up against Hillary. No doubt, your frustration or sorrow must be great. But the numbers are what they are, and it...

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is projected to win the Idaho primary. NBC News called the race for Cruz just before midnight Eastern — less than an hour after polls closed in the state. Fox News called it moments later. The state’s result was in great doubt leading into Tuesday's primary because of a lack of polling in the state. Most pundits had shied away from making a prediction. The Texas senator was endorsed by Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), an influential member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Idaho awards 32 delegates on a proportional basis.

Donald Trump has been coming under fire for retweeting a quote from Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini on Twitter--and it turns out the whole thing was an elaborate setup by Gawker. In a Sunday post on Gawker's website, the news organization explains how one staffer created a Twitter bot account that periodically tweeted out quotes from Mussolini and attributed them to Trump. The account has tweeted multiple times a day, only at Trump, since December 2015. (Its photo is a picture of Mussolini photoshopped with Trump's hair.) "We came up with the idea for that Mussolini bot under the assumption that...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY8tVeR5m4s

CNN will no longer have Donald Trump ally and former adviser Roger Stone on air. "He will no longer appear as a guest on CNN" a spokesperson told POLITICO. Stone had made disparaging remarks on Twitter about CNN political analyst Ana Navarro, which had recently been highlighted by Media Matters, a media watchdog group founded by Clinton ally David Brock. Stone sent out tweets over the past few days calling Navarro, who was a Bush supporter, "Entitled Diva Bitch," "Borderline retarded" and "'dumber than dog s---." He also tweeted about Navarro in December, saying she reminds him of a "rabid...

MSNBC's choice to host Donald Trump in an exclusive town hall on Wednesday did not result in a ratings win against competitors CNN or Fox News. During the 8pm hour, when MSNBC's Trump town hall was up against CNN's GOP town hall (which kicked off with Ben Carson), it was actually Fox News that had the highest total viewers, with 2.3 million, despite the fact that "The O'Reilly Factor" was helmed by a guest host, Eric Bolling. MSNBC's Trump town hall had 1.4 million total viewers, while the first hour of CNN's three-part town hall had 2.05 million viewers. CNN...

Dear Trump Supporters, You say you don't support Ted Cruz because he's a liar (even though he backs up everything he says) and plays dirty politics (like sabotaging Dr Carson's run in Iowa). The former has been dealt with every time it's brought up. I want to deal with the latter definitively. You say that Ted Cruz deliberately sabotaged Dr Carson in Iowa. However, it has been shown conclusively that Ted's team got the information from CNN who got the information from Dr Carson's team. If that hurt Dr Carson's results... show me one person who changed his vote because...

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Many of the Republican presidential candidates descended Friday on Greenville ahead of Saturday's CBS debate.But only one was savvy enough to get himself enlisted as the opening act of a throbbing, trembling Christian rock concert that packed 14,000 evangelicals into a downtown arena on Friday night.So here came Ted Cruz, striding onto the catwalk of a stage, beaming under the spotlight, leading the crowd in prayer, asking them to unite behind him in next Saturday's primary election, and jumping up like a basketball player high-fiving fans as he walked into the locker rooms in the bowels of...

Several United Nations Security Council members pressed Russia on Wednesday to stop bombing around Syria's Aleppo in support of a Syrian military offensive and allow humanitarian access ahead of a crucial meeting of major powers in Germany on the conflict. The 15-member Security Council met behind closed doors to discuss the situation after the U.N. warned that hundreds of thousands of civilians could be cut off from food if Syrian government forces encircle rebel-held parts of Aleppo. "Russia's air strikes have been a direct cause of this crisis around Aleppo," New Zealand's U.N. Ambassador Gerard van Bohemen told reporters after...

... So there you have it. Lonegan thinks Cruz can win the New Hampshire Primary. Team Cruz must be feel confident about their chances to have released this video...

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is already looking ahead to forming his top White House team and is considering one of his sons as the head of the Interior Department. In an interview with Petersen's Hunting, he offered both his sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, as the cabinet secretary because they are hunters and anglers and members of key conservation and Second Amendment groups. In the interview with editor Mike Schoby, Trump said that "ideally" he wants an outdoorsman to run the agency that manages federal land. "Ideally yes, they'd be better at it," said Trump. In the interview with...

We polled Iowa over the weekend for the upcoming Republican caucus, and the final results show that Trump has lost some of his edge, while Rubio has climbed to within one point of Cruz. In fact, all three candidates are within two points of each other; this race is now truly anyone’s game. The narrowing is thanks to several key factors: expected evangelical turnout; the Cruz voter scorecard debacle; and Trump’s debate absence. Among those who watched the Republican debate, voters prefer Cruz and Rubio to Trump by a margin of 10 points. As the results came in, there was...