Free Republic

Donald Trump's path to clinching the Republican nomination ahead of the party's July convention is looking increasingly improbable, according to FiveThirtyEight editor in chief Nate Silver. Silver's latest delegate projection for Trump showed him finishing at 1,155 delegates — 82 short of the 1,237 needed to secure the GOP bid heading into the convention. That number came from Silver's "deterministic" model — which looked at the most likely outcome for Trump in each state. In Silver's prior projection, Trump picked up 1,208 delegates, still short of the needed number but conceivably an easier difference to overcome. That projection came before...

Though Donald Trump is still the front-runner, Senator Ted Cruz has gained momentum in the race to be the Republican nominee as he adds to his delegate count and brings in more and more endorsements (some from politicians who seem to truly support him, some from politicians who are simply #NeverTrump). Cruz made a name for himself with his efforts to shut down the government in 2013, and he's known for his conservative stances: He believes in limited government, opposes abortion and gun control legislation, wants to build a wall along the border of Mexico (yes, him too), and opposes...

A boy can dream. And I'm dreaming of a Ted Cruz-Bernie Sanders matchup in November. I know, I know. It's unlikely. But it's not impossible. And it's the anticlimax American needs to regain a little perspective. Let's agree at the outset that I'm not just hallucinating here. As formidable as Hillary Clinton's and Donald Trump's leads may be, there is evidence that both their campaigns could be tipping toward a late-stage collapse. Sanders is behind, but he's on a major winning streak, taking eight of the last nine contests. Neither New York nor California is in the bag for Clinton....

PARTY LEADERSHIP RECOMMENDING AVOID OHIO CONVENTION... Somewhat quietly, though not without some water-cooler discussion, the Republican Party Leadership is warning membership to stay away from the upcoming Cleveland Ohio convention. The media is describing the issue as centering around those elected politicians who may want to avoid the potential for divisive controversy. However, if you look at the actual landscape, and then look at the political ideology of those who are openly saying they are staying away, what you’ll notice is the RINO caucus, the ‘Decepticons’, are the most cautious. If you spend some time digging through the professional GOPe...

On March 1, the Colorado Republican party prepared for 60,000 voters to arrive at nearly 3,000 precinct-caucus sites across the state. Those voters would select men and women to attend the party’s county assemblies and congressional district conventions, in the first step of a multi-part process that determined 34 of Colorado’s 37 delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. To hear Donald Trump and his fans tell it, those tens of thousands of Republicans never arrived, never made their choices, and never had the chance to play a role in selecting the party’s delegates. Matt Drudge, the populist Right’s...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: All right, look. It really doesn't matter whether I think Cruz is cheating or not. Some of you do, and that's as far as it goes. You don't... But I'm gonna try to explain this to you because I think it is very important that everybody understand this. Now, I just said closing out the previous hour something, apparently, very provocative. My e-mail is blowing up. I'm thinking ahead down the road. I'm asking myself, what happens here if the establishment succeeds in beating Trump? For this discussion, it doesn't matter whether they do it legitimately or...

Calling the Colorado Republican Party’s decision not to hold a primary popular vote a scandal, talk-radio host Michael Savage declared Sen. Ted Cruz should disavow the move and call for a vote. “What just happened in Colorado should, frankly, disqualify Cruz, who claims to be a constitutional conservative,” Savage told his listeners Monday. Savage is a strong supporter of GOP front-runner Donald Trump, who has been a regular guest on “The Savage Nation.” (full article at link)

Surprise! Man Behind the “Literally Hitler” Anti-Trump Ad Is Attorney for Ted Cruz Jim Hoft Apr 10th, 2016 11:42 am 16 Comments Just how dirty is Ted Cruz? This dirty… Attorney Chris Gober is cofounder of Citizen Super PAC and a staunch Ted Cruz supporter. ... Citizen Super PAC recently released “Heil Trump” comparing Donald Trump to Hitler. [Me: from a link provided by Gateway Pundit: "Chris Gober Chris Gober represents more than 100 active clients—including U.S. Senators, Representatives, and multibillion-dollar companies—in litigation, federal investigations, and political compliance matters. He currently serves as legal counsel for Senator Ted Cruz’s 2016...

David Coonradt came to the Colorado state Republican convention as part of Ted Cruz's “persuasion team,” a squad of volunteers working to secure more delegates to propel Cruz to the party's presidential nomination. He came ready to tout the Texas senator's gun-rights and antiabortion credentials, the most crucial information he had to impart appeared on the back of his neon orange Tshirt. “The official Ted Cruz slate,” the shirt blared, with the names of 13 prospective delegates below. More than 600 people were vying Saturday for 13 delegate slots for the Republican National Convention in July. The Cruz campaign wanted...

There’s a recurring question among the Republicans gathering in Colorado at state and local conventions to choose delegates this week: "Where’s Donald Trump?" Colorado is a rare state where party officials choose delegates without any input from a primary or caucus vote. The bulk of the state’s 37 delegates will be picked at a series of congressional district conventions on Friday and a state convention on Saturday in Colorado Springs. Prospective delegates can run as unaffiliated free agents or pledge to back a candidate. "There just doesn’t seem to be any Trump organization at all, to be honest," Dick Wadhams,...

The operating assumption for political observers going into the 2016 election has been that Sen. Ted Cruz doesn't stand a chance to win a general election. But now that the odds have increased of him actually being the Republican nominee, it's worth revisiting that assumption. There are no doubt a number of good arguments as to why Cruz would be too polarizing to win a general election, particularly given how the nation's demographic trends favor Democrats. There's a reason why the smart money would be betting against him. But let's entertain an alternate possibility. To start, of all the Republicans,...

When a political party picks one candidate over another, the party signals to the broader electorate what it represents. If the Republican Party nominates Ted Cruz instead of Donald Trump, it will represent one of the greatest practical and moral victories in the Republican Party’s noble history. Cruz’s enormous victory in Wisconsin this week makes it more probable than not that Donald Trump falls short of the required 1,237 delegates – 50 percent plus one of the 2,472 total delegates to the convention – to cinch the nomination on the first ballot. Combined with savvy delegate recruitment and a mounting...

On Tuesday night, Senator Ted Cruz, R-TX, won a sweeping victory over 2016 Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump in Wisconsin. Cruz won virtually every demographic, nearly 50 percent of the vote and the vast bulk of the delegates. It's becoming increasingly clear that Trump could fail to reach the necessary 1,237 delegates in order to win the nomination outright on the first ballot at the convention. If so, there's no way he wins the nomination at all. That's because Trump has made himself radioactive. If Trump had disappeared from the American political scene after his big win in Arizona, he'd...

“[Donald] Trump’s second-place finish to Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) in Tuesday’s Wisconsin Republican primary may represent no ordinary setback,” write the Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty, Jose A. DelReal and Robert Costa. “It appears to be a pivot point—although it has yet to be seen whether the trajectory from here points downward or upward.” ~snip~ The last time he faced the prospect of venturing into hostile territory—when his rally in Chicago was overrun by left-wing disruptors—he ended up bugging out. If he fails to secure a majority of delegates, perhaps rather than endure defeat in Cleveland he will find a way...

I've only recently become a Trump supporter. I was leaning toward Cruz, but couldn't go with him when he decided to collude with the GOPe, fully knowing (I have to imagine) that there wasn't a snowball's chance in Hell they would pick him in a contested convention. It's obvious that the GOP has decided to self destruct. Their disregard for conservatives and their complete disdain for the middle and working class has turned my stomach. I've turned in my membership. I'm finished for good with the Republican Party. I've decided to go Independant from this point forward, and I've gotten...

Donald Trump’s campaign is increasingly falling into disarray as the Manhattan billionaire braces for a loss in Wisconsin that could set him on course for an uncertain convention floor fight for the Republican presidential nomination. Since March, the campaign has been laying off field staff en masse around the country and has dismantled much of what existed of its organizations in general-election battlegrounds, including Florida and Ohio. Last month, the campaign laid off the leader of its data team, Matt Braynard, who did not train a successor. It elevated his No. 2, a data engineer with little prior high-level political...

The most recent propaganda angle with Team Trumpster has been that 'a vote for Cruz is a vote for an open convention in Cleveland... where the 'Establishment' is going to ram-through Paul Ryan on the 2nd ballot.  'So you gotta vote for Trump- don't you see?' Except that Paul Ryan is running out of ways to say 'I'm not running'.  Yes, the strategy in gaining his current position as Speaker of the House was 'Aw shucks, I'm not interested'... waiting until the demands for him grew louder and wider... then -reluctantly, of course- accepting the will of the people and a...

On Friday's Wolf show on CNN, during a discussion of whether Republicans can stay united after a divisive presidential convention, CNN's Nia-Malika Henderson recalled complaints by some Republicans that Ted Cruz "might not even be that much better" than Donald Trump as a nominee. She and CNN's Gloria Borger were then amused over "Lose with Cruz" as a possible campaign slogan for the GOP after Henderson suggested Republicans would prefer to have Cruz lose the general election as the nominee rather than have Trump heading the ticket.

A pair of new polls are showing good news for presidential hopeful Ted Cruz. In a new Fox News poll of 388 likely GOP primary voters, frontrunner Donald Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz are now in a statistical dead heat nationally. The poll shows Trump and Cruz polling at 41%-38% respectively, a slight edge for the real estate mogul, but within the poll's +/- 5 point margin of error. Governor John Kasich is running in third place with 17%. A second poll, this one from Emerson College, is spelling good news for Ted Cruz in the April 5th, winner-take-all...

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...