Free Republic

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is out with a new ad Monday tying Iowa GOP Senate hopeful Joni Ernst to Sarah Palin. The 30-second ad plays audio of Palin praising Ernst and Ernst praising Palin. (VIDEO-AT-LINK)Given that Palin is broadly unpopular and highly polarizing, the ad might seem to be much ado about nothing. After all, Palin has been a Democratic foil for years. But national Democrats haven't actually used her much in their advertising campaigns. And, in fact, this is the first TV ad the DSCC has ever run featuring Palin. The committee did feature Palin in a 2009...

And if they’re right, they’ll keep the Senate this fall. Buchanan, in an interview with the Daily Caller today, predicted that the violence in Ferguson and the perceived enabling of race hustlers and leftist revolutionaries there will generate a massive negative reaction by America’s “silent majority” at the polls in November.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Buchanan might be right, but of course his perspective is that of a veteran of the Nixon administration. Richard Nixon was elected in a massive rout in 1968, following months of roiling civil unrest in America’s cities. Nixon spoke of that silent majority not taking to the streets thanks...

The party of the next guy has no next guy. For more than two generations, the Republican presidential nominating process has had an immutable internal logic to it: The next guy in line gets the nomination. That’s how every Republican president of the post-Eisenhower era has won his party’s nomination and how just about every GOP presidential nominee since Thomas E. Dewey (1944 and 1948) got to the top of the ticket. It’s certainly how Barack Obama’s two opponents, Sen. John McCain and former Gov. Mitt Romney, were nominated. But just as the Republican Party is going through one of...

Rand Paul and Ted Cruz’s differing tone in response to the Ferguson riots could provide clues for the divergent trails they're forging to woo libertarian voters in 2016. Both the Kentucky and Texas Senate Republicans urged that civil liberties be protected in statements following unrest in Ferguson, Mo.. After an officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an 18 year old African American teen, last weekend, riots have erupted and police have been criticized for using overly-aggressive force against protesters and reporters calling for answers. Strategists say Paul struck a more provocative tone against in his TIME op-ed, calling for the...

Hillary Rodham Clinton likes to travel in style. She insists on staying in the “presidential suite” of luxury hotels that she chooses anywhere in the world, including Las Vegas. She usually requires those who pay her six-figure fees for speeches to also provide a private jet for transportation — only a $39 million, 16-passenger Gulfstream G450 or larger will do. And she doesn’t travel alone, relying on an entourage of a couple of “travel aides,” and a couple of advance staffers who check out her speech site in the days leading up to her appearance, much like a White House...

As she expands her political network in advance of an expected presidential run, Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband have been cultivating an important ally who some believe could become her vice presidential running mate. Former president Bill Clinton invited Julian Castro, a former San Antonio mayor and incoming Obama Cabinet secretary, to the Clintons’ home in Washington last week for a private dinner that friends described as a chance for Democratic leaders from different generations to become better acquainted. Castro, 39, who is scheduled to be sworn in Monday as secretary of housing and urban development, traveled to New...

Rand Paul may be gaining measurable traction among young, liberal voters for his clear admonition of the “militarization of local police precincts” in Ferguson, Missouri, and around the nation, but International Business Times has surfaced a video of him at a 2010 rally that tells a different story: one that tempers his scathing criticism of growing, public armies with his fervent support of private ones. “There’s a fellow in the White House who says you’re clinging to your religion and your guns,” began the Kentucky junior senator to a gathered crowd at an Open Carry rally in Frankfort, Ohio, on...

Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are weighing in on the violence in Ferguson, Missouri, staking out ground on a racially charged issue ahead of their possible 2016 presidential bids. In a highly personal Time op-ed, Paul (R-Ky.) bluntly connected race to the treatment of African-Americans who have gathered in Ferguson since police killed teenager Michael Brown. Paul said that when he was young, he might have “smarted off” but he “wouldn’t have expected to be shot.” “Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting...

Democrats face potentially catastrophic midterm elections that could leave Republicans and conservatives in control of the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court. Yet while Democrats face a political state of emergency, Hillary Clinton this week launched an aggressive preemptive attack — not against Republicans but against Barack Obama, the Democratic president she served as secretary of State, employing lines of attack eerily reminiscent of attacks against Democrats from former Vice President Dick Cheney. Clinton has been running for president for almost a decade. What is striking today is how little she appears to have thought through WHY she would...

To paraphrase a memorable advertisement starring a young Andre Agassi: In Iowa, image is everything. It's a lesson that Rand Paul appears to be learning the hard way. Citing a "family commitment," the likely 2016 White House hopeful passed on attending Saturday’s Family Leadership Summit -- evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats’ annual gathering of social-conservative activists in Ames, Iowa. Few in the nation’s first voting state would have considered the Kentucky senator’s absence a big deal, especially since Paul has been extremely active building relationships in Iowa and has visited there frequently over the past year, including a three-day trip...

Five counties out of the 16 in the 4th Congressional District could determine whether U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais' razor-thin lead holds up or whether state Sen. Jim Tracy can overcome. The number of valid provisional ballots in 11 counties had been accounted for late Tuesday, said Blake Fontenay, spokesman for Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett. That left just Bedford, Grundy, Maury, Rutherford and Sequatchie. Their yet-to-be-counted provisional ballots are keeping election officials quiet -- and the candidates in limbo.

Just 215 votes. That's how close the Republican primary in the 6th Congressional District was on Tuesday, leaving the winner in doubt as state Sen. Glenn Grothman for now holds on to a slim lead over state Sen. Joe Leibham. At one point Tuesday night, the election looked like a clear-cut victory for Grothman, with The Associated Press declaring him the winner with a margin of victory of more than 4,800 votes. But Grothman's sizable lead evaporated as more votes came in from late-reporting Sheboygan County, where Leibham lives. The early-morning tally from Sheboygan County showed Leibham winning that county...

HONOLULU (AP) -- In a stunning defeat for an incumbent, Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie was unseated by a fellow Democrat in Saturday's primary election, as voters chose state Sen. David Ige as their nominee in one of two marquee races that have divided the party. Abercrombie had tried to hold onto his seat while disgruntled voters turned their allegiance to Ige, who promised to bring a less confrontational political style. Voters rewarded Ige with a decisive victory....

’What do you think about Dr. Ben Carson as the GOP candidate for president in 2016?” Republican friends frequently ask me, to which my response is: “Did he win World War II?” In 1952, General Dwight David Eisenhower became the last president of the United States to be elected without first holding a lower elective office. Carson’s path from a very tough childhood to the head of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University is certainly impressive. (In a political field where many Ph.D’s insist on being called “doctor” and few office holders wow you with their intelligence, Carson stands out by...

Conservatives are literally praying that the Texas senator will be the 2016 nominee. The rest of the Republican Party isn't so sure. FORT WORTH, Texas—After finishing his speech, Ted Cruz announced he would take questions from the audience. But instead of asking him anything, they just wanted to tell the Republican senator how great he was. "When I look at you, I can imagine you would be just like one of the founding fathers of this country," one woman said from the microphone stand in the middle of the hotel ballroom. "Honor to you, Ted Cruz," said the next. "We...

The ongoing uproar over the influx of detainees to a U.S. Border Patrol outpost in Murrieta has become political fodder for two Inland state Senate candidates. Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone, a Republican running in the 28th Senate District, sent a letter to President Barack Obama asking for a meeting to discuss possible solutions to a wave of Central American immigration that’s overwhelmed border patrol stations in Texas and forced officials to send undocumented immigrants to Murrieta for processing. Not to be outdone, Republican Bonnie Garcia, Stone’s opponent in the Senate race, penned an op-ed on immigration titled “Humanitarian Crisis...

The push to elect the Asian-American women is part of Republican efforts to tap into Democrat-style identity politics to try to find a way to stop — or even reverse — its eroding support among minority voters. “California is a precursor of the dynamic change, demographicswise, in America,” said Shawn Steel, a member of the Republican National Committee from California whose wife, Michelle, is one of the candidates. “So this is a harbinger. This is a call in the dark night saying, ‘Look, guys, let’s change. We have to adapt or die.’” In the state that controls the single biggest...

A Democratic candidate for a judicial seat in Plainfield, Conn. was forced to answer questions about her husband this week after a watchdog group exposed his ties to the white supremacist movement. The Norwich Bulletin newspaper reported on Thursday that attorney Anna Zubkova, who is running for a seat as a probate judge, said she does not share the views of her husband, who runs a blog called "Mindweapons of Ragnarok" where he waxes about his views on race and white pride. The newspaper reported that the couple have been married for 17 years. "He did not have those views...

I don’t know who is going to win Saturday’s special Democratic Senate primary between Sen. Brian Schatz and Rep. Colleen Hanabusa — and it’s not just because there’s a lot going on in Hawaii right now (an earthquake rattled Hawaii on Thursday, and two tropical storms are on course to hit or come near Hawaii in the next five days). Instead, the polling picture in the Aloha State is a mess. One poll has Hanabusa up by 8 percentage points, and another puts Schatz up 8 points. Why the discrepancy? Hawaii’s diversity has troubled pollsters in the past and looks...

New York Times best-selling author and long-time journalist Ed Klein said that Valerie Jarrett has been engaging in secret meetings with Sen. Elizabeth Warren in recent months, giving rise to speculations that the Massachusetts political newcomer is actually the administration’s choice to head the White House in 2016. “President Obama has authorized Valerie Jarrett, his most important political adviser, to hold secret meetings with Elizabeth Warren to encourage her to challenge Hillary Clinton because the Obamas do not want to see the Clintons succeed them in the White House,” Mr. Klein said during a broadcast interview on “America’s Forum” on...