Free Republic

The GOP presidential primary is on course to be flooded with super PAC money. But in 2016, candidates will need more than a little dough to win over voters.The GOP could have a dozen deep-pocketed presidential contenders, and they'll all learn next year that when it comes to actual votes, that extra money doesn't buy what it used to. Already, super PACs are arming second- and third-tier candidates with tens of millions of dollars while the supposed GOP front-runner, Jeb Bush, promises a record-setting haul. This combined fundraising guarantees that by the time Republicans have picked their nominee in summer...

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign will be in serious jeopardy if she's challenged by a fellow Democrat, says Bill Kristol, founder and editor of The Weekly Standard and an ABC News contributor. "She's in real trouble the moment a Democratic candidate or potential candidate, elected official, attacks her," Kristol said Monday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV. ---snip--- Kristol, who attended the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas over the weekend, said he was very impressed with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, the first Republican to declare his candidacy for president. "The big story of the weekend was Cruz....

If Jeb Bush doesn’t win any of the first four GOP contests — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — does that eliminate him from the Republican race? Or does he have the staying power to survive those losses? If Texas Sen. Ted Cruz finishes first in the Iowa caucuses, does that all but eliminate hopefuls such as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Ben Carson from the race? If Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul finishes fourth in Iowa (which would be worse than his father’s third-place showing in the caucuses...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is making a play for the West in the 2016 race by touting his opposition to the federal government’s expansive land holdings. Cruz’s disdain for federal land control is resonating with Westerners whose lives are impacted by land managers, and could help him win over conservatives in Nevada, one of the early nominating states in the presidential contest. “This is an issue he’s been focused on for quite some time, and it’s one that plays extremely well with the conservative base in the western part of the United States,” said Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist who...

The early bird is getting the worm when it comes to the 2016 Presidential race, as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is reaping the benefits of being the first to officially enter the race. Recent public polling shows a surge of support for Cruz among Republican primary voters. As Breitbart News reported, Cruz launched his campaign with a speech on March 23rd at Liberty University that invited his audience to imagine a future for our country where millions of “courageous conservatives” stood up to “reclaim the promise of America.” The message seems to be hitting home with Cruz’s conservative base, concerned...

Less than a week after Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid announced his retirement, the March 27 Townhall/Gravis poll of 850 registered Nevada voters found that Republican Gov. Brian E. Sandoval has strong leads over possible Democratic opponents. “Sandoval is a very strong candidate and being of Mexican descent gives him inroads to the minority voters,” said Doug Kaplan, the managing partner of Gravis Insights, the Florida-based firm that conducted the poll. The poll surveyed 433 registered Republicans, 319 registered Democrats and 98 Independents on their preferences for the Senate race to succeed Reid and their presidential preferences, said Kaplan. The...

Shmuley Boteach may have just dropped a major clue in one of the biggest mysteries of the 2016 Republican primary: Who does Sheldon Adelson like? In an email yesterday, Boteach’s charity, This World Values Network, announced that Texas senator and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz would be a guest of honor at its May 28 gala. Also being honored? Sheldon Adelson… and Newt Gingrich. The winner of the Jewish Las Vegas casino mogul’s political favor will profit mightily from his blessing. Adelson spent nearly $100 million in the 2012 election, singlehandedly buoying Gingrich in his doomed primary run and throwing...

A veritable bevy of Republican presidential hopefuls have already hired staff, wooed deep-pocketed contributors and made speeches in Iowa and New Hampshire, proving what we already know: The 2016 nomination preseason is well underway. Fundraising, organization, the size of the field and the calendar all will play a significant role in affecting how the race unfolds. The outcome is uncertain. The current conventional wisdom is, in spite of changes intended to shorten the nominating process, the race for the GOP nomination could be more of a marathon than a sprint. The last two Republican presidential nominating fights — with John...

Jeb Bush does. The Democrats’ Castro brothers do not. Ted Cruz knows ‘Spanglish.’ But fluency and being able to talk to Hispanics are two entirely different matters.The ability to speak Spanish is a prized commodity on the campaign trail, a way to prove your bona fides with Hispanics—the fastest-growing bloc of voters—and to show your inclusiveness in a rapidly changing country. Lots of Anglos are proficient in Spanish. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a potential presidential candidate, speaks nothing but Spanish at home, and has for years. His wife, Columba, is from Mexico. A more recent phenomenon in the political...

Consider this karma avoidance by the soon-to-be-ex-Senate Majority Leader, but Harry Reid’s new act won’t fool anyone, least of all Mitch McConnell. Reid has run the US Senate for the past eight years like a dictatorship, steadily eroding minority privileges to the point where Republicans couldn’t offer amendments or put up any significant resistance to Barack Obama’s radical appointments, unless Democrats forced Reid’s hand on either score. After watching his party lay a historic egg in the midterms — the size of which is still not yet fully known — Reid tried spinning the results as a mandate for the...

You almost never see this in politics. David Krone, the chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D), launches a major attack on the White House in this blockbuster story by my colleagues Philip Rucker and Robert Costa: At a March 4 Oval Office meeting, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and other Senate leaders pleaded with Obama to transfer millions in party funds and to also help raise money for an outside group. “We were never going to get on the same page,” said David Krone, Reid’s chief of staff. “We were beating our heads against...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)There are 65 prominent people who might run for president in 2016. The Democratic and Republican fields contrast sharply. Hillary Clinton is the clear front-runner, while there is no front-runner on the Republican side. Twenty-three Democrats have been mentioned as a candidate or are eyeing a bid, according to an analysis by The Hill. The GOP side has 42. Most of the people on this list won’t run, and some have adamantly claimed that they’re not interested. But many politicians have changed their minds on seeking the White House. Before mounting his 2008 bid, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said he...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is so angry over the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in the Hobby Lobby contraception case last week that he apparently forgot Justice Clarence Thomas is black. The Nevada Democrat lamented the court’s ruling which allows Hobby Lobby and other for-profit companies with religious objections to certain forms of contraception to avoid providing them to employees in health insurance plans mandated under Obamacare. Hobby Lobby approves of 16 out of 20 forms of contraception that have been approved by the FDA. “People are going to have to walk down here and vote, and if they vote...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) LAS VEGAS, Nev. – “I don’t have the background of a typical politician, right?” Lucy Flores told a crowd of Democratic activists as she accepted the party’s nomination for lieutenant governor of Nevada in June. It’s a line you’ve heard before: Candidates love to brag about how they didn’t grow up like those “typical” politicians. But there’s no other way to describe Flores, a Latina rising star who was born into an impoverished family of 13 children, whose mother abandoned her in grade school, who fell in with a gang, who was sentenced to a youth prison, who dropped...

The 113th Congress is not done with its debate over guns and background checks. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hinted on Tuesday that his chamber may vote on the bipartisan gun background checks bill again this year — and said such a law could have prevented a mass shooting in Las Vegas. In the wake of the killing of two police officers in Nevada in a shooting that ultimately left five people dead including the shooters, Reid made the case that since the Senate’s bipartisan background check legislation died last spring, there’s been little slowdown in the number of high-profile...

Luck has run out for Las Vegas’ push to bring the Republican Party’s next presidential nominating convention to Sin City. Cincinnati also has withdrawn from the list of possible hosts. Republican National Committee officials voted on Thursday to approve four remaining contenders and planned to soon visit Dallas, Denver, Cleveland, and Kansas City, Missouri. Officials expect to narrow the field by this summer. …

Jeb Bush is thinking about running for president in 2016. Like, really thinking about it. He's the headliner at an event hosted by mega donor Sheldon Adelson in Las Vegas on Thursday. He was actively involved in Rep. David Jolly's special election victory in Florida earlier this month. And he is breaking with his party's orthodoxy on Common Core. So, as Jeb mulls a bid whose advice does he seek? Who does he trust to give him an unvarnished view of what the race might look like? Well, everyone even close to Jeb insists that he largely keeps his own...

Considering the lies,arrogance and hidden anger of Harry Reid we have been seeing lately,can you just imagine if a reporter were to ask him what his theory/explanation/opinion is of flight 370?,It would be beyond obvious what he would likely say.Just like when Liberals were blaming the GOP and Sarah Palin for all of the mass shootings since 2009.Rush made a comical comment that the Kock Brothers hijacked the plane.Although it is a little odd that the far left hasn't said anything yet regarding the tragedy being they are always the first ones to blame all tragic events on the GOP&Conservatives.

Saying there will be no grand bargain in the House-Senate budget conference involving spending cuts to entitlement programs, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claimed everyone is “willing to pay more” in taxes. When asked by a Nevada Public Radio host what Republicans would have to concede to get Medicare and Social Security cuts on the table, Reid made it clear he is more interested in getting rid of the only cuts to actual spending seen thus far — sequestration, as reported by Roll Call. “On sequestration, we’ve done one year of sequestration. It has been brutal,” Reid said. “The only...

On the third-to-last day that Senator Frank Lautenberg ever voted in the Senate, he joined with 53 of his colleagues to support a compromise on new gun regulations. His vote wasn't enough. Now, Lautenberg's death makes the prospect of revisiting that issue — and a number of other Democratic priorities — substantially trickier. Take the gun legislation. The compromise proposal, which would have expanded background checks to include gun show and online sales, was part of a package that was postponed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid after the failed vote. It's expected to come back before the Senate at...