Free Republic

As the 2016 White House race begins to form, more than a few dark horse GOP candidates could end up breaking away from the pack. With the Republican presidential field wide open, the campaign could be a repeat 2012, when even candidates thought to be longshots briefly stole the spotlight and spiked in the polls. “We don't even have anywhere near a front-runner and it doesn't look like one is going to break free,” said GOP strategist Ford O’Connell. “There's a potential opening for a lot of these wild-card candidates.” Republican National Committee rules have changed since then, shrinking the...

Months ago, the isolationism of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was so extreme that I said he might as well be President Bashar Assad's man in Washington, referring to the Syrian dictator and murderer at a time when Rand Paul was following the policy of Ron Paul of extreme non-intervention. Times have changed, or shall I say Rand Paul's calculations have changed, so his positions have changed. Now Sen. Paul mocks President Obama over the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and vows to be a super-hawk going after ISIS. I guess when it's time to raise campaign money for...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Pat Buchanan predicted Mitt Romney will run for president on this weekend's broadcast of The McLaughlin Group. "There is no doubt Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Mitt Romney are in the establishment category or bracket that are headed for the finals," Buchanan said. "I think Mitt would come out first but I really don't see Bush as really having the drive or inner drive. And I think, then you get Mitt Romney against someone like a Cruz, or someone like that, and I think that would be the finals. And I think that Mitt has got it in his heart...

The smart take on social media last night was that Romney’s new op-ed on national defense is a signal that he’s quietly thinking of running too. So maybe we’ll finally get that Mitt versus Jeb match-up that conservatives have been dreaming about lo these many years. In fact, I tend to think the only rational explanation for the Jeb buzz is that it’s some sort of sly “Romney 2016″ psy op. There’s just no way, no way, that the Republican Party’s going to take another bite at the Bush apple. The donor class may despise the base and would doubtless...

Democrats are going to fight to keep their former Kansas senate candidate, Chad Taylor, off the ballot (an odd turn of events to put it mildly). This comes after Kris Kobach, Secretary of State, announced that Taylor must stay on ballot. Kobach is intensely political and is likely the most successful and outspoken voter suppression advocate in the country today. Rick Hasen says the law is not dispositive. But life's hard. Kobach's the Secretary State. He gets to make the decision, or at least he gets the first pass at it. A Court will likely have the final say over...

Heading into the GOP primary for U.S. Congress, New Hampshire state representative Marilinda Garcia has been racking up endorsements by influential Republicans and conservatives. But the most significant, and symbolic, show of support will be on display on Sunday, when U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, will be in New Hampshire to stomp for her. The primary, to be held on Tuesday, will determine who runs against the Democratic incumbent, U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster, in November. “I’m proud to support Marilinda Garcia,” Cruz said in a statement that was released by Garcia’s campaign, “because she is the candidate who will fight...

Jeb Bush, Florida’s former governor, is still deciding whether to jump into the 2016 race. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie continues to endure an investigation into whether his administration abused its power by intentionally creating traffic jams. And Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is struggling to convince conservatives that he is not a foreign policy isolationist while Islamic terrorists run rampant through Iraq and Syria and execute Americans journalists. A dozen or more prominent Republicans have been testing the national political waters for more than a year trying to decide whether to make a bid for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination....

As of now, a handful of Democrats have flirted with (or outright embraced) mounting a challenge to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ahead of her expected second run at the White House. Those candidates have, however, largely been relative unknowns or too exotic to be considered a genuine threat to her inevitability. Self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is seriously contemplating a 2016 bid, but few believe that he can mount a legitimate challenge to Clinton. Former Democratic Virginia Sen. Jim Webb is also contemplating a run at the White House, but he retired from the Senate after only...

The 1968 race riots helped to recast the politics of the country. But what happened in Ferguson was not a partisan issue, and it won't be fixed by helping Democrats keep control of the Senate. In the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, race riots convulsed the country. Chicago, Washington D.C., Baltimore, and Louisville endured the worst of it. Almost 50 years hence, you can still see where the damage was done. Louisville’s West Side, which was an integrated community, is now monochromatic. Some parts of Chicago’s West Side, where the rioting was the worst,...

Four days before Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen, was shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, sparking nearly two weeks of protests, the black community there lost the most racially divisive election in recent memory. On August 5, Democrats in St. Louis County headed to the polls to choose their nominee in November’s county executive race. On the primary ballot was 10-year incumbent Charlie Dooley, who is black, and his challenger, white county Councilman Steve Stenger. When the votes were tallied, Stenger had won overwhelmingly, ousting the black incumbent by nearly the same margin (66 percent...

<p>Now that Labor Day has passed, the 2014 campaign season is officially underway. By any measure, the Republicans seem to have the advantage and are poised to take control of the Senate in the midterm elections. The Democrats are struggling on just about every front. They do not have a credible economic agenda, and under President Obama, our country’s foreign policy has gone from bewildering to frightening.</p>

Definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. — Albert Einstein Unbelievably, the drumbeat has begun for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to run for president a third time. The man who lost twice for president is now being encouraged by many party leaders to give it another try. Congressman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, recently told MSNBC, “I think he’s proven right on a lot of stuff. I happen to be in the camp that thinks he’s actually going to run, and I think he will be the next president of the United States.”...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. fired back at Texas Senator Ted Cruz for remarks he made over the weekend about his borough. During a speech in Dallas Saturday, Cruz said he was tired of northern senators like Charles Schumer lecturing him on border security. He then added, "I understand that Manhattan is very concerned with their security with the Bronx, but it's a little bit different on 2,000 miles of the Rio Grande." Diaz Jr. responded, "This is unbecoming of him as a U.S. Senator, you know, who wants to be President of the United States—which, last I checked,...

ANDERSON, S.C. - Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., "the son of Ronald Reagan when it comes to national security" Monday night at a barbecue gathering of nearly 1,000 conservatives in the upstate. South Carolina's senior senator also dubbed Rubio "a rising young star" in the GOP "who you will see a lot," a nod to his colleague's White House aspirations in 2016. The high praise comes from one of the Senate's biggest foreign policy hawks at a time when the country is confronting how to deal with the unraveling violence and chaos in Iraq being caused...

Mitt Romney appeared on WNYM's "The Cats Round Table" with John Catsimatidis today and took on Barack Obama over domestic issues, including immigration. The President should have enforced our immigration laws from the very beginning. His announcement of a form of amnesty only encouraged people to continue to flood over the border. So the right answer, of course, is to secure our border and hopefully to put in a series of immigration policy reforms so that we can finally get our handle on this immigration mess. We can stop illegal immigration and also make the legal process more transparent and...

Even after the unrest in Ferguson has subsided, we're left with questions about the tension that built up and exploded in the small St. Louis suburb. Among those questions: How did a city where two-thirds of the residents are black elect an almost entirely white city government? The answer is simple: Ferguson holds its city elections entirely separate from state and national elections, and that can make all the difference. People rarely think about the timing of elections. But Missouri's election rules set the stage for the discontent that has tormented Ferguson recently. The state requires its cities to hold...

For House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the “war on women” and victimhood are always in style when election season rolls around. According to CNS News.com, on Thursday, Pelosi said on a conference call that American women have been victims throughout the history of the nation. “It was a struggle all the way,” Pelosi said. “Women marched. Women starved. Women were starved. Women were force-fed. Women could barely speak up in their own homes.” She continued: Women left their homes to take the message. And it was successful, and the right to vote, again, so precious, so hard fought. ......

In Dallas at an Americans For Prosperity event, Heritage Foundation president and former-Sen. Jim DeMint put his thumb firmly on the scale for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) over fellow Texan Gov. Rick Perry for the coming 2016 presidential contest. “I think Cruz even more than Perry right now,” DeMint told the Associated Press. “Ted has become really the national conservative leader.”(continued)

I know what you’re thinking: “Yes, Hillary will be nominated, but Mitt Romney? Again?” The problem with all the other potential GOP presidential candidates is that either they are indicted (Perry), about to be indicted (Walker, Christie), the Tea Party hates them (Rubio, Paul), or they are just too crazy, even for the GOP (Cruz, Palin, Bachmann). Then there’s Bush III (Jeb). When you see him on TV, doesn’t he seem to be half-asleep? Even his own mother thought he wouldn’t be a good candidate. Paul Ryan? He just doesn’t LOOK “Presidential.” He looks like Hoody Doody, baby boomers’ favorite...

A letter released by the Charlie Crist campaign: Dear Governor Scott: Four years ago, a district court of appeals ruled Florida’s ban on gay and lesbian adoption unconstitutional. When the ruling came down, I believed it was my job as Governor to exercise the authority vested in me by the people and our Constitution. The day the judge ruled, I declared Florida’s adoption ban over. Gay and lesbian parents began adopting the children they loved immediately. It is one of my proudest moments as an elected official. Last Thursday Federal District Judge Robert Hinkle gave you the same chance to...