Free Republic

Donald Trump still leads the Republican presidential race, but Ted Cruz continues to beat him at a trickier game: securing convention delegates in states that don’t hold caucuses or primaries.

To his credit, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas admits he is not a warm and fuzzy guy. In the town hall before Wisconsin's primary, he acknowledged, “What I will say is I'm a pretty driven guy. That has pros and cons. I have always been a very driven guy.” In a GOP debate in October, he offered, “If you want someone to grab a beer with, I may not be that guy. But if you want someone to drive you home, I will get the job done and I will get you home.” Now it is true that the most...

The Washington Post today published an interesting photo essay about the small number of people who are still members of the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee and Maryland. The photos reveal them to be mostly a bunch of pathetic outcast losers. However, the real reason for this essay wasn't to demonstrate what we already know about the Klan. Just after the introductory paragraph, the true purpose of this entire photo essay was revealed...to slam Donald Trump.

Just uttering his name will summon a powerful mix of emotions in the average American depending on their political bent. The GOP presidential frontrunner continues to ruffle feathers, crash the status quo — and he remains the only Republican with a path to the nomination on the first ballot at the party’s convention. Amid Trump’s talk of NATO's obsolesce and building walls, he has also chimed in with some surprisingly contrarian — and in my opinion, right on the money — statements on the economy..... ...let's talk about his comment that the 5 percent unemployment rate is likely doctored and...

With a growing possibility that Trump will not arrive at July's GOP convention having the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination on the first ballot, his campaign will have to put more emphasis on the nuts-and-bolts, ground-level organizing at which his closest rival, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, has excelled. That includes assuring that the delegates, many of whom will be picked in coming weeks at district and state conventions around the country, are people who will be loyal to Trump if the convention goes beyond a first ballot in selecting a nominee. Under GOP party rules, most delegates...

No excerpt. This needs to be read in its entirety.

My former colleagues on the New York Daily News editorial board sat down with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on April 1 for an illuminating interview. The more I read the transcript, the more it became clear that the candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination doesn’t know much beyond his standard stump speech about breaking up the banks and how he had the good judgment to vote against the Iraq War in 2002. 1. Breaking up the banks 2. The legal implications of breaking up a financial institution 3. Prosecuting Wall Street executives for the financial collapse of 2008 4. Handling...

MEXICO CITY — The rise of Donald Trump and the anti-immigrant wave he is riding in his presidential primary campaign have alarmed the Mexican government so much that it has reshuffled top diplomats and, according to officials, adopted a new strategy — to defend the image of Mexicans abroad. Trump has consistently targeted the United States’ southern neighbor, calling Mexican border-crossers “rapists” and criminals and threatening to cut off the money they send home to their families unless Mexico pays for a border wall. But for months, the Mexican government has opted to remain quiet, with a few high-profile exceptions,...

large number of faculty and law professors at American University’s Washington College of Law are claiming that the phrase “All Lives Matter” is an “act of intolerance.”

So much of America's future is at stake in the 2016 presidential election. But let's focus for a moment on just one area--energy and the environment--where the Obama administration has made startling progress.... Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, arguably President Obama's best Cabinet appointment, has been leading a quiet revolution in clean-energy technology. Innovation is transforming this industry, costs are plummeting and entrepreneurs are devising radical new systems that create American jobs--in addition to protecting the planet.... Here's a suggestion for any fact-based, technology-respecting candidate in either party: Promise that, if elected, you'll try to persuade Moniz to remain in place.......

Global military spending reached almost $1.7 trillion in 2015, marking a year-on-year increase for the first time since 2011, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks arms expenditure around the world. The United States remained far and away the top spender, which despite a dip from 2014, accounted for more than a third of total global spending. It was followed by China and then, perhaps surprisingly, Saudi Arabia, which supplanted Russia in third place.

As president, Donald Trump would sell off $16 trillion worth of U.S. government assets in order to fulfill his pledge to eliminate the national debt in eight years, senior adviser with the campaign Barry Bennett said. "The United States government owns more real estate than anybody else, more land than anybody else, more energy than anybody else," Bennett told Chris Jansing Sunday on MSNBC. "We can get rid of government buildings we're not using, we can extract the energy from government lands, we can do all kinds of things to extract value from the assets that we hold." In a...

Donald Trump said in an interview that economic conditions are so perilous that the country is headed for a “very massive recession” and that “it’s a terrible time right now” to invest in the stock market, embracing a distinctly gloomy view of the economy that counters mainstream economic forecasts. The New York billionaire dismissed concern that his comments — which are exceedingly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a major party front-runner — could potentially affect financial markets. Over the course of the discussion, the candidate made clear that he would govern in the same nontraditional way that he has campaigned,...

On the eve of the Wisconsin primaries, top Republicans are becoming increasingly vocal about their long-held belief that Speaker Paul Ryan will wind up as the nominee, perhaps on the fourth ballot at a chaotic Cleveland convention. One of the nation’s best-wired Republicans, with an enviable prediction record for this cycle, sees a 60 percent chance of a convention deadlock and a 90 percent chance that delegates turn to Ryan — ergo, a 54 percent chance that Ryan, who’ll start the third week of July as chairman of the Republican National Convention, will end it as the nominee.

On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” Washington Post columnist George Will questioned Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s pro-life stance. Will said, “Well, there’s a policy dimension and a process dimension to running for president. On the policy side, on abortion, he was asked a question that every novice Republican candidate knows he’s going to be asked. And he didn’t have an answer. Now, that’s partly because he’s only been pro-life for about 15 minutes.

Fact Checker Trump’s Nonsensical Claim He Can Eliminate $19 Trillion In Debt In Eight Years Donald Trump, in an interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa In a revealing interview, Trump predicts a ‘massive recession’ but intends to eliminate the national debt in 8 years By Glenn Kessler April 2 The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Robert Costa sat down with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Here's how the interview went. Donald Trump: “We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt.” Bob Woodward: “How long would that take?” Trump: “I think I could do it fairly quickly,...

At least 31 reported killed in fighting between Armenian, Azerbaijani forces By Aida Sultanova April 2 at 6:22 PM BAKU, Azerbaijan — At least 30 soldiers and a boy were reported killed as heavy fighting erupted Saturday between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The fighting was the worst outbreak since a full-scale war over the region ended in 1994. Since then, mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh — officially part of Azerbaijan — has been under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military. Armenian forces also occupy several areas outside Nagorno-Karabakh. The sides are separated...

"I think we’re sitting on an economic bubble. A financial bubble... We’re not at 5 percent unemployment. We’re at a number that’s probably into the 20s if you look at the real number. That was a number that was devised, statistically devised to make politicians – and in particular presidents – look good. And I wouldn’t be getting the kind of massive crowds that I’m getting if the number was a real number." "I’m talking about a bubble where you go into a very massive recession. Hopefully not worse than that, but a very massive recession. Look, we have money...

Donald Trump said in an interview that economic conditions are so perilous that the country is headed for a “very massive recession” and that “it’s a terrible time right now” to invest in the stock market, embracing a distinctly gloomy view of the economy that counters mainstream economic forecasts. The New York billionaire dismissed concern that his comments — which are exceedingly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a major party front-runner — could potentially affect financial markets.

Included in a very long list of Things We Never Expect to See in American Politics is any scenario in which the leftist establishment Washington Post becomes a champion of the Constitution and the Founders’ original intent in framing it. Yet that is precisely what we find in a March 17 article by Pepperdine University School of Law professor Derek Muller, in which we are exhorted to restore the Electoral College system to some semblance of its original form — to prevent Donald Trump (shown on right) from becoming president.The bipartisan political establishment, be it remembered, has been subverting the Electoral...