Free Republic

A Texas-based conservative activist has a prediction for who will be left standing among the crowded field of Republicans seeking the White House. "Everything I'm seeing is a Cruz-Walker race at this point," observes Cathie Adams, a longtime Republican activist and currently the president of Texas Eagle Forum. It's still early in the presidential election and the crowd of declared GOP candidates is already lengthy. There are also the undeclared, including Gov. Scott Walker and Jeb Bush. Adams says Republican Party "kingmakers" are behind Bush, and Cruz and Walker are the conservatives most likely to defeat him in the primary....

It’s not just Iraq: Bush repeatedly insists he won’t yield to popular pressure, until he does.After a week of misinterpreting, misspeaking and mismanaging the media over his position on the Iraq war, Jeb Bush’s hoped-for shock-and-awe campaign-in-waiting looked nothing like a political juggernaut. “It’s the Bad News Bears,” quipped Dave Bossie, president of the Citizens United conservative group. “The problem for Jeb Bush is he didn’t look very agile. He didn’t look smart in the sense of a rapid-response communications system that could get him out of the trouble he was in.” More troubling for Bush is that many supporters...

The field for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination is as flat as any in modern memory—pretty remarkable for a party that usually has a fight but almost invariably ends up nominating whoever's turn it is. While nomination trial-heat polling tells us very little this early, there are some poll questions that are better measurements of at least where these candidates are starting out, before the campaigning, debates, and advertising begin in earnest.An April 26 to April 30 NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll asked Republican primary voters whether they could or could not see themselves voting for each of 10 different...

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's comments last month opposing legal immigration came as a shock. How could a man who until a little over month ago was even willing to consider a path to citizenship for undocumented workers pull such an "Olympic-quality flip-flop"? But the real story is not Walker's switcheroo, but the conservative punditocracy's switcheroo that paved the way for his. Walker, who is fast sprinting into the first place for the Republican presidential nomination, told Glenn Beck recently that "The next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that's based, first and...

The former governor of Florida, John (or as he prefers to be called, Juan) Ellis Bush, doesn't appear to have a lot of support among Republicans, as opposed to Republicans in Name Only (RINOs), who absolutely adore him. But Juan isn't sweating it. He's rolling in dough, and more importantly, he's rolling in opponents. Have you ever heard of a "straw" candidate? When you have a weak front-runner that can't reach 50 percent, often a third, or a fourth, or even a fifth candidate suddenly jumps into the race. If he has a name similar to that of the strongest...

If the GOP doesn’t put together a sensible immigration policy it will lose the 2016 presidential election. When President Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012, with the former Massachusetts governor attracting only 27% of the Hispanic vote with his self-deportation argument, Republicans across the map decided they must develop an immigration-reform policy with an outreach approach to minority groups. According to the Republican National Committee, the days of harsh language and punitive legislation must end. In its place, the GOP must reconstruct the Ronald Reagan/Jack Kemp “big tent” theory of politics, where there is plenty of room for all groups...

One of the Senate’s leading liberals is borrowing a page from the playbook of Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is pushing to strike out language from the “cromnibus” spending bill unveiled Tuesday that would roll back restrictions on “swaps” transactions included in the 2010 financial regulatory overhaul known as Dodd-Frank. Repealing the “push-out” provision would mean that certain derivatives could again be held in bank units with federal deposit insurance. Using a strategy sometimes employed by Cruz for entirely different policy reasons, Warren said that with the $1.013 trillion spending package first being considered by the...

Republican presidential hopeful Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin has already flip-flopped when it comes to immigration. Once upon a time, he supported the Reaganite position which holds that immigration is a good thing and illegals should be given work permits at least. In 2006, Walker supported the McCain-Kennedy bill that would have granted a path to citizenship (nativists vilify that as amnesty) for illegals. But that was then, reported Politico, and the governor now supports curbs on legal immigration. Walker has a new apparent flip flop in the works, this one about the auto bailouts. Back in 2012, he was...

It seems that attacks on Scott Walker seem to boomerang and simply add to his political persona of being a regular guy. Did you hear the one about how Scott Walker never graduated college? #Fail. The latest attack on Walker is that he has “up to” $50,000 in credit card debt to — wait for it — Sears. We don’t know exactly how much because financial disclosures only are made in broad ranges, so it could be as little as $10,000. Regardless, it’s SEARS!

Likely presidential candidate had previously seen GOP reducing focus on issue.If presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tries to push forward a constitutional amendment guaranteeing state control over marriage laws, he'd have support from at least one potential rival. While speaking in Iowa over the weekend, Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker made it clear that he, like Cruz (and Sens. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio) thinks states should have the authority to decide whether to recognize same-sex marriages. In front of a crowd in Waukee, Iowa, he said: "I still hold out hope that the Supreme Court will rule, as...

First he had the Koch endorsement. Then he didn't. Why? A Glenn Beck interview where Walker moved wackier than Cruz. According to a number of well-respected journalists, the Koch brothers are putting their heft and muscle behind Scott Walker for president. Or maybe not. It depends on whom you ask. First, let’s acknowledge once again that the Great Whitebread Hope from Wisconsin seems to have everyone in the political establishment mesmerized by his alleged strategic and tactical brilliance. Sure, he makes epic gaffes over and over again, but that cannot take anything away from the fact that he barely won...

Republicans often rail about undocumented immigrants. But Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, an expected GOP presidential candidate, took it a step further Monday by sounding some critical notes about the number of those who immigrate to the U.S. legally. "In terms of legal immigration, how we need to approach that going forward is saying -- the next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that’s based on, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages. Because the more I’ve talked to folks, I’ve talked to [Alabama Sen. Jeff] Sessions and others out...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)NASHUA, N.H. —Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker closed the NHGOP’s First-in-the-Nation Republican Leadership Summit on Saturday night with a call for “common sense” leadership to promote “big and bold” ideas. Walker, who has been leading the GOP presidential field in recent New Hampshire polling, told several hundred Republicans who remained for the separately ticketed Saturday night dinner that if he runs for president, he would apply the same principles and approach that he said has turned around his state’s economy. Introduced by former Gov. John H. Sununu, Walker said he decided to run for governor because he and his wife wanted...

NASHUA, N.H. – Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has attended a wedding reception for a gay couple, he said Sunday, though the potential 2016 contender still believes marriage should be between a man and a woman. “That’s certainly a personal issue. For a family member, Tonette and I and our family have already had a family member who’s had a reception. I haven’t been at a wedding,” Walker said when msnbc asked whether he would be willing to attend a gay wedding. “That’s true even though my position on marriage is still that it’s defined between a man and a woman,...

The Women’s Defense League of NH is co-sponsoring an event featuring New Hampshire first-in-the-nation presidential primary candidate, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, according to a press statement. The event will be held from 11:45 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sunday, Arpil 19, at the Londonderry Fish and Game Club, 5 Lund St. in Litchfield. Cruz will be coming to speak to the 2nd Amendment Community in New Hampshire. He was the first candidate to formally announce his 2016 Presidential candidacy. The event is free but space is limited and pre-registration is required. Tickets are available via EventBrite. Event is sponsored...

The formal entry of Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida into the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination could spell trouble for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, according to W. James Antle III of The Daily Caller. Walker has been running ahead of the pack of declared and undeclared candidates. The most recent Fox News poll of national Republican primary voters has him maintaining his lead, with 15 percent support. He is generally out front in Iowa and New Hampshire polling, too. Since he declared his presidential aspirations, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has also been pulling double-digit poll numbers. If the...

The National Rifle Association’s annual leadership conference is always a treasure trove of GOP smack-talk and an all-out constitutional liturgy — and if Friday night’s viral talking points are any indication, this year’s celebration ranks further right on the political spectrum than usual. Not that that’s surprising: it is the run-up year to a presidential election cycle, which means that the Republican machine was churning out even more harsh allegations than usual. Of course, one of the biggest showboats of the night was Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who told political opponent Hillary Clinton to “come and take” away his guns,...

Hillary launches her campaign on Sunday – and, some Dems say, it’s about damn time.At long last, the campaign has a candidate. After playing one of the more tedious games of cat and mouse in recent American political history, Hillary Clinton stands now ready to admit that she is what she has been for the last two years: an actual contender for the Democratic nomination for president. The announcement comes as Democrats in DC have fretted that without an organized infrastructure Clinton has been a glutton for Republican attacks, and ill-equipped to respond to the news of the moment, whether...

The latest North Carolina survey from Public Policy Polling suggests that conservative U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz entering the race is stunting Scott Walker's momentum in North Carolina. The PPP poll released on April 10 shows Jeb Bush now leads the GOP field in North Carolina with 19 percent to 16 percent for Walker, with Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Marco Rubio each at 11 percent, Ben Carson at 9 percent, Chris Christie at 7 percent, Rand Paul at 6 percent and Rick Perry at 2 percent. Cruz is up 8 points from his 3 percent standing a month ago, while Walker...

Walker 15 Bush 12 Carson 11 Cruz 10 Huckabee 10 Paul 9 Rubio 8 Christie 4 Perry 3 Santorum 2 Jindal 2 Kasich 1