Free Republic

Ever since Donald Trump, the mercurial businessman, media personality, and presidential candidate, proposed his immigration policy, centering on the mass deportation of up to 11 million human beings, reaction among conservatives has been decidedly mixed. Ann Coulter, for whom illegal immigration is the alpha and the omega of public policy, exalted that Trump could perform abortions in the White House, and she would not care. But Charles Krauthammer, writing in the National Review on Thursday, and George Will, in his latest column published Saturday, provided reality checks. Krauthammer wondered what the practical political effects would be of reenacting the Trail...

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Casting himself as a tax-cutting, passionate government reformer, Jeb Bush drew merely polite applause Friday from thousands of the nation's most-active tea party conservatives gathered at the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers' summit. Only when the Republican presidential candidate wrapped up his 20-minute speech by calling for a military buildup did the more than 3,000 conservatives from around the nation join in a sustained cheer for Bush, a familiar face in American politics but a newcomer in front of the tea party crowd. "I promise you, if I'm elected president of the United States, I will restore the...

Jeb Bush is sticking with the plan. Despite Donald Trump shooting ahead in the polls and Bush’s debate performance getting bad reviews — and amid signs of frustration on the campaign trail from the former Florida governor himself — his supporters aren’t panicking, multiple sources close to the candidate insist. The Bush camp is projecting confidence that the Summer of Trump will fade to winter, and that Jeb will prevail when it matters. Here are five reasons Jebworld isn’t freaking out: 1. ‘TRUMP V. SOMEBODY’ Trump is the man to beat, the undisputed leader in national and early-state polls. Even...

A Fox News poll released on August 16th, showed Donald Trump continuing to enjoy a dominant lead in the Republican race for the 2016 presidential nomination. Trump polled at 25 percent in the 17 candidate field, well ahead of retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson who was in second place with 12 percent support. Ted Cruz was in third place at 10 percent, with no other candidate in double digits. Trump’s commanding lead is no longer surprising, given that he has been comfortably ahead in several recent national surveys, released from multiple different polling firms. What makes the Fox News poll so...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Milwaukee County officials say they don't plan another mass release of emails collected in the John Doe investigation into Gov. Scott Walker's aides and associates when he was county executive. County attorney Paul Bargren says in a letter Wednesday to The Associated Press that more than 29 gigabytes of documents were released as ordered by a judge between August and December. The AP and other news organizations reviewed hundreds of thousands of documents during that time.....

BUSH: changed Rating from No Action to VERY HARMFULCARSON: from No Action to VERY GOODCHRISTIE: from No Action to GOODCRUZ: from No Action to VERY GOODFIORINA: from Unhelpful to VERY HARMFULJINDAL: from No Action to VERY GOODPERRY: from No Action to UNHELPFULRUBIO: from No Action to VERY HARMFULTRUMP: from No Action to EXCELLENTIn addition, the following candidates stuck with the positions (and Ratings) that they had previously staked out. (Santorum and Paul deserve special recognition for taking strong stands long before Trump stirred the media's interest this past week.)EXCELLENT: SantorumVERY GOOD: Paul1st STEPS: GrahamNO POSITION: Chaffee, WalkerUNHELPFUL: Biden, Clinton, Sanders,...

When Donald Trump first burst on the political scene two months ago as a presidential candidate, many of the analysts, commentators and pollsters who populate cable news programs, the so called “experts,” claimed it was all a publicity stunt. Then, they said he would never release his financial statements. Then, they said his controversial comments about Mexican illegal immigration, Senator John McCain and Fox News Host Megyn Kelly would doom his campaign. Now, they are saying his lead cannot continue for his support has a “ceiling” and his campaign is a flash in the pan. Unfortunately for the “experts,” they...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Donald Trump is pulling away from the pack in the race for the party's U.S. presidential nomination, widening his lead over his closest rivals in the past week, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Friday. Republican voters show no signs they are growing weary of the brash real estate mogul, who has dominated political headlines and the 17-strong Republican presidential field with his tough talk about immigration and insults directed at his political rivals. The candidates are vying to be nominated to represent their party in the November 2016 general election. Nearly 32 percent of Republicans surveyed...

Scott Walker just can’t make up his mind on birthright citizenship. “I’m not taking a position one way or the other,” Walker said in an interview with CNBC’s John Harwood. “I’m saying that until you secure the border and enforce the laws, any discussion about anything else is really looking past the very things we have to do.” Harwood then observed that Walker seemed threatened by Donald Trump’s hard-line stance on immigration, and was adjusting his rhetoric accordingly. On Sunday, Trump announced a $166 billion immigration plan that includes a nearly 2,000-mile wall across the U.S.-Mexico border, the deportation of...

Republican presidential nomination candidate Scott Walker dismissed suggestions he would meet with leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement Friday. Campaigning on a four-day swing through New Hampshire, the Wisconsin governor spoke at a "Politics and Eggs" breakfast meeting hosted by the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College in Manchester. When an African-American audience member asked what he would to do prevent shootings of citizens by police, Walker defended police and mentioned state legislation he signed mandating independent reviews of police shootings.

He has crashed Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s show in Iowa, knocked former Florida governor Jeb Bush off course in New Hampshire and sucked up most of the political oxygen this summer. Now Donald Trump is headed south. Trump said Wednesday night that that event was switching venues, from a civic center to a football stadium, because he now expects an attendance of 30,000 to 40,000. Some say Trump’s appeal in the region is different, and according to University of Mississippi journalism professor Curtis Wilkie, it has precedent. “There is a history of outrageous politicians who are able to develop a...

One of the leading lights of Marxism on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison brings home a sweet salary of $170,000 per year. The well-heeled sociology professor is Erik Olin Wright .. The tenured, capitalism-hating professor’s annual salary of $170,000 is $117,587 greater than the household income of a typical Wisconsin family and is in the top 2 percent of all Americans. Whil an average middle-class family in Wisconsin survives on $4,368 per month, the Marxist professor enjoys a cushy monthly income of $14,166. He will teach exactly two courses in the fall semester for this princely sum. ......

An administrator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggested at a recent roundtable conversation that, in order to combat "overpolicing" in the community, police should no longer respond to shoplifting claims at large stores such as Wal-Mart, and shouldn't agree to prosecute people caught stealing. "I just don't think that they should be prosecuting cases ... for people who steal from Wal-Mart. I just don't think that, right?" said UW-Madison director of community relations Everett Mitchell. "I don't think [with] Target or all them other places, them big box stores that have insurance, they should be using justification, the fact that...

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio has opened up a 9 per cent lead over presumptive Democratic nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (45% - 36%) while both Jeb Bush (41% - 40%) and Donald Trump (40% - 39%) have a narrow 1 per cent l ead , well within the margin of error of the latest Mitchell - FOX 2 Michigan Poll . The poll of N=1,310 likely voters in the 2016 General Election was conducted Monday night August 10, 2015, the night before Donald Trump spoke at a packed Republican Party rally in Birch Run, by Mitchell Republican...

The governor is still leading the pack of GOP contenders in his home state, but his margins have narrowed, according to a poll. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is still leading the pack of Republican presidential contenders in his home state, but his margins have narrowed as Ben Carson and Donald Trump see growing support, according to a Marquette Law School poll released Thursday. The poll shows Walker ahead with 25 percent, followed by Carson at 13 percent and Trump with 9 percent. Walker’s numbers have dropped from 40 percent in April — when he had not officially entered the race....

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said Friday he favors term limits for members of Congress, suggesting 12-year terms for members of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate and hinting the same time frame could extend to members of the federal judiciary. ....He pointed to the two-term limit on U.S. presidents and said, “I’d even accommodate, say, let’s make it 12 so that the U.S. Senate and the House are consistent amongst each other.” “It also makes sense not just for the House and the Senate — if the president’s term limited, if the House and the Senate members were ever to...

It’s safe to say that most conservatives across the country think pretty highly of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and that he remains one of the few presidential candidates who are at least broadly acceptable to almost every sub-species of Republican. It’s not hard to find Wisconsinites who will wax rhapsodic about Walker’s job performance as well as how friendly and engaging he is. Yet in the wake of Donald Trump’s bluster, Walker’s quieter but battle-tested toughness and policy successes have seemed to fade a bit from view. In response, Walker hasn’t tried so much to match Trump’s glitz as to...

MADISON, Wis. — Former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, one of the louder critics of speaking fees for government officials, still hasn’t answered his critics’ calls to release the full amount of honoraria the Democrat has pocketed. A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel piece this week revealed Feingold took in more than $100,000 in speaking fees between February 2012 and June 2013, much of that money for discussions on the corrupting influence of money in politics. The Wisconsin GOP, however, believes Feingold, the godfather of campaign finance reform, has yet to reveal all of his earnings from speaking engagements before that period. “To...

MADISON, Wis. – They illegally seized the property of their political targets in an unconstitutional investigation. Now two top investigators in Wisconsin’s political John Doe probe are asking the state Supreme Court to hold on to that property so they can use it to defend themselves against civil rights lawsuits. David Budde and Robert Stelter, investigators with the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office, want to intervene in John Doe special prosecutor Francis Schmitz’s appeal. Schmitz is asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling last month that shut down the investigation. As part of that ruling, the court ordered...

MADISON, Wis. – A bill that would reform Wisconsin’s controversial John Doe procedure – a grand jury-like procedure used to hound Gov. Scott Walker and his conservative allies for years – is now headed to the Assembly floor. Assembly Bill 68 passed Thursday in an executive session of the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee. The bill’s authors, state Rep. David Craig, R-Town of Vernon, and Sen. Tom Tiffany, R-Hazelhurst, said the committee’s vote is an important step toward “ensuring the John Doe statute isn’t abused going forward.” AB 68 was inspired in large part by lengthy campaign-finance probes launched by Milwaukee County...