Free Republic

From the moment he walked onto the Republican debate stage in Cleveland, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has been Donald Trump's most relentless critic. He has called him a "fake conservative," a "chameleon," a man who "buys and sells politicians." Long before former Florida Jeb Bush hit Trump with a video of his most liberal statements, Paul had his campaign team on the case. Yet in a Friday interview with Michael Smerconish, first spotlighted by Mediaite's Matt Wilstein, Paul got a chance to mock Trump's stumbling "commander in chief interview" with Hugh Hewitt. He did not take it. Instead, he defended...

Donald Trump found himself briefly cornered during a call-in radio interview on Thursday. The presidential candidate was a guest on the The Hugh Hewitt Show when conservative host Hugh Hewitt began examining the real estate magnate’s foreign policy chops. Trump seemed to know something was coming, as Hewitt has a nose for generating news (most recently by asking Republican candidates if they would attend a gay wedding), but it was not a flattering exchange for Trump, who confessed to gaping holes in his foreign policy understanding. Trump managed to emerge only slightly bloodied from the interview and the damage was...

Orem • Rand Paul brought his message of limited government and strict observance of the U.S. Constitution to Utah Saturday. A crowd of several hundred applauded his call to stand up for all 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights — not just the one protecting gun rights. "You can't support the Second Amendment unless you protect the Fourth," the GOP presidential candidate said, referring to the constitutional prohibition against unlawful search and seizure. That applause line was the Kentucky senator's segue into his intense opposition to blanket data-gathering on U.S. citizens — a key pillar of his long-shot campaign....

Donald Trump is finally showing us more of his economic plan beyond the "Make America Great Again" slogan on his red hat. America has now learned: -- He wants to tax the rich more and the middle class less. -- He wants to lower corporate taxes. -- He wants to cut government spending and stop raising the debt ceiling. "The hedge fund people make a lot of money and they pay very little tax," Trump said in an interview Wednesday with Bloomberg. "I want to lower taxes for the middle class." In short, Trump is willing to raise taxes on...

<p>“I identify with some things as a Democrat…I was never a Bush fan. [When] the economy crashed so horribly under George Bush, because of mistakes they made having to do with banking and lots of other things, I don’t think the Democrats would have done that.”</p>