Free Republic

More than half of American voters believe that the system U.S. political parties use to pick their candidates for the White House is "rigged" and more than two-thirds want to see the process changed, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. The results echo complaints from Republican front-runner Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders that the system is stacked against them in favor of candidates with close ties to their parties – a critique that has triggered a nationwide debate over whether the process is fair.

The chairwoman of the Boulder County GOP has admitted that grave errors affected the Colorado Republican caucus, in which Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)97% won a clean sweep of 34 delegates without opening up the process to voting by everyday citizens. Breitbart News has obtained an email that Boulder County GOP chairwoman Peg Cage sent to other top Republican officials in Colorado, including to other party chairs, describing the errors in the process that led to “the perception of fraud.” Reached for comment on the email, Cage said that the caucus might have to be done over.

One potential delegate who supports Trump said at the convention he will vote for the candidate that won his district. However, a Cruz delegate candidate says she is voting for Cruz at the convention, even if he loses the district she wishes to represent. More, with video at link

Donald Trump Jr. said that the only way Texas Sen. Ted Cruz can convince delegates to support him over his father is with bribery. "Ted Cruz has no chance of winning this without bribing the delegates. That's his game at this point," the son of the real estate mogul told CNN's Jake Tapper in a CNN "State of the Union" interview that aired Sunday. Trump Jr. said if his father wanted to bribe delegates he could -- and do it very well. "He could send his private plane and send them down to Doral, they could play golf for a...

In addition to "grass-roots" campaign workers, there are at least eight Super PACs backed by 'shadow elites' who are driven to defeat Donald Trump and they are banking on Ted Cruz. At least one of these super PAC leaders, Katie Packer of OPP, met behind closed doors at the RNC Spring Meeting this week in Florida. Packer states that a republican candidate should "uphold orthodox GOP ideology." This smacks of irony given her past allegiance with Romney/Ryan and Ryan's inability to uphold GOP principles as Speaker of the House. The super PACs are calling, texting, emailing, lobbying, and all-out wining...

ALBANY — The head investigator for the state Board of Elections probed the 2014 fundraising efforts by Mayor de Blasio and his team on behalf of the Senate Democrats and found enough “willful and flagrant” violations to warrant a criminal referral to the Manhattan DA’s office. The Daily News obtained a bombshell memo state Board of Elections Chief Enforcement Officer Risa Sugarman sent to the board’s four commissioners on Jan. 4 recommending the referral. “I have determined that reasonable cause exists to believe a violation warranting criminal prosecution has taken place,” Sugarman wrote. “The violations discovered by this investigation can...

Pro-Kasich MS GOP threatens Trump/Cruz convention attendees with “badge or guns” Pro-Kasich? They support John Kasich?A couple of years ago I had the benefit in honor of campaigning with Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel in the state of Mississippi as he was trying to get elected to the Senate and knock off Sen. Thad Cochran . He was met by the Republican state GOP supported by the National Republican Senate Committee (by the way, Sen. Ted Cruz was vice chairman at the time) who used liberal racist fear tactics to defeat him. NOTE: Cruz didn’t participate in this particular strategy by...

Turn on Howie Carr! National Cruz people planning to steal all 23 delegates in Maine tomorrow! The governor wants the delegates that go to Cleveland be 12/ 9// 2. For Cruz / trump / Kasich Cruz people refusing and fans a full slate completely loyal to Cruz

Whether you support Ted Cruz or Donald Trump is irrelevant to the argument I am about to present. However, if you are believer in representative government, you would be hard-pressed to find an issue that is more relevant. A veil of misconception covers our eyes. Another veil of secrecy hides the doings of government. We think we have a representative government. But do we? Republicans and Democrats both do it Judge for yourselves. Recently the State of Colorado exposed a very interesting political dynamic that took most of us by surprise. The Republican Party in that state managed to manipulate...

A Republican National Convention delegate from Colorado said Friday that Donald Trump's senior adviser told him the campaign was dropping its challenge to rival Ted Cruz's sweep of the state's delegates -- an account the campaign is disputing. Guy Short, a national delegate from Colorado and member of the convention's rules committee, said he approached Trump's convention manager, Paul Manafort, after he gave Republican Party insiders a private briefing in Florida earlier this week and asked about Trump's threat to challenge what the billionaire has called a "rigged" system. "Is the Trump campaign going to challenge the credentials of the...

The founder of the conservative group Freedom Watch filed a lawsuit against the Republican National Committee and chairman Reince Priebus on Thursday, accusing the national party of “conspiring to defraud” GOP primary voters. The lawsuit, filed by conservative activist Larry Klayman, also targets the Republican Party of Florida and Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner, alleging that party leaders have colluded to deprive Donald Trump of his victory in the Sunshine State. The lawsuit claims that national party leaders and Republican officials in Florida led voters to believe that the state’s 99 delegates would be bound to the winner for...

I have heard that a lot of Republicans, ESPECIALLY Trump supporters, have said that the candidate who comes into the Cleveland convention with the most delegates should be (automatically?) awarded the nomination even if he cannot get 1237 votes on the first ballot. I just want to go on record as saying that this widespread notion is politically stupid--even politically monstrous. The Republican Party's rules since the very birth of the Party have specified that a prospective nominee must achieve a majority of Convention votes to become the nominee. As most FReepers already know, this longstanding fact is not disputed....

We started writing about Ted Cruz using shady tactics to steal delegates a while back. What makes this even more appalling is we also pointed out that Lyin Ted Cruz had claimed he was against a Contested Convention. The only way Ted Cruz or John Kasich can win is via delegate theft. They both have been mathematically eliminated from the race by the voters. We also pointed out that delegates can be bought. As Hot Air notes; “But if you want to pretend these conversations aren’t taking place in the Cruz and Kasich camps, well… I’d love to know what...

Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus on Friday called for Republicans to unite ahead of the presidential election, striking back against the Never Trump movement. “It is essential to victory in November that we all support our candidate,” Priebus said at the RNC’s spring meeting in Hollywood, Fla. “This goes for everyone, whether you’re a county party chairman, an RNC member, or a presidential candidate. Politics is a team sport, and we can’t win unless we rally around whoever becomes our nominee,” he added, drawing applause from the audience. “They’re trying out for our team. No one is forcing...

On the Friday before Easter, Donald Trump was sitting inside his Mar-a-Lago oceanside resort in Palm Beach, Florida, stewing over the headlines he kept reading about the growing likelihood of a contested Republican National Convention in July. In need of instant advice, Trump picked up the phone and did what he's often done for the last 30 years: He dialed up his longtime political confidant, Roger Stone. "Can they really f--- me on this convention?" Trump asked, somewhat incredulously. "If I have the most votes, can they really take this away from me?"

Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign is a machine with a broken off switch, and it’s America’s terrible, rotten, no-good luck to have to watch it play on until its batteries die. His is a shallow campaign, energetically devoted to winning votes on the cheap. He continues to ask the very least of the same America he wants to lead. This morning he blasted Donald Trump for being soft on the bathroom issue. “Gosh, he thought that men should be able to go into the girls’ bathroom if they want to,” he told a crowd hundreds strong in Frederick, Md., reports...

In light of all the controversy surrounding the Cruz Colorado voterless win. We find that Trump would have won Colorado quite easily. If a Republican Presidential Primary Election were to take place in Colorado, 44% of likely voters would vote for Donald Trump, 34% support Ted Cruz, 17% support John Kasich and 5% are undecided. When asked to choose between only Ted Cruz or Donald Trump, 48% support Trump and 42% support Cruz, and 10% are undecided. These results are interesting in light of the results at the Republican State Convention where Ted Cruz won all 34 delegates awarded. What...

Trump people kill me. They've been whining for weeks about how the Republican Party primary system works. They say it's rigged because their hero is pulling in the most votes and the most delegates but still might not win the nomination. They say it's all very simple: Trump's getting the most votes and therefore it's only fair that the person with the most votes from the people should win the nomination. As I tweeted earlier this week, if that's the way Trump's followers think, then they should all be supporters of Al Gore. In the 2000 election Gore got 540,000...

Pennsylvania, which holds its primary next Tuesday, uses a nonbinding “loophole” primary — and that could cost Donald Trump the Republican nomination. If the state adopted the delegate rules of any other primary, he would probably be an even-money favorite, or better, to amass the 1,237 delegates needed before the convention. Instead, his chances may come down to the whims of 54 unpledged Pennsylvania delegates.

After getting a thorough shellacking in New York, Ted Cruz faces an almost equally bleak battlespace in the upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Delaware. Cruz’s strategy seems to be to concede the latter three states to Donald Trump and fight it out in Pennsylvania and Maryland. The former state elects mainly unpledged delegates, so Cruz will use his organizational wizardry to woo most of them to his corner. In Maryland, the senator from Texas will try to get some delegates on the congressional district level.