Free Republic

Veteran political strategist and informal adviser for GOP frontrunner Donald Trump Roger Stone warns on Breitbart News Daily that the loss in Wisconsin should be a “wakeup call” for the Trump campaign, which he says should invest in campaign infrastructure to sew up the party’s nomination. “It’s an early wakeup call, as it were, for the Trump campaign,” Stone, who predicted earlier that Trump would lose Wisconsin, tells Stephen K. Bannon. Trump’s campaign has been fueled, from the beginning, with these hot button issues and an extraordinary communications-based strategy, where you utilize these huge rallies, the incredible media coverage they...

By this time, everyone with a television, a smart phone or a computer has already seen the MSNBC town hall exchange between Chris Matthews and Donald Trump where the abortion question came up. (Even if you lack all three of those modern devices, you may have caught wind of it via the screams of horror emanating from the windows of your neighbors, both Democrat and Republican.) But on the odd chance that you were in a coma for the past sixteen hours and happened to turn to Hot Air before doing anything else this morning, here’s the short but brutal...

The rapid deterioration of our economy is attributable to the wholesale liquidation of our best companies to foreign interests. The U.S. has sold more than 16,000 of our best companies in the last 30 years to these foreign interests. This trend erodes our ability to generate earnings, and tax revenues to sustain our current standard of living – resulting in our reliance on imports thus creating uncontrolled and escalating foreign debt. Holding our debt our jobs and the production of our goods, foreign countries have ultimate leverage over our policies and our future. If we allow this to continue, it...

Plenty of buzz about this last night, especially among anti-Trumpers struck by the coincidence of Trump superfan Newt criticizing him publicly on the same day that an even bigger superfan, Ann Coulter, called Trump “mental” in an interview. (Matt Drudge, yet another superfan, is leading as I write this with the news of Trump’s campaign manager being arrested for battery.) Are Trump’s cheerleaders heading for the lifeboats because they know something we don’t? Nah. They’re still onboard, they’re just alarmed that the captain won’t steer away from that iceberg that keeps getting closer. Trump’s fans within the commentariat have, I...

He was a lobbyist who represented one client who sought funds from the federal stimulus program and then another, a group backed by the Koch brothers, who opposed it. He was a political operative who once debated a cardboard cutout of the Democratic governor of New Hampshire to protest tax rates. And he was a congressional aide who was arrested after he brought a gun to work, then sued when he did not get it back. Perhaps not surprisingly, the campaign manager for Donald J. Trump’s unorthodox bid for president, Corey Lewandowski, a 40­year­old New Hampshire resident, does not have...

Donald J. Trump, girding for a long battle over presidential delegates and a potential floor fight at the Cleveland convention, has enlisted the veteran Republican strategist Paul J. Manafort to lead his delegate-corralling efforts, according to people briefed on Mr. Trump’s plans. Mr. Trump confirmed the hire in a brief telephone interview. “Yes,” he said, “it is true.” Mr. Manafort, 66, is among the few political hands in either party with direct experience managing nomination fights: As a young Republican operative, he helped manage the 1976 convention floor for Gerald Ford in his showdown with Ronald Reagan, the last time...

Former President George H.W. Bush can no longer use his legs, but he didn't let that stop him from keeping a vow he made five years ago: to jump from an aircraft on his 90th birthday, which is Thursday. Continue reading Former President George H.W. Bush, left, strapped to Sgt. 1st Class Mike Elliott, a retired member of the Army's Golden Knights parachute team, lands on the lawn at St. Anne's Episcopal Church after making a tandem parachute jump near Bush's summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine. More on this story "It's a wonderful day in Maine - in fact, nice...

Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), libertarian hero and constitutionalist congressman, will end the last term of his political career as the number two conservative in the House of Representatives behind Jeff Flake (R-AZ), according to a ranking system of all members of congress created by two political science professors. The "DW-Nominate" ranking system, created by University of Georgia political science professor Keith Poole and New York University professor Howard Rosenthal, ranks all 636 legislators in the House and the Senate and is available on Voteview.com. According to the rankings, Paul held the number one spot for multiple years, despite being behind...

The US is trying to prevent Russia from recreating a new version of the Soviet Union under the ruse of economic integration, Hillary Clinton warned on Thursday. “There is a move to re-Sovietise the region,” the US secretary of state told a news conference in Dublin hours before going into a meeting with her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. “It’s not going to be called that. It’s going to be called a customs union, it will be called Eurasian Union and all of that,” she said, referring to various iterations of a Moscow-backed plan to deepen economic ties with its neighbours....

Mitt Romney engaged in a heated discussion about his Mormon faith with a prominent Des Moines talk show host off the air on Thursday morning. The contentious back-and-forth between Romney and WHO's Jan Mickelson began on the air (video link courtesy Breitbart.tv) when the former governor appeared on the popular program that has become a regular stop for GOP presidential hopefuls. But the conversation spilled over to a commercial break and went on after the program ended, where a visibly annoyed Romney spoke in much greater detail about his church's doctrines than he is comfortable doing so in public. The...

Richard D. Lamm was a Democrat who served as governor of Colorado for twelve years from 1975 to 1987. “This is a speech I gave in Washington D.C. It was a 5 minute speech, and I am amazed and gratified it has received so much coverage.” I HAVE A SECRET PLAN TO DESTROY AMERICA. IF YOU BELIEVE, AS MANY DO, THAT AMERICA IS TOO SMUG, TOO WHITE BREAD, TOO SELF-SATISFIED, TOO RICH, LETS DESTROY AMERICA. IT IS NOT THAT HARD TO DO. HISTORY SHOWS THAT NATIONS ARE MORE FRAGILE THAN THEIR CITIZENS THINK. NO NATION IN HISTORY HAS SURVIVED THE...

Today, while on the road, my wife and I were listening around 9:20 a.m to 98.9 out of Austin, a radio station with Spanish-language programming. The host, "Javier", was talking with a call-in "guest" named "Arturo". Arturo made a comment about Ronald Reagan and his illegal alien amnesty and then said that Hispanics have become "worse off" under Republican leadership. He distinctly made the point that in spite of Reagan's amnesty, Hispanics were "worse off" under Bush. The sad fact is that this radio station constantly mocks and makes fun of Americans but is never called on it because the...

Two Sundays ago, CBS broadcast their grand 75th anniversary celebration. Audiences were reminded of the rich history of a network that has, until now, put artistic integrity and principled news above politics. From I Love Lucy to Murphy Brown in the entertainment arena and from Walter Cronkite to the impressive team behind 60 Minutes in news, we have come to depend on CBS for their high quality programming. As a wonderful recent letter to the New York Times reminded me, it was Edward R. Murrow of CBS who stood up to Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, "a genuinely risky...

Thunderous protest has persuaded CBS to cancel The Reagans, its miniseries about America's 40th president and his second wife. (The series will air instead on Showtime, which shares a corporate parent with CBS.) It isn't especially troubling that CBS would bow to angry protesters in canceling The Reagans, given that the miniseries itself, if at all typical of the genre, is likely a piece of hackwork. (Those who live by popular tastes, die by popular tastes.) But it is troubling that the public, or at least a highly influential segment of it, has apparently ruled any criticism of President Reagan...

we learned in the great debate over the Ronald Reagan TV miniseries is that many conservatives, including the chairman of the Republican National Committee, think you're stupid. Yes, you. And you. And everybody out there in TV Land. They think you can't tell the difference between James Brolin, who played Republican presidential candidate Robert Ritchie on "The West Wing," and Ronald Reagan, who was president of the United States for eight years. They believe you can't figure out that a mini- series starring the Australian actress Judy Davis as Nancy is not a documentary, but a "docudrama." Before CBS announced...

The head of a Washington, D.C. - based media watchdog group is asking that advertisers demand to preview a planned CBS mini-series on former President Ronald Reagan before sponsoring the program. Media Research Center President L. Brent Bozell Tuesday sent a letter to each of the nation's top 100 advertisers, urging them to preview the movie before making a sponsorship decision because it is what Bozell called a "partisan political attack against one of America's most beloved presidents." A review of the script by New York Times reporter Jim Rutenberg noted the two-part mini-series, scheduled for broadcast next month, makes...

This site has a one or two page, concise summary of political events for each century since 1900. Written by a Russian historian. Great for boning up on history and answering "when did that happen?" questions. (The Twentieth Century, Year after Year)