Free Republic

It is late September, the morning after the first presidential debate, and the reviews for Donald Trump’s performance are grim. The betting markets, pollsters and most pundits have pronounced Hillary Clinton the winner. “Trump choked”, declares William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard.Yet Randy Ross is a man in high spirits as he bounds into the Trump campaign’s downtown Orlando office. He watched the debate with other supporters, sipping white wine at a local bar. Despite the negative reaction elsewhere, Ross deems Trump’s performance “amazing”. “Hey! We’ve got the same shirt on!” he calls to a fellow volunteer, pointing...

The “brunch” is on the road for the next two weeks, assessing what’s going on in the politics of some key states. Those states might decide the fates and fortunes of the Trump Presidency and the Republican-led Congress in 2018 and 2020, so let’s “brunch” on that this week: “As Florida Goes; So, Goes the Nation” – The Sunshine State is becoming a bellwether of American politics, not only a key battleground for the White House, but for Congressional influence as well. In the last ten Presidential elections, Florida has been on the losing side only once. Now, as the...

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and other prominent Republicans have faulted President Donald Trump’s response to the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., but there was little criticism — and even some praise — for Trump’s handling of the issue when more than 400 activists, donors and candidates gathered Thursday for a GOP dinner outside Boca Raton. There has been some “chaos and turmoil” of late, Palm Beach County Republican Chairman Michael Barnett acknowledged to the crowd at the party’s annual Lobsterfest event at the Polo Club. But, Barnett added, “God is on his throne, Republicans are in charge and...

Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Florida, criticized White House aides Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller by name on Monday evening, arguing that it's "pretty clear" the two staffers think alt-right groups "should be accommodated." The GOP congressman's comments follow a weekend of unrest and violence in the United States as demonstrators took to the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, where a white supremacist rally was scheduled to take place. One person died and several more were injured when a car drove through a crowd of counterprotesters. "I think that the President would go a long way toward improving his approval rating...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) slammed the "terrible judgement" by former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) regarding a technology aide on her staff who is under investigation for fraud. "The incompetence and terrible judgment displayed by Debbie Wasserman Schultz and House Democrats is jarring," the 2016 presidential candidate said a tweet on Saturday. (TWEET-AT-LINK).....

Jeb Bush, former Florida governor, former presidential hopeful and former loud critic of President Donald Trump, has stepped back into the political arena to call out his fellow Republicans as hypocrites — for not publicly condemning Trump. Sigh. Why, why, why do these entrenched Republicans insist on picking public fights with their fellow GOPers? It doesn’t endear them to anyone but their own dwindling bases. And we know their bases are dwindling because try as they might, their candidates — their Marco Rubios, their Mitt Romneys, their Jeb Bushes — just couldn’t win against Trump. Yet six-plus months into Trump’s...

A few weeks ago the new president of the Florida Democratic Party, Sally Boynton Brown, caught some flak when she told a group of progressives that changes in store for the party include messaging that makes a conscious appeal to emotion, and rigorous script testing, likely through soft polling and focus groups. The problem as many progressives see it is that after losing so much ground, message resurfacing is not the change we need. There is an urgent need to transform the party, to regain relevancy—and that doesn’t come with message tweaks more commonly associated with failed Centrist strategizing. Lucky...

Months after campaigning for Hillary Clinton, Trayvon Martin’s mother is considering running for office herself, Miami news sources reported. “The only thing I can do is try,” Sybrina Fulton told Miami ABC affiliate WPLG. “And, I am not afraid to try.” Fulton spent part of 2016 campaigning for Clinton. In an op-ed she penned for CNN, Fulton explained she endorsed the former first lady because Clinton emphasized the Black Lives Matter movement and backed gun control efforts. George Zimmerman, a former neighborhood watchman, killed Martin, Fulton’s 17-year-old son, five years ago in Sanford, Fla. A Florida jury later acquitted Zimmerman,...

WEST PALM BEACH — Preemptive outrage levels rose precipitously among Florida Democrats on Wednesday over reports that President Donald Trump would pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement. U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson told reporters in West Palm Beach that U.S. withdrawal from the agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be “a huge mistake – 197 countries signed that agreement, albeit a voluntary agreement. What we’re trying to do is save the planet from getting so heated up that there’s no return.” Nelson and others said Florida is in particular danger from sea level rise. U.S. Rep. Ted...

Las Vegas (CNN) — Jeb Bush just gave the political equivalent of an "I told you so" to President Donald Trump. "When I ran for office, I said he is a chaos candidate and would be a chaos president," Bush said on Friday. "Unfortunately, so far chaos organizes the presidency right now," he said, speaking at the annual SALT hedge fund conference, which is headlined by bigwigs from the world of politics, finance, sports and entertainment. Bush said it appears the Trump administration is "living in the tyranny of the moment" instead of "executing on a clear agenda."(continued)

The People’s Pundit Daily (PPD) Sunshine State Battleground Poll finds President Donald J. Trump’s approval rating in Florida far above his national numbers. The President is above water in his adopted state, 52% to 45%. Unlike other oft-cited surveys, PPD Battleground State Polls pegged President Trump’s victories on the statewide level in all but two states we identified as battlegrounds within tens of percentage points, including Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Our final PPD Sunshine State Battleground Poll released on Nov. 6 found him leading Hillary Clinton by 1.6%, rounded up to two points. He won by 1.2%....

Every detail was designed to mark Hillary Clinton’s moment in history — from the glass ceiling at Manhattan’s Javits Center, where her supporters were gathered, to her and hubby Bill’s suite at The Peninsula hotel, selected so she could personally see Trump Tower, home to the foe she was set to crush. Then came the voter returns. In this exclusive excerpt from their fascinating new book “Shattered,’’ political reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes take readers inside Hillary Clinton’s world on the night that changed her life — and the nation — forever. Hillary’s communications team decamped to the Javits...

Former Florida Gov. and onetime GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush said Sunday that President Donald Trump is making life a little more difficult for himself. In an interview with Jim DeFede for "Facing South Florida" that aired Sunday, Bush said Trump "should stop saying things that aren't true, that are distractions from the task at hand." "He's a distraction in and of himself," he said. "He's got a lot of work to do, and some of these things — the wiretapping and all of this stuff — is a complete distraction that makes it harder to accomplish the things I...

Saturday marked a day full of Presidential and Vice Presidential motorcades traveling back and forth across Palm Beach County. For the first time since taking office, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are visiting Palm Beach at the same time. Supporters gathering to watch the President's motorcade return from his golf course to Mar-a-Lago got the surprise of a lifetime Saturday afternoon. A small group had lined up on Bingham Island with signs and flags. "We waved to him, the cars went by really fast, and we were just sitting down talking about the events of the day,"...

MELBOURNE, Fla. — Many of President Trump’s most dedicated supporters — the sort who waited for hours in the Florida sun this weekend for his first post-inauguration campaign rally — say their lives changed on election night. Suddenly they felt like their views were actually respected and in the majority. But less than one month into Trump’s term, many of his supporters say they once again feel under attack — perhaps even more so than before. Those who journeyed to Trump’s Saturday evening event on Florida’s Space Coast said that since the election, they have unfriended some of their liberal...

According to Twitter uses on the scene, attendees waiting to hear President Donald Trump speak at the Orlando-Melbourne International Airport hangar waited several hours to get in and the line reportedly stretched at least one mile past the gate. Other journalists tweeted out images of the crowd inside the hangar, which looked to be sizable and eager to hear Trump speak in what the White House has called a “campaign event.” Citizen journalists were also documenting the event as Air Force One arrived around 5:30 p.m....

Jeb Bush is mocking President Donald Trump as his plan to build a wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico is running up against tough political and practical obstacles. Bush, a former presidential candidate and Florida governor who took heat from Republicans for his relatively moderate stance on immigration, on Friday tweeted a link to a Wall Street Journal column that said Trump's plan is "easier said than done." "Reality sets in," Bush wrote....

In the event that you've been wondering what former Florida governor and GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush has planned for the future, you can rest easy now knowing that it — probably — won't involve running for office again. The Associated Press reports that Bush has joined The Foundation for Excellence in Education, an organization he founded to focus on pushing for “changes in education policy that often drawn opposition from teacher unions and Democrats.” Of his loss in the GOP race, Bush is quoted as saying: “I just think this was my chance. The conditions of this election weren't...

Jeb Bush said Tuesday he hopes incoming first lady Melania Trump takes her husband’s cellphone away so he can focus on leading the country. The former Florida governor and GOP rival to Donald Trump quipped during a lecture at the William Waldon Cameron Forum in Texas that he hopes "Melania steals his phone," noting the president-elect has been known for tweeting at odd hours of the night. Bush said Tuesday he hopes the president-elect is successful. The two famously sparred during the 2016 Republican presidential primary debates and on the campaign trail before Bush dropped out in February. Others have...

I was well impressed with former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) after a magazine profile appeared on him when he first entered the run for the GOP nomination for president. Not so much impressed by his accomplishments, although they were his own and they were formidable; I was impressed by his quiet manner and how he would do the evening cooking at his house and how he became a Catholic to keep his family whole as his wife was Catholic and he was raised otherwise. My Anglo-Irish grandmother had done the same thing. I saw these things as reaching to the...