Free Republic

If a woman is to finally serve as President of the United States, Michelle Obama has the best chance to make a strong run and win. What is more, according to a new poll, the former first lady would win the Democratic nomination out of a crowded field of possible candidates — even against former Vice President Joe Biden. Michelle Obama for president in 2020 is not confirmed, but according to a Zogby Analytics survey of 682 participants via telephone, Democratic primary voters favor the ex-FLOTUS. Michelle Obama leads with 22 percent among candidates whose names have been floated about...

You might be forgiven for thinking ― given all that has happened since Donald J. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton for the U.S. presidency in November 2016 ― that buyers’ remorse would be rampant in contemporary America. But it is not. It is true that Donald J. Trump started his presidency capturing only a minority of the popular vote; and that he is significantly less popular in polls taken today than he was on election day. But very substantial pockets of support remain. They remain among members of his electoral base. They remain among life-long Republicans, not all of whom greeted...

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, said Tuesday that he has decided not to seek re-election next year and will retire from Congress at the beginning of 2019. "Today I am announcing that I will not seek reelection to the US Congress in 2018. Although service in Congress remains the greatest privilege of my life, I never intended to make it a lifetime commitment, and I have already stayed far longer than I had originally planned," the Texas Republican said in a note to supporters. Hensarling, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said that he has an array of issues...

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) said some very disparaging things about President Trump, alleging that he was philosophically and morally unfit for office. Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus said, "It's hard to even remember senators of opposite parties speaking that kind of language about a president." But then she said ..... that "almost all" Republicans "privately agree" with Flake's remarks.

Hillary Clinton may not be running for any particular political seat right now, but she sure does know how to sling a political punch — and boy, is she taking advantage of this Paul Manafort indictment thing. She’s like that kid that hangs with the playground bully, coming in after the beating’s been administered with a sharp kick to the guy on the ground, a “take that” jab when the guy’s rendered defenseless. Impeachment, anyone? That’s what Clinton seems to now be suggesting in a thinly veiled appeal to Congress delivered during her book tour. And just when you thought...

President Donald Trump might not have made it to the White House if the number of robots in the labor market wasn't as high, according to researchers. A study by three Oxford University academics found that workers exposed to automation were more likely to vote for Trump than for than his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. "Automation has always been an engine of prosperity," Professor Carl Frey said in a statement Monday. "But it can take a long time for the benefits to show, and workers who are not able to find better paid jobs are more likely to be hostile...

Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) is planning another run for the presidency in 2020, according to a report from New York magazine. Since losing the nomination in last year’s Republican primaries, Kasich has kept on members of his campaign team who are helping him decide whether to run as a Republican or as an Independent, as he urges the Republican Party to move sharply to the left. “I think we need to be pro-environment,” he told the magazine. “I think we need to completely redo education. … Look, I loved Ronald Reagan. I met Ronald Reagan. But Reagan was then. Now we...

Hillary Clinton skewered Fox News’ focus on her, almost a year after the presidential election, in a speech to the Human Rights Campaign at its national dinner on Saturday. The news network has focused on her campaign’s role in financing the opposition research that led to the infamous Russian dossier, as well as a host of other storylines, even as other organizations report on word that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has filed the first charges in his investigation into the 2016 election. After quipping that she would have preferred to be living closer to this year’s HRC dinner, Clinton said,...

Inside a cramped third-floor office of Hillary Clinton’s once-bustling presidential campaign headquarters in the Ballston neighborhood of Arlington, Va., Kris Balderston and Adrienne Elrod put the finishing touches on a political hit list. It was late June 2008, and Hillary had dropped her bid for the presidency earlier that month. The war room, where her brain trust had devolved into profanity-laced shouting matches, was empty. The data crunchers were gone. The political director had drifted out. A handful of Hillary’s aides had already hooked up with Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign in Chicago. Balderston’s salt-and-pepper beard gave him the look of...

Several prominent Republicans, including Sen. Jeff Flake, attacked President Donald Trump this week, voicing their strongest criticism yet. • While some Democrats praised Flake's denouncement of Trump, the Democratic National Committee issued a statement critical of the senator. • The mixed messaging has some wondering how Democrats will appeal to anti-Trump Republican voters in 2018. Democratic leadership sent conflicting messages following Republican Sen. Jeff Flake's dramatic Tuesday announcement that he will not run for reelection in 2018. After the Arizona conservative delivered perhaps the most thorough public rebuke of President Donald Trump and his administration by an elected Republican, several...

Democratic Rep. John Lewis on Thursday called Hillary Clinton “Madam President” while wishing her a happy birthday on Twitter. The Georgia congressman, who was also a prominent leader during the civil rights movement, has previously said Trump is not a “legitimate president.” Trump has repeatedly accused the Democrats of attempting to discredit the legitimacy of his election victory and his presidency.(TWEET-AT-LINK)

"I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey's letter, on October 28th, and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off. And the evidence for that intervening event is, I think, compelling, persuasive, and so we overcame a lot in the campaign, we overcame an enormous barrage of negativity, of false equivalency and so much else, but as Nate Silver, who doesn't work for me, he's an independent analyst, but one considered to be very reliable, has concluded: If the election had been...

Rep. Martha McSally appears poised to challenge Kelli Ward in what would be a vicious primary fight for Jeff Flake’s Senate seat, but President Donald Trump remains a major wild card. Rep. Martha McSally is taking steps toward launching a challenge to Kelli Ward for Sen. Jeff Flake's seat next year, a move that would set up another scorched-earth primary battle between establishment Republicans and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. The second-term congresswoman indicated her interest in the seat during a closed-door meeting Thursday with Arizona's five-member GOP House delegation, and also met Thursday with Sen. John McCain...

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said Thursday his presidential campaign wasn't involved in research behind the infamous dirty dossier – a day after President Donald Trump said the campaign's identity will 'probably' be revealed. Rubio got asked about the dossier amid a new round of intrigue over who paid for the research, after the Washington Post reported that Democratic lawyer Marc Elias hired a political intelligence firm, Fusion GPS, who in turn hired ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who compiled it. It has long been reported that a Republican anti-Trump donor initially paid for the research that begat the dossier. But...

Has the ground shifted in the biggest election of this off-year with less than two weeks to go? Until this month, Republican candidate Ed Gillespie consistently trailed in polls for the Virginia gubernatorial election to Democrat Ralph Northam. Gillespie scored a one-point edge in a mid-month Monmouth poll, but now shows a commanding eight-point lead in a Hampton University survey:

COLLINGSWOOD, N.J. — The Gold Star father who has criticized President Donald Trump campaigned in New Jersey for the Democratic candidate for governor. Khizr Khan on Thursday rallied in support of Phil Murphy at the Collingswood Community Center and at an event in Princeton. Khan says New Jersey voters will be setting "the nation's moral compass" on election day....

Duane Miller realized at the “very last minute” last November that he was going to vote for a candidate he didn’t much like, Donald Trump. He did not even really vote for Trump, to hear him describe it. Instead, he voted against Washington fecklessness and corruption, which he saw as embodied by Hillary Clinton, in his eyes the ultimate establishment candidate, who was doubtlessly going to win anyway, he thought. “I thought there was no way that Trump could beat Hillary, right up till the end,” said Miller. “Right up to the night before.” That was almost a year ago,...

Congressional Democrats celebrated Rep. Frederica Wilson on Wednesday by wearing stickers adorned with a red cowboy hat and posing for a group picture on the steps of the Capitol. But one notable person was missing: Wilson herself. A source close to Wilson confirmed that the Florida Democrat was not in Washington this week due to ongoing threats against her after she criticized President Donald Trump's handling of a conversation with the family of Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed during an Oct. 4 ambush in Niger. Congressional vote tallies show that Wilson last voted Oct. 12, before the House...

Hillary Clinton is the best thing that could have ever happened to the Republican Party. No one has been more critical of President Donald J. Trump over the past year than I, but when I criticize Trump, I don’t come off like a sore loser who lost the most winnable election since Lyndon B. Johnson versus Barry Goldwater in the 1964 U.S. presidential election. If anything could turn me into a Republican, it would be the Democratic Party. From the moment Clinton wandered back out of the woods of upstate New York in late January, it became clear that she...

Nearly a year after the election of a president who promised Americans would win so much they would grow "tired of winning," a funny thing has happened in American politics — both sides think they're losing. That lose-lose mood, which is on display daily on Capitol Hill, is strongly reinforced by a study of public opinion released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. More than 6 in 10 Americans say they believe their side is losing more than it's winning on the issues that matter most; only about 1 in 4 think their side is mostly winning. That attitude...