Free Republic

John Heilemann, co-host of Bloomberg TV’s With All Due Respect, surely leans left, but is generally a savvy political analyst in my book. But Heilemann went haywire with his prediction today. He suggested that violence in the streets of Cleveland would hurt Donald Trump’s chances of being elected president. Really? If there are, as Heilemann said,”images of chaos and disorder” in the streets, wouldn’t Americans tend to turn to Trump, who has cast himself as “the law and order candidate?” And violent anti-Trump protesters, whether or not they expressly say so, would be in essence urging people to support Hillary,...

CLEVELAND — Donald Trump is putting his stamp on the official policy platform of the Republican Party. Republican Platform Committee members on Tuesday voted to include language calling for the construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. And in a nod their presumptive presidential nominee’s support for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration, they also endorsed language that would impose “special scrutiny” of foreign nationals seeking to enter the U.S. from “regions associated with Islamic terrorism.” Both provisions are departures from the GOP platform of 2012, when Republicans nominated Mitt Romney for president. That party platform then called for...

The Republican platform committee included language calling for a border wall along the U.S. and Mexican border in the draft party platform, getting behind one of presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump's keystone proposals. The group wrapped up drafting the plan Tuesday in Cleveland in advance of the convention there next week, when the platform will officially be voted on by the full convention's 2,472 delegates. The proposae platform will express support for a “border wall” that must cover “the entirety of the Southern Border and must be sufficient to stop both vehicular and pedestrian traffic.” The measure was proposed by...

Other GOP elected officials may be avoiding the Republican National Convention later this month, but Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst sees an opening night speech as an opportunity “to give Iowans a voice on the national stage.” “Right now, Iowans are pretty darned frustrated — just like when I ran for election,” said Ernst, whose 2014 campaign caught fire with a “Make ’em Squeal” promise to cut federal spending. National security is to be her focus when she addresses the Cleveland convention on Monday, July 18. “There’s a real pushback against the failed policies we have right now,” Ernst said Tuesday....

Virginian Carroll Correll Jr promised to support the candidate who the voters of Virginia have chosen and when it turned out to be Donald Trump, he wanted to get out of it. Please remember, he asked for and was granted the privilege of representing the voters at the GOP convention, understanding that obligation and that, only in the event no candidate were to achieve the necessary majority and the convention became contested could he exercise his free will. He even said he would risk being arrested than vote for Trump. But what he did will speak volumes and not in...

Over the weekend, The Daily Wire had the opportunity to speak with Kendal Unruh, a member of the Colorado Republican delegation to the Republican National Convention. Unruh is also a member of the Rules Committee at the RNC, and a leading advocate for a vote that would unbind the delegates from the candidates to which their state primaries are pledged. Unruh explained that "28 committee members are required to pass a minority report, which then goes to the convention floor for all delegates to vote on. It then requires a simple majority to pass." She added that she does "have...

<p>I've come full circle on choices for VP. Sarah Palin to Condi Rice to Newt, Rand Paul, Paul LePage and Chris Christie.</p> <p>In the past few days, General Flynn has been thrown out there.</p> <p>It looks like Pence has been the choice for some time now. And I take my hat off to many here who predicted this weeks ago.</p>

If these numbers had come from one of the “Dump Trump” people, I’d laugh them off as hype for a movement that’s going nowhere. According to the Journal, though, they come from Randy Evans, an RNC member who’s been whipping votes for Trump. This is Team Trump’s own rosiest spin on how many delegates on the floor are personally loyal to him — fewer than 900, well short of the 1,237 he needs for the nomination. None of that matters if the rules about pledged delegates remain in effect, as more than 1,500 are bound to him due to the...

Months after Donald Trump appeared to seal the Republican nomination for president, anti-Trump forces still have one last chance to force a vote on the party’s convention floor that would throw open the GOP contest again. It’s a long shot, but by some counts they are remarkably close to getting past the first hurdle next week in Cleveland. Mr. Trump’s intraparty foes, led by a group of rogue delegates, are waging an intense behind-the-scenes effort to push the Republican National Convention’s Rules Committee for a vote on freeing delegates to back whom they wish, rather than being bound to Mr....

A Trump source, who described the meeting as a “mending of fences,” said the former rivals agreed to a rhetorical cease-fire and promised to work together on issues they agree. One such area is the courts: Trump asked Cruz to assist in cultivating a longer list of conservative judicial appointees, and once more, the Texas senator obliged him. Today Donald Trump met with Cruz privately, and it seemed their buried the hatchet, or so it seems. Cruz accepted a speaking role at the GOP convention in a couple of weeks. I guess my thoughts run to WHEN will he be speaking?...

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch is coordinating with Democratic activists to so disrupt the upcoming Republican and Democratic National Conventions that martial law will be declared. That’s the stunning discovery revealed in a series of direct messages between three activists. On Friday, June 10, 2016, someone hacked into the Twitter account of #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) leader and former Baltimore mayoral candidate DeRay McKesson. McKesson later confirmed the hack to The Baltimore Sun. On June 11, 2016, a Twitterer who calls himself The Saint (@TheSaintNegro) tweeted a direct-message conversation on June 10 between KcKesson and another BLM leader Johnetta Elzie (Netta), in...

Sen. Ted Cruz may be on the list of speakers at the Republican National Convention that Donald Trump said he plans to release on Thursday. Three sources, including one close to the Trump campaign, tell NBC News that Cruz is in negotiations for a speaking spot at the convention. It would be a notable shift for Trump, who previously said his former opponents who haven't yet endorsed him wouldn't be invited to speak. In response to those comments from Trump, a Cruz spokeswoman said at the time that the Texas senator wasn't expecting to receive any time on the schedule....

The fight over rules that could upend the Republican National Convention officially began in earnest Thursday, as delegates began circulating the first proposed rule for this year's convention in Cleveland. A draft rule, obtained by MSNBC, would effectively lock-in Donald Trump as the GOP nominee and kill the "Stop Trump" movement once and for all.

The presumptive nominee’s foes appear to be outnumbered on the panel they’d hoped would pave the way to a new nominee. [ Caption under photo: "The Trump campaign has enjoyed the full backing of the RNC since Ted Cruz left the race. It’s had access for weeks to lists of convention delegates and has begun building a team of more than 150 staff members and volunteers intended to work the convention floor, as well as the rules committee." ] Republicans looking to dump Donald Trump at next month’s convention have passion, energy and a fierce sense that their party will...

Federal Judge Throws Out Cleveland’s GOP Convention Security Plan Byron Tau June 23, 2016 1:37 p.m. ET CLEVELAND—A federal judge on Thursday struck down the city of Cleveland’s rules limiting protests during next month’s Republican National Convention, finding the city’s strict security regulations violated the U.S. Constitution. U.S. District Court Judge James Gwin ruled the city’s establishment of a large zone around the July convention site within which protesters’ ability to demonstrate would be strictly limited contravened the Constitution’s guarantees of the freedom of speech and assembly. “Under the First Amendment, I do find that the city hasn't sufficiently, narrowly...

The specter of Donald Trump’s presidential nomination being ripped from under him in a nastily contested Republican National Convention next month is alive — again. Anti-Trump forces appeared to have been defeated after he ousted his remaining opponents from the race in early May and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus all signaled that Mr. Trump had sewn things up. But weeks of bad press stemming from Mr. Trump’s criticism of a federal judge and uneven handling in the aftermath of the Orlando, Florida, terrorist shooting have kick-started efforts...

Sources now indicate Paul Ryan wants Hillary Clinton to be America’s next president, and is doing everything in his power to secure that very outcome. If that allows Hillary to nominate up to three more Supreme Court Justices and thus tilt the balance of power of the Court so it represents far-left, progressive views, so be it. The forty-six-year-old Paul Ryan doesn’t care because he has already been promised, and wishes to make certain, that he is the GOP’s 2020 nominee for president. And it’s not just the 2020 election cycle that is currently on the table. Powerful Republican insiders...

If you think that Donald Trump already has the Republican nomination locked up, then you don’t understand what is going on behind the scenes.  It has long been my contention that the elite will move heaven and earth in order to keep Trump from ever setting foot in the Oval Office.  One way that they could try to do this is by attempting to deny him the nomination at the Republican convention next month.  Over the past couple of days, the Washington Post, CNN and a whole host of other mainstream news outlets have been reporting on a new “last-ditch...

As Joseph Heller famously wrote in Catch-22, “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” On today’s Morning Joe, Mark Halperin reported that GOP elites are indeed trying to “orchestrate” a “grassroots, organic” revolt against the presumptive nominee. An “orchestrated grassroots, organic” revolt? Oxymoron, anyone? Halperin went on to state “Trump is right: there are people plotting against him.” View the video here.

Supporters of a growing anti-Donald Trump movement announced plans Sunday to raise money for staff and a possible legal defense fund as they asked new recruits to help spread the word with less than a month until the Republican National Convention. Having started with just a few dozen delegates, organizers also said Sunday that they now count several hundred delegates and alternates as part of their campaign. "As we carefully consider not only the presidential nominee but the rules of the convention, the platform of the Republican Party and the vice presidential nominee, remember that this is true reality TV...