Free Republic

Speculation that Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin could run for the 2024 Republican president nomination gets little encouragement from voters. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that only 19% of Likely U.S. Voters believe Youngkin should enter next year’s presidential campaign, while 55% think he should not. Another 26% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

NEW YORK (AP) — Lester Holt, Kristen Welker and Hugh Hewitt will moderate the third Republican presidential debate, scheduled for Nov. 8 in Miami, NBC said Wednesday. The first one held outside the confines of Fox News, the two-hour debate will be seen at 8 p.m. Eastern on NBC and the NBC News Now streaming service. Holt is the anchor of “NBC Nightly News” and Welker is the moderator of “Meet the Press.” Hewitt hosts a morning talk show for the Salem Radio Network, a co-sponsor of the debate. Qualified participants will be announced later. Former President Donald Trump, leading...

GOP Rep. Tom Emmer has dropped out of speaker race – a move that comes just hours after he won his party’s nomination, the latest sign that Republicans are no closer to electing a new speaker. Earlier in the day, Emmer’s bid to be speaker appeared on the verge of collapse amid opposition from the right flank of his conference and fresh attacks waged by former President Donald Trump – just hours after the Minnesota Republican was picked as the party’s nominee. Several Republicans who oppose Emmer say they will not move off their opposition and are calling for a...

Don’t be fooled; the GOP establishment hates its own voter base, especially those who support President Trump—who make up the vast majority of the party. While the establishment wing of the Grand Old Party has taken a severe beating, a few stragglers still exist and are sabotaging any chance we have of triumphing over the left-wing Marxists. The GOP has long been content to play the role of loyal opposition to the ruling Democrats. The notion that we have two distinct political parties in this country is a farce. Need proof? Just take a gander at the Democrat pushing for...

In the backdrop of the controversies about who is to be voted Speaker of the House of Representatives is the awareness that this role is third in line for the presidency. The current president seems barely functional. The number two in line is absent without leave, never qualified in any sense, and is universally regarded as a joke if she is regarded at all, which she mostly is not. That leaves the Speaker of the House, very close to the center of power. For many people in Washington, this is a huge problem. The uniparty decided some years ago never...

Top officials with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign made the case to a gathering of top donors opposed to Donald Trump on Friday that rival GOP candidate Nikki Haley could not defeat the former president in a head-to-head matchup. If they wanted to stop Trump, they argued, the Florida governor remained their best bet. In another presentation made to the same group, Haley’s team argued the opposite. DeSantis’ campaign had flatlined, they insisted, pointing to data that showed that the former UN ambassador was ascendent and, therefore, the logical choice for the anti-Trump crowd. Haley’s team, according to a person familiar...

This might be Nikki Haley’s moment. Not her moment to become the Republican presidential front-runner. (Don’t be silly.) Not even her moment to nip at Donald Trump’s heels. But it could be her chance to consolidate the anti-Trump support in the GOP, and to make a solid play for the silver medal and maybe a good speaking slot at the RNC in Milwaukee next summer. The former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador has risen, slightly, in recent polls, and is now third in RealClearPolitics’ average of national polls, after Trump and Ron DeSantis. She is consistently coming in...

Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton will file criminal complaints Monday morning against the state House Board of Managers for allegedly releasing his personal information, such as his home address, the Daily Caller has exclusively learned. Paxton said the House impeachment managers had a desire to threaten him with the goal of harming him when they released his home address in an Oct. 2 document release. Paxton will be filing complaints with every manager’s county prosecutor. He also is calling for all of the districts to investigate “the criminal offenses that have been committed.” “My family and I receive multiple...

Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday announced his first round of 2024 state House endorsements – all of them for primary opponents of incumbents who voted to impeach him. "Texas conservatives have seen their State House hijacked by liberal RINO Republicans for far too long," Paxton wrote in a statement posted to X. "Texas should be a leading beacon for conservative policies. Instead, Texas has had to watch a liberal House Speaker and his loyalists kill hundreds of pieces of conservative legislation that would unleash untold economic growth and secure even more freedom." Paxton was referring to Texas...

A well-funded group of anti-Trump conservatives has sent its donors a remarkably candid memo that reveals how resilient former President Donald Trump has been against millions of dollars of negative ads the group deployed against him in two early-voting states. The political action committee, called Win It Back, has close ties to the influential fiscally conservative group Club for Growth. It has already spent more than $4 million trying to lower Trump’s support among Republican voters in Iowa and nearly $2 million more trying to damage him in South Carolina. But in the memo — dated Thursday and obtained by...

It is important, VERY IMPORTANT, to remember the Club for Growth (CfG) is the Ron DeSantis career financial vehicle. Ever since his first steps into Congress, CfG has been the primary financial sponsor for the now Florida Governor. There is no moment in the political career of DeSantis where CfG does not exist.While the DeSantis SuperPAC Never Back Down is the mechanics of the DeSantis election strategy, CfG is the well invested advising side, and David McIntosh has been the source of DeSantis’ career guidance for a decade. That’s how intrinsically connected Club for Growth is to Ron and Casey...

Senate leaders announced a potential breakthrough in the government shutdown stalemate Tuesday evening as the House of Representatives remains in paralysis. Nineteen Senate Republicans voted against the measure: Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Katie Britt (R-Ala.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), JD Vance (R-Ohio), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Ted Budd (R-NC) and Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.). ... The Senate’s CR was expected to fund the government at “present levels”...

212-216: six Republicans voted no on the rule. Major blow for McCarthy who had promised it would pass this time.

I knew there was something wrong with Mitt Romney, really wrong, when my mom – a daughter of Pennsylvania’s steel mill country, but a dedicated Republican, told me back in 2012, “I just don’t like him.” Of course, those steel mills are all gone now, moved to China by guys who either were, or looked exactly like, Mitt Romney. Now he’s finally calling it quits as a senator, apparently by popular demand. His departure is cause for celebration. Mitt Romney is a bad person who pretends to be a good person. He is the blow-dried embodiment of everything awful about...

It's make or break time, America. President Donald Trump leads Governor Ron DeSantis, his closest competitor, by up to 50 percentage points. Let's be clear about what DeSantis is up against. He's splitting the 'anyone but Trump vote' with seven other GOP candidates. But there is a way through – just listen to New Hampshire's Republican Governor Chris Sununu. 'If seven of those candidates have the discipline to get out, Trump loses,' Sununu said in a new interview this week. 'Make it a one-on-one race, Trump loses. There's no question about it.' So here we go: a plea to the...

Letter thanking Texans and putting Biden on notice

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who's been trailing Donald Trump in 2024 GOP primary polls, doubts that the former president can be re-elected if he's convicted of a felony. “I think the chance of getting elected president after being convicted of a felony is as close to zero as you can get,” DeSantis said in an interview with CBS News. Anchor Norah O'Donnell asked DeSantis if he agreed with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, another Republican presidential candidate, who said Americans won’t vote for a convicted criminal. She also asked DeSantis if he believes voters will elect someone who is...

The executive director of the George W. Bush Institute, who organized a letter from presidential libraries calling for national unity, previously leaked the now-debunked Steele dossier to reporters during height of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation. David Kramer, who worked in the State Department under President George W. Bush and was an associate of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), pushed for the foundations and centers of former presidents to sign a letter about unifying the country. However, in 2016 Kramer provided the Steele dossier to BuzzFeed, which published it without corroborating its allegations that then-President-elect Donald Trump was a puppet...

WRITE THIS DOWN and force yourself to remember it every day. “The Republican Party priority is to retain their business, to control the outcomes, and this has nothing to do with winning elections.” The RNC would rather lose elections and retain power, than win elections and lose operational control over the apparatus. *snip* The business of buying, selling and controlling policy, is the core operation of people within the US political system. As an outcome, the business has two wings – the RNC and the DNC. Two private corporations inside the political industry who are in place to retain the...

Why does the Never-Trump crowd, the earnest viewers of the Republican primary debate, believe that the tactics used against Donald Trump won’t be used against their preferred candidate? Why can’t they explain how Nikki Haley wins the primary, never mind the general election? Or how does Ron DeSantis overcome the structural fraud problems in every state with a Soros secretary of state? To answer the last question first: Because to acknowledge that the Democrat machine is utterly efficient and capable of manufacturing just enough votes to beat any Republican (including Donald Trump) is to acknowledge that Donald Trump and his...