Free Republic

The Iowa Republican Party is holding onto plans to have its traditional straw poll at the caucus in February to decide the Republican nominee in the bid for the White House. Still, local party leaders maintain that the party firmly supports President Trump. Muscatine County Republican chair Fred Grunder said the party is behind Trump, but there is likely to be a small number of protest votes at the caucus in 2020. “There are some people that I think they’re just trying to make a statement more than anything else,” he said. “If there’s 500 people that are at our...

Who will you vote for in the cans this third district congressional race. The incumbent Republican Kevin Yoder, are the very liberal Democrat Sharice Davids. Davids has never had any political elected office. Her only claim to fame is that she worked for one year as a White House fellow in the Obama administration. She is a socialist, kickboxer, and lesbian. She does not show up in the district at events where the incumbent is going to be. She has refuse to debate the incumbent.

President in Topeka Saturday to rally Republicans in what protest organizer calls ‘highly charged’ environment President Donald Trump will appear in Topeka, Kansas, Saturday night to rally support for candidates in two competitive House races and gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach. But organizers of a large counter demonstration are concerned about public safety. Police will corral demonstrators onto sidewalks sandwiched between traffic on a four-lane road and metal fencing more typically used to enclose livestock, the Topeka-Capital Journal reported. Demonstrators will split between the north side of the venue in a space designated for Trump supporters and the south side in...

Controversy is already brewing as the President plans his visit to Topeka. A local political group is planning a protest for the day of his rally. Kris Kobach said he is thrilled that the president is coming to town to support his campaign. "There is a lot at stake in the Kansas gubernatorial election, and he'll remind people that November 6th is the day. It's interesting in off presidential years the size of the electorate really shrinks, but I think a presidential visit reminds people that this is a big deal, he came here for a reason, and I have...

Former Sen. Bob Dole on Saturday praised President Donald Trump's European trip, calling his speech in Poland "one for the ages" and saying that the nation "should be proud of the strong American leadership being restored by President Trump." "I want to congratulate President Trump and all Americans on the president's successful trip to Europe this week," Dole, 93, the five-term Kansas senator and former Republican presidential and vice presidential nominee, said in a statement released by the White House via Twitter.....

Republican Ron Estes defeated his Democratic rival in a high-profile special congressional election in Kansas Tuesday that had been seen as a referendum on President Donald Trump. But the narrower-than-expected outcome may worry Republicans across the country as they try to decipher how much Trump's low approval ratings might hurt his party's candidates. Trump and former Rep. Mike Pompeo, who vacated the seat to become CIA director, had both won the district by nearly 30 percentage points in November. But Estes appears to have dramatically underperformed that margin, with early returns showing him leading Democrat James Thompson by just about...

The founder of Westboro Baptist Church, Fred Phelps, notorious for leading hateful protests against gay rights, is actually a Democrat with long history of endorsing Democratic candidates. On Tuesday, Politico provided some background on Phelps' political history, most of which saw him endorsing Democrat candidates and running for office a number of times as a Democrat. In the 1990's, Phelps ran in three Kansas Democratic primaries for Governor in 1990, 1994, and 1998, receiving only 15% of the vote. He also ran for Senator in 1992, receiving 31% of the vote, and for mayor of Topeka in 1993 and 1997....

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas' top election official said Thursday that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was justified in refusing to promise now that he'll accept the election results, even as the state party chief and a GOP senator on the ballot urged candidates to do so. Secretary of State Kris Kobach called criticism of Trump over his refusal during Wednesday night's presidential debate to commit to accepting the results "rather amusing." He said no candidate should concede if the race is close and there are questions about the count, citing the 2000 contest in Florida, decided by fewer than...

Bob Dole encouraged fellow Republicans Saturday to back Donald Trump and suggested the presumptive GOP nominee select Newt Gingrich as his running mate. In an interview with CNN's Ana Cabrera, Dole -- the 1996 Republican nominee who said he spoke with Trump last week -- also suggested Trump apologize to Arizona Sen. John McCain and New Mexico Gov. Susanna Martinez for disparaging comments he's made about them in the past. "I have been a Republican all my life," said Dole, who endorsed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at one point during the 2016 primary fight but has since backed Trump....

TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW)-- Governor Sam Brownback has been asked to request the resignation of the leader of the Kansas Hispanic and Latino American Affairs Commission. WIBW Radio reports the commission's director, Adrienne Foster, is being asked to resign because of comments she made to the Kansas City Star, apparently supporting Donald Trump's candidacy for President. Three Democrat lawmakers, Louis Ruiz of Kansas City, John Alcala of Topeka and Ponka-We Victors of Wichita, sent a letter to the Governor's Office expressing displeasure over Foster's support of Trump. The letter states that Foster has diminished her position within the organization. They also...

Donald Trump holds a 6-point lead over his Republican rivals on the eve of the Kansas caucuses, according to a new poll released Friday. Trump is supported by 35 percent of likely GOP caucusgoers, followed by Ted Cruz, at 29 percent, Marco Rubio, at 17 percent, and John Kasich at 13 percent in the Trafalgar Group poll. Public polling in the state has been infrequent. The Trafalgar poll is only the second survey included in the RealClearPolitics index of Kansas polls. Cruz has 43 percent support among self-identified conservative Republicans, followed by Trump, at 30 percent, and Rubio, at 16...

On MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports" Tuesday, the veteran anchor sat down with former Senate majority leader and 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole to talk, ostensibly, about the current state of his party and the rise of Donald Trump. But the Kansas Republican had something else on his mind. And that something else was how much he dislikes Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. In a question about what Dole makes of Trump, the former Senate leader quickly turned matters to Cruz. "He's not traditional Republican conservative," Dole said of the Texan. "Achievements are shutting down the government twice, and calling the...

Jerry Moran of Kansas was one of only 11 Republican senators who teamed up this month with tea party favorite Ted Cruz on three votes intended to stall or defeat the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill — a failed but headline-grabbing maneuver that put him at odds with GOP leadership. Moran’s move raised some eyebrows on Capitol Hill, especially given that he’d spent the past two years as part of that same leadership team and had voted in January in favor of the last trillion-dollar spending bill. So why did Moran buck the party line this time and align himself...

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) on Sunday warned that President Obama's executive actions and general "lawlessness" on immigration could lead to "ethnic cleansing." Kobach, a vocal advocate of the anti-immigrant movement, claimed during his radio talk show that there was a strategy to replace American voters with Hispanic ones who favored socialism. "The long term strategy of, first of all, replacing American voters with illegal aliens, recently legalized, who then become U.S. citizens," Kobach said. "There is still a decided bias in favor of bigger government not smaller government. So maybe this strategy of replacing American voters with...

1:30AM -- I think it was contemplating the fact that both Sam Brownback and Paul LePage both may have survived as governors that was the last straw for me tonight. Brownback has wrecked his state. Even Kansas Republicans believe that. LePage is a local embarrassment who became a national embarrassment in the final days before the election. Even Maine Republicans believe that. But Brownback will go back to wrecking his state, and LePage will go back to embarrassing his because of an attitude that Republicans, and the conservative movement that has powered the party, have cultivated carefully over the last...

Beloved Kansas State University football coach Bill Snyder on Thursday endorsed Sen. Pat Roberts for re-election and is appearing in a new television ad for the three-term Republican incumbent, potentially giving the GOP a boost in a race with national implications. Roberts’ campaign launched the statewide spot just five days before the election, which has Roberts locked in a tough contest with independent candidate Greg Orman, a 45-year-old Olathe businessman and co-founder of a private equity firm. Snyder is highly respected throughout the state and college football and has largely remained aloof from politics....

The polls this cycle have been cruel to Democrats. A number of surveys have given the president’s party undue hope that they could pull off the impossible on Election Day and retain control of the U.S. Senate. But, like Lucy van Pelt ripping the set football away from a rushing Charlie Brown at the very last minute, Democrats have been robbed of that intoxicating hope just as the buzz was getting good. After abandoning the party’s nominee as determined by the voters, Democrats were thrilled by the prospect that ruby red Kansas might elect a Democrat masquerading as an independent...

A national tea party group will hold a news conference in Wichita on Monday with U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, but leaders stopped short of saying whether the group plans to endorse the Republican incumbent. “It will be an announcement,” said Taylor Budowich, executive director of the Tea Party Express, a California-based group that describes itself as the nation’s largest tea party political action committee. The news conference, set for 11 a.m. at the Sedgwick County Republican party headquarters in west Wichita, will be attended by Roberts and local tea party leaders and activists, Budowich said. Earlier this year the group...

A few weeks after the national Republican Party moved in to revamp the campaign and begin an ad blitz aimed at saving incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts' job, a new poll shows him facing more of an uphill battle than ever against independent businessman Greg Orman.

Sarah Palin appears in Kansas Thursday to stump for Sen. Pat Roberts, the most endangered Republican senator. She could be helpful, but there's irony in her pitch.Sarah Palin has come to the rescue. The Republicans’ 2008 vice presidential nominee – and big-time political lightning rod – took the stage Thursday in Kansas on behalf of the state’s endangered Republican senator, Pat Roberts. Three-term Senator Roberts is widely seen as the most vulnerable Republican senator in the November midterms. A loss would seriously harm the Republicans’ chances of retaking the Senate. Enter Ms. Palin. The former Alaska governor’s public favorability has...