Free Republic

The amendment to unbind delegates and allow them to vote "their conscience" has been soundly defeated in the RNC Rules Committee

This is already the most fascinating Republican presidential primary campaign since the fabled Ford-Reagan fight of 1976, But at the moment it looks like it won't turn out as well from the establishment's perspective. Back then, the establishment managed to put their candidate over the top against his right-wing challenger. That's not likely to happen this year. That's because the Ford-Reagan race was essentially a two-man race. But the Trump-Rubio-Cruz race has three men in it. One is likely to keep getting around a third of the vote while the other two split up most of the remainder. The hope...

Cruz For President Announces New Jersey Leadership Team, County Chairs Leading Efforts in all 21 NJ Counties 121 County and Town Chairs join Chairman Steve LoneganHOUSTON, Texas – Presidential candidate Ted Cruz today named 121 people to serve on his New Jersey State Leadership Team as county and town chairs. All 21 counties in New Jersey have Cruz County Chairs organizing for the campaign under the leadership of New Jersey State Chairman Steve Lonegan."I am incredibly proud of the strong team we have assembled in New Jersey and thankful for Steve Lonegan's leadership of these courageous conservatives," said Cruz. "They...

Former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan, a conservative activist who ran unsuccessfully for governor, House and Senate, will be New Jersey chairman of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign. In a news release, Cruz called Lonegan “a tireless advocate for taxpayers” and said he knows New Jersey politics. Lonegan, a former state director for Americans for Prosperity, said his duties include raising money and putting together a slate of delegates who would run in the 2016 primary pledged to Cruz. He praised Cruz’s unsuccessful effort to force a repeal of the health insurance law commonly called Obamacare through a partial shutdown...

Steve Lonegan is a wonderful family man and patriot. He would have been a superb member of the House. But the DC RINOs, led by John Boehner, were opposed to him. You see, he would have been an independent conservative and they cannot stand that in the Capitol Building. So, the RINOs put up a candidate against Lonegan who they can control, and will control, and who loaned his campaign millions to use in an endless series of attack ads. This is the new modus operandi of the RINOs in all the races across the country. During the course of...

On the same week that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin doubled down on waterboarding remarks she made, the campaign of CD3 GOP Primary candidate Steve Lonegan said it would welcome Palin in to campaign with the movement conservative candidate. “Darn right I’d do whatever it takes to foil [terrorists’] murderous jihadist plots – including waterboarding,” Palin, a Republican, wrote in a Facebook post Monday night, following up on controversial comments made last weekend at the annual National Rifle Association meeting in Indianapolis. “Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we’d baptize terrorists,” Palin told...

Why did the National Republican Congressional Committee Young Gun Program just endorse a RINO in New Jersey?TEA Party conservative Steve Lonegan is fighting RINO unknown Tom MacArthur for the soul of the GOP in New Jersey’s 3rd congressional district.Liberal Republican Mayor Tom MacArthur of Randolph has a lot of money but not a lot of support. And so, like any former insurance company CEO with ties to AIG, he’s trying to buy it by bribing the local GOP county clubs in New Jersey’s third congressional district. MacArthur gave over $25,000 to the Ocean GOP County to buy the powerful organization’s...

Updated 4:37 p.m. | New Jersey Republicans avoided a nightmare scenario Wednesday night in the highly competitive, open-seat race for the 3rd District. Ocean County Republicans endorsed former Randolph Mayor Tom MacArthur as their preferred nominee. The endorsement comes five days after the Burlington County GOP also backed MacArthur.

TRENTON — Steve Lonegan, the firebrand former Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, is running for a House seat.

Republican Steve Lonegan is blasting fellow party members for not giving him enough financial support in his failed Senate bid against Newark Mayor Cory Booker. He continued, "The National Republican Senatorial Committee, whose job it is to elect Republicans, actually sent out an e mail that asked people to send money to the campaign," adding, "But they kept every penny. And now I’m left holding the bag."

Opinion polls show New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is leading in his race for re-election by a 2-to-1 margin, but his fellow Republicans may not take control of the legislature. And, USA Today reports, the potential 2016 presidential candidate, may not want them to. Presenting himself as a leader who can work with Democrats in the legislature and as a Republican who can win Blue State voters could give him more political mileage if he runs for president, the newspaper reported Thursday. Christie is on track to be the first Republican to win more than 50 percent of votes cast...

The consensus (more or less) among political analysts was that the GOP was likely to lose in the shutdown showdown, but was unlikely to suffer serious electoral consequences. The first prediction appears to be the case (but see Peter Beinart's smart contrarian take). How about the second one? It is early, but what evidence we have seems consistent with the idea that the GOP didn’t take on much electoral water from this loss. This isn’t to say that there isn’t any evidence that the shutdown hurt Republicans, but the idea that their prospects were seriously jeopardized is thin. Start with...

(CNN) - Senator-elect Cory Booker will move forward with his support of same-sex marriage even before he is sworn in, with plans to grant the marriages of several same-sex couples 12:01 a.m. Monday after a court ruling goes into effect. The story was first reported by Buzzfeed. The New Jersey Democrat, who's the mayor of Newark, re-tweeted that article to his celebrity-sized Twitter crowd of 1.4 million followers. According to Buzzfeed, Booker will recognize the weddings of at least 10 same-sex couples at Newark City Hall. The weddings will come after a New Jersey judge ruled last month that the...

Booker, 44, will become the Senate's seventh youngest member, and its ninth-ever African American and only the fourth black senator ever popularly elected. Even before winning the race, he was widely seen as a potential vice presidential contender as soon as 2016, though his credentials took a hit when the race turned out far closer than many expected. With nearly all of the vote counted, Booker led Republican Steve Lonegan by about 10 percentage points - a convincing margin in most races, but much smaller than many had predicted for a rising star facing an underfunded opponent with views out...

WASHINGTON - Will Cory Booker be another Ted Cruz? The next Hillary Clinton? Or something entirely different? After winning a Senate seat Wednesday, will Booker, a rising political star, follow Clinton's example and try to blend in to the slow-moving Senate, sticking with the tradition of freshmen quietly earning their place? Or will he join the ranks of lawmakers who use the Senate as a platform to build their profiles and shape the national debate, seniority be damned? "He is somebody who does like to make a splash, but I would hope that he would be a little more cautious...

Democrats did everything they could to portray yesterday’s special election for a Senate seat in New Jersey as a referendum on Republicans and the Tea Party. They clearly fell short of their expectations as Democrat Cory Booker underperformed his showing in almost all the polls, and wound up winning by only 10.3 points. By contrast, President Obama won New Jersey by 18 points just last November. At the same time, Democratic senator Robert Menendez cruised to a 19-point victory over a veteran moderate Republican state senator. In a video released on Monday, President Obama had urged people to vote for...

Todd and I were proud to stand with Mark Levin and other bold, patriotic warriors in support of Steve Lonegan in the New Jersey Senate race! Mayor Lonegan fought the good fight, and he and his supporters have not “finished the race,” they’ve just begun! The press has now called the race for Barack Obama’s celebrity stand-in, Cory Booker, but rest assured that Steve fought gallantly for every vote that would have led to American solvency and exceptionalism. Steve is a lucky guy to have a strong New Jersey wife and two great daughters who supported him through this campaign....

Get the complete results from the Senate race: See link

Follow the real time Election Returns. My guess is Booker wins by about 10%. It is NJ, after all. If Lonegan pulls this off, will be a significant upset. http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/10/booker_vs_lonegan_county-by-county_voting_results_in_us_senate_election.html

Today’s U.S. Senate primary in New Jersey is – like so many elections these days – a representation of many of the most destructive trends that define modern politics. It is, for instance, a case of politics as a celebrity-driven coronation – one where one candidate’s media- and Twitter-driven celebrity (Cory Booker) is depicted as more important than other candidates’ far more impressive public policy experience. It is also a commentary on how such a celebrified politics tends to intensify when voters are paying the least attention. As the Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s Adam Green notes, this most certainly is...