Free Republic

President Donald Trump’s political team has concluded that shutting down the government hasn’t damaged his 2020 prospects — if anything, they’re convinced it’s bolstered his standing in key electoral battlegrounds. Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale commissioned a survey taken during the final days of the shutdown that was conducted by respected GOP pollsters Neil Newhouse and Robert Blizzard. The poll, surveying 10 GOP-leaning House districts that Democrats won in the 2018 midterms, found that a plurality of voters blamed Trump for the shutdown. But a plurality of voters also supported his push for a border wall. Trump is expected to...

‘They haven’t gotten his job approval over 50 percent, like Reagan,’ says one GOP pollster. Donald Trump insists the GOP’s midterm election shellacking had nothing to do with him. Things will be different, he says, when his name is actually on the ballot in 2020. While it’s true that most presidents who see their party suffer major losses in their first midterm election get reelected anyway, Trump isn’t most presidents — and there are lots of blaring-red warning lights in this month’s election results for his bid for a second term. Unlike most of his predecessors, he’s been persistently unpopular,...

Donald Trump will win the GOP presidential nomination and pick Mike Huckabee as his running mate. The FBI will file criminal charges related to Hillary Clinton's use of a home-brew email server as secretary of state. ... One Iowa Republican offered a quasi-apocalyptic prediction: "The Beltway chattering class gets back from the holidays and the first week of January they are in meltdown panic mode with one question: What in the world are we going to do with Trump? Until now he's been an illusion. He's been off their radar. Why? Name one presidential candidate who has spent less time...