Free Republic

Via Red State, not a huge deal but worth flagging in case there’s another poll this weekend showing his numbers dipping a bit in New York on the eve of the primary. That would suggest a trend, and that would be a big deal given what’s at stake. To be clear: Trump’s going to romp in NY on Tuesday night, winning by 25 points or better, and will pick up something like 75 delegates even in a worst-case scenario. But since his path to 1,237 is so difficult, it matters a lot whether he ends up with 75 in New...

Shortly after he claimed to be a “unifier” during his Super Tuesday press conference, Donald Trump was at it again, lambasting “so-called conservatives” who don’t share his liberal position on Planned Parenthood, continuing to insist he applauds the group because it allegedly “does a lot of good of good things” for women’s health. Similar logic applies to his position on ObamaCare. He loves the coercive freedom- and job-killing individual mandate, which is the heart of ObamaCare, because he doesn’t want to see bodies in the street, a classic liberal rhetorical scare tactic. Planned Parenthood may do the occasional mammogram referral,...

As Ted Cruz-mania skyrockets exciting millions http://bit.ly/1SHWzWW, I still get emails from professed Christians ripping me to shreds for choosing Cruz over Trump. These anti-Cruz Christians dig deep, coming up with reasons so weak not to choose Cruz that they equal saying Ted Cruz took another kid’s candy when he was seven. Then, they fall back on rehashing Cruz’s eligibility. http://bit.ly/22nhGD6 Frankly, anti-Cruz Christians have me scratching my head. Clearly, these Christians are willing to overlook all of Mr Trump’s shortcomings, anti-Christian political positions http://bit.ly/23mAGaI and liberal leanings. http://bit.ly/1LUzCxd Meanwhile, they “passionately” leave no stone unturned, relentless in their attempts...

After Ted Cruz won every delegate up for grabs at the Colorado Republican convention, Donald Trump began complaining that the process at such conventions is unfair. His claim is that party insiders should not be making these choices, but rather that the power should be vested with the voters. As a consequence, Cruz is “stealing" delegates from Trump, and in so doing defying the will of the voters. Trump's accusations are specious and disingenuous. The process that has been playing out is perfectly legitimate. Trump's real problem is that he is being outhustled by the Cruz campaign. The Republican nomination...

Why are the Trumpists so angry at Cruz? In fact, doesn’t it seem like they are always angry at something or someone? It’s true. It’s either “lyin’ Ted,” the Washington insiders, the press, which is bit surprising considering how much free air time he is given, or whatever. It almost appears Svengali Trump has figured out that he must continually invent new villains to keep his followers amped up. This reminds me a bit of the leaders of the hard left, who must keep some form of “The Man” in perpetuity, holding down the oppressed democrat faithful, who are then...

When conservatives think about what they most hate about the left, several factors come to mind: their racist appeals, their whining social justice warrior nonsense, their distinct willingness to attack conservative women, their consistent stream of lies, their perversion of buzzwords.

It's one thing to be upset with the so-called Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Barack Obama and his destructive policies, but it's another for a GOP presidential candidate to exploit that anger illegitimately against a fellow anti-establishment candidate. Many of us have been critical of the GOP leadership for opposing conservatives in GOP primaries, not backing conservatives in office trying to do the right thing, always advising that Republicans dilute their message to attract independent voters and not sufficiently recognizing the threat President Obama represents to this nation and opposing his agenda. From the beginning, grass-roots conservatives,...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)97% can add Nebraska to his list of states where he’s out organized GOP frontrunner Donald Trump in collecting delegates. “Party officials say they saw virtually no organization by the mogul’s campaign last week when Republicans in all 93 Nebraska counties held local conventions. Those county conventions picked 800 delegates to May’s Nebraska state convention, where 33 delegates to the national convention in Cleveland will be selected,” Politico reports. “Because there was little resistance, many county conventions became Cruz pep rallies, according to interviews with party insiders and convention attendees.” “I didn’t see any Trump supporters,” said...

The conventional wisdom is that though Ted Cruz can excite the conservative-activist base of the Republican party, he can’t beat Hillary Clinton in a general election. But the recent head-to-head polling tells a different story. Unless your name is George W. Bush, it’s tough to win 270 electoral votes without winning the popular vote. And Cruz is hanging in there against the Democratic front-runner. The RealClearPolitics average puts Clinton at 46.4 percent and Cruz at 43.9 percent; the most recent McClatchy-Marist survey has it a tie. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the current Republican front-runner, hasn’t led Clinton in any national poll...

Candidates like Donald Trump are exciting. Trump is guaranteed to bring out thousands to his events and generate copious decibels of noise. He has built a campaign on telling it like it is and refusing to be politically correct. Ted Cruz, on the other hand, is boring. He brings hundreds to his events and utters Ronald Reagan’s name a few times to get the crowd going. His demeanor is confident but not quite as in-your-face as Trump is. But for those afraid of what Trump stands for, Cruz may be the far more dangerous candidate. For one, Cruz is much...

Donald Trump is waxing wroth these days about Ted Cruz's rounding up of Colorado delegates and has called the whole GOP delegate selection process "rigged and crooked." He says this to audiences who probably know less about the state-by-state rules than he does. It is the blind leading the blind, telling the assembled mob to grab their torches and pitchforks and storm the establishment castle.

I am a delegate to both the North Carolina State GOP convention to be held in May and my Congressional District Convention next week. My political insider connection is that I showed up at my precinct caucus/county convention last month, where I expressed the willingness to commit to the time and expense of attending these other conventions. I have made a similar commitment every few years for the past three decades. When I lived in Chicago I was also a delegate to several Illinois State GOP conventions for the same reasons: I voted in Republican primaries, attended my ward Republican...

On the surface, things are looking pretty good for Donald Trump’s efforts to capture the Republican nomination. He’s received more votes, and has more pledged delegates, than any other candidate. After Missouri certified its race on Tuesday, Trump’s delegate lead was 755 to 545 over Sen. Ted Cruz, with 1,237 needed to win the nomination. Trump is about to overwhelmingly capture his home state of New York, and is poised to do nearly as well in Pennsylvania. And Trump has the full backing of some crucial parts of conservative media, notably The Drudge Report. And yet there’s an increasing desperation...

Ted Cruz rejected Donald Trump's claims that the GOP race is rigged, telling Glenn Beck on Tuesday that Trump will continue "to scream that they're stealing the election" as long as they continue to successfully wrangle delegates before a possible contested convention this summer. "Apparently, when anyone votes against him, it's an act of theft," Cruz said on Beck's online radio show. He also told Beck the Trump campaign's "inability to even show up and win elections" makes it appear the front runner "can't run a lemonade stand." "Donald, it ain't stealing when the voters vote against you -- it...

Call it a high-tech lynching. In the wake of Donald Trump’s being shut out in Colorado — final delegate count: Ted Cruz, 34; Trump, 0 — his fans have formed virtual mobs, and on Sunday a particularly passionate Twitter user tweeted out the home address and phone number of Steve House, chairman of the Colorado GOP. House’s personal information has been retweeted more than 1,100 times. He says he’s received some 3,000 phone calls, most of them uncomplimentary: Meanwhile, the same Trump partisan also tweeted information for the state’s national committeewoman, Lily Nuñez, and committeeman, George Leing. Of course, the...

As Donald Trump attempts to distract from his campaign's myriad failures in Colorado by cynically stirring the "rigged corrupt game" pot, one of the public faces of this phony outrage is a gentleman who earned himself prime Drudge real estate when he dramatically burned his voter registration card on camera -- claiming that he was wrongfully turned away from the state party convention because he's a Trump fan. It's a disenfranchisement conspiracy cooked up by the elites, he argued, torching his Republican documentation in protest.  The Federalist's Mollie Hemingway was skeptical of the man's version of events and dug into the back story....

So, here’s what’s going on: Trump wants delegates from the state of Washington, so the campaign sent out an email soliciting possible delegates on Friday, April 8 to let everyone know that the deadline to submit their Declaration of Candidacy for Delegate form was Wednesday, April 6. Oh, no. It gets worse, though. There is no deadline anyway. Well, there sort of is, but it isn’t April 6 across the board; Washington has a number of conventions that all take place on different days and have different deadlines.. The gaffe would have reflected poorly on the campaign if they’d send...

If the Republican primary process were designed to produce an exactly proportional result based on voters' choice rather than a winner, the party would have been doomed to a contested convention almost from the start. Donald Trump, who has failed more than any other GOP presidential front-runner in recent history to unite the party behind him, would have no chance of securing the nomination, for he has won only 37 percent of primary votes so far. Keep this in mind as Trump gripes about how his opponent Ted Cruz secured all 37 delegates at the Colorado convention last weekend. The...

In “Through the Looking Glass,” the Queen tells Alice: “sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” She might have choked on her grits, however, at the thought of Ted Cruz becoming the Republican nominee. Until a few weeks ago he was low in the polls and loathed by the GOP establishment. Sen. Lindsey Graham joked about murdering him. But now, the impossible has happened: Cruz’s unlikely emergence as the favorite to beat Donald Trump. His transformative win in Wisconsin. And even his unthinkable endorsement by Graham. Can Ted believe this is happening? And does he —...

Republican Sen. Cory Gardner says Donald Trump has a “diminishing future” after his loss to Ted Cruz in Wisconsin’s primary last week. The Colorado senator was asked on the Kelley and Kafer show Friday about Trump’s former adviser, Roger Stone, threatening to publicize the hotel rooms of Republican convention delegates who don’t support Trump. “It sounds like to me like a consultant, a political consultant who has a candidate that is kind of wits end because they see a diminishing future, and I think you can see that turning point in Wisconsin as somebody else has caught momentum,” Gardner said....