Commentary: Trump Tightens Grasp over GOP

Trump Crowd

Former President Trump continued his romp through the Republican primary, easily winning all but one Super Tuesday contest and demonstrating a dominance so absolute that his stacked victories now seem nearly routine.

“We want to have unity,” Trump told a crowd gathered at Mar-a-Lago, “and we’re going to have unity, and it’s going to happen very quickly.” On the eve of perhaps the greatest political comeback in modern American history, his remarks were relatively subdued by his standards. He never mentioned his former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, almost as if the competition did not exist and a third nomination was guaranteed all along.

Read the full story

Commentary: 2024 GOP Nomination Is the Fight over America First vs. Global World Government

Trump Haley

Political commentators and talking heads of the established regime have been abuzz over a comment made by former Ambassador Nikki Haley following her drubbing in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary. Dana Bash of CNN asked Haley, “Isn’t it possible the party (GOP) has moved, and the party is about Donald Trump and not what you’re describing, which might be the party of yesterday?” Haley admitted that “It is very possible.”

Note the framing Bash set out. Either the Republican Party is the party of yesterday; or, it is nothing but a cult of personality around Donald Trump. Haley dutifully played the role of stooge and walked into it, agreeing “it is very possible” that is the situation.

Read the full story

Commentary: President Joe Biden Has Put America in a Mess

Joe Biden

The State of the Union speech is on March 7, and with it comes a chance for Republicans to start setting the 2024 presidential campaign agenda. What should the Republican who replies to Biden’s speech say?

Probably the central point to keep in mind is that Biden may not be the candidate by the time the election rolls around, which means criticism of the last four years should be aimed at the Democrat Party itself at least as much as at Biden.

Read the full story

Neil W. McCabe: ‘Trump is Flourishing in a Political Era That Should Have Been Dominated by Democrats’

Donald Trump

National political reporter Neil W. McCabe said the tone of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is “completely Trump,” noting how the “Trump-hating corporate conservative establishment” is not present this time around.

“It’s completely Trump,” McCabe explained on Friday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy. “In the past you would kind of have sort of the Trump-hating corporate conservative establishment, but they’re not here.”

Read the full story

GOP Members Criticize RNC’s Ronna McDaniel for Spending, Weak Grassroots Work for 2024

As the Republican National Committee had its annual meeting this past week in Las Vegas, several GOP members expressed concerns about the party’s leadership going into the 2024 election cycle, with its “worst-ever financial situation” and limited focus on both grassroots efforts and supporting the 2020 alternate electors.

After the failure of a “red wave” to materialize in the 2022 midterm elections and as the GOP looks to take back the White House, Republican Party members have criticized the lack of aid that both the 2020 alternate electors and grassroots have received as the RNC is experiencing financial trouble. Some are pointing to a lack of leadership from RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.

Read the full story

Almost 40 Percent of New Hampshire Voters are Unaffiliated, Can Vote in GOP Primary and Possibly Skew Results

With efforts to close New Hampshire’s presidential primary likely failing, the state’s primary could be determined by the state’s independent voters, who make up nearly 40 percent of the state’s electorate.

Republicans make up significantly fewer voters, 29.82 percent, and Democrats slightly more, at 30.28 percent. Since President Joe Biden has no significant challengers in the state’s Democratic primary, many Democrats were expected to register as independents — known as undeclared voters in the state — to sway the Republican primary.

Read the full story

Stephen K. Bannon and John Fredericks Call for Ronna Romney McDaniel to Resign as RNC Chair

Ronna McDaniel

WarRoom host Stephen K. Bannon made an appearance on The John Fredericks Show Tuesday morning, where he joined Fredericks in calling on former President Donald Trump to demand the immediate resignation of Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel.

Bannon criticized the current state of the RNC, citing a substantial list of failures, including financial issues, lack of focus, and questionable priorities such as organizing debates that foment anti-Trump sentiment.

Read the full story

Reagan Day Dinner Returns: Davidson County GOP Chair Lonnie Spivak Unveils New Plans, Initiative for 2024

Davidson County Republican Party Chairman Lonnie Spivak joined Friday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss the return of the Reagan Day dinner scheduled for January 25, 2024.

Spivak shares details about the event to be held at the prestigious Cordell, and the event will feature Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs as the keynote speaker and hints at potential surprise guests.

Spivak offered listeners a peek behind the scenes of party political operations to mention one of the initiatives underway to mobilize Republicans who only vote in presidential elections with the roundtable of in-studio guests including author Roger Simon and original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael.

Read the full story

Arizona GOP Legislative District Passes Resolution Urging State Legislature to Oversee the Presidential Election So It Can Add Election Integrity Measures

Legislative District (LD) 3 Republicans passed a resolution unanimously on November 30 urging the Arizona Legislature to change the procedures governing the presidential election to allow the body to administer the 2024 general election directly instead of state government. The Republicans said they believe this would allow the legislature to implement additional election integrity measures such as one-day voting and hand-counted ballots. The Maricopa County Republican Committee (MCRC) previously called for the Arizona Republican Party to administer the presidential preference election on August 26.

Read the full story

Commentary: Forget the Media Doomsaying — the GOP Will Be Ok

Congress Building

If you follow politics and didn’t know that voters in Charleston, South Carolina, elected the city’s first Republican mayor in almost a century and a half, you can be forgiven. A lot of people missed it because, while it was covered, the legacy media failed, unsurprisingly, to recognize it for the landmark it is.

The scant attention paid to the outcome of that race compared to, say, the GOP’s failure to take over the Virginia Legislature is a discordant note that throws off an otherwise harmonious national narrative that has the Republican Party hopelessly divided and unable to win elections now that Bidenomics is working.

Read the full story

Pence Vows to Block Federal Funds for Sex Changes on Children

Former Vice President Mike Pence says if elected president he would block federal funding to healthcare providers who perform and promote surgical or chemical gender reassignments on children.

Pence over the weekend laid out his Putting America’s Families and Values Plan that endorses passage of a 15-week federal limit on abortions, advancing universal school choice, and “ending the war on traditional family values.”

Read the full story

Commentary: Biden’s Hispanic Vulnerability

A growing cohort of Hispanics find themselves political orphans. Many of them have yet to fully align with the Republican Party, but they increasingly turn away from the economic mismanagement and leftist social extremism of the 2020’s Democrats.

As such, Biden finds a new and worsening problem headed into election year: hemorrhaging support among Hispanics, and especially among working-class Latino voters.

Read the full story

Commentary: Climate Activists Have Exploited Our Children

A report published in the Washington Times last week, entitled “Young conservatives take climate activism to GOP presidential debate,” undoubtedly is of grave concern to conservatives and the Republican Party. A group of young Republicans called the American Conservation Coalition is warning GOP presidential candidates that they “need to engage on energy and climate or they’re going to lose young voters.”

Read the full story

Poll Shows Voters in Battleground States Trust Republicans over Democrats on Education

A new EdTrends poll of voters in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Nevada, shows that Democrats have given up what was once a double-digit lead on “trust in education” and are now lagging behind Republicans by three percentage points.

The poll revealing the historic shift was released Friday by Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), an organization that lobbies for Democrat candidates and heads campaigns to achieve “educational equity for students of color and students from low-income backgrounds.”

Read the full story

Commentary: Trump’s Coyness on Debate Participation All Part of His Grand Strategy

Donald Trump

The first Republican primary debate of the 2024 presidential nominating cycle is set for one month from yesterday – on August 23, 2023. On that day, presumably, all major candidates for the GOP presidential nomination will assemble in Wisconsin to present their campaign pitches to the American public.

There isn’t an incumbent president in this year’s extravaganza, so it’s only natural that several hopefuls have expressed interest in a campaign. Deference is usually afforded a party president during his reelection run (as Democrats have announced there will be no debates on their side with senile Joe Biden currently in office), yet this year is different.

Read the full story

College Towns Across America See Massive Democratic Shift: Report

College towns across the United States have come to overwhelmingly support Democrats, which is damaging the Republican Party’s ability to win elections in key swing states, according to a new report.

The American Communities Project (ACP), which has sought to develop a demographic profile of every county in the United States, has cataloged the voting patterns of 171 “college towns,” where major colleges or universities are situated and account for much of their economic activity, according to a report released by the project this year. The towns have seen a dramatic increase in Democratic support since the 2000 presidential election, with over two-thirds now being expressly Democratic, per the report and analysis by Politico.

Read the full story

Democrats Lost 26 Points with Hispanic Voters in 2022 Midterm Elections, Says Pew Research Center

The Republican Party saw significant gains during the 2022 midterm elections in large part due to Hispanic voters, according to a new poll released by the Pew Research Center on Wednesday. 

Pew Research Center found that while most Hispanic voters still favor Democratic candidates overall, the Democratic advantage among Latino voters decreased by 26 points, from a 47-point margin in 2018 to 21 points in 2022. 

Read the full story

Trump, Biden Dominate Latest Granite State Poll, but Many Don’t Want to See a Re-Match

Former President Donald Trump has upped his support over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the Granite State and President Joe Biden leads his Democratic Party challengers by more than 50 percentage points, according to a new poll conducted by the Saint Anselm College Survey Center at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics.

But the latest poll also finds that a majority of New Hampshire voters believe a repeat of 2020 presidential candidates in 2024 would mark a “broken” U.S. political system.  

Read the full story

GOP Presidential Hopefuls Commit to Family Leadership Summit, Important Faith-Based Stop on the Road to the Iowa Caucuses

After a bit of a lull in Iowa’s parade of presidential candidates, the summer campaign season will soon start to heat up again in the kick-off caucus state. 

U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) on Tuesday announced he’ll speak at next month’s FAMILY Leadership Summit in Des Moines, billed as “the Midwest’s largest gathering of Christians seeking cultural transformation in the family, Church, government, and more.” 

Read the full story

Ramaswamy: Plea Deal Keeping Hunter Biden out of Prison Is a ‘Joke,’ the ‘Perfect Fig Leaf’

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is blasting a plea deal announced Tuesday that will keep President Joe Biden’s troubled son out of prison on two federal misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his taxes and a separate felony charge of possession of a firearm by a known drug user.

Multiple news outlets are reporting that Hunter Biden and his attorneys have reached an agreement in which U.S. Attorney David Weiss would recommend probation on the tax violations. The younger Biden also would avoid prison time on the gun possession charge, “subject to a pretrial diversion agreement,” his attorney said in a statement.

Read the full story

North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum Launches Bid for White House, Joining Crowded Field of GOP Contenders

At a Fargo events center packed with family, friends and neighbors, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum stressed his small-town roots, his success in building a multi-billion dollar software business on the Great Plains,  governing a growing state, and his vision for an innovative America in announcing his bid for the White House. 

The newly minted presidential candidate joins a crowded field of declared Republican presidential candidates, launching his campaign on the same day former Vice President Mike Pence kicked off his in Iowa. 

Read the full story

Exclusive: New Poll Finds Trump with Significant Lead Over DeSantis Among Republican Primary Voters

A new poll from Trump pollster McLaughlin & Associates finds the former president leading Florida Governor Ron DeSantis by nearly 40 percentage points as the chase for the GOP presidential nomination heats up. 

The poll shows Trump at 54 percent, and DeSantis with 16 percent support, as the Florida governor kicks off his campaign for the White House. 

Read the full story

New PAC Encourages Pennsylvania Republicans to Adapt to Mail-In Voting

Two and a half years after Democratic Governor Tom Wolf and a Republican-controlled legislature enacted no-excuse absentee voting, many right-leaning Pennsylvanians still resist adjusting to the new system. 

Arnaud Armstrong can sympathize. The Allentown native and 2018 University of Pittsburgh graduate has worked in various communication and grassroots roles for GOP campaigns and always found in-person voting ideal from a civic standpoint. But the lead organizer of Win Again PAC, a committee that formally launched last weekend at the conservative Pennsylvania Leadership Conference near Harrisburg, says it behooves his party compatriots to mount more spirited efforts to win absentee votes.  

Read the full story

Pro-Life Leaders Push Back on Trump’s ‘No Exceptions’ Blame for Midterm Losses

Former President Donald Trump accepted no blame for Republicans’ failure to achieve the anticipated “red wave” results in the midterm elections, but, instead, pointed a finger at pro-life candidates who insisted on “No Exceptions” to abortion as the reason for the party’s losses.

“It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations in the MidTerms,” Trump posted to Truth Social on Sunday. “I was 233-20! It was the ‘abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters.”

Read the full story

Commentary: Rebuilding the Right in the Age of the Moderate Majority

The failure of the Republican Party to achieve its much-ballyhooed red wave is a reflection of just how badly the GOP has failed its voters and the nation. While it is fair to lay some of the blame at the feet of former President Donald Trump, the rest of the party must carry an equal, if not greater, share of it. 

This failure comes down to one thing: misapprehending the permanently changed dynamics of the electorate. 

Read the full story

Commentary: Predictably, the Republicans Form Their Circular Firing Squad

With the disappointing midterms, Republicans have lost a major battle in the fight to restore American greatness. We are now rapidly approaching the final standoff between the flailing Republican Party and the reenergized Democratic Party. The Democrats survived what should have been a political bloodbath in 2022, and the Right seems to be in the most vulnerable position since the 1960s, when Republicans were essentially a permanent minority in Washington.

It could happen again. Whether the GOP returns to minority status in two years will depend on the party determines who will be its nominee in the next presidential election. While many on the Right assume it will be Donald J. Trump, there are other candidates in the offing.

Read the full story

GOP Struggled with Voters 18-29 in 2022 Election over Abortion, Gun Rights, Climate Change

The Republican Party struggled with young voters ages 18-29 in the 2022 midterm election, largely due to issues such as abortion, gun rights, and climate change, according to an analysis from Look Ahead Strategies. 

CNN found that House Democratic candidates “won voters under 30 by 28 points,” which was a two-point increase over the 2020 election data for that age group.

Read the full story

Faith Leaders Call upon Republicans to Vote Against Same-Sex Marriage Bill: ‘Corrosive’ to Religious Freedom

Faith leaders are calling upon Republicans to uphold their party’s platform that declares “the union of one man and one woman” to be the “cornerstone of the family.”

The leaders are reacting to the fact that 12 Senate Republicans joined with Democrats Wednesday to advance legislation, dubbed by Democrats the Respect for Marriage Act, that would codify the Supreme Court‘s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which made same-sex marriage legal across all 50 states.

Read the full story