Trump served notice on Cruz via Twitter on Friday, responding to a New York Times storyabout a private donor meeting in which the Texas senator questioned whether the billionaire businessman has the judgment to be president.
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“I’ve heard for a month that he seems to have a pretty-good plan to get faithful people to come to the caucuses”, he said. “That is what we need is a strong leader”.
It’s a big get for Cruz, whose poll numbers have been rising in Iowa and who has been angling for the state’s evangelical vote. Or, as Trump calls them, “bosses”. And Trump, in turn, has spared Cruz from the missiles he’s aimed at almost every other rival.
“All the candidates sort of recognize that if you knock down Trump it may help a candidate other than themselves”. “As you’ve seen in the polls, he’s beginning to rise”.
By Friday morning, Trump himself was in on the act, first tweeting out, “Looks like @tedcruz is getting ready to attack”. “I think the whole politically correct stuff – he’s thrown it out the window, and he’s been real, and that’s what I like”. He has refrained from criticizing Trump for fear of alienating the front-runner’s supporters.
THE WEEKLY STANDARD has asked the Cruz campaign to explain but has not yet received a response.
“Ultimately, Trump will falter”, Goidel said. Expect Trump to find unsubtle ways to bring this up. “And I think that is a question that is a challenging question for both of them”, Cruz added about Trump and Carson.
“Both of them I like and respect”, said Mr. Cruz, about Trump and Carson.
The USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Tuesday – but conducted entirely before the Muslim ban proposal – had Trump ahead with 27 percent, then Cruz 17 percent, Rubio 16 percent, and Carson 10 percent. Trump, who went through a highly publicized divorce and owns several casinos, is not what many devout Christians view as a role model.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, left, and Donald Trump. In a question-and-answer session later, Cruz declined comment on aNew York Times story saying he questions whether Trump has the “judgment” to be president.
“There is this huge anti-Washington thing going on in the Republican Party”, O’Sullivan said.
The problem for Cruz, said Kondik, is that gaming out a race with more than a dozen candidates is ridiculously complicated.
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A consistent 40-plus percent of voters favor Trump in national polls in which he is matched against Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, who is usually shown winning – though not by a very large margin. It’s interesting that Trump advisor Dan Scavino, in accusing Cruz of having finally showed his “true colors”, didn’t clip the audio of Cruz talking about Trump’s judgment but rather the bit where he admits to bear-hugging Trump as a matter of strategy.
