The episode demonstrated a developing dynamic in the Republican race: Cruz doesn’t want a fight with Trump, but Trump is spoiling for one himself.
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“By the middle of March, this thing could be well over. A reporter asked me the question”, Trump said, an apparent reference to a Washington Post interview earlier this week.
“Now I recognize, particularly as our campaign has gained more and more support, as we’ve seen conservatives uniting behind our campaign, that a coalition of lobbyists and Democrats have gotten together and are spending an very bad lot of money trying to convince you that somehow Ted Cruz opposes corn farmers”, Cruz said in Sioux Center.
Cruz is working to build on his strong Iowa polling this week with a 28-stop, six day bus tour focused largely on small towns and farm communities. There’s just not a comparison. Iowa produces more ethanol than any other state, and the renewable fuel has always been a powerful economic and political issue.
Republican presidential candidates will be onstage together next week in SC for their sixth primary debate of the cycle. But pressed on how he would address specific hotspots of today, Cruz places limits on American action, including refusing to back ground troops to combat the Islamic State.
CNN’s Gloria Borgor summed the issue up succinctly after the interview: “Have you ever heard of the technical term, ‘pot-stirring?’ That’s what this is”.
Earnest’s tone was much lighter than the one taken by Obama in 2011 as questions surfaced around his own birth certificate, a controversy also heavily fueled by Trump.
“Despite the happenstance of a birth across the border, there is no question that Senator Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a “natural born Citizen” within the meaning of the Constitution”, read a 2015 Harvard Law Review Op-Ed from two Georgetown University Law Professors titled “On the Meaning of Natural Born Citizen”.
And then there’s Cruz’s mother, Eleanor Darragh Wilson. On Tuesday night in Sioux Center, the former manager of an ethanol plant cornered Cruz on the issue. “We’ve met with him a few times and he’s going to tell you a different story'”. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who is emerging as the “establishment” candidate in the still large field, comes in at third with 13%, with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush-once a front-runner- now at 4% and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina also now in single digits. As he has since the summer, Trump holds a formidable lead there.
Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta to an American mother and a Cuban father.
Colvin reported from Claremont, New Hampshire.
On Wednesday, Cruz was forced to react to Trump’s latest remarks questioning whether Cruz’s Canadian birth compromises his eligibility to become president.
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Not the first time Earnest has trolled Cruz about his foreign pedigree from the highest podium in the land.
