Conservatives shaken by the rise of Donald Trump appealed to Republicans on Friday not to support his presidential candidacy, uniting in a full-blown attack from the pages of an influential conservative magazine. “I think you’re going to be very, very happy with a President Donald Trump”.
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“Guys like Ted Cruz will never make a deal because he’s a strident guy”, Trump said.
“It wasn’t the best week for Cruz, but I think he was able to turn the Branstad anti-endorsement at least partially to his advantage by presenting it as evidence that Ted Cruz is the candidate the establishment fears”, said Mark P. Jones, political science professor at Rice University.
“It’s like being shot or poisoned”, the South Carolina Republican said.
“This transformation (to conservative) that he claims he’s done needs to be tested”, Bush said.
The back-and-forth between Trump and Cruz came on a day when a new CNN/ORC poll showed Trump with a commanding lead in Iowa after weeks in which the two men have been within the margin of error in many polls.
“He had his moment and he blew it”, Trump said after a reading a series of polls showing him surging in states around the country. “Stick together! We can do it!!!”
“This guy, he’s a maniac”, Trump said at his rally in Las Vegas. Orrin Hatch, the most senior Republican in the Senate, told CNN.
“The one thing I know for sure is that he absolutely is 100 percent pro-American and he loves this country and wants to restore it to greatness”, Kremer said of Trump.
Cruz wasn’t Trump’s only target, as he called former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush a “lost soul” and mocking the lavish spending by the political committee supporting him given how little momentum they have produced for his campaign.
The National Review editorial emerged as some establishment Republican figures debate whether Trump is a preferable standard-bearer for the November 8 election instead of the other leader in the Republican race, Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
The criticism of Cruz and the kind words about Trump from the GOP establishment reinforced Cruz’s anti-establishment message.
Cruz adviser Jason Miller said in a statement: “Just as we stood up to Donald Trump’s misleading attacks in the last debate, we’ll stand up to his attack ads now. It is caving on our principles and giving in to the bipartisan corruption in Washington that got us into this mess, that got us with $18 trillion in national debt”. And Friday the Texan released a TV ad in New Hampshire criticizing Trump’s willingness to use eminent domain to build projects. Believe me, don’t worry. “He can advance that position, but he doesn’t get to pretend that it’s not amnesty if he’s legalizing and making citizens 12 million people here illegally”, said Cruz in an exclusive interview with ABC’s GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump appears at a campaign rally on Thursday, Jan. 21, 201 …
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Cruz had to cancel New Hampshire campaign events for the first-in-the-nation primary to return to Washington on Wednesday in order to vote on a bill limiting Syrian and Iraqi refugees – which failed to get the threshold 60 votes.
