“This is the first that he’s really kind of stepped out in the political realm since he was president…For him to come do this warms my heart”.
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The Rubio campaign’s view is that debates can’t help presidential candidates, but they can do them damage.
For months, the candidates have espoused theoretical, sometimes vague, policy proposals. “He’s the last Republican that was president, he is the most popular Republican alive”.
“Two branches of government hang in the balance, not just the presidency, but the Supreme Court”, Texas Sen. Although Bush left office with a lowly 34 percent approval rating, according to Gallup, a recent poll by Bloomberg pegs his approval rating among Republicans at 77 percent, The Washington Post noted yesterday in questioning whether Trump’s Saturday night performance might backfire on him. “If we get this wrong, if we nominate the wrong candidate, the Second Amendment, life, marriage, religious liberty, every one of those hangs in the balance”. This is a guy who thinks that Hillary Clinton was a great negotiator in Iran. Jeb Bush’s own book from 2013, “Immigration Wars”, admitted that America’s “leaky” immigration laws may have contributed to the attack.
Trump rained insults on all of his challengers, but it was the diatribe he directed at former president George W. Bush, whom he faulted for the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, that was the source of his undoing on Saturday.
With three other justices over the age of 75, the next president could have other vacancies during his or her tenure, even if Obama fills Scalia’s seat.
George W Bush’s legacy has come under fierce attack from Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
History suggests the language could turn even more coarse in the run-up to next Saturday’s Republican nominating contest in SC.
During a rally last week in New Hampshire, for example, Trump discussed Cruz’s reluctance to endorse waterboarding, a woman in the crowed shouted a vulgarity about Ted Cruz. That year, Sen. John McCain carried the state because the opponents running to his right – Romney, Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson – divided up the very conservative vote. “Sanders, this should serve as a wake-up call for what’s exactly at stake”, said Jim Manley, a former aide to top Democratic senators. The billionaire businessman declared – as he has done before – that the Bush administration lied about the threat of weapons of mass destruction in convincing Congress and the American people to go along with an invasion that toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. But that could open them up to questions from Republican primary voters about the ideological purity of their judicial choices.
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The escalating quarrelling may increase the likelihood of a long, expensive and potentially futile effort to unite Republicans around the eventual nominee. He contends Trump could not be trusted to do the same. Trump attacked Bush often and often for his huge campaign spending and having little results to show for it. He also accused him of being “not a good governor” and allowing Florida’s economy to crash. After Bush assailed the front-runner, Rubio jumped in to note that he is grateful George W. Bush was president when the Twin Towers went down.
