Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is slowly starting to emerge as the consensus choice among establishment figures within the socially conservative wing of the Republican Party, earning both the endorsement of evangelical Bob Vander Plaats and the backing of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).
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“Where are the ethanol people?”
Trump, speaking to a crowd of several hundred people inside an auditorium at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, mocked Cruz, who has been remarkably deferential to Trump.
“He’s got to come a long way because he’s right now for the oil”, Trump said at a rally in Des Moines. “The oil companies pay him a lot of money but I’m with you but I’m with everybody”.
“I think you’re going to see both Cruz and Rubio go at each other more than before”, Republican strategist John Feehery predicted. “Not a lot come out, but I like him nevertheless”, Trump said.
For months Cruz and Trump have played nice with each other – or at least as nice as the two hard-hitting candidates know how to – with Cruz praising Trump for making immigration a focal point of his candidacy, while the magnate has hinted that if he gets the GOP nomination he would choose Cruz to be his running mate.
The Cruz campaign has called The New York Times report misleading and in an appearance on Fox News on Thursday, Cruz insisted his comments were not specifically about Trump, despite clearly referencing the candidate in the audio.
Trump also seemed to question Cruz’s appeal to evangelicals in Iowa, speculating he may not be able to relate to the influential voting bloc due to his Cuban heritage. “I say to myself, ‘If Ted Cruz is against ethanol, how is he winning in Iowa?”
The poll also sets up an intriguing dilemma for Trump, including in the Republican debate Tuesday: The billionaire has sometimes mocked challengers on the basis of their personalities, but doing so against Cruz could prove risky, given the high senator’s high favorable rating in Iowa.
But Cruz was quoted questioning Trump’s foreign-policy “judgment” at a closed-door event earlier this week.
Cruz’s new front-runner status in Iowa has been accompanied by a jump in his favorability rating, now an all-time high of 73 percent, the highest in the Republican field.
That’s mild by Trump insult-comic standards, more of a “watch your mouth” shot across the bow than an opening of hostilities.
In Des Moines, Trump dismissed the poll, done by Monmouth University, as “just one little outlier”.
By Friday morning, Trump himself was in on the act, first tweeting out, “Looks like @tedcruz is getting ready to attack”.
Despite all predictions to the contrary, Donald Trump so far has not shown any signs of dropping in the polls ahead of next year’s primaries.
I urge all citizens in Lubbock to contact members of the Lubbock City Council and respectfully tell them to stand for the Second Amendment and to vote against banning citizens from carrying guns at council meetings.
Cruz has been surging in the Midwestern state, where many white evangelical Protestants are receptive to his message.
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Trump was asked questions about Syrian refugees, gun rights, Social Security and Medicare and the economy.
