Get comfortable – a 51-minute video officially launching Trump’s campaign has been watched more than 1.8 million times. He would instead attend rallies in Kansas, which held its Republican caucus yesterday, and then Florida, which votes on March 15.
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With regular attendees like Rush Limbaugh, Paul Ryan, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, this is the high-profile right-wing gathering where candidates go to win over conservative voters, donors, power brokers, strategists and media.
“Being a conservative can never be about how loud you’re willing to scream, how angry you’re willing to be, or how many names you’re willing to call people”, he said earlier in the speech.
When Time picked Trump as its Person of the Year, they posed him with a bald eagle that rearranged Donald’s “do” and staked a claim on his aspirin. He again knocked Trump on the Supreme Court, which Cruz says will be lost to the left when Trump appoints a liberal to fill the vacancy left by the death of Antonin Scalia.
Cruz also noted Friday that the GOP contenders who have dropped out of the presidential race would all be a “natural” fit for Cabinet positions – leaving out Trump. “And they won’t have a chance if the conservative movement is hijacked by someone who is not a conservative”. In contrast to the Democrats’ debates, which focused upon issues, this one in Detroit was more like a heated session of TV’s “The View” than a true debate, with Trump’s profanity-laced debate points duplicating his profanity-laced campaign speeches.
Mr Trump, who is drawing support from many blue-collar Republicans concerned about illegal immigration and stagnant wages, has won most of the party’s nominating contests and leads in many polls for the primary contests still to come. “There are a lot of people who love me, they just won’t vote for me”, he said.
Also this week, Republican foreign-policy luminaries from diverse flanks of the party wrote an open letter opposing Trump’s candidacy, for his “hateful, anti-Muslim rhetoric”, his “embrace of the expansive use of torture” and more. He added that he wanted a candidate who would listen to the citizens rather than special interest groups.
Cruz’s victory in the straw poll comes as he urges other Republican candidates to unite behind him to defeat Trump.
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“Last night he said over and over how flexible he was”, Cruz said. Sam Holdeman, director of the Michigan College Republicans, was similarly disappointed that Trump couldn’t come out. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz among the GOP candidates to make public such personal financial records.
