Terry Branstad said Monday that the birthplace of Sen.
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“You come here, you have the humility to stand before the men and women of this state and answer your questions”, he said in a Charles City coffee shop Friday when the question came up again.
Could the rise of Donald Trump lead to a viable third-party presidential candidacy? He also leads in New Hampshire by double digits over a splintered field of establishment candidates.
“I really think it was the vote of, ‘I’m going to vote for Barack Obama because I hate Mitt Romney or vice versa and don’t want to waste my vote'”.
Trump was adamant, meanwhile, that his frequent remarks about Cruz’s eligibility were not an attempt to disqualify his rival from the presidential race over a technicality.
“I think he can go in for some kind of a judiciary proceeding and – look, it doesn’t matter what he does”.
“You can’t have a person running for office, even though Ted is very glib, and he goes out and says, ‘Well, I’m a natural born citizen, ‘ ” Trump said. It’s one of those little decisions. And McCain, who has clashed with Cruz in the Senate, offered him no support last week saying in a radio interview that “I don’t know” if the Texas senator was a natural-born citizen.
According to the RealClearPolitics average, Cruz leads Trump in the Hawkeye State by only 2.5 points. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed, Fordham constitutional law professor Thomas Lee explains that to a constitutional originalist, Cruz is not eligible to become president.
“That means a lot of people think you have to be born here”, said Trump. Members of the crowd shouted back, “No!” “He’s welcome to toss whatever attack he wants”, Cruz said. “Honestly, we don’t know”. Civis Analytics, in a study of 11,000 Republican-leaning supporters, found that Trump would get 40 percent of the vote of those who have less than a 20 percent chance of voting.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus punted when asked if Cruz is eligible to run for president.
“The American people, and this is getting more acute to me every day, understand that they need somebody from outside of Washington DC, and somebody who is going to be strong and tough and honest”, Christie recently said. “I’ll let all these folks argue about this stuff, and I’m going to stay out of it”.
Another Republican candidate, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, said on CBS’ Face the Nation it was unclear if Cruz qualified as a natural born citizen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in the Republican presidential primary. He has made outrageous statements about Mexicans as “rapists”, John McCain as not a military hero, and his rants against Carly Fiorina’s ugly face and Megan Kelly bleeding from “wherever”.
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Seven out of 27 voters told Luntz that though they disliked the former secretary of state, Trump is much worse, the Des Moines Register reported.
