Donald Trump is once again alone at the top of the Republican field of presidential candidates. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks Saturday, Dec. 5, 2015, during the Rising Tide Summit at the US Cellular Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
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“They are looking not for a campaign conservative who talks a good game on the trail, they want a consistent conservative”, Cruz said.
It appears that Donald Trump’s position on issues like immigration are winning him the support of a large block of voters in the Republican primary, but losing him enough votes among the general electorate to lose to Clinton. Over the years we’ve seen Republican primary voters fall hard and fast for political newbies like Ben Carson, Herman Cain, Pat Buchanan, and Pat Robertson, before eventually choosing experienced officeholders. In 2012 former Pennsylvania Sen. Cook suggested that many conservatives “are working through various stages of alienation and anger that is manifesting itself for now in support for Trump and Carson”, a process he likened to the five stages of grief described by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross; once they’re done, he suggested, many may opt for a less angry candidate. But he said he wasn’t anxious.
Even when polls narrow themselves to likely voters, they still get it wrong.
The poll was conducted before this week’s deadly shootings in San Bernardino, California, which were carried out by a man reported to have been radicalized and his wife, claiming the lives of at least 14 people.
One audience member later joked to Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin that the GOP frontrunner’s jokes made them throw up so many times they needed a mint.
Later, in Cedar Rapids, some of Trump’s rivals are speaking at an economic summit sponsored by the tea party-backed FreedomWorks.
Cruz also rejected calls from the Obama administration and the Democratic presidential candidates for stricter gun-control laws.
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“Toppling a government and allowing radical Islamic terrorists to take over a nation is not benefiting our national security interests”, Cruz said. “We stop the bad guys by using our guns”. It’s one of the reasons why I was opposed to this law that even some of my opponents running for president voted for, this USA [Freedom] Act that passed a few months ago. Marco Rubio of Florida at 12 percent, former Florida governor Jeb Bush at 6 percent and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina at 2 percent, the poll indicates. Paul generally favors limiting American influence overseas.
