“I don’t think he’s qualified to be president because I don’t think he has the right temperament”, Trump responded. “And, you know, if that is the case, then, you know, I’m out of here”.
Advertisement
A woman cheers for Donald Trump before a town hall meeting on December 12, 2015 in Aiken, South Caro …
Only 25 per cent of Americans approve of the idea, according to a study from the NBC-Wall Street Journal.
In Iowa, a Des Monies Register and Bloomberg Politics poll released yesterday showed Cruz on 32 per cent and Trump trailing on 21, just nine weeks out from the first national caucus there.
For Iowa’s conservative voters, “the coalescing has begun”, said J. Ann Selzer, founder of Selzer & Co., the West Des Moines-based firm that conducted the poll.
But that same poll puts the former secretary of state in a tight race with Florida Sen.
At center stage will be front-runner Donald Trump, fending off a challenge from Ted Cruz. Carson saw his poll numbers continue to ebb, capturing third but only with 13 percent support. After the initial debates in August and September, Fiorina reached into the double-digits for Iowa Republicans but the latest Iowa Poll showed only one percent support.
Cruz won 90 votes in the non-binding preference poll, nearly twice as many votes as second-place finisher Marco Rubio.
“You look at the way he’s dealt with the Senate, where he goes in there, frankly, like a little bit of a maniac”, Trump added.
“How do you tell the Bahraini pilots that fly, the Saudi pilots that fly and the Emirati pilots ‘You’re good enough to fight against ISIL, but you’re not good enough to come to the United States?’ Huge mistake”, Burr said. He’ll never get anything done.
“Ted appeals naturally to religious conservatives”, he says.
The American Jewish Committee’s director, David Harris, noted the timing of Trump’s statement, which called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, coincided with the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
And most concerning for GOP leaders, Trump has frequently floated leaving the Republican Party altogether to mount an independent bid, which would significantly increase Clinton’s chances of winning the White House.
Trump’s former top campaign aide, Roger Stone, also believes Trump may become an “indirect beneficiary” of the Cruz-Rubio clashes.
“Trump has gone so far that it has in some ways masked how problematic Cruz would be as the nominee as well”, he said.
But the real lesson from the birth certificate escapade was simply this: Facts don’t matter when you’re giving people an excuse to hate people whom they already want to hate. There’s a sickness going on.
“It says to those in Islam who are trying to exploit people and recruit foreign fighters and otherwise, it says look, look at America”. “We have to figure out the answer”. With more mouth than actual evidence, Trump’s baseless allegations gleaned a surprisingly hu-u-u-uge (as he might say) amount of publicity that included a humorous response from Obama and photo evidence of the original certificate.
Advertisement
Trump still maintains a big lead on a national basis and in other states with the GOP and GOP-leaning electorate, assuming the polling data is accurate.
