Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has finally unleashed a verbal assault on the one rival he has so far spared.
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Christian conservative voters traditionally wield significant influence in the Iowa caucuses because they tend to be organized and motivated to participate.
A prominent Iowa evangelical leader has endorsed Ted Cruz for president, a coup for the Texas senator, who has heavily courted churches and pastors in an effort to win the state’s leadoff Republican caucuses.
Cruz has the support of 31 percent of Republican voters in the state, compared to just 21 percent for Trump, a new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa poll.
Since October, Cruz has jumped 21 percentage points. Florida Senator Marco Rubio held onto his position in the double-digits of Iowa Republicans but only with 10 percent. No other candidate had double-digit support.
How will Ted win Iowa since he’s against ethanol?
In Des Moines Friday night, Trump anticipated the bad poll numbers by bashing the Des Moines Register.
It was widely expected that Cruz was going to leapfrog Trump after the billionaire real-estate developer went on the attack yesterday morning ahead of the results.
This two picture combo of file photos shows Republican presidential candidate, Sen.
Long locked in a mutual nonaggression pact, Mr. Cruz and Mr. Trump have teetered on the brink of hostilities in recent days.
Cruz’s campaign declined to comment when Business Insider asked about Trump’s Cuba remark. That appeared to come earlier this week, when The New York Times obtained audio of Cruz at a private fundraiser suggesting that Trump and Carson could not lead the nation given rising national security concerns. “I’m Cuban, Irish, and Italian, and yet somehow I ended up Southern Baptist”, Cruz said at one event, for example. Sorry to disappoint – [Trump] is terrific.
Mr. Trump struck a different tone. “Looks like [Cruz] is preparing to attack”. I am leading by so much he must. I hope so, he will fall like all others.
That prompted a series of jibes from Trump aimed to discredit Cruz among evangelicals and show him as beholden to big oil firms, an especially important issue in Iowa. “Not a lot come out”.
In 2008, Mike Huckabee – who would go on to capture the caucuses that year – zoomed 17 points between October and November. Carson was at 28 percent then, and Cruz was at only 10 percent. “The oil companies give him lots of money, but I am with you”. Ted Cruz can say he’s evangelical, but he’s still a dirty Hispanic at heart.
“You have one of the most dishonest right here in your backyard”, Trump said to a crowd of supporters. “Some reporter named Jacobs, she is the worst”, he said, referring to The Register’s lead political reporter, Jennifer Jacobs. In the past, he’s criticized the paper for its editorial calling on him to drop out. The editorial board, which endorsed Mitt Romney before the 2012 caucuses, has not yet announced its preference for 2016.
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Last week, Cruz credited his steady rise in the polls to on the ground organization the campaign has put in place in the state. I think something going on w/them.
