Trump update 2/13/2016..tonite ugliest debate yet
Trump threatens to sue Cruz as ad wars heat up
Still Report #608 – Trump Widens Lead Nationally
Donald Trump’s terrible appeal
Cruz and Trump poised for the ugliest debate yet
Ted Cruz and Donald Trump enter Saturday’s debate locked in a two-man race for South Carolina, and to prepare, both have gone full negative.
After splitting the first two votes, the New York billionaire has relentlessly hammered away at Cruz on everything from his campaign’s tactics to what Trump sees as the Texan’s character flaws. And on Friday, Trump warned that he has standing to sue Cruz over questions of his birth and constitutional eligibility to serve in the White House.
“If @tedcruz doesn’t clean up his act, stop cheating, & doing negative ads, I have standing to sue him for not being a natural born citizen,” Trump tweeted of his rival, born in Canada to an American mother.
Asked about the threat, Cruz did not back down. “There’s more than a little irony in Donald accusing anybody of being nasty given the amazing torrent of insults and obscenities that come out of his mouth on any given day,” he told reporters. “Suddenly every day he comes out with a new attack.”
Trump is expected to carry these attacks onto the stage on Saturday at the final candidate forum before South Carolina votes. It’s a fight Cruz’s allies say they are ready for, as they prepare to assault Trump’s Republican credentials with an eye on the conservative, religious and security-focused voters throughout the south.
Cruz: ‘Not gonna insult’ Trump after lawsuit threat
By Burgess Everett
“There’s a Himalayan mountain of evidence out there that Donald Trump is not a conservative,” said Charlie Condon, a former South Carolina attorney general and a Cruz surrogate, pointing to Trump’s past positions on issues including abortion, health care and Wall Street bank bailouts. “I’m confident that everything I’m telling you will be discussed at the Peace Center.”
Condon said that the more Trump attacks Cruz on Saturday, the more the Texas senator will come across as the Trump “alternative.”
“It’s a recognition of what we think the reality is: This is becoming a two-man race,” he said. “So if you’re not comfortable with Donald Trump being president, whether for temperament reasons or judgment reasons or the fact that he really is a campaign conservative—he’s been a Democrat almost his whole life…if you’re uncomfortable with that…Cruz is the alternative.”
Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler said the candidate would be “prepared” for Trump, whose campaign he dismissed as unserious. “This is the Seinfeld candidacy,” he said. “It’s a campaign about nothing.”
The escalation of the conflict between the two leading candidates for the Republican nomination comes as they contest a state that has refined the political dirty trick to a fine art and where the mogul is accusing a “dishonest” Cruz of orchestrating anti-Trump robocalls.
Already, in Iowa, the Cruz campaign came under fire for spreading inaccurate reports that Ben Carson was suspending his campaign on the day of the Iowa caucuses and sending out high-pressure mailers intended to shame inconsistent voters who were likely to support Cruz into turning out.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/donald-trump-ted-cruz-south-carolina-debate-219237#ixzz405sz2rbP
Trump Threatens To Sue Cruz As Ad Wars Heat Up
Report: 1st New Poll Out Of South Carolina Shows A Clear Leader- This Will Get Interesting…
The results: Trump 32 percent, Cruz 26, Rubio 20, Gov. Jeb Bush 10, Ben Carson 7, and Gov. John Kasich 2.
The article does not indicate how recently the poll was conducted, but presumably it was done sometime in the past week.
South Carolina Showdown – GOP Candidates Battle To Be Trump Alternative – Journal Editorial Report
Huckabee: Evangelicals reflect anger at DC donor class
The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Being Right About Donald Trump | Zero Hedge
By Eddie Zipperer, originally published in The Hill
The complete idiot’s guide to being right about Donald Trump
If you operate under the assumption that helium is heavier than the air around you, you’re going to lose your balloon. If you’re smart, you won’t lose many balloons before you change your assumption. If you don’t change your assumption, you’re going to keep losing balloons and start to look pretty stupid in the process.
But it looks like you can’t teach old pundits new paradigms. After presidential candidate Donald Trump finished in second in the Iowa Republican caucus, the media went straight to work picking out a coffin for his campaign, battling it out to see who could write the most definitive obituary. After months of being wrong about Trump, something finally happened to make them look right: All the Iowa polls were wrong — Trump lost! Sure, he scored more Iowa votes than anyone ever — excepting Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), who won Iowa — but he lost. Trump is a loser and this proves it.
It’s hard to blame them for trying to spike the ball in Trump’s face. You’ve seen it before. Your favorite NFL team is down by 50 points. The team finally gets a first down, and the halfback celebrates like he just won the Super Bowl. Everyone except him just laughs and shakes their head. That’s what opinion writers like David Brooks — who wrote a piece declaring that “Donald Trump Isn’t Real” in the aftermath of Iowa — looked like last week. CNN ran a piece by Michael D’Antonio headlined “Donald Trump is a loser.” And the list of similar sentiments is long.
The pressure of being wrong about Trump over and over was building, so when it appeared they were finally right about something, the release was earthshaking.
Last July, I asked a political science professor at an Ivy League university how Trump would appeal to the electorate in a general election. He told me that “It’s a moot point” because “Trump has no chance of surviving the primaries.”
I predicted Trump’s demise more than once myself since last summer. The difference between me and the rest of them is that I threw out my broken election assumptions and started holding tight to the string of my balloon. For anyone interested, below is a guide on how to be right about Trump next time. It all starts with rejecting the bad assumptions and embracing the good ones.
Bad assumption: Manners are of the utmost importance. Every time Trump utters a naughty word, the media go nuts. The story was everywhere on Tuesday (you know the one; he repeated an audience member’s use of the word “pussy”). I heard more than one talking head predict that Trump would lose the New Hampshire primary when voters found out. Didn’t happen; never will. Trump doesn’t do manners, and his supporters don’t want him to.
Good Assumption: Every time Trump says something that no other politician ever would, he scores points. Politicians are well-mannered in front of voters and employ others to do their dirty work. Take former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), for instance. He talks a big game about the president being mature and the presidency as being above Trump’s behavior. Sounds nice, but then consider the truth lurking behind Bush. According to Larry Sabato, “Jeb Bush is Meaner Than He Looks.” Or recall former presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) lecturing us on maturity during the same debate where his communications director, Sergio Gor, tweeted a copy of Carly Fiorina’s closing statement that had been left in the hotel copier.
Bad assumption: An ideological misstep will dissolve Trump’s support. Most Republican voters despise eminent domain. I despise eminent domain. In Saturday night’s debate, Trump defended eminent domain. He didn’t try to “Rubio” his way out of it with prepared sound bites. He didn’t try to muddy the water and make people question whether he actually supported it. He was totally straight about it.
Good assumption: Honesty transcends ideology. Voters would rather disagree with a straight-shooter than agree with a political wind-tester. We’ve seen too many politicians run as conservatives and then prove not to be. Voters have become suspect of politicians with ideologies that try too hard to match the electorate.
Bad assumption: Trump is unelectable in November. Uh-huh. Just like he could never win the primaries. Every time a pundit says Trump is unelectable in November, there’s a good chance he or she also wrote him off in the GOP primary a few months ago and at every step along the way. Repeating something over and over doesn’t make it true. Just ask Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).
Good assumption: Trump is a winner.
Source: http://blogdogcicle.blogspot.com/2016/02/trump-update-2132016tonite-ugliest.html
