Three candidates for the Republican nomination have broken away from the rest of the pack, and two of them — businessman Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — give the GOP establishment nightmares.
That leaves the third member of the trio, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, potentially well placed to pick up the support of center-right Republican voters who are looking for someone to stop Trump and Cruz at almost any cost.
But Rubio is behind both of his top-tier rivals in national polling averages and is even further back in Iowa, home to the first-in-the-nation caucuses, where he holds fourth place, albeit behind the fast-fading Ben Carson.
An even deeper problem for the Florida senator is that other candidates who are competing for the same voters are unlikely to drop out before the New Hampshire primary. That means votes that might otherwise go to Rubio could instead be won by contenders such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Add all these factors together and it becomes clear why establishment Republicans are so concerned, especially in the wake of Trump’s inflammatory call to ban Muslims from entering the United States. Cruz, meanwhile, has been enjoying a rapid rise in the polls. (Read more from “Nightmare Scenario for Establishment: Trump or Cruz” HERE)
In an interview with Boston talk radio host Jeff Kuhner, Republican Ted Cruz said that if he were elected president, he would “absolutely”appoint Donald Trump to build a giant wall on the U.S.-Mexican border.
“If you’re elected president of the United States, will you do what Donald Trump has pledged to do? Would a President Cruz build a wall along the entire southern border?” Kuhner asked. “And would you if you were president appoint Donald Trump to build that wall?”
Cruz laughed. “Absolutely yes on both fronts,” he responded. (Read more from “President Ted Cruz Would ‘Absolutely’ Appoint Donald Trump to Build Border Wall” HERE)
GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz told conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt that “the simple and undeniable fact is the overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats” during an interview on Monday.
The Republican presidential candidate was discussing the shooting in Colorado Springs at a Planned Parenthood building where three people were killed.
According to Politico, “The suspect’s reported mention of ‘baby parts’ at the time of the shooting —as well as the location of the shooting — has linked the incident to the nation’s ongoing debate on abortion. It also led some people to blame the incident on the ugly rhetoric surrounding Planned Parenthood.” (Read more from “Ted Cruz: Majority of Violent Criminals Are Democrats” HERE)
GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) spoke out Thursday on the growing debate over transgender policies for school facilities including restrooms and lockers, specifically the push for kids to use facilities consistent with their “gender identity.”
“The federal government is going after school districts, trying to force them to let boys shower with little girls,” Cruz said on the conservative radio show “Louder With Crowder.” “Now listen: I’m the father of two daughters, and the idea that the federal government is coming in saying that boys, with all the God-given equipment of boys, can be in the shower room with junior high girls – this is lunacy!
“And I bet you there are a whole lot of parents – particularly parents of daughters – that are not eager to have the federal government saying ‘Guess what? Your daughter has to shower with a boy, if he wants to be in there,’” he continued.
Cruz later added, “You know, the funny thing is, my five-year-old knows there’s a difference between boys and girls, and yet modern Leftists can’t figure that out.”
Cruz’s references to the federal government’s involvement in this issue likely allude to the Obama administration’s legal support for transgender students in two recent cases. (Read more from “Cruz on ‘Lunacy’ of Transgender Policies” HERE)
Sen. Ted Cruz stood outside the New Hampshire state capitol Thursday morning, moments after filing papers to qualify for next year’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary. Coatless against a cold drizzle, he delivered a fiery call to arms to the enthusiastic supporters gathered around him and beyond.
“We’re seeing conservatives in New Hampshire and nationally unite,” he said. “We’re seeing the liberty movement coming together… Let me tell you, what is happening on these steps in New Hampshire scares the living daylights out of Washington.”
It was an exhortation by a politician on the rise in the competition for the Republican nomination. Two outsiders with no political experience, Donald Trump and Ben Carson, continue to lead the GOP field. But in the year of the outsider, the freshman senator from Texas who has made his mark defying the political elites believes that, ultimately, he can be the beneficiary of the virulent anti-Washington mood that has shaped this pre-election year.
And as unlikely as his path might have seemed a few months ago, Cruz’s rise in the polls and his formidable war chest represent an additional threat to the establishment that is not going unnoticed.
During a lengthy interview as he returned to his hotel after a long day of campaigning, Cruz offered a detailed explanation of what he views as his path forward — and why he thinks he’ll win. But it is a path strewn with obstacles, opponents and question marks. (Read more from “Ted Cruz Explains His Challenging Path to the GOP Nomination” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-16 21:00:212016-04-11 10:56:06Ted Cruz Explains His Challenging Path to the GOP Nomination
I remember the spring of 2013 like it was yesterday. It was one of the busiest times of my career. Republicans were working overtime to codify Obama’s open borders agenda into law, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) was the ring leader of the effort. The voice of the people was not being heard and we were subjected to fallacious talking points on a daily basis.
Along with several other conservative writers, I wrote dozens of articles exposing the details and the broader implications of the 1,000-page piece of bilge that is known as the “Gang of 8” bill. Instead of working with conservatives, Rubio and his office coordinated attacks on conservatives together with liberals. Even after all of his promises were exposed as pure fabrications, he still went on to star in ads for Mark Zuckerberg touting his bill as something it was not.
Now Rubio wants our votes and suddenly he is on our side.
In order to convince voters that he has walked the Road to Damascus on the road to winning Des Moines, his campaign is promulgating the following narrative: Rubio learned his lesson from the Gang of 8 and now shares the same views on immigration as Ted Cruz, so nothing to see here – let’s move on.
There is a lot to like about Marco Rubio. But as it relates to the all-important compound issue of immigration, one would have to erase all of history to suggest he is on the same playing field as Ted Cruz. When it mattered, Cruz wasn’t just a vote for sovereignty and security, he was a voice for it. Rubio wasn’t just a vote for Obama’s prize agenda, he was a voice for it.
For those of us who fought with everything we had to defeat the Gang of 8 despite Rubio’s best effort to score the ultimate game-winning touchdown for Obama, we can’t just let this go. The only similarity Rubio and Cruz share as it relates to immigration is the same similarity that a firefighter and an arsonist share with regards to fire – they were both there at the scene of the crime. The one was a perpetrator of the problem; the other was part of the solution.
TURNING CRUZ’S FIREFIGHTING INTO ARSON
Rubio is now suggesting that Cruz also supported amnesty because at the time of the Gang of 8 debate, Cruz introduced an amendment stripping the provision providing a path to citizenship from the bill. Rubio’s camp disingenuously submits that this act means Cruz implicitly supported legalization so long as no citizenship is involved.
Perhaps Rubio is unfamiliar with an amendment strategy when fighting legislation because he has been in very few firefights for the cause of conservatism since his election to the Senate. One way of embarrassing and exposing proponents of a bad bill is by introducing amendments to tweak the bill with changes its proponents are hard-pressed to oppose. This doesn’t mean the senator would otherwise support the legislation if it contained those changes, it’s merely a strategy to derail the bill altogether.
It’s for this reason that Rubio, during one of the few battles he actively fought, introduced an amendment to the Corker-Cardin bill forcing Iran to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. It’s not that he otherwise would have been fine with the Iran deal or the Corker-Cardin process. This was merely a way to expose the other side for their extreme position.
This is what Cruz was doing when he introduced amendments to pause any amnesty until the enforcement was implemented or to take away the pathway to citizenship or his amendment to expand legal immigration. He wanted to show that the entire Gang effort had nothing to do with being compassionate, pro-immigrant, or enforcement oriented – as proponents of the bill, including Rubio, so ardently asserted – rather this was a scheme to create new Democrat voters and disenfranchise the citizenry. Indeed, Senator Sessions, who clearly opposes legalization, supported Cruz’s amendment, while Rubio’s fellow Gang members on committee opposed it.
Hence, in the irony of all ironies, Rubio is using the hard work of Cruz in defeating his bill to suggest that they really share the same view!
Rubio was promoting his bill as ‘enforcement first’ even as he was voting down amendments to make the bill do just that.
RUBIO NEGATED HIS OWN TALKING POINTS AT THE TIME
As highlighted in his Conservative Review profile, Rubio was promoting his bill as ‘enforcement first’ even as he was voting down amendments to make the bill do just that. It’s not just that Rubio changed his position to “enforcement first,” it’s that he touted that Gang of 8 bill for months as doing just that. He opposed the following amendments:
A provision to ensure that the border is secured before any amnesty is granted. (Senate.gov)
A provision requiring completion of the reinforced double-layered border fencing. He was one of only five Republicans to do so. (Senate.gov)
A provision requiring that a visa tracking system be implemented before any amnesty is granted. (Senate.gov)
A provision that would require congressional votes affirming the border has been secured before the granting of temporary legal status. (Senate.gov)
As noted in our guide to political conversions, a legitimate recent convert to a cause is usually the most zealous in championing the issue unprompted by political pressure. When Cruz was fighting Obama’s executive amnesty, the border surge, sanctuary cities, the release of criminal aliens, the Islamic refugee scheme, and homegrown terror threats via immigration – using all his platforms on committee, floor speeches, and in the media – where was Rubio? Until Breitbart called him out for not supporting a single enforcement effort, Rubio never even signed onto the effort against sanctuary cities.
Moreover, even long after the Gang of 8, Rubio continued to promote his amnesty agenda and gave tail winds to Obama instead of actually fighting him on his executive amnesty. While Cruz was fighting DACA, Rubio was saying he’d keep it and the only problem he had with it is that it wasn’t permanent amnesty. He seemed to be bothered more by Obama poisoning the well against his legislative amnesty effort than actually stopping Obama’s broader open borders agenda.
Every candidate engages in conversions while running for office to a certain extent. Even Cruz has changed his tune on H1B visas. But Cruz has a lot more credibility on the overall immigration issue because “enforcement first” has been more than a campaign talking point to serve as window dressing for amnesty; it has embodied his tenure in the Senate.
Ask yourself this question: do you believe in your heart of hearts that Rubio will fight for conservatives on sovereignty and borders the minute he wins the primary and commences his general election messaging? (For more from the author of “Cruz Fought Amnesty, Rubio Fought Conservatives” please click HERE)
Imagine the existence of a group involved in covertly formulating a plan on how to subvert the U.S. Constitution, distributing that plan among its leadership and agents within the U.S., quietly supporting terrorism to further this agenda, declaring war against America, and brazenly recognizing U.S. indifference by boasting about its terrorist activities.
A rational mind would conclude this group be identified as a domestic threat with every effort made to minimize its influence. Yet President Obama has not only embraced the group, but welcomed its leaders to the White House.
In numerous other countries—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the UAE, Bahrain and Russia—this group, known as the Muslim Brotherhood, has been banned due to its well-known destructive intentions and terrorist acts. The Obama administration has yet to do the same.
Legislation to pull back the Muslim Brotherhood’s veil, exposing its telltale terrorist heart, has been introduced—again. On November 3, legislation was filed to have the Muslim Brotherhood designated a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” (FTO)—introduced by Senator Sen. Ted Cruz in the Senate and Representative Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart in the House.
A similar bill introduced in July 2014 fizzled. The question now is whether Congress will push this bill through, forcing Obama’s Brotherhood enabler—U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry—to strip the group of its veil. (Read more from “Ted Cruz Seeks to Remove Muslim Brotherhood’s Veil” HERE)
The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist organization founded in Egypt in 1928 that could be finding itself in trouble soon with the United States Congress.
Robert Mueller, former director of the FBI, said about the group during testimony in 2011: “I can say at the outset that elements of the Muslim Brotherhood both here and overseas have supported terrorism.”
Although multiple members of the organization are on the Obama administration terror list, thus far the US has not yet officially designated the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
That could soon be changing. Republican presidential candidate and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, along with Florida Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, introduced a bill this week called the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act.
Passage of the bill would not automatically designate the organization as a terrorist group. Instead, it would express a “sense of Congress” that the Brotherhood meets the criteria of being a terrorist organization. The State Department would be given 60 days to express whether agrees. If the State Department decides against listing the organization as a terrorist group, it would have to provide a “detailed justification as to which criteria have not been met.”
Five countries – Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Russia – already consider the Brotherhood to be a terrorist group. (Read more from “Ted Cruz Just Made an Enormous Move Against the Muslim Brotherhood That Could Impact Obama” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-04 23:56:372016-04-11 10:56:30Ted Cruz Just Made an Enormous Move Against the Muslim Brotherhood That Could Impact Obama
By Eli Stokols. Inside a sleek Denver condominium, George W. Bush let a hundred donors to his brother’s campaign in on a secret. Of all the rival Republican candidates, there is one who gets under the former president’s skin, whom he views as perhaps Jeb Bush’s most serious rival for the party’s nomination.
It isn’t Donald Trump, whose withering insults have sought to make Jeb pay a political price for his brother’s presidency. It isn’t Marco Rubio, Jeb’s former understudy who now poses a serious threat to his establishment support.
“I just don’t like the guy,” Bush said Sunday night, according to conversations with more than half a dozen donors who attended the event.
One donor in the room said . . . “I was like, ‘Holy sh-t, did he just say that?’ . . . I remember looking around and seeing that other people were also looking around surprised” . . .
Bush took a harsh view of Cruz’s apparent alliance with Trump, who stood with the senator at a Capitol Hill rally last month in opposition to the Iran deal. While Trump, the current GOP poll leaders, has attacked most of his competitors in the 2016 field, he has avoided criticizing Cruz. (Read more from “George W. Bush Unleashes on Ted Cruz” HERE)
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George W. Bush Reportedly Rips Ted Cruz to Jeb Bush Donors
By Fox News. Former President George W. Bush reportedly ripped into Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at a weekend gathering of donors to his brother’s presidential campaign, according to a published report Monday.
Politico reported that Bush said of Cruz, “I just don’t like the guy,” at the event, which was held Sunday night in Denver.
According to the report, which cited at least six donors who were at the event, Bush said he did not like Cruz’s de facto alliance with Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who has notably spared Cruz from the criticism he has ladled onto other members of the 15-candidate Republican field.
“He said he found it ‘opportunistic’ that Cruz was sucking up to Trump and just expecting all of his support to come to him in the end,” one donor told Politico when asked to describe Bush’s remarks about Cruz. The report added that the former president had been engaging with amiable discussions about the state of the GOP race when Cruz’s name came up . . .
The report also said that Bush warned the donors to not underestimate Cruz’s strength in the South and in Texas, where his message of religious liberty is expected to play very well with voters. (Read more from “George W. Bush Reportedly Rips Ted Cruz to Jeb Bush Donors” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-10-20 00:43:212016-04-11 10:57:10George W. Bush Unleashes on Ted Cruz
In an exclusive interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told NBC’s Chuck Todd that the Republican leadership has “passed more Democratic priorities than Harry Reid ever could.”
“The truth of the matter is, Republican leadership are the most effective Democrat leaders we’ve ever seen. They passed more Democratic priorities than Harry Reid ever could,” Cruz said.
Cruz said the Republicans voted to fund Obamacare, amnesty for illegal immigrants, and funding for Planned Parenthood, in addition to confirming Loretta Lunch as U.S. attorney general – all Democratic priorities.
TODD: Have you overpromised? You were sitting there saying that you could stop Obamacare if you just did what you did and shut down the government and that Republicans could stop the Iran deal. The fact is, you couldn’t. The numbers weren’t on your side. There’s a Democratic president, so did you overpromise, because I understand you’re saying others, but didn’t you?
CRUZ: When it comes to promising, what I promised is that I would fight with every breath in my body to stop the out-of-control spending and the debt that is bankrupting our country, to stop Obamacare, to protect our nation, and all of those are promises that I have honored every single day in the Senate. And you know it’s amazing—so I was visiting with a colleague recently, who was making that pitch about, oh gosh, the problem is expectations. We need to define expectations. (Read more from “This Is Ted Cruz’s Fiery Opinion of Republican Leadership” HERE)
