Free Republic

Well then, you must like losing your job to someone in Mexico who will make $3/hour. Union leaders at an air conditioner factory in Indianapolis threatened with losing 1,400 jobs to Mexico said on Tuesday the plants owner expects to pay Mexican workers $3 an hour compared to an average of more than $20 an hour for the U.S. workers. "We have not given up the fight yet," said Chuck Jones, president of the United Steelworkers union local that represents workers at the Carrier Corp plant. "But Carrier has pretty well indicated that the wage differential is too great and...

Augusta Chronicle 2/18 - 2/19 780 LV MOE 3.5 Trump 27 Rubio 24 Cruz 19 Bush 11 Kasich 7 Carson 8

We've been inundated with polls: South Carolina polls, Nevada polls, national polls, general election polls. In fact, there are so many polls that you can tell yourself pretty much any story you like about the Republican presidential primary. Is Ted Cruz surging? There's a poll for that. Is Cruz stalling out? There's a poll for that too. Have you heard about the poll showing a Ben Carson comeback? OK, I made that one up. But earlier this week, you could find a poll with John Kasich in second place in South Carolina, even though he was polling at about 2...

Is Trump losing his one big lead in South Carolina? Just days before the South Carolina primary, some polls have shown Trump's once-huge lead in Palmetto State is shrinking. But now, hours before voters head to the polls, FOX Business' Charles Gasparino is hearing it from inside sources that both Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are seeing surges in support. On Friday's show, Gasparino told Tom Sullivan the campaigns and the "big money" behind them are seeing private poll numbers that suggest both Republican Senators may do better than the pundits expect and even top Donald Trump....

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. -- Speaking just six miles apart on Friday morning, Donald J. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas renewed their bitter personal feud, while their supporters echoed the candidates' language and themes - a sign that the bitterness between the two men has now seeped deeply into the feelings of voters. Mr. Trump called Mr. Cruz "the biggest liar I've ever seen," a line he has been pushing all week. Trump supporters, some of whom said they had once considered supporting the Texas senator, largely agreed with Mr. Trump's harsh assessment. "I'm very disappointed in Ted Cruz...

Charleston, S.C., As Sean Hannity stood onstage Friday with Ted Cruz before a packed audience at the College of Charleston's Sotille Theater, the Fox News host announced that "a few special guests" were backstage. "Moments before we came out here, you got a big endorsement," Hannity said. With less than 24 hours until the South Carolina GOP primary, Congressman Mark Sanford, the state's former governor, emerged from behind a velvet curtain. The crowd went wild, and Sanford then spoke for one minute about why he was supporting Cruz. Sanford mentioned the importance of upholding the Constitution and how impressed he...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.wltx.com/story/news/politics/2016/02/19/ted-cruz-south-carolina-like-iowa/80629886/

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/02/18/cruz-continues-wooing-upstate-voters/80583894/

Ted Cruz has pinned his hopes on a big showing in the South. He could still do it, but it's far from certain It's taken a while for the chattering classes to come around to the idea that Donald Trump may actually pull this thing off. It's hard to blame them. It's as if we all went to sleep one night and woke up in an alternate universe. But they do seem to have accepted it. He came close to winning Iowa, a notoriously buttoned up electorate, and won decisively in New Hampshire. All the polling going forward looks good....

There's no magic formula to winning the South Carolina GOP primary, but for the best shot at victory February 20, candidates will have to navigate three key groups of Republican primary voters. They must do this while being mindful of something else: South Carolina Republicans are fiscally and socially conservative and often display a strong distrust of government, particularly the federal government. So, first, they need to connect with evangelical Christians. South Carolina is the buckle of the Bible belt, and according to the 2012 exit polls, evangelicals made up 65% of the state's GOP primary voters. Evangelicals propelled Ted...

For Christians, the stakes couldn't possibly be higher in the 2016 elections, and presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) believes he can be the leader the nation needs to help turn things around. To do that, though, he knows he needs the support of a broad coalition--the former "Reagan Coalition"--of which evangelical voters make up a big voting bloc. And, as a result, his campaign has aggressively courted evangelical voters in South Carolina. "I believe we need to reassemble the Reagan coalition, to unite conservatives and libertarians and evangelicals and women and young people and Hispanics and blue collar...

SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- Ted Cruz's campaign is trying to make the most of Gov. Nikki Haley's endorsement of Marco Rubio days ahead of the South Carolina primary: driving sky-high his political expectations here. "If he doesn't finish first, this is a massive loss," Jason Miller, a senior Cruz adviser, said hours after news reports began circulating that Haley would endorse Rubio at a rally Wednesday evening. "Rubio has to win here." Earlier this week, Jeb Bush had called Haley's endorsement "the most powerful, meaningful one in the state." Haley's backing of Rubio comes on top of the support of Sen....

Two things about this. One: Cruz is entirely right that Trump's lawsuit would be frivolous. Watch the allegedly "defamatory" ad below. It's Politics 101: My opponent may say X now but he said Y before, so how can you possibly trust that X is his true opinion? Trump seems to think that using old footage of him stating his own position on abortion constitutes defamation unless the viewer is also told that he's since changed his mind. It would be like Rubio suing over an ad that showed him touting comprehensive immigration reform in 2013 because he no longer believes...

Pro-Jeb Bush Super PAC Right to Rise has conducted an internal poll in SC that finds Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in an extremely tight race. The results list Trump at 26 percent, and Cruz at 24 percent, with Bush and Marco Rubio coming in a distant third and fourth with 12 and 11 percent respectively, according to a report by Politico. Right to Rise polling is now being conducted by South Carolina veteran political strategist Richard Quinn. In the Politico report Quinn states: "This is clearly a tight, volatile race that could produce most any result over the next...

The event will take place at the same time as a CNN town hall featuring fellow GOP presidential candidates Ben Carson, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. CNN announced its event Saturday. Scarborough had harsh words for CNN last week, after the network reported that the "Morning Joe" hosts were giving favorable treatment to Trump, and that MSNBC officials were concerned about the trend. MSNBC also responded by issuing a statement that denied some of the accusations put forth by CNN, including that Brzezinski and Scarborough celebrated the New Hampshire primary results with Trump in his hotel room. It should be...

Go read this right now. I have seen the data from the Ted Cruz Super PAC Army. Not only that, I've seen data from Cruz's own army. It is amazing and impressive. The number of people they have connected with on the ground, converted, and are prepared to mobilize is one of the most impressive feats in modern Republican politics. I don't mean that hyperbolically. I mean that seriously. The Democrats are always far better organized with ground games while the GOP has offset inferior ground games with advertisements and robocalls. The Cruz camp is going toe to toe with...

Internal polling by the Jeb Bush campaign showing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is within 2 points of GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump in South Carolina is leading to speculation that it might be the reason Trump is going after Cruz so hard. Fox News media reporter Howard Kurtz tweeted about the Bush internals on Sunday and Politico reported on them. Howard Kurtz Internal poll for Bush PAC shows much tighter SC race: Trump 26, Cruz 24, Jeb 12, Rubio 11--while public surveys give Trump a huge lead Internal polling by the Jeb Bush campaign showing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is...

Donald Trump has led every reliable public poll of voters in the South Carolina Republican Primary for the past 200 days. To say that he is the frontrunner in the Palmetto State is an understatement. Like New Hampshire, where Trump scored a resounding victory last week, the many Trump supporters who are not Republicans are welcomed into the GOP primary. Trump has held many events in South Carolina and even recruited one of the leaders of the state's political establishment, Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster, to the Trump train. While South Carolina is slightly more challenging for Trump given its higher...

The South Carolina debate is over, and for those of you who are following the nuance – now the endorsement game begins. In order to understand what is being evidenced, you must step back in time and remind yourself what is going on behind the political curtain – The bigger ‘big picture’. All the way back in February of 2014, the RNC rules committee decisions for the 2016 presidential race were constructed in Washington DC. Almost every player in the 2015/2016 were either present (mostly splitters), or had a representative present on their behalf. Republican party officials, party consultants, party...