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Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/12/10/why-bob-vander-plaats-chose-ted-cruz-over-donald-trump-marco-rubio-ben-carson/77087998/

How the former Florida governor, once shy about his famous last name, is leaning on his family's network. For months, Jeb Bush has insisted he's his "own man." Now, he's mobilizing his family's expansive network as he searches for momentum amid the dominance of Donald Trump and the rise of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Starting next month, Bush's campaign will deploy hundreds of his brother and father's former White House aides to early primary states to assist in canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts. The plan, which has been hashed out in private emails and phone calls for months, is taking...

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The Family Leader’s CEO Bob Vander Plaats spoke one on one with Breitbart News after he endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for president, saying Cruz has the resources and infrastructure to win the GOP nomination, unite conservatives, and select a Vice President with characteristics that buy into his vision and agenda for the country. Senator Cruz has the real ability right now to unite conservatives from the liberty wing of the party, from the Republican grassroots wing, from the Evangelical pro-family wing, to the limited government wing, so I think he’s going to bring a lot of factors of the...

The Iowa caucuses are 54 days away. Donald Trump is, still, the national front-runner. Marco Rubio is, now, the establishment's best (only?) hope. And Ted Cruz is the guy who looks best positioned to win. Yes, you heard that right. Ted Cruz, as of today, has the most direct route to the Republican presidential nomination -- assuming the past history of Republican nomination fights works as a broad predictor of where this race is headed. Let me elaborate. 1. Cruz is positioned as the most conservative candidate in the race. While Trump gets all of the attention for his over-the-top...

Hillary Clinton's super PAC backers and operatives who are gearing up for the general election fight are preparing for three possible opponents - Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz....

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Monday challenged Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to take a stand against Donald Trump's proposal to ban Muslim immigrants from entering the United States. When asked if he would support such a ban on Monday, Cruz replied, "No, that is not my policy," but did not criticize Trump, according to the Texas Tribune. "I believe the focus should focus on radical Islamic terrorism, and we need to be directly focused on threats to the United States," he continued. "We need a commander in chief that perceives what the threat is and that targets all of our...

While moderates languish in the polls, Ted Cruz and his ilk are doing just fine.It would be easy to dismiss Lindsey Graham as a sore loser even before the contest has been decided. In the Republican presidential campaign, his support has hovered between the negligible and the nonexistent. “I’m at 1 percent,” Graham quite honestly admitted to the Republican Jewish Coalition last Thursday. “The election is still long away. Help me stay in the race.” But it is precisely because Graham is doing so poorly that he offers some valuable insights on the outcome of a battle within the GOP...

A new poll has Donald Trump way ahead. Polling at 36%, Trump is 20 points in front of his closest competitor, Sen. Ted Cruz. Ben Carson is polling at 14% and Sen. Marco Rubio is at 12%. Nobody else is even close. A few months is a long time in American politics, although for now it appears that either Trump, Carson, Rubio or Cruz will take the Republican nomination. To some extent, it's hard to be any more precise than that. We'll have to wait and see how things unfold once the primaries get going in February. If Trump were...

Presidential candidate Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) took a bold step away from many in the pro-life camp Thursday when taking aim at his rival for the White House, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), over his allegedly extreme stance against abortion.The South Carolina senator indicated that taking a hardline pro-life stance, in essence, will preclude any presidential candidate from winning the 2016 election. “You can be pro-life and win an election, but if you’re going to tell a woman who’s been raped she has to carry the child of the rapist, you’re losing most Americans,” Graham argued. The 60-year-old GOP member took specific...

RICHMOND, VA. — Under a feeble sun trying to clear a morning rain, Heidi Cruz hopped out of her rental car — coincidentally a Chevrolet Cruze — and headed for the Virginia elections office. Her immediate task last Tuesday was to hand-deliver a carton of 10,907 signatures — more than double the number needed to put her husband’s name on the GOP presidential primary ballot in Virginia, one of a dozen mostly Southern “Super Tuesday” states, including Texas, that will go to the polls March 1. But as the primary season draws near, Cruz’s underlying mission was more subtle: To...

The conventional wisdom is that Cruz is vulnerable on foreign policy. But Rubio is the one who should worry.After the conservative movement defeated immigration reform in Congress two years ago, transforming the issue from one of great promise for Marco Rubio to an enduring liability, the Florida senator realized he had a problem with the right. With his signature initiative destined to become one of the world’s largest stockpiles of scrap paper, Rubio returned to the movement orthodoxies that had propelled him to the U.S. Senate in the first place. In 2013, he joined a quixotic campaign, organized by his...

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is making a three-day campaign lap around the state, with stops in 14 cities. “I just want to say thank you all for being here. Thank you for standing up. I’m here asking for your support, asking for your help. We are building a grassroots army,” Cruz said to conclude an appearance at the Windrow restaurant in Creston on Saturday afternoon. Wally Miller of Creston was there to show his support for Cruz. “He’s the only one that makes sense,” Miller said, adding he has a screening test for candidates. “When I look at someone,...

John Sears, Ronald Reagan’s one-time campaign manager, once said “discipline is nine-tenths of politics.” And, as Tevi Troy reminds us: Candidate Reagan put Sears’ dictum into action, running a relentlessly focused communication operation that kept to its message of the day, often to the consternation of the reporters following the campaign. This approach continued into Reagan’s presidency. As the authors of All the President’s Spin put it: “Ronald Reagan’s administration broke new ground with its message discipline and image control.” The same was true of George W. Bush. Troy, who worked in the Bush administration, recalls Bush’s chief-of-staff Andy Card...

He has been called a “Whacko Bird” by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other establishment Republicans in the U.S. Senate. He has been called an “extremist” and a Tea Party Republican that likes to hang out on the far right fringe of the GOP. Detractors, especially those who support his amigo in the Senate, Senator Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) , make fun of his voice and appearance, as well as how he delivers his message. Haters from the Rubio camp and those Democratic Party talking points-spewing armchair quarterbacks, who think they can accurately foretell the future when it comes to...

With Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s comments about immigration Sunday, the top two Republicans in Congress have now declared dead the prospects of an overhaul before the 2016 elections. In the aftermath of 2012, when Latinos made up 10 percent of the electorate and President Barack Obama was re-elected resoundingly, Republican lawmakers and strategists predicted the GOP’s White House ambitions were directly tied to the passage of comprehensive immigration legislation. Many of those voices haven’t changed their tune. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of the four “gang of eight” Republicans who successfully navigated an immigration overhaul through the Senate in 2013,...

Today's Ted Cruz news: It's official: With his rise in Iowa, Ted Cruz -- in a statistical tie with Donald Trump in the Hawkeye state -- is the man of the hour, the likely Republican nominee for president. So goes today's story line. If you like Cruz, the conservative Texas U.S. senator's ascension will be pleasing, although the manner in which he is described won't. If you dislike him, you'll cheer the way he is described. And just to spoil the party a wee bit, we'll add a historical note: At this point in the 2012 GOP race, Newt Gingrich...

With a world on edge after the coordinated terror attacks in Paris, and as criticism grows louder of the Obama administration’s handling of adversaries such as Iran and Syria, tough talk and defiance have become strong currencies in the presidential race. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson’s mild-mannered, soft-spoken demeanor – which helped endear him to many voters in the first place – now appears to be working against him, while Sen. Ted Cruz’s tell-it-like-it-is, in-your-face style is now raising his stock. In the crucial state of Iowa, which holds closely-watched caucuses, the event in Paris on Nov. 13 changed many conservatives’...

Trump's racism is bad for Republicans now, but the eventual wild-eyed nominee will only look moderate in comparison.Since the Donald Trump campaign kicked off with demagoguery about Mexican immigration, political watchers have been on quiet but alert fascism watch, carefully monitoring Trump to see if he steps over the line. You can feel in your bones that Trump and his supporters long for to give into the sweet oblivion of balls-out racism, rather than dealing with the tedious process of carefully measuring the lines so you can toe them without stepping so far over that liberal journalists are freed up...

For all of the candidates, all of the debates and all of the unpredictability, the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 has taken a clear shape over the past month or so. There is a four-candidate top tier that has separated itself from the rest of the pack. There is then a trio of “if/then” candidates who would need a major mistake or collapse from one of the top four to have a realistic chance at winning. Everyone else running has a puncher’s chance — at best — at being relevant in the nomination fight. Below are my...