Posted on 12/10/2015 7:49:24 AM PST by RoosterRedux
Senator Ted Cruz raised questions on Wednesday at a private fund-raiser about whether Donald J. Trump, his bombastic rival for the Republican presidential nomination, has the "judgment" to be president and mused about "strength," according to two people who attended the event in Manhattan
The remarks from Mr. Cruz came as he has studiously avoided public criticism of Mr. Trump, who is handily beating the rest of the Republican field in opinion polls.
Mr. Cruz has positioned himself to be the beneficiary of any erosion of support for Mr. Trump. While he has said he doesn't agree with Mr. Trump's proposal for a ban on Muslim immigrants entering the United States, he has taken pains to praise Mr. Trump for making immigration a focal point of his candidacy.
But inside a conference room in a Madison Avenue office, with about 70 people pressed around a table, Mr. Cruz gave a candid assessment of the race, lumping Mr. Trump with another candidate whose supporters the Texas senator hopes to poach, Ben Carson, according to two people present for the remarks.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Perhaps if you listen to him you would see he is, i.e. promising to ban every Muslim from entering the U.S., promising to replace Obamacare with something much better and much cheaper, promising to renegotiate the Iran deal, promising to create a big, beautiful safe zone in Syria, and on and on. Trump's promises far outnumber his concrete proposals for filling them.
I don’t think judgment is Trump’s Achilles heel. Trump’s instincts are actually pretty good. His biggest problem is lack of knowledge outside his field of expertise. He’s similar to Carson in that way. He’s done a fairly decent job of minimizing the damage that shortcoming can potentiaaly cause him, but Trump will have more and more trouble with that as the campaign proceeds. In a one on one debate Cruz could eviscerate Trump. I think Trump knows that. Cruz knows it too but also knows it would be bad for the country for him to do that.
Do you have to meet a dilettante to know they are one? Do you have to meet an amateur, like Obama or Trump, to know they are one? I don’t think so.
Yes, I question his judgement, there is news Trump canceled his trip to Israel after cant take criticism from BIBI.
Wonder at age if he is not going senile.
Which indicates that Trump knows nothing about the insurance industry. I live in Missouri. Say I surf the web and find a company that does business in Texas but does not have any current policy holders in my state. Why would I go to them and say I want to buy their policy? Why would they sell me one? I can use my current health insurance at my doctor because she is in their network. The Texas company has no network established in Missouri so the odds are my doctor won't accept them. Because they have a network in Missouri my insurance company has negotiated discounted rates for the services my doctor provides. The Texas company has no network established, so even if my doctor accepted them as my insurance the Texas company would pay the full cost of the work done. And the odds of the Texas company going to the time and expense of establishing the network in Missouri for a single customer is about zero. So shopping across state lines for health insurance is one of those sound great ideas that really isn't an idea at all.
You know, you’re right. I haven’t met M2T either.
Still, it might have been a benefit to know what Trump’s personal at home thoughts were on the people and policies he was addressing in public.
I’ve got a pretty good idea he wasn’t as complimentary of Hillary or Trump at home.
When you’ve got $3 billion on the line, sometimes you hedge your comments in public.
Sorry you couldn’t figure that out.
I see a lot of that on the forum these days.
In 2011 he said the following in his book:
"Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said Congress had to pass Obamacare so we could find out what's in it. Now we have. And what's inside those 2,733 pages is a job-killing, health care-destroying monstrosity. It can't be reformed, salvaged, or fixed. It's that bad. Obamacare has to be killed now before it grows into an even bigger mess, as it inevitably will."
"One way to infuse more competition into the market is to let citizens purchase health-care plans across state lines. Why not allow people to buy health insurance across state lines and make companies compete the best plans at the best rates?"
Trump, Donald J. (2011-12-06). Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again (p. 131). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.
He also has a chapter on tort reform with loser pay that I did not include in these snips.
That would be one way to criticize him effectively.
If he goes politically correct, everyone will see right through it and he will be in trouble.
Trump might just ask everyone in the next debate to state what country they were born in.
That will leave a mark.
Obama got elected with the two highest vote totals in US history--by far. That is the lesson to be learned by the GOP which has lost the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 elections.
I am serious. Ted Cruz has said he wants to repeal Obamacare, period. No replacement. Not the government's job and not fiscally responsible even if it was.
The Texas senator promised to “pass common sense health care reform that makes health insurance personal and affordable, that keeps government from getting between us and our doctors.â€
They're more doable then promising to ban every Muslim in the world from entering the U.S. or to build a wall along our southern border and get Mexico to pay for it. Or to promise to establish a big, beautiful safe zone in Syria so they don't have to leave.
You are distorting the Trump position. He wants a temporary moratorium on admitting Muslims into this country until our elected representatives can figure out how to address the problem of terrorists entering this country legally. Trump has really raised the larger question of whether the practice of Islam is compatible with our Constitution and Western culture and values. This is a much larger problem that needs to be addressed before admitting millions more of Muslims.
I am confident Trump will build the Wall. There are ways to get Mexico to pay for it including import taxes and tariffs on their goods as a surcharge. Regardless, the Wall will be built for security reasons. Drugs, terrorists, and criminals go across our borders daily.
The Syria safe zone is being touted by a number of candidates. It is a way of saying that we don't need to bring in Syrian refugees and that it is cheaper to support them there than here. And then there are the security concerns.
And Trump is an outsider. I'll take Cruz any day when it comes to knowing how to get things done in D.C.
LOL. Cruz is a pariah in his own party. He has done nothing but tilt at windmills. Green eggs and ham are not the way to get things done in DC.
If this is true, then Cruz is NOT fit to be president or VEEP!
I’m sorry to hear this. Cruz has made an error in judgment here.
Yes, I am aware that he wrote that. I am also aware of his 60 Minutes interview on Sept 27, 2015:
Donald Trump: Obamacare’s going to be repealed and replaced. Obamacare is a disaster if you look at what’s going on with premiums where they’re up 40, 50, 55 percent.
Scott Pelley: How do you fix it?
Donald Trump: There’s many different ways, by the way. Everybody’s got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say because a lot of times they say, “No, no, the lower 25 percent that can’t afford private. But–â€
Scott Pelley: Universal health care.
Donald Trump: I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.
Scott Pelley: The uninsured person is going to be taken care of. How? How?
Donald Trump: They’re going to be taken care of. I would make a deal with existing hospitals to take care of people. And, you know what, if this is probably–
Scott Pelley: Make a deal? Who pays for it?
Donald Trump: –the government’s gonna pay for it.
This is one of hundreds of times Trump has discussed big government healthcare solutions, including nationalized healthcare when he thought Obamacare didn’t go far enough. The fact that he writes one thing and says something different (recently, I might add) again calls into question his judgement. So which is it? What he wrote in his book or what he recently said in a sit down interview on 60 Minutes? Was it what he said before he wrote that particular book? There were no gotcha questions in the interview. No straight answers without being prodded, either.
He was for before he was against it before he was before it. Where have I heard that before?
Donald Trump is an American and a patriot. I don’t, however, like his chameleon political positions nor do I like his advocacy of liberal positions on many other topics.
Trump, hasn't made one gaffe at all; you just don't like him.
Nobody is perfect and Trump is 100% on EVERYTHING that is important; strengthening the military, pro-gun, lower taxes, no COMMIE CORE, no damned PC, protecting America and Americans from our enemies, build the wall, and on and on and on!
So the solution is to have Trump promise everything to everyone, as Obama did, hope that nobody asks how he was going to do it, as nobody asked Obama, and hope that when he's elected people will forget about it? Why not? It's worked so well for the past 8 years.
The Texas senator promised to "pass common sense health care reform that makes health insurance personal and affordable, that keeps government from getting between us and our doctors."
It would help if you read his legislation - Link. In it he repeals Obamacare, it's subsidies and mandates and regulation and restrictions, completely and unequivocally. Added to the legislation is a change to allow purchase of medical insurance across state lines. That is not a replacement. That is I change to current law which really will do nothing to the affordability of health care coverage but also won't require the government to provide or require such insurance. Trump, on the other hand, has promised a big, beautiful, super-colossal replacement for Obamacare that would cover everyone and be super cheap as well - Link. You tell me who has the better idea?
You are distorting the Trump position. He wants a temporary moratorium on admitting Muslims into this country until our elected representatives can figure out how to address the problem of terrorists entering this country legally.
He wants a complete ban on Muslims entering this country for as long as it takes, as you said, for our "elected representatives to figure out how to address the problem of terrorists entering this country legally." So what really do you think is the scope of the solution and how long do you think that will take for Congress to come up with one? A month? A year? Ever? The fact is that Trump's ban is open-ended and impossible to implement.
Trump has really raised the larger question of whether the practice of Islam is compatible with our Constitution and Western culture and values. This is a much larger problem that needs to be addressed before admitting millions more of Muslims.
So what if Trump's answer to that question is "No". Then what?
I am confident Trump will build the Wall. There are ways to get Mexico to pay for it including import taxes and tariffs on their goods as a surcharge.
So if you're funding it through import tariffs and taxes then wouldn't that mean that it'll be the U.S. consumers who is paying for the wall and not Mexico? After all any tariffs and taxes will just be added to the cost of the goods they are buying.
The Syria safe zone is being touted by a number of candidates. It is a way of saying that we don't need to bring in Syrian refugees and that it is cheaper to support them there than here. And then there are the security concerns.
Name one other than Trump. And just how many tens of thousands of U.S. troops will it take to establish the safe zone and keep it safe? How much do you think that'll cost?
Well....in that case.....ok.
Nobody is perfect and Trump is 100% on EVERYTHING that is important; strengthening the military, pro-gun, lower taxes, no COMMIE CORE, no damned PC, protecting America and Americans from our enemies, build the wall, and on and on and on!
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LOL. If that is everything that is important to you in a candidate...
He is pro-gun. But loved the scary assault weapon ban. Maybe he changed his mind on that one. Again.
He is definitely for low taxes. Except even Bernie Sanders liked Trump’s idea of 14.5% tax on the accumulated net-worth of anyone with over $10M. Not income mind you, confiscate 14.5% of their accumulated net-worth. Yes, tax the rich! They can afford it! Are they still doing that Occupy Wall Street thing? Did he change his mind on this too?
You can call Trump a lot of things. You cannot call him a conservative with a straight face.
But I do like his ideas of a wall, kicking out illegals, banning sand people and that he is destroying PC wherever he finds it. It still doesn’t make him conservative. He is a populist.
If you were an HONEST person, you would see that Trump is a true patriot and yes, a CONSERVATIVE !
He wrote a book back in 2000, ‘The America We Deserve’, he talked about the threat of illegals there, bad trade deals as well as the threat of terrorist attacks and mentioned bin laden too.
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