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Posted on 02/13/2016 9:32:01 AM PST by SoConPubbie
These rivals are itching for a fight as South Carolina settles into a two-man race.
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.
"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.
In South Carolina, where polls show Trump with a double-digit lead over Cruz, the senator and his supporters are not holding back. "I've worked campaigns for long time and I've never seen the stuff Cruz is putting out," said one Trump campaign staffer in the state, referring to mailers that question the businessman's conservative credentials.
According to the Real Clear Politics average, Trump is running a solid first in South Carolina with 37 percent, followed by Cruz at 20 percent. (Marco Rubio sits a distant third at 14 percent.)
"As we approach South Carolina, Trump's competitors will grow increasingly desperate," said Seth Weathers, a Trump supporter who briefly served as the businessman's George state director. "Trump's tweet was a reminder that he doesn't take attacks lying down. He never attacks first, but when he responds, he unleashes hell."
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I guess it will be “lose” for you and your candidate.
I didn’t feel like reading the article. How many will be on stage tonight?
If more than 4, I will not watch it.
Gonna be a slugfest. I hope they can both manage to keep it civil. Probably gonna be tough with an audience full of bought-and-paid political stooges.
We’ll find out soon enough!
Does the Left so viciously attack their own the way the Right attacks the Right? Why is the Right kind of self-destructive? I think somewhere along the line, the Prince of Darkness, who is the Accuser of the Brethren, is in there pitching. I think he leaves the Left alone because he’s already got them, but I think he is VERY interested in defeating the Right’s values of Christian freedom and a strong America. I think Satan, like Obama and the Left, hates America.
You have to know among other things, that spiritual warfare is involved in America’s recovery or downfall. Satan hates America and has allies mainly on the Left, so he leaves the Left alone. His main adversary is the Right so he does everything he can to wreak havoc among those on the Right.
TRUMP/CRUZ 2016!!! 16 YEARS OF RECOVERY IN AMERICA!!!
I, for one, hope they manage a spirited debate without sliding off into ugliness. Politico, and the rest of the GOPe cabal, simply want Trump and Cruz to damage themselves, seeing how the GOPe has proven itself feckless in that regard.
Cruz will come across as a Snarky, Preachy, Condescending jerk, you know, himself.
It would be nice if they all surprised us, and stuck to the issues, and reserved their attacks for Clinton, but that’s probably too much to hope for.
Yawn..Nobody cares. Debate is on at 9:00 on a Saturday night before Valentine’s Day. What is this, debate 8? Many of us have better things we will be doing but just to annoy the Cruisers I’ll be voting for Trump on the Drudge and Time polls without even watching....Ted can attack Trump all he wants, but Jonas Nightengale Cruz is not going to win South Carolina...
cruz is on his last gasp, I expect he will pull out the stops. It’s like quick sand, cruz believed his extremely narrow win in Iowa meant he was a front runner. Now that it is becoming clear he is not and is falling in the polls, he is desperate enough to go all out in the debate. It will have the opposite effect that he is hoping for. After SC, or maybe NV, cruz will be able to read the writing on the wall. The really sad thing for cruz is that he has destroyed any future political potential he ever had.
I think it’s safe to say that Trump will act like a total prick as usual.
In all likelihood Ted has also cost himself his Senate seat in 2018 as well. The establishment hates him and will be all in to get that seat back. He’ll be primaried and probably by several candidates to force a runoff. If he survives, he will need to win a general with a party probably hostile to him. Ted would do well to drop out soon, then suck up to future President Trump and look for an AG or SC nomination.
We’ll see. I don’t think it’s impossible that while everyone has been claiming and assuming that Donald Trump would be the one to lose his cool and fly off the handle, it turns out Cruz is the one to lose it. Trump has been tacking toward a more “nice guy” routine since NH (twitter barbs aside). And Cruz is slipping in the polls.
Trump’s rally in Tampa yesterday had a very positive tone and pretty much his only bashing of his fellow candidate was reserved for Yeb!, the rest he saved for Hillary and The Communist. :D
Odd timing for the debates. of course the last one, just a week ago, was the day before Super Bowl Sunday. There just are too many of these debates to the point of becoming repetitious.
I don’t there will be a Drudge poll this time - last time it was on a Saturday he didn’t have it.
Make that:
I don’t THINK there will be a Drudge poll this time - last time it was on a Saturday he didn’t have it.
No one has cared for weeks.
The FR live thread are just people screaming how their candidate “hit it out of the park” or some other platitude. I’ve even stop reading it because I dont learn anything.
At the end the polls will look exactly the same. People will go on with their lives.
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