A new Bloomberg/Purple Strategies poll finds 65% of likely 2016 Republican primary voters favor Donald Trump’s call to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the U.S., while more than a third say it makes them more likely to vote for him.
Said pollster Doug Usher: “This indicates that, despite some conventional wisdom expressed in the last 48 hours, this is unlikely to hurt Trump at least in the primary campaign.”
Donald Trump was interviewed by Barbara Walters on ABC News:
WALTERS: Are you a bigot?
TRUMP: Not at all. Probably the least of anybody you’ve ever met.
WALTERS: Because?
TRUMP: ‘Cause I’m not! I’m a person that has common sense, I’m a smart person, I know how to run things, I know how to make America great again.
“Cruz is like Trump, but at a toned-down level.”
— Iowa state Sen. Jake Chapman (R), quoted by Bloomberg, explaining his support of Sen. Ted Cruz for president.
First Read: “The Clinton campaign is out with a web video tying Trump to the rest of the GOP field – highlighting Ted Cruz’s and Jeb Bush’s preference to allow Christian Syrian refugees into the U.S., and Chris Christie saying he wouldn’t bring in Syrian orphans under the age of 5.”
First Read: “Our prediction: The Republican Party will not surrender and let Trump be its nominee without a protracted fight.”
“The reason: The GOP’s majorities hang in the balance. While none of these folks in charge of winning House/Senate elections want Trump at the top of the GOP ticket, many MIGHT welcome a Trump independent candidacy. Why? It might giftwrap the presidency for the Democrats, but it would potentially bring more right-leaning folks to the polls, and there aren’t many three-way races down the ballot. Could a Trump indie candidacy save the Senate for the GOP? Something to ponder.”
“Strikingly, however, none of the 2016 Republican candidates was willing to say that they would not vote for Trump if he became the GOP nominee.”
For members: How Trump holds immense power over the Republican party.
Jeb Bush told MSNBC that Donald Trump’s is trying to capitalize on the public’s fears with his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country.
Said Bush: “He’s not going to be the nominee. He’s not a serious candidate. He’s an entertainer. These utterances that he makes shows that in serious times, we need a real leader and I believe my life experience puts me in a good position. Americans are scared. Republicans and Democrats alike are very scared with the situation we have now, but to make his proposals out there just to basically — these are dog whistle proposals to prey on people’s fears and consume the news. It’s not a serious campaign.”
“On the campaign trail, Chris Christie has largely succeeded in cutting off questions about the George Washington Bridge lane closings with this stock reply: Three separate probes failed to find a shred of evidence linking him directly to the political payback scheme,” the Bergen Record reports.
“But Christie didn’t count on his own erstwhile dining partner Donald J. Trump, who reached his own conclusions without subpoenas or emails or a grand jury. Trump says anything he wants, drawing heavily on hearsay and suspicion. And that’s precisely why Trump is suddenly so dangerous to Christie.”
Said Trump: “The George Washington Bridge — he knew about it. He totally knew.”
Donald Trump told the Washington Post he’s staying in the presidential race until the end.
Said Trump: “I will never leave the race.”
When asked again, he waved one arm over his head, as if to clear away everything and remove all doubt: “I. Will. Never. Leave. This. Race.”
Sen. Ted Cruz “has taken his evangelicals-focused Iowa playbook to South Carolina — and conservative leaders in the state say that it’s starting to work,” Politico reports.
“Now, there are signs that the same Christian conservatives-focused approach Cruz used to surge in Iowa, largely at Carson’s expense, is making him a formidable candidate in South Carolina as well, a state in which 65 percent of Republican primary voters in 2012 identified themselves in exit polls as “born-again or evangelical Christians.” Evangelicals are particularly concentrated here in the deeply religious Upstate region.”
A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds that 54% of Americans, including about three-quarters of Republicans, about half of independents and over a third of Democrats, said the United States takes in too many immigrants from the Middle East.
By contrast, 46% of Americans, including 6 in 10 Republicans, slightly under half of independents and 3 in 10 Democrats, said the U.S. takes too many immigrants from Latin America.
“I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to ISIS.”
— Donald Trump, in an interview with ABC News.
“BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith told staff in a memo on Tuesday that it’s permissible for them to call Donald Trump a racist as a fact on social media,” Politico reports.
“Donald Trump continues to go where no recent candidate for president has gone before, plunging the Republican Party — and the nation — into another round in the tumultuous debate about immigration, national identity, terrorism and the limits of tolerance,” the Washington Post reports.
“Nothing in modern politics equates with the kind of rhetoric now coming from Candidate Trump. There are no perfect analogies. One must scroll back decades for echoes, however imperfect, of what he is saying, from the populist and racially based appeals of then-Alabama Gov. George Wallace in 1968 and 1972 to the anti-Semitic diatribes of the radio preacher Charles Coughlin during the 1930s.”
Politico: “With the Iowa caucuses just 55 days away, Republicans are beginning to see Trump as a dire threat to their majorities on Capitol Hill. And they’re warning that the GOP poll leader, who this week called for a ban on Muslims entering the country, will cause irreparable harm to the party.”
“From vulnerable senators to top party officials, the fear is palpable and bursting into public view. Congressional Republicans face a tough 2016 landscape even without Trump. Senate Republicans are clinging to a four-seat majority as they defend 24 seats versus just 10 for Democrats. And House Republicans are expecting to lose roughly a dozen seats in 2016. Trump’s rhetoric, they fear, could cause those losses to grow substantially.”
A new CNN/WBUR poll in New Hampshire finds Donald Trump leading with 32%, followed by Marco Rubio at 14%, Chris Christie at 9% and Jeb Bush at 8%, John Kasich at 7% and Ted Cruz at 6%.
Joe Biden told Bloomberg that Donald Trump’s call to stop Muslims from coming to the U.S. is dangerous and predicted that if Trump wins the Republican nomination for president, Hillary Clinton “wins in a walk.”
Said Biden: “I don’t know what his motive is, but I know what he’s preaching is a very, very dangerous brew for America.”
He added: “I believe he’s smart enough to know half of what he’s saying makes no sense: Build a wall? He’s got to build a wall that’s the best wall and the highest wall? A lot of this is showmanship.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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