Bloomberg: “For months, Jeb Bush and the super-PAC supporting him have dominated the airwaves in the states that will cast early votes in the in the Republican presidential campaign. But in the last four weeks, Marco Rubio and his allied super-PAC have pulled ahead of his one-time political mentor turned presidential rival.”
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GOP Image Takes a Hit During Primary Battle
“The tumultuous race for the Republican nomination is taking a toll on the GOP’s image, with more than four-in-ten voters saying that the primary contest has soured their perceptions of the Republican Party — more so than impressions of the Democrats,” according to the latest NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll.
“In the poll, 42% of registered voters said the primary race has made them feel less favorable about the GOP, compared to just 19% who said they feel more favorable. Thirty-eight percent said the brawl for the Republican nomination hasn’t changed their view of the party as a whole.”
Christie Says Rubio Won’t Look at Him
Gov. Chris Christie told Time that the most telling moment of the recent Republican debate came after Marco Rubio “couldn’t look at me in the eye” when the New Jersey governor was responding to an attack.
Said Christie: “I think that’s just a sign of his inexperience and if he can’t look me in the eye, he’s not going to be able to look Hillary Clinton in the eye, he’s certainly not going to be able to look Vladimir Putin in the eye.”
Trump Leads in South Carolina
A new Opinion Savvy survey in South Carolina finds Donald Trump leading the GOP presidential field with 32%, followed by Ted Cruz at 18%, Jeb Bush at 13%, Marco Rubio at 11% and Ben Carson at 9%.
Jeb Bush and an Uncouth Race
The New York Times notes that the “era of polite and high society — on the courts and playing fields of New England, in the halls of boarding schools and in the corridors of government — is fast fading. And in many ways, the travails of Mr. Bush’s presidential campaign can be seen as perhaps the last, wheezing gasp of the WASP power structure.”
“Against a frustrated, profoundly un-WASP-like Republican electorate that craves the visceral pugnaciousness of Donald J. Trump or the outsider anger of Senator Ted Cruz, Mr. Bush’s family values — of cordial restraint, of civil discourse, of earnest public service — can seem almost quaint.”
Trump Hints at Big Endorsement
Donald Trump says in a Facebook post that he’ll have a “special guest” at an Iowa event tomorrow.
Early speculation is that Sarah Palin will endorse Trump at the rally.
The Establishment Candidate Must Win Somewhere
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Has Donald Trump Met His Match In Ted Cruz?
Rick Klein: “Consider how Cruz is handling Trump – and yes, it’s Cruz handling Trump, and not the other way around. Trump has been trying to draw him out for months with small and often veiled attacks. Cruz refused to engage. Then the birther buzz began, courtesy of Trump. Cruz found an opening for what may go down as the most effective attacks of the race: ‘New York values.'”
“Cruz took his lumps for it. But he knows that being attacked by The New York Daily News, Bill de Blasio, and, especially, Hillary Clinton is a good thing in the Democratic primary. He’s now focused scrutiny on Trump’s past statements and positions – scrutiny he’s been able to avoid via his own bluster and media ubiquity until now.”
“Cruz has vulnerabilities of his own, including some that are only just now surfacing. Trump is now unloading on a man he now calls ‘a nasty guy’ whom ‘nobody likes.’ Cruz is savvy enough to know what kind of words hurt, and what’s just noise.”
RNC Officially Severs Ties with NBC on Debate
The RNC officially severed ties with NBC for what was supposed to be a Feb. 26 Republican primary debate in Houston, Politico reports.
“The committee voted via conference call Monday after negotiations with NBC failed, two sources familiar with the call confirmed. The RNC initially suspended the relationship with NBC on Oct. 30, following a debate on CNBC that angered many of the campaigns and the RNC for the network’s handling of the debate format and the moderators’ line of questioning.”
Obama Plans ‘Audacious’ Executive Actions
President Obama’s pledge to pursue “audacious” executive action during his final year in office is stirring a frenzy of speculation about what he might have up his sleeve, The Hill reports.
“With only 12 months left in office, the president is increasingly constrained in what he can accomplish. Finalizing executive orders and regulations takes time, and the administration is already scrambling to put in place dozens of executive orders and regulations that have already been announced.”
U.K. Lawmakers Debate Banning Trump
Debate began in the British Parliament over whether to ban Donald Trump from visiting the United Kingdom, the Washington Post reports.
“The debate, which was started by an online petition that described Trump’s comments about Muslims as ‘hate speech,’ will not produce any binding decisions. Authority to ban someone from the country rests with the home secretary, not with Parliament. But the debate will give British lawmakers an unusual chance to weigh in directly on U.S. politics.”
British members of Parliament have called him “a buffoon,” “a demagogue,” “a joke.” One member called him “an idiot” about five times in three minutes.
Trump Courts Evangelical Voters
Donald Trump called on Christians to “band together” and “unify” at an address to Liberty University students, Politico reports.
Said Trump: “Christianity, it’s under siege. We don’t band together. Other religions, frankly, they’re banding together… we have to unify.”
New York Times: “In dozens of interviews with evangelical voters in 16 states, from every region of the country outside the Northeast, those supporting Mr. Trump sounded a familiar refrain: that his heart was in the right place, that his intentions for the country were pure, that he alone was capable of delivering to a troubled country salvation in the here-and-now.”
Does GOP Establishment Have an Opening?
First Read: “The Trump vs. Cruz battle is getting uglier and uglier… If this continues over the next two weeks, then the GOP establishment has the opening it’s been waiting for.”
Bonus Quote of the Day
“I think Ted once again is trying to be Mr. Ivy League cute. He’s Harvard and Princeton, he’s federal court clerkships, he’s government jobs, and somehow he’s an outsider? If you took his name off and you put that résumé down, that would look like the consummate Washington insider.”
— Gov. Chris Christie, blasting Sen. Ted Cruz in an interview with Time.
Democratic Debate Was Most Watched of Cycle
Last night’s Democratic presidential debate was seen by 12.5 million viewers across all platforms, making it the most-watched broadcast network Democratic debate of the 2016 campaign so far and the third-highest rated Democratic debate in history, according to a NBC News press release.
Looking for Simple Answers to Complex Questions
Gerald Seib: “Two debates held in recent days, one among Republicans and the other among Democrats, revealed a stark reality of the 2016 presidential campaign: We are in a time of complicated questions in search of simple answers.”
“That is a dynamic that works to the advantage of candidates with clear and simple philosophies (think Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders) and to the disadvantage of candidates more in the center, offering nuanced solutions rather than quick fixes (think Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush).”
“This trend is fueled by the fact that each party’s base has moved toward the ideological wings of the left and right, where the world looks black and white, not gray.”
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‘Will Hillary Clinton Get Prosecuted?’
The Hill: “Some of the top trending questions on Google during Sunday’s Democratic presidential debate related to Hillary Clinton’s legal troubles… Two of the top five questions relating to Clinton implicitly concern the FBI investigation into the private email server she used as secretary of State.”
