Ted Cruz Secures Trifecta of Key Iowa Endorsements

Both went on to win the state’s caucuses.

“I would say that we would certainly have things in mind for Ted”, he said.

“My approach – much to the frustration of the media – has been to bear-hug both of them and smother them with love”, Cruz said of Trump and Carson in the leaked audio.

Cruz sought to join forces with Trump by tweeting Friday that “The Establishment’s only hope: Trump & me in a cage match”.

“Not a lot of Evangelicals come out of Cuba in all fairness”, Trump told the crowd in an apparent shot Cruz’s heritage. But now that it looks like his turn in the spotlight is nearing (a poll out this week found the Texas senator leading in Iowa for the first time), Cruz appears to be bucking up to directly challenge his old buddy – at least behind closed doors.

“I’m not going to comment on what I may or may not have said at a private fundraiser”, he said.

Trump and Cruz have refused to attack each other over the course of the Republican campaign, as each appeals to the same disaffected GOP voters.

Yet another poll from Iowa released on Monday by CNN has Trump comfortably ahead in the Hawkeye state and most polls still have him with a double-digit lead nationally.

The chances of endorsing Cruz were bolstered when Perkins’ close friend from their days in Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, dropped out of the race. “We have to create a safe zone someplace in Syria but I don’t want them coming into this country because we don’t know who they are”.

Rubio, who has been running an increasingly aggressive campaign against Cruz, was in Iowa on Thursday.

Earlier this week, Cruz rejected Trump’s proposal to bar most Muslims from traveling to the United States, but he did not blast it in the way that other candidates did.

Trump, who has said that Cruz would have to attack him first before he’d fire back, seized the opportunity. Several conservatives courted the endorsement of Vander Plaats, most lately at a presidential forum in November hosted by the Family Leader. Men prefer Cruz (29%) and Trump (24%) over Rubio (12%) and Carson (12%).

RealClearPolitics shows Donald Trump continues to lead the candidates, with Cruz in second place and Sen. “I believe that gravity will bring both of those campaigns down”.

Over the summer, the pair even held a joint rally in front of the Capitol protesting President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. “As Ben Carson’s stock has fallen, Cruz has been able to corral most of those voters”, said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute in West Long Branch, NJ.