Endorsements play minor role in GOP race so far

Ted Cruz is snapping at his heels. Those delegations, in turn, could help swing a contested nomination in favor of a particular candidate. “Of all the reasons to dislike (Marco) Rubio, surely the greatest is that he’s the only Republican who consistently outpolls Mrs. Clinton in general election matchups”.

After all, the functional difference between someone like Cruz and someone like Rubio is small.

The criticism may presage a strategy to challenge Christie’s conservative credentials and his ascendancy in the first-in-the-nation primary state where he’s heavily invested his campaign.

New Hampshire’s primary is February 9. A senior Cruz campaign official, granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking, called Trump a “formidable opponent” when asked Tuesday about the prospect of a two-man race.

“I introduced an amendment that said anyone here illegally is permanently ineligible for citizenship”.

The Real Clear Politics poll average has Cruz second nationally among Republican voters at 16.3 percent. Another survey put out a day later by CNN, however, found the gap between the two to be much wider – 21 points.

Last weekend, the New York Times, in a front-page article, noted that Trump may be holding his own in the polls (though Cruz seems to have pulled ahead of Trump in Iowa), but has not got the kind of ground-level organization in Iowa that historically has taken candidates from wannabes to winners. It’s a point that has not been lost on Cruz as he rethinks the architecture of the race. Cruz is expected to spend much of January solidifying his lead in Iowa, where he has risen from the middle of the pack to front-runner status over the course of two months. “They’re confused their golden children are not succeeding in the polls”.

When it comes to favorability ratings, both Trump and Clinton are under water. He has unified a formerly disparate counter-establishment of right-wing conservatives, shutting out potential competitors like Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal, and putting himself in a place to either win a match-up with an “establishment”-centered candidate, or-if those candidates falter-offer himself as the only one who could beat a true insurgency in the form of Trump”.

And those candidates – Bush, Christie, Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich – are all running closely together in recent polls behind Trump. “I think we’ve got to write rules that if someone behaves this way you disqualify yourself”.

But Trump’s by far the worst. Trump raised questions Sunday about Cruz’s temperament and judgment, saying he had been “frankly like a little bit of a maniac” in the Senate.

A word of caution to those Democrats, particularly those supporting Hillary Clinton, openly rooting for Donald Trump to win the Republican presidential nomination.

For months, Cruz’s allies and supporters have watched Trump’s campaign with mixed feelings.

Despite the target now firmly on his back, Cruz is appearing increasingly confident about his chance in Iowa, boasting to reporters Wednesday in Oklahoma that he was winning in Iowa by “a significant margin” and once again predicting a two-man race between him and Donald Trump. Twenty-three percent of voters said they would be proud to have Trump as president, compared with 33% who would be proud to see Clinton elected.

Donald Trump has broken numerous rules of presidential politics: He’s insulted war heroes and minority groups, eschewed New Hampshire’s tradition of retail politics, and phoned in interviews to networks while other candidates jockey for facetime. “He’s never been in the fight before”.

“It was certainly educational for me, and, hopefully, showed them not all politicians, in particular Republicans, feel the way that Donald Trump does”, Flake said.