Trump embraces Muslim ban in opening TV ads

Which brings us back to Donald Trump.

A new super PAC ad backing him highlights his opposition to the closure of Gitmo.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, perhaps the most right-wing of the Republican candidates, has explicitly disavowed any criticism of Trump, repeatedly praising him while offering himself as a less eccentric but equally reactionary alternative. Marco Rubio of Florida as a lightweight. The Trump campaign has said they were aware of the footage location.

The survey also asked all registered voters statewide, not just likely voters in the GOP primary, their opinions about the three leading Republican candidates.

POLITICO: “In private conversations with several former aides, Mitt Romney, who in March will keynote the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual fundraising dinner, has expressed rising frustration about Trump’s prolonged lead in polls and has argued that the real-estate mogul could inflict lasting damage on the party’s brand”. “If that happens, I think we could safely say his star has burnt out”. “Scaring people is the fastest way to create an ad that resonates”.

“She’s got the proven ability to get the best out of a hard situation”, he said to a group of volunteers in Dover.

Some are skeptical that anyone can out-Trump Trump. “The ad is confirming things that he’s said repeatedly in speeches”. It is a full embrace of the most incendiary of his proposals, as opposed to the more biographical spots that some other candidates favor. “No one will have great results”. But the conditions are especially ripe in a race where some of the party’s traditional dividing lines have been blurred, where there have been few negative ads until now, and where the ability of the ostensible front-runner, Trump, to drive voters to the polls is in question.

“If we don’t have security, we won’t have a country”, said Lee Guthrie, a 76-year-old retiree who turned out to see Cruz in Guthrie Center, Iowa, on Monday.

Trump’s visit to Lowell, just over the border from New Hampshire, is a shrewd move by his campaign.

“He ll quickly cut off the head of ISIS and take their oil”, added the male speaker, referring to the IS extremist group based in Iraq and Syria that allegedly inspired the couple. But Rubio also must confront Christie, who is ascendant in New Hampshire, which votes about a week after Iowa.

“Up in New Hampshire and MA you have a tremendous problem with drugs and we know where it’s coming from”, Trump said. “You’ll get a president who will destroy terrorists overseas by authorizing whatever tools our commanders need”.

As columnist E.J. Dionne explained, Trump supporters make up only a fraction of those surveyed in most national polls, a small percentage of the actual American electorate. Then comes a United States battleship launching a cruise-missile strike.

His rhetoric is resonating.

Reuters/Ipsos polling showed Trump with 38 percent support among Republican respondents, followed by U.S. Senator Ted Cruz with almost 15 percent, and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson with 12 percent.

Not every Republican is playing along. Sen. He said he figured that advertising would be a waste for him, too. By contrast, he said, Facebook, Instagram and other social media are more conducive to direct videos.

And some Democratic strategists are doubtful that fears of terrorism will ultimately determine the outcome in 2016.

“They’re throwing feces at the wall to see what sticks”, Deace said.

And Clinton leads Sanders nationally by a 17 point margin.

Clinton was an hour late to the event, saying her campaign had to “de-ice” in Cedar Rapids, which took a lot longer than she thought it would. “One of my many rules in politics is don’t look past the next election”.

But at a campaign event in Derry, N.H., on Sunday, Clinton was heckled by a local GOP lawmaker. “I used to tell people: I’ve spent nothing, Jeb spent $59 million, he’s at the bottom of the barrel”.