Do you believe Ted Cruz should be eligible to run for president?

With three words presidential hopeful Ted Cruz made one of the greatest cities in the world hate him, briefly united his Democratic rivals and launched a trending hashtag.

“I have concluded without any hesitation, any doubt, that Jeb Bush is worthy to be commander-in-chief on day one”, Graham said Friday at a joint press conference with Bush.

Campaigning Saturday afternoon in South Carolina, Cruz did not hold back when it came to his “friend” Donald Trump. “I think we pride ourselves on being a place of diversity and equality”. He said the mayor “stands with the looters and criminals rather than the fearless men and women in blue”. Cruz himself looked to isolate Trump and his “New York values” – in support of partial-birth abortion, gay marriage and gun control – from a culturally conservative South Carolina GOP electorate.

“If I lose the suit that’s fine, he’s eligible, but if he’s elected and he’s determined to be ineligible after the election, that would cause massive confusion”, Schwartz, a self-described liberal, said.

John Markowski, a minister who was dropping his son off at a public school, said: “It’s insulting for anyone to make a derogatory comment about NY values”.

A Texas lawyer has filed a lawsuit saying Ted Cruz’s status as a “natural born citizen” should be decided by the court system – and Donald Trump is loving it. Cruz was born on Canadian soil to an American-born mother and a Cuban father.

Trump said on ABC’s “This Week” that he doesn’t think Cruz “has a greet chance, to be honest with you”.

Asked by MSNBC Friday about the exchange with Cruz, Trump said, “Y’know, he’s a good debater, but he’s very strident, and a lot of people are not going to like that”. For example, whatever the drafters of 1868’s Fourteenth Amendment may have intended (nobody will ever know for sure), it’s impossible to imagine as a political matter a twenty-first century Supreme Court upending “birthright citizenship” and leaving millions of Hispanic and other Americans in limbo without their national identity as American citizens. And now he is tying the bank loan storyline to Cruz’s recent critique that Trump represents “New York values”, an all-encompassing insult understood by residents in more rural, conservative states like Iowa and SC.

He continues: “Instead of celebrating Christmas, New Yorkers celebrate a pagan holiday called Festivus”.

More than two hours of prime-time argument Thursday presented voters with a sharp contrast to the optimistic vision of America that President Barack Obama painted in his State of the Union address earlier this week.

As for their mutual audience Saturday, opinions appeared hard-baked weeks before Iowa’s February 1 caucuses.