Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul Quits 2016 GOP Presidential Race

Former President Jimmy Carter surprised reporters in London Wednesday by saying he would choose Donald Trump over Ted Cruz to win the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, “which may surprise some of you”. After a brief effort to appear statesmanlike and spin his success positively, Trump is now accusing Texas Sen.

The first post-Iowa poll in the Granite State shows the billionaire leading the Republican field with 38 per cent of the vote – a far larger number than anyone finished Iowa with and 24 percentage points ahead of his closest rival.

Trump initially tweeted that Cruz “illegally stole” the Iowa caucuses, before deleting the tweet and tweeting again without the word “illegally”.

He criticized Cruz for putting out a statement saying that a fellow candidate, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, was quitting the race, and accused Cruz of lying to thousands of voters about Trump’s policies.

Trump also made mention of a deceptive mailer distributed by the Cruz campaign created to shame Iowa voters into caucusing. Ben Carson qualifies under the third criterion, but it’s unclear whether he will participate, as he plans to skip New Hampshire to focus on campaigning in SC.

Carson thinks this dirty political trick cost him votes.

A near-majority of Iowa Republicans consider themselves evangelical Christians, favoring Cruz and explaining Trump’s late emphasis on church attendance and his childhood Bible.

“Reality just hit the reality star – he lost Iowa and now nobody is talking about him, so he’s popping off on Twitter”, Mr Cruz’s communications director Rick Tyler told Politico in an email.

Meanwhile, the race moves to New Hampshire, where Trump leads and Cruz is in second place in many polls. He congratulated Ted Cruz on his victory. But Carson brought up his own campaign staff shakeup: “When I discovered that there were things in my campaign that I couldn’t agree with after really doing an investigation”.

“Many people voted for Cruz over Carson because of this Cruz fraud”, Trump said of the Cruz campaign’s caucus day actions. “I’m doing this for the first time”.

Trump, who has faced questions from conservatives about how his position on abortion has changed over the years, also took a position on overturning Roe v. Wade, a question he has previously said he would look at “very, very carefully”.