Cruz Wraps Up Southern State Tour with Stop in Tulsa

“He stands up to Washington he exposes their corruption and I donate every time he does”, another said. “Obsequious pandering to Trump belies Cruz’s well-honed reputation as a maverick standing up to party leadership in defense of conservative principles”, the editorial board recently wrote. “They’re confused their golden children are not succeeding in the polls”. That only proved true for Carson, whose frontrunner status has slipped away as national security has come to the forefront of the race following terrorist attacks in Paris and California.

The tour, with Cruz and his family and aides traveling by chartered jet, has a general-election, big-time feel.

The ultra-friendly crowd ate up the presidential hopeful’s goals.

Cruz has targeted Super Tuesday states where voters head to the polls on March 1, concentrating on several Southern states where he is particularly popular among conservatives. “I just think what Rubio has done on immigration is one of the worst, worst machinations in politics that I’ve ever seen”, the Senate minority leader said. But Cruz says his amendment was clearly a “poison pill”, created to show the Democrats’ hypocrisy. His campaign increasingly believes the race for the Republican presidential nomination will come down to him and Trump.

Who’s more responsible for turning Cruz into a strict opponent of legalization, Rubio or Trump?

Cruz is also attracting more arrows from the candidates who have essentially based their entire campaigns in Iowa. The Florida senator and his campaign have aggressively sought to show he and Cruz have similar positions on immigration, which Cruz has dismissed as an attempt to muddy the waters.

The River Valley Teenage Republicans, most too young to vote but all working to build support for their candidate, have been quietly working to build Arkansas support for the Texas senator in his White House bid.

Rubio also panned Cruz for reversing himself by voting against $3 billion in cuts to a crop insurance program.

Cruz has looked to characterize recent attacks like these in Iowa and elsewhere as a validation of his campaign’s strength, taking the most pride in the daily hits from Marco Rubio’s campaign.

In fact, Cruz’s campaign believes Rubio has only helped Cruz by accelerating the sharpening of their contrasts on the issues – and rallying prominent conservative figures to Cruz’s side in the process.

Although Trump leads in many national polls, Cruz appears to be successful in drumming up support among conservatives in Arkansas, getting 72 of the 137 votes cast in the state party’s straw poll in early December.

Rubio’s campaign maintained Wednesday that Cruz still is not being forthcoming on a range of issues that go beyond immigration. “We still don’t know Sen”.

As he began the trip, Cruz took steps to fix damage sustained in a fight with Florida Sen. Yet Cruz, a hard-liner on immigration, sponsored an amendment to the bill that would have allowed legal status – but not citizenship – for those in the United States.

His next stops are in Tulsa and Oklahoma City on Wednesday.

Although Cruz still follows Trump by a gap of 21 percent, he has gained 2 percentage points since the last CNN/ORC poll, taken in November.

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, a Republican, led the effort to get Southern states to group their primaries together, hoping to increase the region’s clout.