In first attack, Donald Trump cites ethanol to hit Ted Cruz

Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats on Thursday endorsed Ted Cruz for president, giving the Texas senator’s campaign one of its biggest boosts yet in the first-in-the-country caucus state.

If so, you’ve come to the right place for Trump skepticism. “I understand it. Oil pays him a lot of money”.

“I believe that gravity will bring both of those campaigns down, and I think the lion’s share of their supporters come to us”, said Cruz. Ted Cruz, who has only spoken well of his opponent on the trail.

“You have some reporter named Jacobs, she’s the worst”, Trump said.

He wields such influence, Donald Trump reportedly joked that he’d turn around his plane to join The Family Leader’s presidential forum if Plaats would assure him his support. Cruz also got a key endorsement this week from an influential Iowa evangelical leader. Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother and Cuban father. Asked if she thought Trump would make a good president, she said, “I don’t think that he can do any worse than what we have”. Ted Cruz picked up his third major endorsement in 24 hours, with more yet to come, this time from a man many credit with the rebirth of the modern conservative movement. “While other candidates in this race have gone out of their way to throw rocks at him, to insult him, I have consistently declined to do so and I have no intention of changing that now”. The billionaire businessman questioned the appeal of Cruz, given his opposition to subsidies for ethanol, an corn-based alternative fuel that has been a boom to Iowa’s farm economy.

“Looks like [Cruz] is getting ready to attack”.

Real-estate magnate Donald Trump tweeted a challenge to Sen. Trump, Carson and Cruz are seen favorably by fewer, though more than 60% of Republicans like each of them.

Later Friday morning, Cruz sought to calm the waters with his own tweet – a message that Trump later retweeted and spoke favorably of at the rally.

The Establishment’s only hope: Trump & me in a cage match.

The Texas senator then went on to say: “In the course of a Presidential election, the voters are going to make a decision about every candidate”. Now Rubio has become the Republicans’ best-liked candidate: 71% of Republicans now have a favorable view of Rubio, up 6 points in the last two weeks.

That Cruz bothered pushing back at all shows just how cautious he has been about handling Trump.

“There was one poll – Monmouth”.

“Everything I say, he agrees with me – no matter what I say”, Trump said. You’re going to be so sick of me.

“If we win Iowa”, he said, “I think we’re going to win everything after that”. I also do poorly with the Bloomberg polls.

Arthur Sanders, a political science professor at Drake University in Des Moines Iowa, says Cruz has been running his campaign at a marathon pace and it’s paying off.

The ouster of Assad, Cruz said, could result in “radical jihadis” controlling Syria, leading to more problems for the United States.