Cruz cheated?

[baddog]

2 hours ago, Mr.Green Jeans said:

If Trump wins South Carolina he may well run the table.

A while back, I stated in a Trump thread that he rubbed people the wrong way and it was actually what made him attractive. His anti-political correctness is very popular. It shows that he indeed has a "pair" and that he actually uses them. Something that has truly been missing with our current administration. I mean, who cares how big your pair is if you don't use them? I also said he would probably be our next president. Still a long way to go, but he is still there and in front. 

[tvc184]

8 hours ago, Mr.Green Jeans said:

If Trump wins South Carolina he may well run the table.

He could. I don't think he will win all of the Super Tuesday elections but he doesn't have to win them all.  

[tvc184]

5 hours ago, baddog said:

A while back, I stated in a Trump thread that he rubbed people the wrong way and it was actually what made him attractive. His anti-political correctness is very popular. It shows that he indeed has a "pair" and that he actually uses them. Something that has truly been missing with our current administration. I mean, who cares how big your pair is if you don't use them? I also said he would probably be our next president. Still a long way to go, but he is still there and in front. 

Trump has a built in advantage over almost everyone else in the race. 

If anyone says the wrong thing or gets caught in some lie or scandal, his/her career is over. Trump is in a nothing to lose position. Be is a billionaire and will be so when this is over. For an office holder, a slip of the tongue, even if it is true or half the people agreed with it, can bring a quick end. 

Trump isn't brave or being truthful. In fact he says things off the cuff that are certainly wrong. He is like a comedian that uses profanity just to do so to get laughs. It doesn't change the joke but we all snicker like junior high school students that heard a no-no. Trump does the same as he is in a no lose situation. 

His money and property holdings will be there if he wins or loses. No matter the outcome, it will not hamper any future real estate deals. 

That is a huge advantage that has nothing to do with knowledge, skill, stance, etc. 

[baddog]

Cant disagree. No one has a "stance" until elected. Then, and only then, will we know where any of them really stand. Trump is just pushing the right buttons....and it is working.

[PAMFAM10]

Trump is not responsible for anything in D.C. That's his biggest advantage. 

He's the most popular thing in politics if he can get his voters to the polls he at least win the R nomination.(I think he will fail to do so).

[Hagar]

Saw an interview with him after debate.  When ask if he'd appoint conservative SCJ, he attacked Bush's appointment of CJ Roberts.  He never answered the question.  He may not have been a politician, but he's evolving into one pretty fast.  

[shovel]

I've got to ask... Is there anyone on this board that is voting for Trump?  Of all the people I talk with, I know of one person that is a Trump fan. Most people I've talked with are no longer looking at Trump as a good candidate.  Maybe my world is too small!

[smitty]

1 hour ago, shovel said:

I've got to ask... Is there anyone on this board that is voting for Trump?  Of all the people I talk with, I know of one person that is a Trump fan. Most people I've talked with are no longer looking at Trump as a good candidate.  Maybe my world is too small!

Trump is kind of getting on my nerves.  I think he was exposed in this last debate.  Hopefully it'll be Cruz that will eventually breaks out.  It appears, as has been stated here before, that Trump is obama in different clothing.

[BS Wildcats]

6 hours ago, smitty said:

Trump is kind of getting on my nerves.  I think he was exposed in this last debate.  Hopefully it'll be Cruz that will eventually breaks out.  It appears, as has been stated here before, that Trump is obama in different clothing.

Has been a dem supporter since the Carter days.  He is in no way a Republican(RINO).

[PN-G bamatex]

6 hours ago, smitty said:

Trump is kind of getting on my nerves.  I think he was exposed in this last debate.  Hopefully it'll be Cruz that will eventually breaks out.  It appears, as has been stated here before, that Trump is obama in different clothing.

He's just now getting on your nerves?

[PN-G bamatex]

One of the things I noticed at the end of the debate Saturday night was that when the candidates were all shaking each other's hands, Carson didn't shake Cruz's. Instead, the two just looked at each other. Cruz gave his normal grin and Carson gave the closest thing I've ever seen to a look of contempt on Ben Carson's face. I thought that was a telling moment. Then I saw the article below and realized exactly why Carson had that look on his face:

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In addition to this article, which contains the voicemails the Cruz campaign left on the phones of Cruz supporters in Iowa the night of the caucus, I also came across another I found interesting:

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I've heard of campaigns sending cease and desist letters for "slanderous" political ads before. I've never heard of a television station's legal counsel considering the letter's accusations substantive enough to take the ad down. What that means is that whatever it is the Cruz PAC's political ads said about Rubio in the ad, the station taking the money for the ads thought they were far enough off the mark - far enough beyond the normal embellishment you see in political ads - to invite too much risk of a lawsuit. That's pretty eye-opening. Throw in the fact that the Cruz PAC that created the ad, perhaps ironically named "Stand for Truth," is having its donations funneled to it through "a high number of companies" - a move that I can only guess is designed to obscure the identities of the actual donors - and things just get that much more suspect, in my opinion.

Donald Trump is just about the last person on earth I want to agree with right now. But he's onto something here.

[Mr.Green Jeans]

I am going to make a statement about Ted Cruz that may offend some people so here it is.  Mr. Cruz made a big effort to support the Kountze Cheerleader Case,  but never spoke of. or asked for justice about the Kountze Church Burning.  Can someone help make sense of this?

[Hagar]

11 hours ago, PN-G bamatex said:

One of the things I noticed at the end of the debate Saturday night was that when the candidates were all shaking each other's hands, Carson didn't shake Cruz's. Instead, the two just looked at each other. Cruz gave his normal grin and Carson gave the closest thing I've ever seen to a look of contempt on Ben Carson's face. I thought that was a telling moment. Then I saw the article below and realized exactly why Carson had that look on his face:

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In addition to this article, which contains the voicemails the Cruz campaign left on the phones of Cruz supporters in Iowa the night of the caucus, I also came across another I found interesting:

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I've heard of campaigns sending cease and desist letters for "slanderous" political ads before. I've never heard of a television station's legal counsel considering the letter's accusations substantive enough to take the ad down. What that means is that whatever it is the Cruz PAC's political ads said about Rubio in the ad, the station taking the money for the ads thought they were far enough off the mark - far enough beyond the normal embellishment you see in political ads - to invite too much risk of a lawsuit. That's pretty eye-opening. Throw in the fact that the Cruz PAC that created the ad, perhaps ironically named "Stand for Truth," is having its donations funneled to it through "a high number of companies" - a move that I can only guess is designed to obscure the identities of the actual donors - and things just get that much more suspect, in my opinion.

Donald Trump is just about the last person on earth I want to agree with right now. But he's onto something here.

Wow PNGtex, I'm beginning to think you're not a Cruz supporter lol.  

Based on your previous post, you are supporting Rubio, who is second, to Cruz, on my Christmas list.    Since all your post indicate to me you're extremely knowledgable, and thorough, I can't call you out in the street at noon with colts blazing.  Doubt I'd clear leather  

So here's some questions on the link on this post about Super Pacs, of which my knowledge is limited to what I've heard on the news and is mostly derogatory.  Aren't they "separate" from the candidate?  Aren't most funded by  companies, and organizations/groups with their own interests?

And unfortunately, like a garter snake is not poisonous, I still can't stand them, the fact that the link was from CNN automatically activates my skepticism.  Regardless of that, with Trump leading poll after poll, it pains me to see Cruz & Rubio going after each other.  

 

 

[PN-G bamatex]

13 hours ago, REBgp said:

Wow PNGtex, I'm beginning to think you're not a Cruz supporter lol.  

Based on your previous post, you are supporting Rubio, who is second, to Cruz, on my Christmas list.    Since all your post indicate to me you're extremely knowledgable, and thorough, I can't call you out in the street at noon with colts blazing.  Doubt I'd clear leather  

So here's some questions on the link on this post about Super Pacs, of which my knowledge is limited to what I've heard on the news and is mostly derogatory.  Aren't they "separate" from the candidate?  Aren't most funded by  companies, and organizations/groups with their own interests?

And unfortunately, like a garter snake is not poisonous, I still can't stand them, the fact that the link was from CNN automatically activates my skepticism.  Regardless of that, with Trump leading poll after poll, it pains me to see Cruz & Rubio going after each other.  

I'm not the expert on this, so take what I say with a grain of salt. But I've talked about it a lot with a friend who did finance for one of the presidential campaigns (not the one that was a student here last semester), and this is how I understand it.

Super PACs are, by law, required to be separate from the campaign, and are not allowed to coordinate with the campaign. In reality, though, the line of separation often isn't as absolute as it's supposed to be. It's not uncommon to see people who once worked on the campaign working on the PAC, or who once worked on the PAC taking a position with the campaign, or a top campaign donor founding or holding some kind of leadership position in the PAC, or people who worked with the candidate or a top-ranked campaign official in previous capacities taking a position with the PAC, or something of the like.

In my opinion, PACs are often just there to do the dirty work the campaigns don't want to be directly tied to. If Candidate A wants to be positive, often times the negative attack ads against Candidates B and C will be run by one of the PACs that support Candidate A, instead of by Candidate A's campaign itself. This isn't always the case, but it happens a lot. The PACs try to complement the campaign strategies.

PACs do often take massive donations from companies. The whole reason PACs exist is to absorb the corporate donations that the campaigns themselves can't take because of federal campaign spending limits, so it's not unusual for them to take donations from companies. What stands out to me here is that a "high number" of companies are backing this PAC, but it's raised virtually no money; it's the second worst PAC in terms of fundraising of any of the major GOP candidates. That means lots small donations are coming in from lots of companies, as opposed to large donations coming in from a smaller number of companies, as is usual with PACs. That raises my suspicions about what's going on. Are there just a bunch of mid-sized and small corporations backing Cruz, or are people using shell companies to channel donations to the PAC? I don't know, but I would find it odd if a guy whose wife works for Goldman Sachs, who took out loans from Goldman Sachs and Citibank to finance his original Senate campaign and who I personally know is recruiting former officials with major financial institutions to both donate to and staff his campaign is getting a bunch of small corporate donations as opposed to a few big ones.

Where CNN's concerned, while I understand suspecting bias, CNN can't change the facts, just the way it presents them. At the end of the day, a pro-Cruz PAC with some peculiar characteristics still had an ad attacking Rubio pulled off the airwaves by media group's legal department.

As for who I support, I've said openly that I'm a Rubio fan in prior posts. My mail-in ballot is already filled out and waiting for me to drop it off at the post office with the box beside Rubio's name filled in. He's my candidate. But that's really beside the point. I didn't vote for Cruz in the Republican Senate primary back in 2012. I voted for Dewhurst, in part because I felt Dewhurst had proven himself a capable, policy-oriented legislator during his tenure as Lieutenant Governor, and in part because even back then, I had my own reservations about Cruz, a Bush administration official suddenly turned Tea Party conservative. Since Cruz took office, he's only really done one thing in the Senate that I find praiseworthy, which was defending gun rights after Sandy Hook. Other than that, his term in the Senate, in my (admittedly unpopular on this site) opinion, has been an abysmal failure. Frankly, the only reason I think conservatives have trouble finding blemishes on Cruz's record is because there really isn't that much of a record to find blemishes on. It is completely void of policy achievements. In that sense, he's a conservative Senator Barack Obama circa 2008. Like Obama during his four years in the Senate, Cruz has passed no major legislation, has proposed no real legislative solution to any of the country's pressing problems, and has no objective success to his name. Literally all he's done is filibuster until he was blue in the face, force a government shutdown, change his positions on various issues the moment controversy cropped up around them (another one of Obama's real talents), voted to make massive cuts in defense spending and criticized every element of the national leadership at every available opportunity (something Obama was quite skilled at as a senator as well, though Obama was never as aggravated or direct and played nicer with his own party). Cruz's sole policy initiative was the amendment he proposed to the immigration reform bill, which he now distances himself from as an attempt to kill that same bill, another Cruz claim I find hard to believe having watched Cruz during the debates for that very amendment. And despite not even trying to get something done, he still has the audacity to attack other candidates for trying to find solutions and actually getting things done.

I get being anti-establishment. Four years ago, I wasn't particularly happy with the Republican establishment, myself. I still consider myself to be outside the party mainstream, even though it's moved much closer to where I stand than it used to be. On that note, in terms of policy alone, I align more with Cruz than any other candidate except Rubio. But there's a difference between being anti-establishment and being outright obstructionist. Cruz is the latter, and it seems apparent to me that he's assumed that role for no other reason than to lay the groundwork for a campaign for the presidency that rests on that very persona. Throw in suspect campaign practices, and I just plain don't trust the guy. It's for that very reason that despite agreeing with them less, I would vote for Bush, Kasich, and Carson all before I would vote for Cruz if Rubio weren't in the race. As much as I dislike Donald Trump, if it were between he and Cruz, I would still have reservations about voting for Cruz. And if Cruz (or Trump, for that matter) gets the nomination, I may, for the first time in my life, consider supporting someone other than the Republican candidate for the presidency.

Above all else, that's the part that really concerns me. Me, a millennial that's been a Republican literally all his life, being put in a position where I have to entertain the possibility that Gary Johnson could get my vote. I'm not the only one facing that decision.

The GOP has more support among millennials right now than I think it's ever had. The economy sucks, recent college graduates are looking for jobs to pay off all this student loan debt and the social progress fatigue the country had in the late seventies is setting back in. I've personally been surprised at how many people my age have expressed openness to voting for a GOP contender. Rubio and Kasich both have surprising amounts of millennial appeal, and Rand, as we all know, was almost exclusively supported by millennials. Jeb's even managed to get a little of it despite his last name. About a week ago, I was shocked when I gave a Hispanic UT law student a ride home and he, who I would characterize as a moderate, told me out of the blue that if Rubio got the nomination, he'd vote for him in a heartbeat. The number of ostensibly anti-GOP students saying things like that has actually thrown me off; I'm not used to having somewhat popular political opinions among others in my generation. But we're at a point right now where two of the three frontrunners for the GOP nomination would squander every bit of that millennial support. I go on Facebook, Twitter or GroupMe (that's a group messaging app) right now and almost every political meme I see from another millennial is aimed at one of three people: Trump, Cruz and Hillary.

I go to arguably the most conservative major law school in the country (I realize that comes as a surprise in reference to UT; understand that I'm referring to the law school, not the undergraduate campus, where the political climate is very, very different). The UT chapter of the Federalist Society, the organization for conservative lawyers and law school students, is the second largest in the country, behind only Harvard, a law school with three times as many students as UT. The ratio of conservative and liberal law school students, at least in my class, has almost reached parity. UT publishes the nation's most prominent conservative law review, the Texas Review of Law & Politics, and the Federalist Society chapter here has more members than the American Constitutional Society, its liberal counterpart. The only law school in the country that's arguably more conservative is the University of Chicago, which is really more libertarian than anything else because it takes a hardcore economic approach to everything, and which also happens to be the alma mater of our current dean. Needless to say, I come into contact with more conservative law students on a daily basis here than I would anywhere else.

Of all of those conservative students in my 1L class whom I interact with regularly (probably 35-40), only one of them supports Ted Cruz (this isn't the one that worked on the Cruz campaign and got kicked out of UT; I'm not counting him here), and he openly admits that his support is at best lukewarm. Only two are going for Trump, and I feel fairly certain they're just doing it to get on everyone else's nerves. The rest all support Rubio and Kasich, with a few Jeb Bush fans and a fair number of libertarians still trying to get over Rand dropping out. I shake up old GroupMe conversations among my friends at Alabama, which is where I went to undergrad and happens to be one of the most conservative public universities in the country, and the distribution is the same. You look at Cruz's millennial outreach page on Facebook, and he's got less than 3,000 likes. I've seen candidates for student government get more likes than that. It's the worst millennial outreach effort of any of the major candidates except Donald Trump. This general disdain among millennials for Cruz, in my experience, hasn't been over his platform positions; his platform isn't worlds apart from Rubio and bears some similarities to Paul, both of whom enjoy varying degrees of popularity among millennials. It comes down to his personality - the smug smile, the squeamish voice, the condescending tone, the presumptuousness, the unworkable attitude in the Senate and the reputation for suspect tactics practiced by his campaign and its affiliates.

This likability problem isn't limited to millennials, either. Cruz has banked his entire campaign on winning evangelical and Tea Party voters, basing the strategy in a study done by the RNC after Mitt Romney lost suggesting that several million such voters stayed home in 2012. The thinking in the Cruz campaign is that if they can organize a grassroots effort to get those voters, they can win the primary and the general election. The problem with that strategy is that (1) there's not enough voters out there who fall in those categories to win with them alone, (2) Cruz has so over-leveraged himself with that specific element of the GOP that he's got no crossover appeal, and (3) he doesn't even do that well among those voters. The fact that there aren't enough evangelicals to carry the Cruz campaign alone is exactly why he didn't win New Hampshire and why he's not in first place in South Carolina right now. It's also evident in the polls pitting him against Democrat nominees in a general election. In addition to making a play for millennials that's failed in epic proportions, Cruz also tried to make a play for libertarians in the last days of the Rand Paul campaign. He did such a poor job that Rand's wife called him "two-faced," and, after Rand had already dropped out, Ron Paul went on a speaking tour not to urge libertarians to vote for anyone specifically, but instead to urge them to vote for anyone but Ted Cruz, echoing Iowa's governor in the days leading up to the Iowa primary. Cruz can't seem to get a single endorsement from any elected Republican official except a handful of Congressmen and Texas state officials. Nobody in the Senate - not even close Cruz friends and, in the past at least, political allies Mike Lee and Jeff Sessions - has endorsed Ted Cruz. And perhaps worst of all, despite his almost singular focus on evangelicals, Cruz can't even win a majority among them. In Iowa, the most evangelical-dominated state in the first four GOP primary states, Cruz only won 26% of evangelical voters. Trump, who is perhaps the worst candidate for evangelicals of all time, and Rubio, who hasn't emphasized his evangelical bona fides nearly as much as Cruz has, both came within five points of Cruz's lead. One of the other longtime evangelical candidates in this race, Rick Santorum, endorsed Marco, not Ted, upon dropping out of the race, and the other major evangelical player in the GOP race, Ben Carson, is caught in the middle of a blood feud with Cruz over Cruz's dirty tactics. All of this leads me to believe that Cruz's status as a frontrunner is purely a function of the GOP field being so jam-packed; if it weren't for so many other candidates being in the race and slicing up other voting bases within the party so many ways, I don't think Cruz would be a serious contender. I come to that conclusion before even beginning to take into account my own experiences with Cruz campaign officials.

So, long story short, when I boil this down to the facts, I don't see a "consistent conservative" or a strong presidential candidate. I see a candidate with no real record, no real experience, a reputation for brinkmanship behavior and inflammatory rhetoric, a serious likability problem, no crossover appeal to speak of and problems getting support even within his own base. He's got electability issues, favorability issues, consistency issues, personality issues, and if I'm being totally frank, authenticity issues. I see him as neither capable of winning the presidency, nor the right person to be president.

 

[Hagar]

Thank you for your candor and time.  Your explanation of Super Pacs was, unfortunately, my perception of them.  I'd like to see Congress reevaluate them, but since both parties utilize this "snake in the grass" approach, I'm doubtful that will happen.  

One thing we differ on is the, If whoever gets it, I'll vote on so&so.  I made that decision (mistake?) one time.  Seemed a solid alternative at the time, but I've second guessed myself ever since.

Once again, thanks for your input!

 

[PN-G bamatex]

This was released by the Rubio campaign's South Carolina Facebook page this afternoon.

Obviously, there's no proof that the Cruz campaign had anything to do with it. That said, a similar Facebook attack on the Rubio campaign happened in Iowa right before the caucus there took place, and I can't think of anyone else who stands to gain anything from taking votes from Marco and giving them to Ted, except maybe the Democrats.

[shovel]

The Republican race is getting nasty, mostly due to Trump and Cruz. Rubio and Carson are trying to fight back, but come off looking weak. Kasich and Bush don't want to fight with the big boys. I've watched almost all the debates and watched Trump bully Jeb every time. Jeb comes across really weak. One thing I have noticed about Jeb is that he isn't waffling on his stance, even when Trump beats him up for it. If Jeb would stand up for himself and his family; step across the stage and throat-punch Trump, I  think I'd vote for him. That's fantasy on my part... Looking forward to see how things play out in SC and Nevada. Glad I've got almost 2 weeks before I vote!

[Hagar]

Let's get this out front.  My wife and I watch a lot of cop shows.  Ive read a few mystery books.  I bought a badge online.  So now that you're aware of my bonafides, here's my opinion of this Facebook incident.  

If you're under suspicion of something, and therefore scrutiny, you lay low.  You don't repeat what you're accused of.  But, if you're trying to set someone up, and you see the chance, make it so.  IF someone backing Cruz did it in Iowa, I doubt they would repeat it.   That would be as stupid as a glass eyed dog.  My First suspect is actually Trump.  His ego is so big, as is his wealth, it would be easy for him to pay someone to do it.  As it would be for the DNC, my second suspect, who may want Trump to win the Repub nomination so they might win in Nov.   Last suspect is Mr. Left Wing Liberal computer geek who just wants to stir the pot.  I'm pretty durn good but I wish I had Gibbs & his NCIS Team to help me solve this.  

[PN-G bamatex]

14 hours ago, REBgp said:

Let's get this out front.  My wife and I watch a lot of cop shows.  Ive read a few mystery books.  I bought a badge online.  So now that you're aware of my bonafides, here's my opinion of this Facebook incident.  

If you're under suspicion of something, and therefore scrutiny, you lay low.  You don't repeat what you're accused of.  But, if you're trying to set someone up, and you see the chance, make it so.  IF someone backing Cruz did it in Iowa, I doubt they would repeat it.   That would be as stupid as a glass eyed dog.  My First suspect is actually Trump.  His ego is so big, as is his wealth, it would be easy for him to pay someone to do it.  As it would be for the DNC, my second suspect, who may want Trump to win the Repub nomination so they might win in Nov.   Last suspect is Mr. Left Wing Liberal computer geek who just wants to stir the pot.  I'm pretty durn good but I wish I had Gibbs & his NCIS Team to help me solve this.  

All fair points. In truth, there's no way of knowing. But, I'll add this food for thought: watching the the social media war so far this year, the two GOP campaigns that have, in my opinion, generally made the best use of social media have been the Cruz and Paul campaigns. For all his trouble getting millennial support, there are massive Facebook groups dedicated to bringing together evangelical voters for Senator Cruz on Facebook. They've definitely focused on that element of their campaign.

[Hagar]

2 hours ago, PN-G bamatex said:

All fair points. In truth, there's no way of knowing. But, I'll add this food for thought: watching the the social media war so far this year, the two GOP campaigns that have, in my opinion, generally made the best use of social media have been the Cruz and Paul campaigns. For all his trouble getting millennial support, there are massive Facebook groups dedicated to bringing together evangelical voters for Senator Cruz on Facebook. They've definitely focused on that element of their campaign.

I don't use social media, unless this Forum fits the description.  Just not useful for me.  Like a gun it can be put to good use or bad.  Not knowing, I'd guess that folks could use false names, and like the young man that you mentioned in an earlier post, passed himself off as a Rubio supporter (as I remember) with a "graphic".  The fact that All the media want to out scoop each other (even Rush got caught on this one), makes social media fertile ground for misinformation.  Personally, it urinates me off for worms to distort a useful tool.

Sadly, I know folks who believe everything on the Internet despite all the warnings.  I suspect it's the same with social media.  We'll just have to muddle through it.