‘Unfavorable’ Signs for Ted Cruz in South Carolina

If God isn't dead then I'm sure she would like to be dead after seeing the likes of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

Cruz is exactly the kind of snake-oil demagogue our protracted nomination process is designed to reveal.

Our nation was designed to protect itself against the destructive power of organized religion, which had ravaged Europe for centuries. The fact that Cruz touts his "faith" in such a garish way, while exhibiting so little Christian behavior, makes him both a fraud and unsuitable for public office.

Cruz cannot win a national election. The mainstream Republicans know that -- they know that Cruz as the nominee would be a bigger disaster for the party than Trump.

The Republicans have screwed themselves with no candidate who can take on Trump. The most pathetic aspect of it is that Rubio is just a hand-puppet for Braman, and so witless, advancing nothing but trying to be "the nicer Cruz with whiter teeth."

Cruz will run as long as somebody will keep putting up cash, but it's long overdue for sensible people to "click" and change the channel.

I'm amazed that voters gives cruz one vote never mind 20% of the votes , This is the guy that wanted to shut down the American Government . I wouldnt vote this guy dog catcher

What we need is more Goderment and less Government.

What this article (and most every other article I've read that analyzes Cruz's showing in Iowa and Rubio's showing in New Hampshire) fails to include is that Cruz lied in Iowa to get votes from Carson and Rubio bombed in NH because he bombed at the debated immediately prior to NH. And bombed badly! Had either of those two things not happened, Cruz might not have done so well and Rubio might not have done so poorly. To not even mention that as a consideration is faulty.

Keep your god out of my government, Ted.

Rubio: "God wants me to be your President."

Cruz: "No, God wants me to be your President."

Trump: "Oh no I don't."

Judging by the pessimistic assessments of every candidate in the race in both parties, no one is going to win either nomination. Hmmm, maybe that's for the best.

I hope Tramp or Crum win the nomination as either democrat will beat them like a drum in the general election.

It's not exactly clear. A lot of conservatives have been fooled by Trump but a lot of them are starting to ditch him. Cruz will out perform the polls.

Trump is wrong/lying 95% of the time he opens his mouth, but he was right on one thing: no one likes Cruz.

Mr. Cohn writes, "The Ted Cruz campaign...believes its candidate can win the nomination: by unifying the party’s...“very conservative” base with the...evangelical voters who make up the party’s rank and file in the South."

1. Of course Cruz's campaign people say he'll win the nomination (even though truly they don't believe in fairy dust).
2. Sadly for Cruz, the "very conservatives" make up only a wee-small number of voters.
3. Also sadly for Cruz, "evangelicals" make up only a wee-small number of voters.

In sum, the "unfavorable" sign for Cruz is this: In no way is a well-balanced candidate for president.

Cruz is not getting hurt so much from the attacks as from prolonged exposure to the "disinfectant of sunlight." As Lincoln said: You can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. So Cruz's time in the spotlight may be nearing an end.

Cruz appears to believe that Cruz is always the smartest person in the room & only Cruz knows what will be good & right for the U.S. But I see that more & more people are questioning Cruz's pronouncements which Cruz always states as eternal truths. Lincoln never made a claim like that of Cruz to have a direct line to the Lord, instead Lincoln always hoped that he was on the side of right. Even the Pope, when asked about homosexuality, said "who am I to judge others."

Perhaps what is most revealing about the self-proclaimed brilliance of Ted Cruz is shown in his first two appearances before the Supreme Court, of which Cruz now is the self-appointed arbiter for who would be a good justice. 1st appearance as Texas Solicitor General Cruz argued that Texas had the power to disregard a consent judgment Texas had agreed to to provide medical care for children. Scalia said that was crazy; 9 to 0 against Cruz. 2d outing Cruz attempted to keep someone in prison 15 years longer than lawful because the defendant's lawyer had failed to timely object. After Kennedy got Cruz to admit the sentence was unlawful Cruz couldn't give a good answer as to why he was there

Does Mr. Cruz really have the "conservative lane" all to himself? Frankly, his policy positions don't seem much different from those of Mr. Rubio. Even Mr. Bush falls pretty far on the conservative side policy-wise, even though his genial, "let's all get along" personality doesn't broadcast the fact. But I'll concede that he's been all too successful in portraying himself as a true moderate for a year when his party's primary voters want red meat.

Let's face it: Even if the Republican "establishment" is not as extreme as the candidates, they'll prefer Mr. Rubio to Mr. Cruz simply because he is an easier man to get along with. Heck, some of them have already said they'd even prefer Mr. Trump!

If there truly is a God, as the evangelicals and other political Christians claim, and try to ram down our throats, then Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Sleepy Ben Carson will not win the republican nomination.

And don't forget that he tends to redefine "truth" now and then.

What are we even talking about here? "Among ill-informed, racist and religious voters, Ted Cruz is leading the way. Among racist, selfish and nationalistic voters, Trump is ahead of the pack. Voters who prefer candidates with alliterative slogans that do not amount to any real policy, Marco Rubio is the 'establishment' choice." When it isn't hilarious it's sad. When it isn't sad, it's frightening. The GOP has successfully created an ill-informed, afraid electorate and is not offering anything in the form of policy, just more stress. They've successfully convinced a portion of the electorate that Hillary never tells the truth(not true), but they've also created such an aggressive unease among their own flock that no one GOP candidate appeals to a majority. The really scary thing for them is that there isn't a majority their own electorate that really feels like the GOP nominee will win in the general election.

It seems Sen. Cruz needs to build a wall - and some bridges.

Cruz is proving the adage that you can go pretty far just by holding a bible and wrapping a flag around yourself. Faith doesn't have to displace logic, but unfortunately many people take the easy path of believing the guy with th bible, following his words without carefully observing his actions and character.

I am an evangelical Christian who would never vote for Ted Cruz, no matter how much he waves his Bible around. When I read the New Yorker piece about how Cruz is gambling on the possibility that he can galvanize all the evangelical Christians in the U. S. into one massive voting block, I knew he'd already lost the election, even if by some fluke he becomes the GOP candidate. Evangelicals cannot be pigeon-holed, for one thing. His idea that they will rise as one and vote in lockstep is fantasy. And has he not realized (as our church has, to its sorrow) that the fastest-growing spiritual reference is "None"? Those who are upset about Cruz' campaign (and there is a lot to be upset about) can rest with the knowledge that his efforts will soon backfire, if they have not already.

There's something about Cruz that is just plain creepy.

Although my home state is considered an evangelical backstop, Trump might just crush him here.

Super Tuesday will be interesting.

All the Republican candidates are elitist and racist. No matter who they vote for, the rest of us will not be changing our minds about the conservative religionists who live in South Carolina. Can't imagine why they took down the Confederate flag, when most of them really didn't want to do it.

It's hard even to give Cruz too much credit forr Iowa, since it's not clear he would have won without spreading the lie about Carson withdrawing. And the trick and his response made it clear he does not live by the faith he professes.

A friend and I saw footage of his irate speech about Trump suing him. We both turned to each other with the same astonished thought -- this was the only moment we'd ever seen him drop the creepy supercilious smirk and show a flash of honest human-to-human emotion, before reeking insincerity took over again.

He's a dangerously self-righteous, power-seeking Christian soldier, but he's not actually an android. To paraphrase Ben Franklin, all Democrats must hang together or we'll hang separately. Winning the general is what matters.

Surprisingly, and as others have stated here, Donald Trump is correct in that there are serious legal issues regarding Cruz's eligibility.

At the time of the Constitutions authorship, citizenship was understood as being derived through PATRILINIAL means ONLY. Indeed, the Immigration Act of 1790 also explicitly states this -

"And the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been a resident in the United States"

Thus, if Ted Cruz purports to be a strict originalist (read: the literal meaning of the words at the time that they were written), he therefore disqualifies himself. Of course, this conception of citizenship no longer exists today; it has since been changed by statute. If challenged in a court, it is not without question that "natural born" does not include citizenship derived by statue.

Additionally, one of his main counterpoints is equally invalid. He often mentions that John McCain was born "in Panama." In fact, McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone, which was an unincorporated territory of the United States from 1903 to 1979.

Why isn't the NYTimes talking about the hit job Cruz did on Carson, or about the robo-calls against Trump or the mailer he sent out which promised a "check inside" that was made out to Cruz? All of these are factual events that actually happened and need to be investigated. Sure South Carolina Politics is dirty, as is Texas and the rest of the South - so why does the NYT allow it to continue and not bring some sunshine to how the republicans work in states with low education voters.

It would be nice to see some factual reporting rather than all these "blah-blah" columns full of conjecture and "what if" commentary full of "gee whiz" advice, e. g., "his best bet will be to excel in Western States" AS IF Cruz cares what the writer thinks

I just don't get what "very conservative" voters are thinking here. Ted Cruz is what you get when you ask central casting for a creepy guy in a suit. Look at his horizontal rictus of a smile. Punish yourself by watching his Green Eggs and Ham rendition. I'm not trying to be superficial, but this is ridiculous. He's too creepy to be President.

What to choose, a sidewinder or a copperhead?

Perhaps all of this is a sideshow, albeit a wildly entertaining one, to distract us from the so-far unnoticed race that counts: the US Senate. With A gop Senate, especially this one with this House, no Democratic president can hope for anything except more gridlock. Look what they managed against a clean, admired, transformational candidate who even had a Democratic Senate for awhile. It's no wonder Republicans support Sanders, partly with money but mainly by giving him a free pass. For now.

Thank you for not painting Mr. Cruz as a Christian candidate. The use of "evangelical" is even questionable, but best not associated with the word "Christian" in the context of Mr. Cruz. Cruz, a flagrant opportunist, uses hatred and fear of change to incite cultists to vote for him. He is a dangerous demagogue without real morals. That fits nicely with many of his supporters who cherry-pick their so-called faith based on how it fits their life-long prejudices. St. Paul would have ranted against these evangelical cults much the same way he did against the various temple cults of the first century AD.

I don't understand why the Donald doesn't hammer Cruz on the secret financing by Goldman Sachs of his Texas senate campaign. And Cruz's lying about how he used his family's money and then refused to report the Goldman loan per election regs. (Is that a misdemeanor? Or worse?)
And, of course, there is Cruz's Canadian citizenship issue. Cruz always answers that his mother was American. but that argument is complicated by the fact that his mother at the time of his birth was a Canadian citizen, voted in Canada and probably paid taxes in Canada. Did she also pay taxes in America or not?
The constitutional originalist would say that the Framers put the native born provision in the constitution because they were afraid that a foreign power (Britain) would maneuver to insert a presidential candidate that could be influenced by that foreign power and that the question of Cruz's mother's nationality should be viewed in that light.
Cruz is lucky that Scalia died.

Cruz would be doing better if Trump was not in the race. Unfortunately, Cruz and his strategists did not plan for a "non-politician" to disrupt the Republican primaries.

As disgusting as Trump can be, at least his blatant lying is often delivered with a wink. Not so Cruz. He has all the marks of a dangerous man. Let's hope he is knocked out of the running.

Trump is America's last hope!

Cruz is worse than Trump, but either would be a disaster for the country not to mention the world. Anyway, one thing at a time. Would be nice if Cruz loses heavily in the next primaries. His supporters would almost definitely shift to Trump if he (Cruz) drops out. Then, it will be a matter of defeating Trump in the general election. Prediction: Trump picks Rubio for his VP running mate, and Rubio unashamedly accepts! Republicans fall in line, anoint Trump as the new Ronald Reagan (Donald = Ronald). Then, they still lose the general and are terribly unhappy again.

Lose with Cruz. He is much "too right", unyielding and does not appear to many to be too ethical with the "report card" stunt in Iowa. He carries a Bible with one hand and vocally castrates opponents with the other. People can see through him.