Trump, Cruz trade blows

The Canada- born senator’s eligibility is an issue in the debate.

north charleston, s. c. » The mutually beneficial campaign detente between billionaire Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz came to an end on the debate stage here Thursday.

Until recently, it was in both candidates’ interest to avoid a direct confrontation. Cruz was leery of alienating Trump’s supporters — who might come to him if the billionaire stumbles. Trump did not consider Cruz much of a threat.

But now, the two Republican presidential candidates are locked in a tight race to win the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses. In Thursday’s debate, the sixth for the Republican presidential candidates, they went so far as to question each other’s fitness to govern.

Trump contended that Cruz’s birth to a U. S. citizen in Canada might disqualify him from becoming president because the Constitution decrees that only a “natural born citizen” may hold the office.

“There’s a big question mark on your head. And you can’t do that to the party. You really can’t,” Trump told Cruz.

The Texas senator retorted that Trump was motivated more by his political prospects than any constitutional concern.

“I recognize that Donald is dismayed that his poll numbers are falling in Iowa,” Cruz said. “But the facts and the law here are really quite clear. Under long- standing U. S. law, the child of a U. S. citizen born abroad is a natural- born citizen.”

Then it was Cruz’s turn to go on offense.

Repeating something he first said in a radio interview, Cruz charged that Trump had “New York values” — invoking that city’s reputation, particularly in red- stateAmerica, as the bastion of the liberal elite.

“I can frame it another way,” Cruz said. “Not a lot of conservatives comeout of Manhattan. I’m just saying.”

Trump responded with indignation, saying New York City is home to “loving people, wonderful people.” He invoked the fall of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, noting the “smell of death” that pervaded the city for months.

“I saw something that no place on Earth could have handled more beautifully, more humanely than New York,” Trump said. He added, “That was a very insulting state--

ment that Ted made.”

As Trump and Cruz argued back and forth over the latter’s constitutional qualifications to be president, the other candidates struggled to get a word in. Sen. Marco Rubio drew applause when he interjected, “I hate to interrupt this episode of Court TV, but I think we have to get back to what this election ought to be about.”

Theirs was not the only simmering argument that spilled over from the campaign trail into the debate, whichwas sponsored by Fox Business Network. The event gave the candidates a chance to confront each other face to face, rather than through their speeches and surrogates and allied super PACs.

Among the Republicans, several battles are going on at once. Where Trump and Cruz are each looking to win the caucuses by claiming to be the one who can slay the old order, the field also includes a host of current and former governors and senators.

Nearly as important as which candidate comes in first place is the question of which will emerge from what is being called the “establishment lane.”

Rubio repeated his charge that Chris Christie, the governor of heavily Democratic NewJersey, has been too liberal to be the standard- bearer of a conservative party. He noted that Christie once supported Common Core educational standards, backed some gun- control legislation and supported Obama’s nomination of Justice Sonia Sotomayor.