Gloves are off: Trump, Cruz fight has begun
WASHINGTON— They circled around each other for months, studiously avoiding direct combat, betting that a mutual non-aggression pact was the ticket to the top of a crowded race. It worked. But now it’s on. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, finally abandoned the pretense of congeniality on Thursday night, clashing at length about Cruz’s birth in Canada and what Cruz calls Trump’s “New York values.”
The outcome: a draw, probably, but one that served to minimize the other five men on the stage. Eighteen days from the Iowa caucus, the incendiary billionaire and the hardline conservative emerged from the debate as they entered: the clear favourites, with every establishment-backed candidate well behind.
Cruz, a Texas senator, came prepared for the question of his presidential eligibility, an issue Trump has forced to the fore over the past two weeks. Trump, he noted, said in September that Cruz’s Calgary origins did not violate the constitutional requirement for a president who is a “natural-born citizen.”
“Since September, the constitution hasn’t changed, but the poll numbers have. And I recognize that Donald is dismayed that his poll numbers are falling in Iowa. But the facts and the record here are really quite clear,” Cruz said.
The exchange was long, contentious and punctuated by both boos and laughter from the crowd in North Charleston, S.C. Cruz seemed to win. But Trump seemed to get the best of their subsequent exchange about Cruz’s coded claim that Trump has “New York values.” Asked what he meant by the phrase, Cruz said the city is “socially liberal or pro-abortion or pro gay marriage.” Turning around a phrase Trump uses to question his evangelical faith, Cruz said: “Not a lot of conservatives come out of Manhattan. I’m just saying.”
The debate, hosted by Fox Business moderators, turned contentious only in its second hour. In the first, the candidates joined in painting a picture of an America in much worse shape than the thriving power described by U.S. President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address on Tuesday: humiliated by Iran, failing economically, vulnerable to the Islamic State group.