The Cleveland Daily Banner Sunday, January 10, 2016 | Page 13

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Cleveland Daily Banner—Sunday, January 10, 2016—13

GOP candidates pitch conservative
path to helping in the poverty fight

Trump goads Cruz on eligibility
to run and surprised by Iowa
WAUKON, Iowa (AP) — Donald
Trump
goaded
a
fellow
Republican front-runner, Ted
Cruz, over his eligibility to be
president and professed bafflement that he’s not beating him in
Iowa polls as a delicate detente
between the two became ever
more frayed Saturday.
With Trump in Iowa for the
first time in the new year, Iowans
were seeing a sharp contrast
between the grinding Iowa campaign of Cruz — whose five stops
Saturday complete a six-day, 28event bus tour — and the
splashy mega-rallies that have
become as much Trump’s brand
as his gilded hotels. Both have
attracted overflow crowds:
Trump at large halls and stadiums; Cruz in countless coffee
shops, convenience stores,
churches and diners.
The Texas senator and the billionaire have been quietly circling
one another as they work to win
over voters in the final stretch
leading to the caucuses.
The feud escalated Saturday
as Trump lashed out at Cruz on
multiple fronts before a packed
665-person capacity auditorium
in Ottumwa, Iowa, with many
more voters crowded into an
overflow room.
“The polls are essentially tied. I
don’t get it,” Trump said in the
first of several references to Cruz
in rambling remarks that
spanned an hour.
The billionaire attacked Cruz’s
apparent shift on ethanol subsidies, the influence of wealthy
campaign donors and renewed
questions about the Texas senator’s Canadian birth.
“He’s got to straighten out his
problem,” Trump said just two
minutes into his address. “You
can’t have that problem and go
and be the nominee.”
Trump late last year began
efforts to undermine Cruz, ques-

tioning the senator’s religion and
accusing him at recent events of
stealing his idea to build a wall
along the Mexico border.
The intensity escalated this
past week when Trump questioned whether the Canadianborn Cruz was eligible to be president.
Cruz has been careful not to
take on Trump directly even as a
few other rivals have savaged
him. He chalked up the comments about his eligibility to the
political “silly season” and said
it’s a non-issue.
But he appeared to offer a
counterpunch on Friday, when
he suggested that Trump wasn’t
devoting the time and energy to
wooing Iowa voters that history
shows is needed to win.
“There is an Iowa way of campaigning and deciding caucuses,”
Cruz told supporters packed into
a basement of a pizza restaurant
in Decorah. “I believe the only
way to compete and win in the
state of Iowa is to come and
spend the time asking the voters
for their support. Looking them
in the eye.”
He’s often asked how he can
beat Trump.
“You know we are gonna continue doing exactly what we are
doing,” he said in a Charles City
coffee shop Friday when the
question came up again. “You
come here, you have the humility
to stand before the men and
women of this state and answer
your questions. And you have the
strength and courage of your
convictions to say I can defend
my record. And I can answer the
hard questions.”
While Cruz has been traveling
by bus, meeting people at one
event after the next over jampacked days, Trump typically
holds a single major rally, then
departs. While that’s a break
from tradition, his campaign

says he’s able to reach far more
potential voters than candidates
at smaller events can do.
Campaign manager Corey
Lewandowski said earlier in the
week that Trump has a series of
stops planned for the next three
weeks leading to the caucuses,
including multiple overnight
stays.
In Ottumwa, Trump himself
vowed to return. “I’m going to be
here a lot over the next three
weeks — a lot,” he said.
Yet the usually confident
Trump also acknowledged he
might not ultimately win the
state’s leadoff caucuses next
month.
“We’ve got to win Iowa, oh
we’ve got to win it, otherwise
we’re wasting our time,” he said.
“If I don’t make it I’m going to
love you folks just as much.”
Iowa voters have been mixed
on Trump’s approach.
“In Iowa, we need to press the
skin,” said Theo Boman, an
undertaker from Webster City
who backs Cruz and came to one
of his recent events.
But Lars Johnson, a retired
chiropractor who lives near
Decorah, Iowa, said he wasn’t
concerned that Trump was sticking to massive rallies.
“Every person’s got his own
way of doing things,” said
Johnson, who lists Trump as his
top choice, followed by Cruz. “I
don’t think Trump would be satisfied with a couple hundred people.”
Meanwhile, Cruz has said he
has no interest in getting into a
war of words with Trump.
“Our friends in the media desperately want Donald and me to
engage in a cage match,” Cruz
said on Friday. “I am not interested in throwing rocks at
Donald Trump or any other
Republican running for president.”

AP photo

In thIs JAn. 7 fIle
Photo, Democratic presidential hopeful former
Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton speaks in San
Gabriel, Calif. The State
Department released Friday
another 3,000 pages of
emails from former
Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton's private email
account, missing a courtordered goal for their production by a week.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) —
Republican presidential candidates said Saturday their party
must do more to convince poor
Americans that conservative policy — and not an active federal
government — will expand economic opportunity.
But the White House hopefuls,
addressing a conservative V6