2016 Election

[Malsua]

Just like every other politician...they say what they feel when they are in "friendly" circumstances. They lie the rest of the time.

Rubio would have an infrastructure project put in place to add a 100 lane super highway one way from Mexico and a one way super bridge/tunnel from Cuba if he could get away with it.

[Ryan Ruck]

Can't really say I disagree with you on that. For sure, he's at the very bottom of my "would vote for" list, above only Rand.

[Ryan Ruck]

Cruz Raised $772,000 Through Midnight From Debate Performance

October 29, 2015

Sen. Ted Cruz's presidential campaign raised $772,000 through midnight following his debate performance Wednesday evening in Boulder, Colorado.

"We're continuing to have a strong day on fundraising," a top Cruz aide who confirmed the fundraising haul said on Thursday.

Cruz earned the most-talked-about moment on Facebook and Twitter with a verbal assault on the CNBC moderators, saying their questions illustrate why Americans don't trust the media.

"This is not a cage match. And, you look at the questions: 'Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?'; 'Ben Carson, can you do math?'; 'John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?'; 'Marco Rubio, why don't you resign?'; 'Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?'" Cruz said, sparking applause from the audience and also annoying the moderators. "How about talking about the substantive issues people care about?"

The fundraising number comes the same day the Cruz campaign announced it had 77,190 volunteers across the country supporting the Texas senator's candidacy. Those volunteers, according to the Cruz campaign, are in all 50 states as well as five territories. The campaign said 5,927 of those volunteers are in the first four caucus and primary states.

"We're very encouraged by that haul. That combined with our recent announcement of having more than 77,000 volunteers all across the country further solidifies the track that we have the organization and the financing necessary to aggressively compete with every other candidate in the field," the aide added.

Cruz has been putting up strong fundraising numbers, bringing in $12.2 million in the third quarter, surpassing most of the Republican presidential field except for Ben Carson. His campaign also reported having the most cash on hand — $13.8 million.

Wow! Almost $1 million dollars in just under 2 hours!

[Ryan Ruck]

Updated numbers for money Cruz has brought in.

Cruz Says He Raised $1.1 Million Since Debate

October 29, 2015

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) had a strong, breakout performance during Wednesday's presidential debate, and it paid off — literally.

Cruz's campaign has raised $1.1 million online since the debate, the candidate said on Fox News on Thursday.

"That is a real demonstration, I think, of the hunger Republican primary voters have for someone who will actually stand and fight for them," he said.

The Texas Republican also got traction on social media during the debate, capturing a majority of all of the social and traditional media mentions of the evening, according to Zignal Labs. He also had the most mentioned moment of the debate on Facebook, where he criticized the questions the debate moderators asked.

Cruz reported more money in the bank than any other Republican candidate as the last fundraising quarter ended, with $13.8 million, according to figures released by the Federal Election Commission. Cruz's campaign reported raising a total of $26.5 million.

The senator has deployed a fundraising strategy that so far no rival has been able to match, raising millions from grass-roots supporters while getting checks from wealthy donors.

Overall, Cruz has the most balanced mix of donors among all the Republican hopefuls. Of the $24.5 million he has raised for the primary race, 40 percent has come from contributors who have given him $200 or less, 25 percent from those who have given $201 to $999, 13 percent from those who have given $1,000 to $2,699, and 21 percent from those who have given the $2,700 maximum, according to the Campaign Finance Institute.

[Malsua]

The problem is you need a billion to get elected.

I really want Ted Cruz as the president, go Ted!

[Ryan Ruck]

The RNC has officially pulled out of the February debate that was supposed to be on NBC thanks to what went on on CNBC.

The great thing is that Cruz seems to be the one getting credit for being the fulcrum that brought about this change!

[Ryan Ruck]

The problem is you need a billion to get elected.

I really want Ted Cruz as the president, go Ted!

That comes in at the General Election once you've got the party's money behind you. If Cruz gets the nomination they will have no choice but to put those resources to him.

Then again, the whole money thing may be overrated... Jeb's got over $100 mil right now (IIRC) and look where he's sitting in the polls.

Going to be an interesting election for sure.

[American Patriot]

I love that Trump is pissing off everyone though, lol

[Ryan Ruck]

Where Is Ben Carson's Money Going?

The outsider candidate topped the Republican field in fundraising last quarter, but he’s also spending a huge amount of cash to raise it.

Ben Carson is raising a ton of money. He hauled in an impressive $20.8 million in the third quarter, shocking the political world and topping the Republican field in fundraising. That comes after a strong second quarter, when he raised more than $10 million.

But Carson is also spending a ton of money—he spent nearly seven out of every $10 he raised in the quarter. What is that money being used to do, and is that rate of spending sustainable?

One of the most important metrics in fundraising numbers is the burn rate—the proportion between the cash that campaigns are raking in, and the amount they spent in the same time period. Carson’s burn rate is 69 percent. That’s generally considered high, though it’s hardly the highest total in the field: Hillary Clinton’s campaign had a whopping 86 percent burn rate. As logic holds, it’s generally preferable to have a lower burn rate now and save for later in the campaign. But a lot of that depends on how the money is spent: Is it building a long-term organization that will provide for the campaign going ahead? If so, spending now isn’t an all-bad thing.

In Carson’s case, a majority of what he’s raising is being plowed right back into fundraising costs—$11.2 million of the nearly $20.8 million. That means 54 cents out of every dollar Carson raises is going to raise more money. Carson’s campaign only spent roughly $3 million on everything else—merchandise, office supplies, field staff, space, travel, and so on. Compare that to Clinton, whose biggest expenses included media buys, payroll, and online advertising, spending that’s designed to build a real campaign infrastructure and future strategy. She’s also spending significantly more on rent. (A headquarters in downtown Brooklyn doesn’t come cheap.)

Carson spokesman Doug Watts says the campaign is not worried about the burn rate.

“It’s not only sustainable, it’s strategic and it’s profitable,” he says. “We have a more innovative approach here. We’re using modern tools that allow us to do things more efficiently. We’re doing a lot of things with tools that are not on most people’s radars. They’re showing effective results in these polls.”

But some of Carson’s most-favored tools are among the oldest in the book. His campaign relies on direct-mail and telephone fundraising—literally sending fliers to voters or cold-calling them and trying to talk them into giving money. Those are common tactics for political campaigns of all types, and in particular for Republicans, since they reach older voters better. One advantage these methods confer is that they help to build up a grassroots base. Carson has astonishing grassroots support, with a wide base of small-donor dollars, and that support has helped push him near the top of the Republican field.

“Strategically it was our plan to build a donor base,” Watts said. “There’s only one way you do that—you invest in prospecting in direct mail, prospecting in telemarketing, prospecting online. By the end of the year, we’ll have a unique donor file of half a million names.”

The downside of the tactic is that it costs a lot. “Prospecting is expensive,” Watts added. You’ve got to mail the fliers—nearly $2.5 million, or about a quarter, of what Carson spent in the third quarter was categorized as postage-related—and you’ve got to have human beings making those telemarketing calls. And even when the investment pays off, what it yields are small-dollar donations—$25, $50, $100—rather than anything approaching the $2,700 maximum.

While direct mail has its detractors, even its champions argue that the goal is to spend less on it over the course of a campaign—to make direct mail obsolete. As a campaign builds its donor file, it can return to those supporters repeatedly, convincing them to give a little more each time. Carson’s campaign burn rate actually increased in the third quarter, from 64 percent in the second quarter, but Watts said the fundraising costs are down.

“We spent 54 cents on the dollar to raise money this quarter,” he said. “Last quarter we spent 64 cents on the dollar. That is an 11 cent reduction. I expect we’re probably going to have a 10 or 11 cent or maybe more reduction the next quarter.”

The campaign has some 700,000 donors, about 300,000 of whom have given more than once, and Watts said several thousand donors moved from giving less than $200 to giving more than that amount in the third quarter. The test for the Carson campaign’s strategy will be to see whether the portion of repeat givers continues to rise, whether their donations continue to climb, and whether the amount spent to raise each dollar continues to fall.

Is this just the price of getting grassroots support? Not necessarily. Compare Carson to the other major grassroots candidate in the race: Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator has also put up fundraising numbers that dropped jaws, and he’s also doing it almost entirely with small-dollar donations. But Sanders’s overall burn rate is less than 45 percent, and he’s spending very differently—by far his largest expense is on digital consulting and advertising, and he spent less than $100,000 on postage. Sanders’s trick is that much of that money is coming in through ActBlue, an online platform for making donations to liberal causes. It’s highly useful because it provides candidates an off-the-shelf tool, it tends to hook donors by, essentially, gamifying giving, and it’s extremely cheap—in general, it charges less than 4 percent commission to candidates. So while Ben Carson is netting around half of every dollar he raises, Bernie Sanders is taking in 96 cents of each greenback. (So much for the free-spending socialist.)

This isn’t a problem unique to the Carson campaign. Ted Cruz also had a high burn rate, for example. Republican candidates are at a disadvantage because there’s no GOP equivalent to ActBlue. Democrats are just farther ahead on the digital game, much to the frustration of forward-thinking Republican strategists. Despite the high fundraising costs, the Carson campaign promises a great field organization, including the best ground game in Iowa. If so, it’s not obviously showing up in the reports so far, and skeptics say the campaign isn’t built to last—it isn’t spending enough on personnel and on TV ad buys.

“We have our own approach. It’s much more akin to the Obama operation in 2007 and 2008, and way off the page of the normal Republican playbook,” Watts said. He says the campaign poured $5 million into targeted online advertising that’s more effective than buying 30-second spots in primetime. “What they’re talking about is a traditional campaign. It’s only been gone for a couple of years, but it’s long gone. Putting all your money into TV just doesn’t cut it. Just ask Karl Rove.” (Watts also noted that the campaign was beginning ad buys on Friday. NBC has more details on that here.)

The campaign may also not need to worry so much about actually building the organization. The expanded role of super PACs means that the Carson team can leave this work to an outside committee. “The Carson Super PAC team has the state blanketed,” an Iowa source told Politico. “You can’t go to a county GOP or local community event without seeing someone in a Ben Carson shirt handing out literature and signing people up.”

Direct mail’s reputation has been tarnished in recent years. Matt Lewis, a conservative journalist, has asked bluntly whether it’s ethical. The major villains are “scam PACs,” particularly those purporting to support Tea Party causes or candidates, that raise a great deal of money through direct mail and then spend it on … nothing, save hefty salaries for their employees. The total spending on actual politics ends up being close to nil. Often they have no real connection to candidates. “It is a terrible blight on the conservative movement and on the tea party in particular that the hucksters have come up to cash in,” wrote Erick Erickson.

Many strategists say direct mail is an important part of a diversified strategy. Other operatives, though, when discussing the Carson campaign, use words like “grifters” or “unconscionable.” They complain that Carson’s fundraisers appear to be reaping small-dollar donations from atypical donors and true believers while doing little with that money to build the infrastructure to win the nomination. For the majority of analysts who still consider Carson a very long shot to win the nomination, anyway, there appears to be no big downside for the candidate. But what about the earnest folks writing the checks?


Even with the best of intentions, a heavy reliance on direct mail has sometimes led campaigns and PACs to squander their muscle and money—including some staffed by the same people who are now working for Carson. One of Carson’s chief fundraisers is Mark Murray, who’s also president of TMA Direct, a direct-mail firm. TMA Direct was one of the top vendors to the Carson campaign in the third quarter, along with InfoCision and Eleventy Marketing, two companies based in Akron, Ohio, that have long worked with TMA Direct.

Murray was previously treasurer of American Legacy, a PAC affiliated with Newt Gingrich. As Mother Jones noted at the time, American Legacy’s spending in 2013 looked questionable. As of July 15 of that year, it had raised $1.4 million while contributing only $27,500 to actual candidates. The biggest recipient of American Legacy’s cash was InfoCision. TMA Direct also took in about $14,500. American Legacy’s mid-year report for 2015 is even worse. It raised $1.25 million but spent $1.38 million, and gave just $2,500 to candidates.

Carson’s national finance director is Amy Pass. She was previously the national finance director for Newt Gingrich’s 2012 campaign, and before that she was the director of major gifts at American Solutions, another blandly named Gingrich-affiliated PAC. Pass was apparently good at her job—American Solutions raised some $50 million over four years. But in 2011, the PAC went bankrupt. “Campaign finance reports showed that much of that money went to pay for charter flights for Mr. Gingrich as he traveled the country, keeping his political profile high,” The New York Times reported.

The 2012 Gingrich campaign and the 2016 Carson campaign share staff, and they share candidates who have proven they are able to rise to the top of the field—though the former speaker’s campaign showed that such success can be fleeting. Both campaigns have also been accused of using a campaign as a tool to sell books. Late in 2011, Gingrich and his wife Callista seemed to be combining a tour for their various books along with his stump appearances, requiring a delicate balancing act to adhere to the law.

Carson is now doing something similar, spending some time doing book events—which can’t be paid for with campaign cash—while also doing some fundraisers and campaign events. (The campaign notes that he isn’t suspending all political activity.) Leon Wolf at RedState rolled his eyes at the move. “If Ben Carson wanted the job of being President, there is no way that a book tour would prevent him from doing everything in his power to expand his campaign right now and to take over the lead for good from Donald Trump,” he wrote.

Since Carson took his quasi-break from the trail, however, polls show him increasing his support nationally and maybe even pulling past Trump in Iowa. Which all goes to show: Few of the traditional rules seem to apply to candidates this cycle. But Carson’s burn rate and his spending on fundraising in particular remain weak spots for the campaign, and his continuing success will depend on bringing those figures down. “If we need cash, we’re going to have all the cash we need for whatever purpose,” Watts told me. The next few months will determine whether he’s right.

[Ryan Ruck]

Finally narrowing down the field...

Christie and Huckabee Fail To Make Main Stage At Fox Business Debate

November 5, 2015

Chris Christie failed to make the cut for the main stage at the upcoming Fox Business Network/Wall Street Journal debate, a major blow for the New Jersey governor who has struggled to gain traction in the presidential race.

Fox Business announced the lineup on Thursday for its 9 p.m. main event and 6 p.m. undercard debate on Nov. 10. Christie failed to meet the 2.5 percent average polling threshold needed to make the primetime event, after having been on the main stage for the prior three GOP debates.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, former New York Gov. George Pataki and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore also got bad news, failing to register enough in the polls to participate in the event at all. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee also got bumped to the undercard stage.

The eight candidates on the main stage are: Ben Carson, Donald Trump, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz, former Gov. Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Gov. John Kasich, and Sen. Rand Paul.

On the undercard stage will be Christie, Huckabee, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and former Sen. Rick Santorum.

[Ryan Ruck]

I'm about 2/3 through the most recent Republican debate right now. DVR'd it so I could play me some Fallout.

For a whole bunch of the opening, I just about wanted to throw something through my TV with the way Bush and Kasich were sucking off illegal aliens. Soooo goddamn annoying. Those two need to be gone from future debates. I don't remember who it was but one of them said something along the lines of them wanting the law abiding to have a way to gain citizenship. I so, so, so desperately wanted someone (hopefully Cruz) up there to jump in and say, "Damnit! They are ILLEGAL aliens. By definition NONE of them are law abiding!" No one did though... I don't know how you can have a "law abiding illegal alien".

Would have liked to have seen someone (again, preferably Cruz) call out Kasich and Bush for being hand-wringing, pantywaists. I think that would have really delivered a coup de gras against them.

That said, It was nice for the candidates to have a decent bit to open up and explain their positions instead of being just soundbites.

At this point Bush, Kasich, and Paul need to get bumped from this debate. It really can only make the debate better.





(As an aside, I've had some Rum and Coke (Aspartame Free Diet Pepsi) so take this for what you will.)

[Ryan Ruck]

Now further into the debate I would like to take this time to fully, totally, and humbly apologize for ever casting a vote that propelled John Kasich into any position of prominence but, in my defense, it was either him or Sherrod Brown for governor.

Again, please forgive me and the rest of Ohio.

[American Patriot]

(As an aside, I've had some Rum and Coke (Aspartame Free Diet Pepsi) so take this for what you will.)

Pirate.

Cept, they don't use SUGAR FREE, cuz, dude, rum is made from SUGAR. lol

[vector7]

http://www.cbsnews.com/

Democratic debate live coverage

Democratic debate erupts into argument over foreign policy, terrorism

11:04 p.m.A summary of closing statements:

"If you believe that our country's problems and the threats that we face in this world can only be met with new thinking, new and fresh approaches, then I ask you to join my campaign," O'Malley says. "We will not solve our nation's problems by resorting to the divisive ideologies of our past or by returning to polarizing figures from our past."

"I've heard a lot about me in this debate and I'm going to keep talking and thinking about all of you because ultimately I think the president's job is to do everything possible, everything that she can do to lift up the people of this country, starting with our children and moving forward," Clinton says. She argues she has spent her life looking for ways to even the odds and level the playing field for everyone.

Sanders points to issues of income inequality, campaign finance, a lack of guaranteed health care for all Americans, high rates of child poverty and no guaranteed family and medical leave. "That's not the America that I think we should be, but in order to bring about the changes that we need we need a political revolution. Millions of people are going to have to stand up, turn off the T.V., get involved in the political process and tell the big money interests that we are taking back our country," he says.

10:55 p.m.Dickerson asks all three candidates to name a crisis in their life that suggests they have been tested for the challenge of being president.

Clinton points to her role in advising President Obama to initiate the raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

There was no certainty attached to it, the intelligence was by no means absolute, we had all kinds of questions that we discussed and at the end I recommended to the president that we take the chance to do what we could to find out whether that was bin Laden and to finally bring him to justice. It was an excruciating experience," she said O'Malley says he doesn't believe there is a crisis at the state or local level that one can point to as evidence they are ready to be a commander in chief, but he says he learned "certain disciplines" that he believes are directly applicable to the job of being president.

"I have been tried under many different emergencies...I know how to manage people in a crisis and be very clear about the goal of protecting human life," he says.

Sanders points to his role in crafting legislation to reform the Veterans' Affairs Hospital system after a series of scandals plagued the agency in 2014.

"I could only get two Republican votes," he says of his original bill. "I had to go back and start working on a bill that wasn't the bill that I wanted...I lost what I wanted but I had to stand up and come back and get the best that we could."

10:40 p.m. Sanders gets a question about whether his desire to have a single-payer healthcare system is realistic given that it's a $1 trillion industry in America.

"It's not going to happen tomorrow," he says, "and it's probably not going to happen until we have campaign finance reform" and insurance companies have less influence over elections.

But he stands by it, and says "single-payer system is the way to go."

Clinton says she "waited" for the revolution on single-payer healthcare, but says it never came. But she says now the focus should be on improving the Affordable Care Act and stopping Republicans from repealing it.

She knocks Sanders for wanting to turn healthcare over to the states, saying, she would not want Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad in charge of her healthcare.

10:35 p.m. Sanders glosses over giving details on how states offer free tuition at public colleges and universities even though many are running deficits.

"I think they're going to be pretty smart because I think a lot of states will do the right thing and those who don't will pay a heavy penalty," he says.

O'Malley argues a better goal is debt-free college.

10:30 p.m. Lots of agreement among the candidates that there needs to be reform in the criminal justice system as an answer to larger issues of race inequality. O'Malley and Sanders both talk about steps that they have taken or want to take to address racial disparities in the prison system.

10:25 p.m. Sanders weighs in on his famous remark from the last Democratic debate -- that "the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!"

"I was sick and tired of Hillary Clinton's email, I am still sick and tired of Hillary Clinton's email," he says, joking that after what he said, stories about the email scandal disappeared from the front pages. He says he would prefer to be talking about issues like the disappearing middle class, income inequality, and a lack of paid family and medical leave in the U.S.

"We've gotten off of Hilary's emails, good. Let's go to the major issues facing America," he says.

"I agree completely," Clinton says in response. "I couldn't have said it better myself."

10:17 p.m.The candidates spar over the issue of gun control, and Clinton goes after Sanders' support for a 2005 bill that granted legal immunity to gun manufacturers. Sandres said he would favor reversing immunity and doing even more on gun control.

"I want to see it improved and expanded. I want to see us do away with the gun show loophole," he says.

Asked whether the vote was a mistake, he says, "There were parts of that bill which I agreed with, parts I disagreed with."

O'Malley jumps in to accuse Clinton of being on "three sides" of the gun issue, and argued that in 2008, "You were portraying yourself as Annie Oakley and saying we don't need those regulations."

"There's a big difference in leading by polls and leading by principle," he says.

Sanders cuts in to remark that Baltimore - the city where O'Malley once served as mayor - "is not one of the safest cities in America."

10:07 p.m. O'Malley joins Sanders in attacking Clinton's plan for Wall Street reform as insufficient.

"It was greeted by many as 'weak tea,'" he says. "It is weak tea. It is not what the people expect of our country. We expect that our country will protect the main street economy from excesses on Wall Street. And that's why Bernie's right - we need to reinstate Glass-Steagall." He's referring to the Depression-era law that separated commercial and investment banking and was repealed in 1999.

10:03 p.m.Clinton argues that voters know she will not be beholden to Wall Street even though she accepts donations from people in that sector. She points to her record as a senator, where she introduced legislation to reign in compensation, give shareholders more control, and says she told Wall Street that what they were doing to the mortgage market was "bringing our country down."

She has released a plan she says will help prevent another taxpayer-funded bailout.

Her response, according to Sanders: "Not good enough." He points to the fact that he doesn't have a super PAC and won't be beholden to special interests.
9:56 p.m.The debate shifts to the issue of immigration reform. O'Malley calls Donald Trump an "immigrant-bashing carnival basher," and adds, "our symbol is the Statue of Liberty it is not a barbed-wired fence."

Clinton is asked how she can go further on immigration reform than President Obama has gone even though his proposals are in limbo in the court system.
"I know the president has appealed the decision to the Supreme court," she said, referring to the case involving Mr. Obama's 2014 immigration actions to protect as many as five million illegal immigrants.

Clinton she has reviewed the law, and she said she's convinced "that the president has the authority that he attempted to exercise with respect to Dreamers and their parents."

9:44 p.m. The Affordable Care Act gets a lot of love from both Clinton and Sanders. Clinton calls it a "great accomplishment" and Sanders says it was a "step forward."

Both argue that the law can be improved, particularly to bring down the price of drugs for Americans. Clinton said earlier it's "outrageous" that the U.S. government does not have an opportunity to negotiate for lower drug prices under Medicare.

"We have to go after price gouging and monopolistic practices and get Medicare the authority to negotiate," she says.

Sanders says, "I want to end the international embarrassment of the United States being the only major country on earth that doesn't' guarantee healthcare to all people as a right and not a privilege.

9:43 p.m.Sanders said he wouldn't make the tax rate as high as the level under President Dwight Eisenhower, which Sanders said was at 90 percent. "I'm not that must of a socialist compared to Eisenhower," he joked.

9:39 p.m. O'Malley defends his call for debt-free college by pointing to the fact that he was able to hold Maryland's public college tuition rate steady for four years. He turned the conversation to an entitlement he says the U.S. can no longer afford: A lower income tax rate and lower rate on capital gains.

9:35 p.m. O'Malley, who was the first candidate to call for the U.S. to take in 65,000 Syrian refugees, said he stands by that figure despite the fact that some of the terrorists involved in the attacks in Paris might have come into Europe with refugees fleeing Syria.

Clinton has also called for the U.S. to take in 65,000 Syrian refugees. She said, "I do not want us to in any way inadvertently allow people who wish us harm come into our country," Clinton said, adding that the U.S. has to look at other global challenges including in the South China Sea and with Russia.

9:30 p.m. A few foreign policy nuggets:

Clinton says Congress should "update" the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) to make sure the president has the authority that is needed for the fight against the ISIS. The administration is still relying on a 2002 authorization for the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
.
Sanders calls for "major reform in the military making it more cost effective but also focusing on the real crisis that faces us."

On taking in refugees fleeing conflict in Syria, he says, "I believe that the United States has the moral responsibility with Europe, with Gulf Countries like Saudi Arabia, to make sure that when people leave countries like Afghanistan and Syria...of course we reach out."

But, he added, "What the magic number is, I don't know, because we don't know the extent of the problem."

9:28 p.m Clinton argues it's "not particularly helpful" to say the U.S. is at war with radical Islam because the U.S. needs to reach out to Muslim countries.

She does say it's fair to talk about "Islamists who clearly are also jihadists." Many Republicans have criticized President Obama for not using the term, "at war with radical Islam."

Sanders weighs in: "I don't think the term is what's important."

O'Malley argues the appropriate term is "radical jihadis," but most important is to get Muslim Americans to speak out against violence committed in the name of Islam.

9:22 p.m O'Malley gets a question about whether or not the world is too dangerous a place for a governor with no foreign policy experience. He pivots to an implicit attack on Clinton without using her name.

"Libya is now a mess. Syria is a mess. Iraq is a mess. Afghanistan is a mess. As Americans we have shown ourselves to have the greatest military on the face of the planet but we are not so very good at anticipating threats," he said.

9:17 p.m. Clinton once again says her vote in favor of the Iraq was a "mistake," but argued it is a mistake to fixate on that one vote.

"We need to understand it and realize that it has antecedents to what happened in Iraq and we have to continue to be vigilant about it," she said.

Sanders said his disagreement with Clinton runs deeper than just the Iraq War vote, and pointed to a long U.S. history of pushing for regime change in countries like el Salvador and Guatemala.

"These toppling of governments, regime changes have unintended consequences," he said. "On this issue I'm a little bit more conservative than the secretary and I am not a great fan of regime change."

9:13 p.m. Sanders blames the "disastrous" Congressional vote in favor of the war of Iraq for the deteriorating situation in the Middle East.

He called for an international coalition, including Muslim countries, to fight ISIS.

"I think that was one of the worst foreign policy blunders in the modern history of the United States," he said.

9:11 p.m. Clinton is asked whether the Obama administration -- herself included -- underestimated the threat from ISIS. She placed the blame on former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

"I think that what happened when we abided by the agreement that George W. Bush made with the Iraqis to leave by 2011 is that an Iraqi army was left that had been trained and was prepared to defend Iraq. Unfortunately Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, set about decimating it," she said, before pointing to the violence in neighboring Syria.

"I don't think that the Untied States has the bulk of the responsibility. I really put that on Assad and on the Iraqis and on the region itself," she said.

9:08 p.m.The candidates are invited to give one-minute opening statements about the attacks in Paris. Some excerpts:

Sanders: "Together leading the world this country will rid our planet of this barbarous organization called ISIS. I'm running for president because as I go around this nation I talk to al to of people and what I hear is people's concern that the economy we have is a rigged economy. People are working longer hours for lower wages...on top of that we have a corrupt campaign finance system."

Clinton: "Our prayers are with the people of France tonight but that is not enough. We need to have a resolve that will bring the world together to root out the kind of radical jihadist ideology that motivates organizations like ISIS, a barbaric, ruthless, violent jihadist terrorist group. This election is not only about electing a president, it's also about choosing our next commander in chief, and I will be laying out in detail what I think we need to do with our friends and allies in Europe and elsewhere to do a better job of coordinating efforts against the scourge of terrorism."

O'Malley: "Our hearts go out to the people of France in this moment of loss...as our hearts go out to them and as our prayers go out to them we must remember this: This is the new face of conflict...in the 21st century, and there is no nation on the planet better able to adapt to this change than our nation....we must anticipate these threats before they happen. This is the new sort of challenge, the new sort of threat that does in fact require new thinking, fresh approaches."

9:00 p.m. Since the first Democratic debate was held one month ago, the field has been cut in half. Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, former Rhode Island Gov. and Sen. Lincoln Chafee and Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig (who didn't even qualify for the last debate) have all dropped out.

That means Saturday night's debate in Des Moines, Iowa features the three remaining candidates: former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley.

CBS News is hosting the debate in conjunction with CBS' Des Moines affiliate, KCCI, and the Des Moines Register. "Face the Nation" anchor John Dickerson will be the principal moderator, and he will be joined by CBS News Congressional Correspondent Nancy Cordes, KCCI anchor Kevin Cooney and the Des Moines Register's political columnist, Kathie Obradovich.

In the aftermath of Friday's attacks in Paris, the debate will focus in part on foreign policy differences among the candidates and strategies to fight extremist groups abroad.

Candidates have already responded, via social media, to the attacks that have left more than 120 people dead and several dozen more injured. While all three have expressed their condolences for the people of Paris, the debate will provide a forum to discuss how the U.S. might prevent such an attack from happening at home.

A CBS News/ New York Times poll released ahead of the debate shows that Clinton enjoys a considerable lead, with support from 52 percent of Democratic primary voters nationally.

• What: Second Democratic presidential debate
• Time: 9pm to 11pm ET
• Where to watch/listen:
• On TV: CBS television affiliates or on CBSN streaming on Apple TV,Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV and Xbox One
• Mobile: CBSN streaming on the CBS News apps CBS News for Android and CBS News for iOS
• Online: CBSNews.com (livestream will include real-time Twitter trends, instant reactions, curated Tweets and other key information)
• On radio: CBS Radio News affiliates
• Pre-debate coverage: Join Senior Political Editor Steve Chaggaris and White House correspondent Major Garrett for CBSN's livestream coverage of debate preparations will air online at CBSnews.com/live starting at 6pm ET.

[Ryan Ruck]

I didn't even bother to watch it. All it is is one liberal trying to out liberal the next...

[American Patriot]

Anyone that votes for a Liberal these days is an camel's ass kissing commie.

[vector7]

anyone that votes for a liberal these days is an camel's ass kissing commie.

[Ryan Ruck]

Bobby Jindal is officially out.

Not going to have a huge impact in the main debate stage (except for hopefully driving the other losers [not that Jindal is, he just never got traction] out of the race).

I'd like to see him officially endorse Cruz but he's not endorsing anyone at this time.

[Ryan Ruck]

Time for some Cruz News.

Ted Cruz Explains His Challenging Path To The GOP Nomination

November 17, 2015

Sen. Ted Cruz stood outside the New Hampshire state capitol Thursday morning, moments after filing papers to qualify for next year’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary. Coatless against a cold drizzle, he delivered a fiery call to arms to the enthusiastic supporters gathered around him and beyond.

“We’re seeing conservatives in New Hampshire and nationally unite,” he said. “We’re seeing the liberty movement coming together. . . . Let me tell you, what is happening on these steps in New Hampshire scares the living daylights out of Washington.”

It was an exhortation by a politician on the rise in the competition for the Republican nomination. Two outsiders with no political experience, Donald Trump and Ben Carson, continue to lead the GOP field. But in the year of the outsider, the freshman senator from Texas who has made his mark defying the political elites believes that, ultimately, he can be the beneficiary of the virulent anti-Washington mood that has shaped this pre-election year.

And as unlikely as his path might have seemed a few months ago, Cruz’s rise in the polls and his formidable war chest represent an additional threat to the establishment that is not going unnoticed.

During a lengthy interview as he returned to his hotel after a long day of campaigning, Cruz offered a detailed explanation of what he views as his path forward — and why he thinks he’ll win. But it is a path strewn with obstacles, opponents and question marks.

He said he sees the nomination battle unfolding, at least initially, as some have in the past, with a candidate favored by the party establishment pitted against a conservative or populist insurgent. But this time, Cruz is planning for a different outcome, with grass-roots conservatives — evangelicals, tea party activists, libertarians and others — coalescing to defeat the establishment.

Cruz is not a believer in conventional politics or conventional wisdom. Should he prevail in defeating his party’s establishment and winning the nomination contest, his formula for winning a general election also runs counter to the view of many political analysts, including GOP strategists.

He doesn’t dismiss the need to improve the party’s standing among minorities, particularly Hispanics. But he sees a different route, arguing that possible vote gains among those minority groups are “dwarfed” by the millions of conservatives, Reagan Democrats and otherwise disaffected Americans who stayed home in 2008 and 2012 because they found the Republican presidential nominees, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, uninspiring or insufficiently conservative.

Cruz doesn’t believe demographic shifts have put the Republicans at as much of a disadvantage as many analysts have said. What’s needed, he argues at almost every stop, is a true conservative nominee rather than someone who runs “to the mushy middle.” That strategy has been tried and failed, he said. His mission is to persuade enough Republicans to turn to him to pursue a different path.

“The single biggest reason we decided to run was when I looked at the other candidates, all of whom I like and respect, I didn’t see a whole lot of candidates who I thought were likely to energize and mobilize and inspire the millions of conservatives who were staying home,” Cruz said.

To do that, he must first overcome hurdles within his own party, starting with Trump and Carson, both of whom must fall for him to flourish. Beyond that, he is seen among establishment Republicans as too conservative to win a general election, a candidate who they fear could lead the party to a historic defeat.

In the interview, Cruz offered another view, describing in some detail how he envisions the campaign unfolding and why he believes the race sets up well for him.

In past nomination contests, there was often an early consensus choice from the mainstream conservative wing of the party. (Cruz calls it the moderate establishment wing.) This year, he argues, is different.

“The moderate lane is unbelievably crowded,” he said. “There are four, five or six candidates who are fighting like cats and dogs. They’re going to spend millions ripping each other apart. This cycle, moderates are acting like conservatives typically do.”

In contrast, he argued, the conservative lane has become less crowded than some had predicted. Two candidates competing for the conservative base, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Texas governor Rick Perry, have already dropped out. Some others have not yet shown the ability to build substantial support, he said.

Cruz didn’t name them, but that list could include the two past winners of the Iowa caucuses, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, as well as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

That still leaves Trump and Carson, who continue to attract close to half of the GOP primary vote. Cruz and his advisers believe that, as the campaign enters a more serious phase, when the records and experience of all the candidates will be more closely examined, the two non-politicians will fade.

How long he is prepared to wait to see if they fall is a strategic question he’s not yet ready to answer publicly.

In the interview, Cruz simply asserted that neither Trump nor Carson would end up as the Republican nominee, adding: “I believe that we are going to win the conservative bracket.”

If support for Trump and Carson does begin to weaken, many Republicans believe the nomination contest could narrow to a competition between Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. If that were to happen, the two young Cuban Americans represent the competing theories of what Republicans must do to win the White House.

Both have been buoyed by strong performances in the past two GOP debates. In the days after last week’s debate in Milwaukee, the two clashed sharply over immigration, which Cruz sees as a critical fault line that he hopes to exploit by highlighting Rubio’s support for a Senate bill that included a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants now in the country. Rubio’s advisers are confident they can neutralize Cruz’s attacks.

Cruz said he sees a battle with Rubio for the nomination as plausible and has said the Floridian would be a strong opponent. But, noting the intensity of the competition among Rubio, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and businesswoman Carly Fiorina, he said it’s not yet obvious who will prevail.

Cruz acknowledges that in past elections, the candidate with establishment credentials and establishment money generally has won the nomination, in part by capturing more than enough conservative votes to win. “Their strategy was to keep conservatives splintered,” he said. “If conservatives ever unite, it’s game over.”

Cruz could have advantages that candidates from the party’s most conservative wing have not had in the past. One is money. Through the third quarter of the year, Cruz had raised $26.6 million for his campaign, second only to Carson among the Republicans.

He had more cash on hand — at $13.8 million — than any other GOP candidate (not counting Trump, who is funding his own campaign). He also had the second-highest amount stockpiled through the second quarter in his super PACs, although Bush’s super PAC dwarfs all others.

The second asset is organization. Earlier, Cruz announced that he had county chairs in all 171 counties in the first four states on the voting calendar — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. In the interview, he said the campaign has identified organizational chairs in every congressional district in the states that hold contests from Feb. 1 to March 14.

“Nobody else has anything close to that level of infrastructure, organization,” he explained. “This campaign’s strength, the heart of the campaign, is the grass roots.”

He declined to say which among the first four states could give him his first victory but nonetheless called the nomination calendar “a tremendous asset” to his candidacy.

“I don’t believe we have to win any of those four,” he said. But conceding that no one has won the nomination without a victory in the early states, he added, “There is no doubt that if we get blown out of the water in the first four states, it’s game over.”

The states that come next form the heart of Cruz’s strategy, starting with those voting March 1. On that date, roughly a dozen states will vote — with a concentration in the South, including his home state of Texas. “No other candidate has the natural base of support in those states,” he said. “Those are Southern states. They’re conservative states. They’re evangelical states.”

Cruz’s strategy would come apart if the candidate favored by the establishment also finds significant support in the party’s conservative base. Rubio appears to have that potential; as a result, Cruz will try to persuade anti-Washington conservatives that Rubio would be indebted to the establishment if he were president.

“Candidates make a decision,” Cruz said. “Whose agenda are they going to champion, the big-money moderate donors in New York and California or the grass-roots activists? Often those agendas are in direct conflict. . . . If you choose to take one path, you are closing off the other path to yourself.”

Cruz wears with pride his quarrels with GOP leaders in Washington. “I’ll give you a very simple syllogism that my chief strategist laid out at the beginning,” Cruz said. “ ‘America hates Washington. Washington hates you. That ain’t bad.’ ”

On Veterans Day, Cruz was in Kingston, N.H., where he spoke to an overflow crowd at VFW Post 1088. There, he talked about the parallels he sees with the late 1970s and how the trends resulted in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

“It didn’t come from Washington,” he said of the Reagan revolution that changed the direction of the country. “Washington despised Ronald Reagan. It came from the American people to turn this country around.”

That is the message he now carries from state to state in his quest to score the ultimate victory over the party establishment.

[Ryan Ruck]

Cruz Campaign Names Congressional District Coordinators in 24 States

November 17, 2015

Ted Cruz has hired congressional district coordinators in all 24 states with a caucus or a primary taking place on March 15 or before, according to campaign sources. That’s a total of 163 congressional district coordinators, who will accompany the campaign’s 171 county chairs, one in each county in the first four early-voting states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada.

Though initially underestimated, the Texas senator has surprised many by raising an impressive amount of both hard and soft money. Though his cluster of super PACs, flush with over $30 million, have puzzled many with their failure to purchase virtually any television ad time in the early states yet, the Cruz campaign has used its money to build out an impressive campaign infrastructure in the early primary states, putting particular emphasis on the Southern states that head so the polls in March in the so-called SEC primary.

The goal is to run a truly national primary campaign, which is an option only available to a handful of candidates. As Cruz told Politico last month, “For the candidates who have not been able to raise any money yet, it is simply not feasible for them to run a national campaign, and so they’re not.”