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“I’m not a masochist,” Trump said in an interview with CNBC’s John Harwood. “Right now, I’m leading every poll, in most cases big. . . If that changed, if I was like some of these people at 1 percent or 2 percent, there’s no reason to move forward . . . If I tank, sure, I go back to business. Why wouldn’t I?” For now, Trump sees nothing but blue skies. He continues to draw large crowds with his bombastic, anti-immigrant rhetoric and promises to renew America’s greatness. Campaign funding is no problem for the deep-pocketed real estate magnate who...

AUSTIN - U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s friendly approach to mogul Donald Trump might be paying off in Texas. A poll released Thursday by the nonpartisan, nonprofit Texas Lyceum showed that Trump leads the Republican field in Texas, but Cruz is close behind and is the second choice for more than a third of Trump’s supporters. Cruz could be expected to have a strong swath of support among Republicans in his home state. But his strategy with regard to Trump may have kept Cruz from alienating a bigger share of businessman’s backers. Trump, as he has led in polls, has been...

The Daily Iowegian will publish an editorial Question of the Week on the Opinion page. The Iowegian wants you to think about the field of Republican candidates running for United States president. Last week the Iowegian asked you about Carly Fiorina. This week the focus is on Ted Cruz. So, the question of the week is, “Does Ted Cruz have what it takes to be president of the United States?” Go to the Daily Iowegian website, www.dailyiowegian.com, and scroll down the home page to POLL on the left hand side and cast your vote. Or call the Iowegian office at...

With the Summer of Trump behind us, the GOP presidential primary race is beginning to take shape. The sharp decline and hasty exit of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker leaves only four truly competitive candidates for the Iowa Caucuses on Feb. 1: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Donald Trump, Ben Carson and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Cruz has the strongest ground game of that group and is the best-funded. Carson is better organized than most realize, but has an unproven team and is an unproven candidate. I agree with many experts who believe we now have seen Trump's peak in polling,...

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul could be on the chopping block and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham may not even make the undercard debate under criteria released Wednesday by CNBC ahead of its Oct. 28 GOP presidential debate. The rules would limit the prime-time debate to any candidates polling above 3 percent. That's of an average of national polls released between Sept. 17 and Oct. 21. Surveys from NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox News, CNN and Bloomberg will be used to make the determination. To quality for the undercard debate, candidates must pull in at least 1 percent support in any of...

Donald Trump boasted several times that the amazing ratings both Fox News and CNN enjoyed while hosting the first two Republican presidential debates is primarily due to his presence in them, and after seeing the viewership numbers from The Donald’s appearance on 60 Minutes the other night, he might be right. Kipp Jones of Breitbart reports. “Trump’s Sunday evening interview with 60 Minutes, in which Russian President Vladimir Putin was also interviewed by Charlie Rose, brought in big ratings for CBS, which finished Rand Paul only behind NBC’s Sunday Night Football.” “…Scott Pelley’s sit-down with GOP frontrunner Donald Trump brought...

If the election were held today in Polk County – and say only a bit more than 100 people voted in it – Donald Trump might be strutting his way into the White House. In a straw poll conducted by the Polk County Republican Party during the fair last week, some 111 people expressed who they thought might be the best person to lead the country. Trump, who remains in the lead in the national polls, picked up 37 votes from attendees at the fairgrounds over the week. Tied for second place are surgeon Dr. Ben Carson and Florida senator...

Twitter feuds, hero bashing, insulting not one but two ethnic groups, ad hominem personal attacks on opponents, nose-to-nose confrontations, just one scandal after another—these aren’t from episodes of Keeping Up With the Kardashians—they’re from the “Trump Saga.” At the outset of the campaign, Trump insulted anyone and everyone: from calling undocumented immigrants “killers” and “rapists” to insulting venerated war hero John McCain. He then moved on to TV host Megyn Kelly, radio host Erick Erickson, Univision reporter Jorge Ramos, the pope, Carly Fiorina and the Fox News Channel. Democrats and Republicans alike didn’t take Trump too seriously when he entered...

By October 28th, we’ll be four full months into Trumpmania and will have shed, at a minimum, two of the most successful Republican governors in America from the field. Let’s either do one big debate with all the candidates left or face the hard reality that we’re never going to have a President Pataki or President Graham by culling the asterisk candidates. Another undercard debate isn’t going to help anyone who didn’t make it out of the first two. In fact, didn’t Chuck Todd say just a few days ago that NBC felt no pressure to feature 10 or 11...

Republican presidential candidate, businessman Donald Trump, speaks at an event sponsored by the Greater Charleston Business Alliance and the South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce. Real-estate tycoon Donald Trump retains a significant lead over his Republican rivals, according to a new poll from Suffolk University and USA Today. About 23.5% of likely Republican voters in the poll said they prefer Trump as the Republican Party's nominee. Trump leads retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who each received about 13% support. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), at 9%, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), at 8%,...

A lot of Republicans are hoping Donald Trump will go away, and here’s why he won’t: The Thirders aren’t going away, either. Understand, the Thirders aren’t a lot of us — just a third — but being the life force of the Republican Party, they are enough to run it. That’s a takeaway from the announced retirement of Speaker John Boehner. He is conceding the House to the forces of GOP wackery. We used to know the Thirders as Birthers, but we’ve come to see that they have, um, diversified. The term “Thirders” is my own. It came from polls...

The funniest part of this story isnÂ’t that theyÂ’re obsessing over an online predictions website. The funniest part is that JebÂ’s standing in that market really might be the best argument they have left to donors to stay aboard while this ship drifts aimlessly towards Iowa and New Hampshire. If PredictIt is for Jeb, who can be against him? Except PredictIt isnÂ’t for Jeb anymore. For the past week, Jeb BushÂ’s campaign advisers have been using a new data point to convince nervous donors that heÂ’s still the candidate to beat: BushÂ’s lead in the political prediction markets. Just one...

Just a day after Rand Paul said he'd outlast "clown" Donald Trump, the real estate mogul is firing back, using his favorite way to attack his fellow GOP candidates: Twitter. Trump tweeted Tuesday morning, "Prediction: Rand Paul has been driven out of the race by my statements about him-- he will announce soon. 1%!" He tweeted again, "I hope when Rand Paul gets out of the race---he is at 1%--his supporters come over to me. I will do a much better job for them." Paul told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday that it's "silly season anytime Donald Trump opens his...

Donald Trump remains the frontrunner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, though support for the toxic carnie has softened in the wake of his lackluster performance at the second debate on September 16th. Concurrently, two other candidates have broken through the crowded primary field; former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, boosted by her conversely strong performance at the Reagan Presidential library, is now polling in the double digits, and pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who emerged as a sort of temperate alternative to the squalling Trump, remains in second place in the most recent round of national polls. Meanwhile, Texas Senator Ted...

Sorry, Carly. You're peaking too early. Just ask President Herman Cain. Last week's CNN poll shows Carly Fiorina, the former business executive, rocketing to the top tier of the Republican presidential race. She has 15 percent support, up from 3 percent weeks earlier. Meantime, the previously unassailable front-runner, Donald Trump, is suddenly hemorrhaging support, falling to 24 percent from 32 percent, while Ben Carson has dropped to 14 percent from 19 percent. Then there's Scott Walker, who just two months ago was the front-runner in Iowa, then saw his support vanish. He has now dropped out. This dizzying reshuffle of...

Amy Eldred, program chair and first vice president of RWKC, led a local caucus or straw poll about the Republican candidates for the 2016 Presidential election, after displaying a poster of all 15 of them so luncheon attendees would remember who they all are. Unofficial selections favored Ted Cruz or Carly Fiorina as Republican nominee. The Republican Women of Kerr County and their and guests held a luncheon meeting last Friday, expecting a visiting guest speaker from the Republican Party of Texas, and instead got to hold their own local caucus or straw poll about the 2016 Presidential election. When...

I would like to thank all of you who took part in my recent poll. The question was which three Republican candidates you liked best and which you disliked the most. Although there were many more men than women who took part, there wasn’t much of a gender divide when it came to those you preferred and those who would force you to hold your nose in the voting booth when casting your vote against Hillary, Joe or Bernie, in 2016. Although there is no exact way to measure the difference in enthusiasm between a first place vote and a...

The last time I ranked the 10 people most likely to wind up as the Republican presidential nominee in 2016, I had Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as the third-best bet to be the GOP standard bearer. That was Aug. 2. On Sept. 21, Walker dropped out of the race, registering as a literal asterisk in his final poll as a candidate. The rise and fall of Walker — he was an official candidate for only 70 days — is evidence of the massive fluidity in the race; GOP voters are still looking around, jumping on some candidates . . . only to...

“He’s a master brander,” Clinton says of Trump. “He’s got a lot of pizzazz and zip.” (CNN) Former President Bill Clinton believes his wife, Hillary Clinton, will win the Democratic presidential nomination — and that Donald Trump could ultimately be her opponent in 2016. “He’s a master brander,” Bill Clinton said during an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria Friday. “And when you’ve got a lot of people running, and people are trying, you’ve got to make distinctions. Being able to put a personal stamp on it so people identify who you are certainly counts for something, at least in the...

)—The fallout from House Speaker John Boehner's abrupt resignation, the impact of the summer fund-raising challenge on the 2016 field and Donald Trump's big week ahead -- those stories filled our Sunday trip around the "Inside Politics" table. 1. Frantic fund-raising as the quarter ends Presidential campaigns are required at this point to report quarterly fund-raising numbers -- and the year's third quarter ends on Wednesday, the final day of September. The three-month period includes July and August, traditionally the toughest months to raise money. And CNN's Jeff Zeleny pointed out all the campaigns are in a frantic push to...