NY Mag: Ted Cruz the Only GOP Candidate Who Knows How to Handle Donald Trump

The Associated Press
The Associated Press

From Marin Cogan writing at New York magazine:

Of all of the curiosities this presidential campaign has produced so far, add to the list a joint-candidate rally featuring two of the most polarizing candidates in the GOP. On Thursday, Ted Cruz announced that Donald Trump would join him at the Capitol next month to protest lawmakers supporting the Iranian nuclear deal. “Glad @realdonaldtrump accepted my invitation to rally in DC to stop the catastrophic #IranDeal,” Cruz tweeted from his campaign account.

It was the surest sign yet that Cruz’s apparent strategy of wooing the controversial candidate — and positioning himself to win over Trump supporters if (or when) the businessman flames out of the race — is starting to pay off.

However Trump’s magic-carpet ride through GOP primary season ends, it will be remembered for (among other things) just how ill-prepared his fellow candidates were to take him on. Jeb Bush tried this week, in his characteristically genteel way, to respond to the insults that Trump has been hurling at him like spitballs all summer: “There’s a difference between Donald Trump and me: I’m a proven conservative with a record,” he told a gaggle of reporters last week with his hands clasped uncomfortably in front of him. Trump, not just undeterred but energized by the reaction, told the New York Times that Bush was a “low-energy person” — a phrase he’s repeated several times, knowing that it tweaks the younger Bush brother — and took to Twitter to mock him for rarely using his last name. Scott Walker has tried to ignore him, refusing to answer whether or not he supports birthright citizenship and declaring himself“unintimidated” so often it’s hard to believe him. But the Donald’s diatribes have caused him to slip in the polls, too.

Read the rest of the story at New York magazine.

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