Chad’s Morning Brief: Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton Talk Abortion and Ted Cruz Lays Groundwork for the SEC Primary
Here are some of the issues that will be discussed on today’s edition of The Chad Hasty Show.
Clinton vs. Rubio on Abortion
According to POLITICO, Democratic candidate for President Hillary Clinton took advantage of the comments made by Donald Trump to hit all Republicans on how their policies would impact women. Clinton singled out Senator Marco Rubio and his stance on abortion.
“But I think if we focus on that, we’re making a mistake,” she said. “What a lot of the men on that stage in that debate said was offensive.”
Clinton then took aim at Sen. Marco Rubio. During the Fox News GOP debate Thursday, Rubio said he never said he supported a rape and incest exception to abortion bans.
“The Republicans get to choose their nominee and they will have to make that decision, but … when one of their major candidates, a much younger man, the senator from Florida, says there should be no exception for rape and incest, that is as offensive and as troubling a comment as you can hear from a major candidate running for the presidency,” Clinton said. “So the language may be more colorful and more offensive, but the thinking, the attitude toward women, is very much the same.”
Rubio hasn't backed down since Thursday's debate and Monday evening, the Rubio campaign put out the following statement:
"Hillary Clinton supports abortion even at the stage when an unborn child can feel pain; she has defended partial birth abortions as a 'fundamental right;' she opposes requiring parents to be notified that their minor daughter is having an abortion; she supports funding Planned Parenthood even after they have been exposed for their role in selling the organs of unborn children; and she supports using taxpayer money to pay for abortions overseas. Hillary Clinton holds radical views on abortion that we look forward to exposing in the months to come."
It's good to see Rubio not backing down on this subject. He is showing fight and an eagerness to take on Clinton.
Cruz Heads South
Senator Ted Cruz is riding high after a well-received debate performance and a boost in the polls. According to RollCall, Cruz began laying out his plans for what has been called the "SEC Primary".
Cruz plans to make his stand during the so-called SEC Primary in March on Super Tuesday. Cruz’s campaign has taken to calling that swath of the U.S. “Cruz Country” because of its traditional conservative, evangelical base — his target demographic.
He outlined some of that strategy aboard his campaign bus after a large outdoor rally in sweltering Georgia heat behind Sprayberry’s Barbecue in Newnan, Ga., on Aug. 8.
“The RNC changed the primary calendar this year, so that the entire primary is accelerated. You’re going to have the first three primaries — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina — and they’ve always been critically important. They will remain critically important,” Cruz said. “But then just two weeks later: boom, we hit Super Tuesday. We hit primaries all across the country, primarily across the South, big states that are expensive to be on media, and it’s so fast that any campaign that hasn’t done the hard work of building a grass-roots team, putting in place strong leaders, is going to find themselves behind the eight ball because there’s not enough time.”
The following day, introducing Cruz at a Shelby County GOP event, Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill said the decision of SEC states to unite behind the March 1 primary date would give the conservative primary electorate in the region the chance to meet and greet candidates up close.
“I think there are some good people in Iowa, OK? But there’s nobody in Iowa that’s any better than the people in Shelby County, Tuscaloosa County, … any county in the state of Alabama,” Merrill said. “Our people deserve, and they’re going to get a right, to meet presidential candidates, just like the one we’re going to hear from today.”
Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., told CQ Roll Call likewise before introducing Cruz at a packed house in Huntsville Sunday evening. An estimated 1,400 people attended that stop in northern Alabama, and it was nearly moved outside because of the turnout.
“The South as most people understand it, which is a culture and a belief system, has not had much of an impact in general elections because we can be relied on to go one direction only,” Brooks said. “This time though, it looks like that we’re going to have a major say in who the Republican nominee is, and I think that’s very important.”
“We need to make sure that the Republican nominee is not going to be squishy, is not going to be beholden to special interest groups or powers that be with lots of money, but instead is going to be beholden to the values expressed by our Founding Fathers in the United States Constitution,” Brooks said.
Brooks made clear his appearance did not constitute an endorsement, though he considers Cruz an ally. Brooks is one of the known members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus that’s been a thorn in the side of GOP leadership.
“There are roughly 20 candidates who are running for president, maybe more than that,” Brooks said. “There are a handful of candidates on the Republican side that I think very highly of, any of whom I would be tickled to death if they were our nominee, because I think they would both govern well out of the White House and would win the general election. Ted Cruz is one of the people that I believe has what it takes to get America back on the right track.”
At a series of stops during a bus tour that continues for a couple more days through what the campaign has taken to calling “Cruz Country,” the Texas Republican has been greeted by enthusiastic crowds exceeding expectations (or capacity).
Smart plan by the Cruz team as they continue to build a grassroots coalition. When Trump fizzles out, Cruz could be the candidate that many of Trump's supporters go to.
Must Read Links:
These and many more topics coming up on today’s edition of The Chad Hasty Show. Tune in mornings 8:30-11am on News/Talk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App. All guest interviews can be heard on our KFYO YouTube page after the show and online at kfyo.com.
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