Chad’s Morning Brief: Six Republicans Would Beat Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz Rises in Iowa

Ted Cruz continues his national rise. The Chad Hasty Show airs 8:30-11am on 790AM KFYO.

Six Republicans Would Beat Hillary

It's good news for many of the Republican candidates including Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Marco Rubio. According to The Hill, many of the GOP candidates would defeat Hillary Clinton if the election were today.

Six GOP presidential candidates would beat Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in a head-to-head matchup, according to a Fox News poll released Sunday.

Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) would do best against Clinton, 50 to 42 percent, pollsters found.

Billionaire Donald Trump, retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie would also win hypothetical elections, according to the new poll, taken after more than 100 people were killed and more than 300 others injured in a wave of terrorist attacks in Paris.

Clinton and former businesswoman Carly Fiorina would tie with 42 percent each.

Trump remains the GOP front-runner with 28 percent support from likely Republican primary voters in the new poll.

Carson has 18 percent while Cruz and Rubio are tied at 14 percent apiece. No other GOP candidate had more than 3 percent support.

This is good news for a Republican party that is split right now. It shows the strength of the GOP vs. the weakness of Hillary Clinton. Marco Rubio's lead over Hillary Clinton is very positive as his lead over Clinton has increased for months now.

Cruz Rises in Iowa

According to the Texas Tribune, support for Ted Cruz in Iowa is steady and growing. Cruz has put himself in excellent position in Iowa so far.

Ted Cruz's Iowa moment has arrived.

The U.S. senator from Texas, who has worked for months to manage expectations in the first early voting state, is starting to flirt with top-tier status as his campaign zeroes in on this critical presidential proving ground.

He has visited the state five times over the last six weeks. His paid staff in Iowa has quadrupled from what it was just two months ago. His campaign has launched its first major ad buy in Iowa, an initial six-digit purchase on TV and radio. And he's secured a big-name endorsement from U.S. Rep. Steve King of Iowa, with another social conservative kingmaker, Bob Vander Plaats, expected to line up behind him soon.

Whether Cruz likes it or not, expectations for his campaign in the state have risen accordingly.

“I’ll be honest — I think they’re as high as they’ve ever been and they’re only going to get higher," said Craig Robinson, a former state party official who writes the influential Iowa Republican blog.

The growing expectations could pose a new dynamic to Cruz and his aides, whom have long insisted they are running a national campaign that does not hinge on his performance in a single state. The candidate himself regularly brushes off questions about any state being a must-win, asserting his campaign is "all in" across the map, with the organization and resources to go the distance.

Keeping expectations in check could be an especially important task this cycle, which has already seen an early Iowa frontrunner — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — slip from dominance there, only to drop out of the entire race several weeks later.Well aware of the booms and busts that have plagued other campaigns, Cruz's supporters in Iowa insist his rise is of a different variety.

"I believe the momentum is there just at the right time," said Steve Holt, an Iowa state representative. "This is not going to be a momentum like some have been — just up and down, and then it's gone."

“He’s slowly going up," said Omar Marquez, a junior at Briar Cliff University in Sioux City, where Cruz held a town hall Friday morning. "You see other candidates — they’re already at the top like [Donald] Trump. You expect them to fizzle out, but I think it’s better to start slower."

Cruz's slow-but-steady rise in Iowa has not been accidental. While other GOP candidates were competing for oxygen this summer with Walker and then Trump, Cruz's campaign was a little more focused on laying groundwork in states deeper into the primary calendar, such as the group of mostly southern states, including Texas, that are set to vote March 1 in what is being called the "SEC primary." As a result, Cruz's efforts in Iowa did not begin ramping up in earnest until Labor Day, two weeks after which he opened his first campaign office in the state.

"You know, Scripture talks about building your house on a foundation of rock and not on sand," Cruz said at the time. "This campaign is designed to be built on a foundation of rock."

Cruz's campaign has at least one county chair in all 99 counties of Iowa as well as congressional district coordinators covering the entire state. It has eight paid staffers — up from two in September and one over thesummer, when state director Bryan English was working alone out of his living room. And Cruz himself is showing up in the state more often, having public events scheduled in the state during seven of the 11 weeks since Labor Day.

Cruz's campaign in Iowa received a big boost Monday when he won the support of King, an influential figure in conservative circles who could open doors for Cruz throughout the state. By the end of the week, Cruz had picked up the endorsement of Loras Schulte, who had to give up his membership on the Iowa GOP State Central Committee to back Cruz.

"It didn't hurt” when King endorsed Cruz, Schulte said. “When he announced on Monday, it was kind of a personal confirmation that, yes, I had made the right choice."

The candidate’s Iowa polling average, as calculated by the website RealClearPolitics, has increased more than 5 percentage points since Sept. 7, when he was bunched together with several other GOP candidates in the mid-single digits. Now Cruz and fellow U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida comprise a tier of their own behind frontrunners Ben Carson and Trump.

As he stumped across the state Friday, it was easy to see why Cruz's star has risen in Iowa. After a forum in Des Moines went way over its scheduled length — stretching on for more than three hours as several inches of snow blanketed the city — a still-lively Cruz was holding court in his reception room, taking another half hour of questions from a crowd spilling out into the hallways.

As I have said from the beginning, don't count out Ted Cruz. I remember having him on my show in the early day's of his Senate campaign when no one gave him a chance. I and many others liked what Cruz had to say. Slowly, Cruz began to rise in Texas. It wouldn't surprise me at all if we see the same thing in Iowa and other states.