{"id":33761,"date":"2016-02-17T09:04:36","date_gmt":"2016-02-17T17:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/cruz-rivals-pounce-on-candidates-trust-issues\/"},"modified":"2016-02-17T09:04:36","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T17:04:36","slug":"cruz-rivals-pounce-on-candidates-trust-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/cruz-rivals-pounce-on-candidates-trust-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruz rivals pounce on candidate’s trust issues"},"content":{"rendered":"

BEAUFORT, S.C.<\/strong> \u2014 Ted Cruz is getting hammered by his Republican rivals over what they call a pattern of unethical campaign tactics and inaccurate statements by the Texas senator who has shaped his White House bid around trust.<\/p>\n

Cruz has had some trouble getting all his facts straight in debates, has used campaign tactics that some find suspicious and had an ad by an outside group temporarily pulled for questions about its accuracy. His opponents are blunter, calling him simply a liar.<\/p>\n

The Texas senator shrugged off the criticism Tuesday while campaigning for Saturday\u2019s South Carolina Republican primary.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth Donald Trump and Marco Rubio have this very strange pattern where if you point to their actual record, if you point to the words that have come out of their mouth, they don\u2019t respond on substance. They just scream \u2018Liar! Liar! Liar!\u2019\u201d Cruz said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Both Trump and Rubio have accused Cruz of distorting their records with increasing frequency. And while such charges are common in presidential politics, Cruz\u2019s team has also faced rebukes for misleading voters in recent weeks from multiple outside groups \u2014 the Iowa Secretary of State and a prominent anti-abortion group, among them.<\/p>\n

The fiery conservative\u2019s ability to navigate questions about his integrity could well decide his fate in the crowded 2016 contest, where he remains a top-tier contender.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s lying. And I think it\u2019s disturbing,\u201d Rubio said in Beaufort. \u201cJust here in South Carolina this week, he\u2019s lied about my record on Planned Parenthood, he\u2019s lied about my position on marriage, he\u2019s lied about his own record on immigration. So, I think this is very disturbing when you have a candidate that now on a regular basis just makes things up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump was even more aggressive, describing Cruz the day before as \u201cthe single biggest liar I\u2019ve ever come across, in politics or otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I have seen some of the best of them,\u201d the billionaire businessman said in a statement. \u201cHis statements are totally untrue and completely outrageous. It is hard to believe a person who proclaims to be a Christian could be so dishonest and lie so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Virtually all of the 2016 candidates have been caught stretching the truth over the course of the campaign, including Trump and Rubio. But only Cruz has embraced trust \u2014 and the play on his first name, \u201cTRUSTED,\u201d as the fundamental rationale of his campaign.<\/p>\n

After a legal review, a South Carolina television station over the weekend pulled down an ad from a pro-Cruz super PAC that targeted Rubio\u2019s position on immigration. Among other charges, the ad said Rubio worked to allow \u201csanctuary cities\u201d as part of the immigration deal he struck in 2013. Although the ad is running again, the station had questioned whether the charge was misleading.<\/p>\n

The Cruz campaign, which is barred from legally coordinating with the super PAC, claimed no knowledge of the ad. Yet Cruz continues to face fallout from at least two incidents leading up to his victory in Iowa\u2019s Feb. 1 caucuses.<\/p>\n

As Iowa voting began, Cruz supporters incorrectly spread word that rival Ben Carson was leaving the race. That was just days after the Iowa Secretary of State condemned Cruz campaign for sending bogus notices warning of election \u201cviolations\u201d to Iowa voters to persuade them to participate in the caucuses.<\/p>\n

Iowa\u2019s secretary of state criticized the tactic \u201cas not in keeping with the spirit of the Iowa caucuses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Late last week, Cruz was also chastised by the anti-abortion group, National Right to Life, for accusing Rubio of not fighting to strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood. The organization called Cruz\u2019s attack \u201cinaccurate and misleading.\u201d<\/p>\n

And on immigration, Cruz in recent weeks has repeatedly overstated the deportation records of past administrations and misstated his own position on the 2013 so-called \u201cGang of Eight\u201d legislation. The senator publicly backed legislation that proposed eventual legal status for millions, while stopping short of offering them a path to citizenship.<\/p>\n

While polls indicate Cruz\u2019s favorability is falling, his loyalists seem unperturbed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI trust Cruz 100 percent,\u201d said 67-year-old Dick Winters, a retired Navy veteran from Charleston. \u201cThey\u2019re taking things he\u2019s done and twisted them around.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was much the same at a Rubio rally 90 miles down the South Carolina coast, where Carol Benz, a 54-year-old Republican from nearby Port Royal, said her confidence in Cruz was based on a series of actions over time, not a single event on the campaign trail.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo I trust him? Yes I do,\u201d Benz said of Cruz, citing his fight against the federal health-care overhaul that triggered a government shutdown. \u201cHe didn\u2019t back down.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Trump supporter Tom Kennemore said he appreciates the brash businessman\u2019s willingness to tell the truth no matter what.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m leaning away from Cruz,\u201d Kennemore said at a Trump rally in Greenville Monday night. \u201cI\u2019m glad Trump pointed out his dishonesty.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP writer Jeffrey Collins in Greenville contributed to this report. Bauer reported in Mount Pleasant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BEAUFORT, S.C. \u2014 Ted Cruz is getting hammered by his Republican rivals over what they call a pattern of unethical campaign tactics and inaccurate statements by the Texas senator who has shaped his White House bid around trust. Cruz has had some trouble getting all his facts straight in debates, has used campaign tactics that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":33762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-33761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33761"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=33761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}