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Cruz fires top campaign spokesman over Rubio Bible video

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Monday he’s fired campaign communications director Rick Tyler, after his top spokesman promoted a video that wrongly depicted Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as trash-talking the Bible. 
The Texas senator announced that he's asked for the resignation at a press conference Monday afternoon.
“We are not a campaign that is going to question the faith of another candidate. Even if it was true, our campaign should not have sent it. That’s why I’ve asked for Rick Tyler’s resignation,” Cruz said in Nevada, ahead of the state's GOP caucuses on Tuesday. “The standards of conduct in this campaign have been made absolutely clear.”
Tyler originally had linked to a story showing a video of Rubio walking by a Cruz staffer and Cruz’s father Rafael, who were reading the Bible in a hotel lobby. The original subtitles on the video showed Rubio saying to the staffer, “Got a good book there, not many answers in it.”
But after Tyler linked to the story, Rubio communications director Alex Conant tweeted out the same video with what he says are the correct subtitles -- and they tell a very different story.
In them, Rubio actually says of the Bible, “All the answers are in there.”
Conant called the move “another dirty trick” by the Cruz campaign.
Cruz on Monday said it was a “grave error in judgment” – but at the same time accused Rubio of exploiting the controversy for political advantage and to distract from his own record.
“We are going to stay focused on issues and substance and record,” he said.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, delighted in the news, taking to Twitter to slam the “dirty tricks”
“Ted Cruz has now apologized to Marco Rubio and Ben Carson for fraud and dirty tricks. No wonder he has lost Evangelical support!” Trump tweeted.
Rubio also had criticized the Cruz campaign last week for using a doctored image of Rubio supposedly shaking hands with President Obama. This, after the Cruz campaign also faced accusations of spreading false rumors on Iowa caucus night that Ben Carson was dropping out -- when in fact Carson had only announced he was going to Florida to pick up some fresh clothes.
Cruz has described the Iowa caucus incident as a simple mistake, blaming it on a media report regarding Carson's travel plans.
Tyler, meanwhile, told Fox News earlier Monday that he made a mistake.
"I posted in haste, I should not have done it," Tyler told Fox News' Martha MacCallum. "It was a mistake and I would not knowingly post something I knew to be false."
Tyler also apologized Sunday on Facebook, noting the Cruz staffer in the video said Rubio made a “friendly and appropriate remark.” (The source of the original report, The Daily Pennsylvanian, has nevertheless stuck by its original transcript of Rubio's remarks.)
Tyler is a long-time political strategist. He served as spokesman for Newt Gingrich for 12 years, and also worked on political campaigns for former Rep. Ron Paul and former Rep. Todd Akin.

Georgia Supreme Court hears KKK bid to 'Adopt-A-Highway'

Does the Ku Klux Klan have a constitutional right to "adopt a highway"?
That question was at the center of a high-profile battle Monday before the Georgia Supreme Court, where the Klan is challenging the state's refusal to let it participate in the popular Adopt-A-Highway program.
The hate group, with the American Civil Liberties Union by its side, is casting its bid as a free speech issue.
“The government cannot be a censor of free speech,” Alan Berger, an attorney for the International Keystone Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, said.
But the Georgia Department of Transportation has resisted the KKK's efforts ever since 2012 to join the program.
For its part, GDOT maintains it should be allowed to exclude certain groups from the program -- and stands by its claim that the KKK’s “long rooted history of civil disturbance” would “cause a significant public concern.”
Monday’s arguments centered around Georgia's claim of so-called sovereign immunity – a legal doctrine that shields the state from civil suit or criminal prosecution. The state had appealed a lower court decision by Judge Shawn LaGrua, who ruled Georgia was not protected against the KKK suit because the group claimed the discrimination involved a violation of its constitutional rights.
“The state denied the application, not because of safety hazard or some other compelling government interest, but because the state disagrees with what the KKK represents,” Maya Dillard Smith, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia, told FoxNews.com. “It is precisely this kind of government action the Constitution prohibits.”
While Smith admits that many people who hear about the case have a “visceral reaction” to it, she warns its outcome could have a dangerous ripple effect.
“What may seem as chipping away only at the KKK’s free speech right, will, in fact, open Pandora’s box and create legal precedent that justifies curtailing the free speech rights of religious evangelicals, abortion protestors and even Black Lives Matter supporters and opponents,” she said.
A judgment is not expected for a couple of months, Berger told FoxNews.com following Monday's oral arguments. In the meantime, GDOT has suspended Adopt-a-Highway applications.
This isn’t the first time a state has gone rounds with the white supremacist group.
In 1994, Missouri tried to block the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from participating in its Adopt-A-Highway program.
The group -- which excludes anyone who is black, Jewish, Mexican or Asian -- had requested a half-mile section of road on Interstate 55, one of the routes that had been used to bus black students to school as part of desegregation efforts near St. Louis.
The state denied the KKK’s request.
In that case, lawyers for the state unsuccessfully argued that it had a right to control its own speech and that allowing the Klan to participate would violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s ban on racial discrimination in federally funded programs.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, thereby forcing the state to allow the group to take part in its “Adopt-A-Highway” program. However, the state later kicked the group out, saying it failed to do its job and pick up the litter on its adopted stretch of highway.
In 2009, the National Socialist movement, a neo-Nazi group, tried to adopt another stretch of road in Missouri. In response, officials renamed the part of the highway after Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a man had who fled Nazi Germany and later became a popular civil rights advocate.
In 2005, two green signs popped up on a rural road in Oregon that seemed to suggest the American Nazi Party was participating in that state’s Adopt-A-Highway program. Complaints poured in after the signs were featured on a local newscast. One sign was even vandalized.
In an email to The Spokesman-Review, the group’s leader Rocky Suhayda denied involvement in the program, saying the group “would never pick up garbage along a highway in this toilet-bowl of a country.”

Consultants reaped windfall from failed Bush campaign

When Donald Trump pointed the finger at Jeb Bush at the last debate and claimed he’s got nothing to show for the millions his campaign has spent, he wasn’t kidding.
A review of how Bush and his allies spent over $125 million in his failed campaign shows the main thing to come out of it was a lot of consultants and local TV stations made a lot of money.
A Washington Post review of Bush spending shows more than 95 percent of the advertising budget – from his campaign and the separate super PAC, Right to Rise – went to consulting firms Oath Strategies and Revolution Agency. The more than $100 million budget largely went straight to buying up air time on local TV stations, but the consultants themselves reportedly would have pocketed several million dollars in commissions and fees along the way.
The rest of the money, according to the Post review, went to polling, legal fees, and other areas. For all that, he won just four delegates – or roughly $31 million per delegate. He drew just 3 percent of the vote in Iowa; 11 percent in New Hampshire; and 8 percent in South Carolina.
The Post also puts the spotlight on Mike Murphy, who ran the pro-Bush super PAC – suggesting his influence could account for why so much money was poured into advertising.  Murphy, it turns out, is a founding partner of Revolution Agency. He also previously served as a top adviser to Bush’s 1998 and 2002 gubernatorial campaigns.
The super PAC was expected to be a dominant factor in shaping the narrative for the 2016 GOP fight but in the end, Right to Rise fell short of its expectations. Bush, the former Florida governor, dropped out of the race after a disappointing South Carolina finish on Saturday. 
The drop-out comes after Republican front-runner Trump made a point of calling Bush out on his lavish spending during the most recent South Carolina debate.
"In New Hampshire, I spent $3 million. Jeb Bush spent $44 million. He came in five, and I came in No. 1," Trump said.
But the get-rich campaign cycle isn’t limited to Bush.
So far, presidential campaigns reportedly have spent $400 million on consulting services – about three times as much as they did in the 2012 campaign cycle.
The bulk of Ben Carson’s spending has been on consulting firms specializing in fundraising, including email solicitations and data analytics. More than $15 million has been paid to three consultants: TMA Direct, InfoCision and Eleventy Marketing Group.
Ted Cruz paid $4.75 million to Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm started by Robert Mercer, the same man who gave a pro-Cruz super PAC Keep the Promise $11 million.

Biden argued against weighing Supreme Court nomination during 1992 campaign

Senate Republican leaders Monday seized on comments made by Vice President Joe Biden 24 years ago, when the then-senator from Delaware said the Senate should not consider a Supreme Court nominee during an election year.
"Once the political season is underway and it is, action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over," Biden said in June 1992 on the Senate floor, according to a C-SPAN recording of his remarks.
 
Biden was referring to a hypothetical situation, since the Senate was not considering a nominee at the time of his remarks. But the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia earlier this month has left a precarious 4-4 ideological balance between right- and left-leaning justices as they consider cases on abortion, voting rights, Obama's health care law and other polarizing issues.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., reiterated the stance he took hours after Scalia's death that the next president should select a court nominee. He said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, whose statements have wavered, agreed with him.
But separately, McConnell's press office and Grassley in a floor speech went further and cited the 1992 Biden remarks. Grassley called the comments "The Biden Rules" and said the vice president "knows what the Senate should do."
Biden defended himself in a written statement, saying that in his 1992 speech he said the Senate and White House should cooperate "to ensure the court functions as the founding fathers intended." He said under his long-time leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the chamber considered nine Supreme Court nominees "and the current Senate has a constitutional duty to do the same."
Both sides have spent days unearthing comments members of the other party made about court nominations years ago under presidents of different parties when the political circumstances were reversed.
McConnell's assertion that the president elected this November should nominate the replacement has drawn support from nearly all Republicans and irate, solid opposition from Democrats. Yet as the two parties girded for what promises to be a months-long battle, some cracks have appeared on the GOP side.
Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill. — who faces a difficult re-election race this year in a Democratic-leaning state — distributed an opinion column he'd written for the Chicago Sun-Times saying he looks forward to Obama selecting a nominee.
"I also recognize my duty as a senator to either vote in support or opposition to that nominee following a fair and thorough hearing along with a complete and transparent release of all requested information," Kirk wrote.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she favored Judiciary Committee hearings "so that there can be an in-depth vetting of the nominee and his or her views." Several other GOP senators said they'd defer to a decision by Grassley about holding hearings, including Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., Rob Portman, R-Ohio and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who face re-election contests in November.
Obama is expected to announce his nomination in coming weeks. GOP senators will gather on Tuesday for the first time since Scalia's death to discuss their path forward.

The New Hillary Cartoon

Southbound, Clinton aims to build delegate edge over Sanders

COLUMBIA, S.C. –  The election calendar may have Democrats voting next in South Carolina, but Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are eyeing bigger prizes in March, a month that will determine whether the Vermont senator can keep pace in the White House race.
Clinton shook off some of the anxieties shadowing her campaign with a solid victory in Saturday's Nevada caucuses.
The results offered a glimpse of her strength with black voters. They are a crucial group in South Carolina, which holds its primary this coming Saturday, and in other Southern states with contests on March 1, Super Tuesday.
Sanders has yet to prove he can consistently expand his base of support beyond white liberals and young voters. His campaign cited progress with Latinos in Nevada, but his advisers are clear-eyed about the challenges on Super Tuesday.
They are mapping out plans to stay close to Clinton in the delegate count until the race turns to friendlier territory later in March.
"Because we can do the long game, once we get past March 1, the calendar changes dramatically," said Jeff Weaver, Sanders' campaign manager. "It's frontloaded for her, but we have the ability to stay in the long game."
More than half the 2,383 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination will be determined in the 28 states that hold primaries and caucuses in March.
Clinton and Sanders should have enough money to stay in the race for weeks afterward, but the delegate tally at the end of the month could make the results inevitable.
For Sanders, strong showings in March are more important because of Clinton's lead with superdelegates -- the party leaders who can support any candidates regardless of how their states vote.
Clinton has captured the support of 451 superdelegates compared with Sanders' 19.
Underpinning Clinton's strategy are the painful lessons of her 2008 primary loss to Barack Obama.
Clinton's campaign failed to account for the Democratic Party's system of allocating delegates proportionally in voting contests, then watched superdelegates, who can shift their allegiances, move toward Obama as the campaign stretched late into the spring.
Under the proportional system, avoiding overwhelming losses that can dramatically shift the delegate totals is almost as important as outright victories.
"Other than Vermont, I don't see a single state where Hillary Clinton is going to lose in a blowout. I see a lot of states where Hillary Clinton will probably win by a lot and that equals real delegate yield," said David Plouffe, the architect of Obama's 2008 campaign and a Clinton supporter.
"I know that's not sexy, but I think that's how the Clinton campaign has structured their campaign this time after some of the lessons from eight years ago."
Few observers had foreseen Sanders as a serious threat to Clinton. But he has energized young people, working-class voters and liberals with his impassioned calls for breaking up big Wall Street banks and making tuition at public colleges and universities free.
"I think the more people know our record, the better we do," Sanders said Sunday on CBS' "Face The Nation."
Sanders' prolific online fundraising has given him staying power and he has pledged to take his campaign into the Democratic convention in July.
While Sanders outraised Clinton in January, a new fundraising report showed he went on a spending spree at the start of the year and ended last month with about $15 million in available cash -- less than half of Clinton's cash on hand.
That's enough to stay competitive and Sanders' team is eying delegates in March 1 states such as Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma and his home state.
He also hopes to flex his muscles in two other states with contests that day, Colorado and Virginia, and help him make the case that he is more electable than Clinton.
Sanders' campaign has cited entrance polls of Nevada caucus-goers showing him doing better than Clinton among Latino voters.
But the high margin of error in the polls makes it impossible to say with confidence whether either candidate held a lead among the group.
While Sanders was campaigning in South Carolina on Sunday, he planned to be in Massachusetts for a college rally and campaign in Norfolk, Virginia, on Tuesday.
Clinton also was spending time in Super Tuesday states. She flew from Nevada on Saturday to Texas, a huge delegate prize, for a late-night rally in Houston. She planned to raise money in California on the week and then campaign in South Carolina.
Beyond Super Tuesday, Clinton and Sanders are looking ahead to the March 15 contests in Florida, Illinois, Missouri and Ohio. Big wins in those states for either candidate would put the nomination within sight.
Clinton's support among black voters could pay dividends because of the way Democrats award high-performing congressional districts with a greater share of delegates.
Many of the most delegate-rich states have large minority populations, including Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Illinois and Florida, giving Clinton an inside track to accumulate delegates in March.

After South Carolina, can anybody take on Trump?

Donald Trump on Sunday expressed measured optimism about winning the nomination, compared to his bravado after his overnight South Carolina victory, saying he could “always be stopped.”
The front-running Trump won 33 percent of the vote in the Republican South Carolina primary, roughly 11 percent ahead of challengers Sens. Marco Rubio, of Florida, and Ted Cruz, of Texas.
The win is Trump’s second in the first three, early-state contests and now focuses the debate on whether any the four other remaining candidates can stop him, in part by taking the support for Jeb Bush, who suspended his campaign after a disappointing fourth-place finish on Saturday in South Carolina.
“I guess you can always be stopped,” Trump told “Fox News Sunday.” “I have very good competition. … They are very talented people.”
In his South Carolina victory speech, Trump said, “Let’s put this thing away.”
To be sure, Trump appears to be in a good position. Every Republican presidential candidate who has won New Hampshire and South Carolina has taken the party nomination. And he appears to have strong support in the Deep South as the primary season swings into the region next month.
Trump notably held a rally this summer in Mobile, Ala. that attracted an estimated 30,000 people.
Rubio and Cruz remain confident they can eventually get more votes as the GOP field continues to narrow, then overtake Trump.
The eventual winner will face either Democrat Bernie Sanders or front-runner Hillary Clinton, who on Saturday night won her party’s Nevada caucus over Sanders 53-to-47 percent.
She defeated Sanders in Iowa, but lost to him in New Hampshire.
Rubio told “Fox News Sunday” that he has a “real sense of optimism” after South Carolina. However, Rubio said he is not trying to get other candidates, specifically Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who finished fifth in South Carolina, to drop out, which could give Rubio even more of the so-called establishment vote now that Bush is out.
“The sooner we coalesce, the better we can do as a party,” he said. “It’s going to happen one way or another.”
Cruz told ABC’s “This Week” that Trump is a “formidable candidate” but polls show a majority of voters don’t think he can beat Clinton.
“You cannot come from him at the left,” Cruz said of his primary strategy. “You have to have a true conservative” to win.
Clinton’s Nevada win came just a week-and-a-half after she lost to Sanders by double-digits in New Hampshire.
"To everyone who turned out in every corner of Nevada with determination and heart: This is your win. Thank you," Clinton tweeted after the race was called.