Alfonse D'Amato

Challenges and surprises for 2016

Posted

Happy New Year! As we all know, resolutions will come and go (so why bother making one?), but one thing remains certain about the new year: the U.S. will elect a new president in 2016.

The Iowa caucuses are less than a month away. In the most recent polls, Sen. Ted Cruz is pulling ahead of Donald Trump, with Sen. Marco Rubio and Ben Carson following behind. Former Gov. Jeb Bush is a distant fifth, followed by other candidates who are in the single digits.

Bush has focused almost all of his efforts on New Hampshire, pulling ads in Iowa and South Carolina. It appears that Barbara Bush was right — there have been enough Bushes in the White House.

Cruz’s surge in recent weeks is somewhat surprising. He focused his entire campaign on the conservatives who make up over half of all Republican primary voters. He consistently courted the religious right, while being the Tea Party candidate and shunning the establishment. He has managed to make himself look like a friend of Donald Trump instead of his enemy.

Overall, Cruz is a smart and politically savvy candidate and a competent senator. No other candidates can say they clerked for the late Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Cruz has run a very smart campaign, having managed to spend relatively little money compared with his opponents.

Can he move on to be successful in the New Hampshire primary, just one week after Iowa? I’m not sure. That race is still wide open, and I think it is where we will see anti-Trump backlash. There’s a lot of competition among the more mainstream establishment candidates — Govs. Chris Christie, John Kasich and Bush, and Rubio. If Cruz wins Iowa, you can’t count him out in the fight for a top spot in New Hampshire, too.

Whoever does go on to become the Republican nominee and face off against Hillary Clinton or Sen. Bernie Sanders will have significant issues to tackle on the campaign trail, most important, how is he or she going to keep our country safe in 2016 and beyond?

For the rest of the year, the Obama administration’s greatest challenge will be fighting the Islamic State and keeping the terrorist group from succeeding in its daily quest to grow larger and recruit more members.

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