Mrs. Cruz brings political talents to the table that could prove helpful in the 2016 election season. Her Goldman Sachs ties make her a “not-so-secret weapon” in terms of fundraising, per Representative Kevin Brady (R., Texas).
.. which has already paid dividends for her husband; he received $65,000 from Goldman Sachs employees and the company PAC when he ran for Senate
“He gets criticized for being low-key, but as a farmer I try to stay low-key and not get easily wound up,” said Gary Schroeder, who heard Mr. Bush speak on Monday night in Goose Lake, Iowa. “After 40 years of farming, I like that.”
Mr. Schroeder shook his head at Mr. Bush’s predicament, saying: “You wouldn’t think with all the money, he’d be sitting at 4 percent.”
.. But his expressions of confidence can sound as though Mr. Bush is reassuring himself. “As people get closer, they’re going to want to know who has the leadership skills to actually be president, not to feed on people’s fears, not to turn a phrase in a way that gets people all riled up,” he said in Iowa, where the first votes in the nominating race will be cast in less than eight weeks. “We’re electing a president. And it’s a pretty serious job, and it requires serious leadership skills.”
.. One reason for Mr. Bush’s lack of traction, polling suggests, is that immigration continues to be a deal-breaker with the Republican base. Large majorities in both Iowa and New Hampshire say they will only choose a candidate who agrees with them on the issue — and those majorities do not share Mr. Bush’s support for a path to legal status for people in the United States illegally.
.. Mr. Bush’s sustained rough patch comes as his donors are set to gather in Miami this weekend for a quarterly retreat. Privately, donors and Bush supporters concede they are worried about Mr. Bush’s downward trajectory and had expected his numbers to start ticking up by now.
One of those targets can be found on the RJC’s masthead. The casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has donated millions of dollars to Republican candidates in previous elections, and is likely to do so again. Adelson himself was not present. But the forum is widely considered a kind of public audition for his support.
.. Jews are concerned about the resurgence anti-Semitism around the world, so they might be expected to welcome Christians’ sincere opposition to Jew hatred. The problem is that they find effusions of eternal love creepy rather than reassuring.
In fact, again and again, those who have challenged the Kochs and Koch Industries—whether they are federal officers, private citizens, or members of the press—have suspected that they have been under surveillance.
.. Similarly, as I reported in my New Yorker piece, when a Senate committee investigated Koch Industries, in 1989, for what its final report called a “widespread and sophisticated scheme to steal crude oil from Indians and others through fraudulent mismeasuring,” the report noted that in the course of the probe Koch operatives had delved into the personal lives of the committee’s staffers, even questioning one’s ex-wife.