Overnight Campaign: Cruzing for trouble

by Jonathan Swan - 12/10/15 6:26 PM ET

Welcome to OVERNIGHT CAMPAIGN, your daily rundown from The Hill on all the latest news in the White House, Senate and House races.

If history is any guide, attacking Donald Trump is a spectacularly bad idea for someone who wants to be president.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry tried it. So did Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. So did Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. So did South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. What these men have in common is that none of them will be the Republican nominee.

When Trump returns insults he does so in deeply personal, ruthless ways, that are unique even in the bitter partisan politics we now take for granted.

Seeing all that, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a brilliant political strategist, has from the start of the campaign gone out of his way to shower Trump with compliments. As a result, Trump has not only refrained from attacking Cruz, but has publicly embraced him.

That may be about to change. A story in The New York Times on Thursday said that Cruz questioned Trump’s judgement in a private meeting with donors. The Cruz campaign quickly issued a statement calling the report “misleading,” but the story may be all the excuse Trump needs to destroy the Texan, who has become his biggest threat on the right.

Read Jonathan Easley’s report on the ever more fragile peace between the sharp-tongued GOP frontrunners.

RACE TO 1600 PENN

WHAT HAPPENS THEN? The Hill’s Bradford Richardson writes: More than 20 top GOP officials discussed at a dinner on Monday the party’s strategy in the event of a brokered convention amid Donald Trump’s consistent lead in the polls. The hand-wringing comes as even the veteran presidential trouble-maker Ron Paul says he thinks a Trump nomination could break the party apart.

HAWKEYE TED: The Hill’s Ben Kamisar reports: Influential Iowa conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats has endorsed Ted Cruz for president. Cruz is already surging in Iowa and its first-in-the-nation presidential contest, and the key endorsement will add to perceptions that the Texas senator is in a strong position to win the state’s presidential caucuses.

AMBASSADOR O’MALLEY: The Hill’s Ben Kamisar reports:Democratic presidential hopeful Martin O’Malley plans to visit a mosque on Friday to show solidarity with the Islamic community in light of Donald Trump’s call to ban Muslim immigrants.

FLIGHT FROM DONALD: When Trump opened his campaign by declaring that Mexican “rapists” were pouring over the southern border, major brands such as Macy’s began boycotting. Now, with his latest plan to block Muslim entries into the U.S., other public figures are exploring ways to denounce him. Today, The Hill’s reporters write on how Muslim NFL players and Dubai real estate developers are fighting back against Trump.

LABORING FOR HILLARY: The Hill’s Jonathan Easley reports: Hillary Clinton landed another endorsement from a major national union group on Thursday as she expanded her lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the race for labor support. The American Federation of Government Employees, a group that counts 670,000 members, said its executive board voted to back Clinton after meeting with both her and Sanders.

TED TALKS: The Hill’s Julian Hattem reports: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) offered his foreign policy vision on Thursday, seeking to ground it in a sense of political realism that he repeatedly tied to President Ronald Reagan. In a roughly hourlong speech at the conservative Heritage Foundation, Cruz dismissed calls for American power to aggressively advance democracy, instead claiming that he would take a “dime-store dictator” over the chaos that allows extremism to breed.

ODDS AND ENDS:

BERNIE ON THE TEE-VEE: The Hill’s Ben Kamisar reports: Bernie Sanders is out with two new ads in the key early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, according to a release from the campaign. One focuses on his relationship with family farms, which could play well in a certain early voting state with its fair share of farmland. The other touts his effectiveness in Congress.

MY GOOD FRIEND MARCO: The Hill’s Mark Hensch reports: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Thursday that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) often backs President Obama and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton on foreign policy. “He has far too often agreed with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama,” he said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

THE BIG SORT: The Hill’s Jonathan Easley reports: It’s ballot deadline time and in Virginia all candidates qualified with the exception of former New York Gov. George Pataki. In Idaho and Oklahoma, Pataki and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore both missed out.

POLL POSITION

TOUGH CROWD AT HOME: The pollsters running the latest Rutgers-Eagleton survey have some tough news for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. While his presidential fortunes are rising — especially in New Hampshire — it’s a bleaker picture back home. “Christie’s overall job approval has slipped to its lowest point yet: 33 percent of New Jersey registered voters now approve of his performance, a drop of six points since October, and 62 percent disapprove, up six points,” the report says.

YOUNG LOVE FOR OUTSIDERS: The Hill’s Jesse Byrnes reports: Donald Trump and Ben Carson are running neck and neck in winning support from primary voters ages 18-29, according to polling released Thursday by Harvard’s Institute of Politics.

MORE YOUNG LOVE FOR OUTSIDERS: The Hill’s Mark Hensch reports: Bernie Sanders leads Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary among the party’s millennials, a new poll says. More American Democrats ages 18-29 prefer Sanders to Clinton for the White House in 2016, according to the Harvard University Institute of Politics survey.

THE DAILY TRUMP

JIHAD AGAINST TRUMP: The Hill’s Mark Hensch reports: No Republican presidential candidate is more outspoken against Donald Trump than South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. His latest volley? Trump, in Graham’s reckoning, is putting U.S. soldiers and diplomats in peril by “declaring war on the Muslim faith.”

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“There are coalitions and I’m talking about now like Hispanic coalitions that …will not support Trump. And that’s OK because the ones that don’t like Trump aren’t even here legally and they can’t vote, so it doesn’t really matter, right?”

— Michael Cohen, executive vice president and special counsel for The Trump Organization

CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGNS

CALIFORNIA CHALLENGER: The Los Angeles Times reports: There is another Democratic challenger going after freshman Rep. Steve Knight (R-Lancaster), who represents a potential swing district stretching from Simi Valley to Palmdale in northern Los Angeles County. And the DCCC is already pitching in with ads.

MAKING IT OFFICIAL: Congressman Charles Boustany (R-LA) has filed his papers. He’s in the race to take the Louisiana senate seat vacated upon David Vitter’s retirement.

WHEN DOVES CRY: The Wisconsin GOP has made a statewide ad buy bashing former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold’s foreign policy as “dangerous” ahead of the clash between Feingold and incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson.

MONEY WATCH

POPE GETS BEHIND RUBIO: The Hill’s Jonathan Swan reports: One of the most influential political donors in the United States, North Carolina businessman Art Pope, has endorsed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for president. It is the third endorsement from a high-profile donor in a matter of weeks, coming on the heels of support from billionaire New York investor Paul Singer and Illinois hedge fund manager Ken Griffin.

WHAT WE ARE WATCHING FOR TODAY, TOMORROW AND THE WEEKEND:

(All times Eastern)

Ted Cruz is a guest on “The Kelly File” at 9 p.m. today on Fox News.

Rand Paul joins “Hannity” at 10 tonight on Fox News.

Donald Trump holds a rally in Iowa 8 p.m. Friday and a noon rally in Aiken, S.C., on Saturday.

Hillary Clinton holds events in Tulsa and St. Louis on Friday and as a private fundraiser in Tulson. Actor Tony Goldwyn, president on the hit TV show “Scandal” will campaign for Clinton at several events in Iowa on Saturday and Sunday.

Bernie Sanders holds four events in Iowa on Saturday and four on Sunday.

Marco Rubio holds a town hall in South Carolina on Saturday.

TWEET OF THE DAY

If he were a restaurant, he’d write his own Yelp reviews under different names. “Best ever!” https://t.co/mBB1CS6noN

— stuart stevens (@stuartpstevens) December 10, 2015