Presidential Primary Brief: 336 days until Election Day

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2016 Presidential Primary Brief_23 Nov Update_ Election Day 2016

143 days until AL Presidential Primary
336 days until Election Day

Convention Dates: Republican July 18-21 2016, Democratic July 25-28 2016

Weekly Headlines:

Primary Brief_GOP Polls_7 Dec 2015

Primary Brief_Dem Polls_7 Dec 2015

Press Clips:

Lindsey Graham blasts Ted Cruz at D.C. forum (USA Today 12/3/15)

Lindsey Graham, a long-time critic of Republican front-runner Donald Trump, has broadened his attack to include Ted Cruz. Both Trump and Cruz are using “garbage” rhetoric on immigration that will cost Republicans a general election by alienating the large and growing Hispanic population, the South Carolina senator told the Republican Jewish Coalition on Thursday. Graham also criticized Cruz for opposing efforts to remove Syria’s Bashar al-Assad from power, saying the Texas senator has changed his position in a way that will damage U.S. hopes of destroying the Islamic State, also known as ISIL.

How demographics will shape the 2016 election (FiveThirtyEight Politics 12/3/15

Republicans contend that the 2016 election will be about Americans’ desire for change after eight years of a Democratic president. Democrats hope the election will tell a different story of change: a continued march toward a more diverse electorate that is ever more hostile to the GOP’s Electoral College fortunes. We’ve built an interactive tool to help you draw your own conclusions about whether, as is often said, demographics truly are destiny. You can use it to see how changes in turnout and partisanship within five demographic groups would affect the outcome of the 2016 election. Paying homage to the BBC’s iconic tracker of vote swings in British parliamentary elections, we’re calling it the 2016 Swing-O- Matic.

Michael Bloomberg for GOP candidate (US News & World Report 11/30/15

Is there a man who can save the party of Republicans from themselves? There may be one, but only one. His name is Michael Bloomberg, and he used to be a Republican (when he was mayor of New York) and a Democrat before that. Now Bloomberg is an independent waiting to be asked to dance by a party that is taking American politics and values down. The 2016 field of candidates has been a summer circus, but we aren’t laughing anymore at Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and the dark rhetoric they (and others) spew against the American traditions of immigration and religious tolerance. By the way, didn’t Trump marry an immigrant woman once or twice? I thought so.

Trump calls for targeting Islamic State Fighters’ families (The Express Tribune 12/3/15

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said on Wednesday his plan for combating Islamic State (IS) militants involves targeting not just the group’s fighters but also their families. “When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families,” Trump said on Fox News. “They care about their lives, don’t kid yourselves.” Trump said if he were president, he would try to avoid civilian deaths in going after the militant group, but he said the Obama administration was “Fighting a very politically correct war.” Christoph Wilcke of Human Rights Watch said in response to Trump’s comments that military forces legally can only target combatants. “The family members of fighters are civilians and cannot be targeted,” he said in an email.

Mass shootings reveal sharp partisan divisions ahead of 2016 elections (Washington Post 12/3/15

Two mass shootings less than a week apart have quickly highlighted how guns, national security, abortion and the threat of terrorism are deepening the nation’s political fault lines ahead of next year’s election. In essence, the events provided each side of the partisan divide with mirror-image, poster-child suspects who reflect their views of the biggest threats to Americans’ safety: a gun-wielding, white abortion opponent in Colorado and two heavily armed Muslims in California with possible ties to terrorism.

Jeb promises he’d ‘whoop’ Clinton in the 2016 election (TPM 12/3/15)

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said Thursday that he’d “whoop” Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton if they were nominated by their parties in the 2016 election, The Hill reported. Bush made his comments during speech in Washington D.C. to the Republican Jewish Coalition, the publication reported. “Should I win this nomination I will take it to Hillary Clinton and I will whoop her,” Bush was quoted as saying.

Can Evangelicals swing 2016 for GOP, as Cruz says? (Wall Street Journal 11/30/15) 

For months, Sen. Ted Cruz has been hovering in the middle of the GOP presidential campaign pack, waiting for his moment—and honing his argument for why he has the strategy and appeal that can win for Republicans in 2016. In a nutshell, the Cruz case is this: There is an army of silent evangelical voters out there, and I can mobilize them. The country has 90 million evangelical Christians, 54 million of whom stayed home on Election Day in 2012, he says. If I can get just 10 million of the no-shows to vote for me in 2016, we win.

Trump, Carson flop with Jewish Republicans (Politico 12/3/15)

 Donald Trump joked about Jewish stereotypes, declined to affirm his support for a united Jerusalem, and told his audience they wouldn’t back him because he did not want their money. Reading from a prepared text, Ben Carson repeatedly pronounced the name of the Palestinian group “Hamas” as if it were a delicious spread made with chickpeas. The performance of these two outsider candidates left attendees at Thursday’s summit of the Republican Jewish Coalition amused, but not impressed. With the RJC, an influential group of donors and activists that prioritizes American policy toward Israel, the retired neurosurgeon and the businessman faced a more politically sophisticated crowd than either is used to, and one more concerned with the nuances of foreign policy.

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