RUTHFULLY YOURS

Political beauty (Carson) and the beast (Trump)…..one is civil and ill equipped and the other is a bufoon and cur…..When they cancel each other out as they should and will, a rea; candidate will emerge and garner their votes…..Rubio and Cruz? rsk

It’s hard to say who’s leading on the national level because some polls show Ben Carson ahead while others show Donald Trump ahead, with wide differentials between polls. But on the state level, Ben Carson is beating Donald Trump in too many state polls to be ignored. He is leading in North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Wisconsin, and Iowa. That’s impressive. It’s well-known that he’s doing well with religious conservatives in Iowa, but now it looks as though he has appeal throughout the South and other Midwestern states.

In North Carolina, Carson has a huge 31% base of support, while Trump has only 19%. In Iowa he has a whopping fourteen-point lead over Trump according to one poll and leads of various sizes in other polls. He is one point ahead in Texas, six points ahead in Oklahoma, and two points ahead in Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, Carson is neck and neck with Trump, only 2% behind him in a recent poll. In Pennsylvania he is only 1 point behind Trump.

It looks as if Trump is slowly losing voters to Carson.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is drawing sharper distinctions with front-runner Hillary Clinton, casting her policy reversals over the years as a character issue that voters should take into account when they evaluate the Democratic field.

Sen. Sanders of Vermont, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, also said the federal investigation of the security surrounding Mrs. Clinton’s private email account is appropriate.

In the Democratic debate last month, Mr. Sanders said voters were “sick and tired” of the focus on Mrs. Clinton’s “damn emails.” Afterward, many Democrats and political analysts said that he had appeared to dismiss her use of a private email account and server in her four years as secretary of state.
Mr. Sanders rejected that assessment on Wednesday. If her email practices foiled public-records requests or compromised classified information, those are “valid questions,” Mr. Sanders said.

The swirl this week over Marco Rubio’s personal finances brings to mind that popular children’s word game, “Would You Rather.” Cut through the hype and the question Mr. Rubio presents to the electorate is this: “Would you rather a president who is above it all, or who has lived it all?”

Only the voters can answer that question—if they have the chance. The press for its part is more interested in presenting Mr. Rubio’s financial history as some evidence of scandal. The New York Times has devoted near novel-length inches to the non-news (this was all covered in Mr. Rubio’s Senate race in 2010) that as a Florida legislator he used a Republican Party charge card for personal purchases.

And? The card was used primarily for political expenses—which were covered by the party. Mr. Rubio occasionally used it for a personal expense, which he then paid for each month by writing a check to the card company. No one is suggesting that the party paid a dime toward Mr. Rubio’s expenses, or that the candidate was a dime short in promptly paying back his personal charges. If this is a scandal, we’ve found a cure for insomnia.

PORTSMOUTH, N. H.—In a Republican primary filled with intense rivalries, none is more personal than the one between Jeb Bush and his one-time lieutenant Marco Rubio.

Mr. Rubio got the better of his former governor in the last GOP presidential debate, undermining Mr. Bush’s standing in the primary and thrusting the Florida senator to the head of the pack of candidates with elected experience.

That raises the stakes heading into a critical week in which they will appear at the next GOP debate in Milwaukee Tuesday and a forum in Florida on Friday before a hometown audience both will eventually need to keep their presidential hopes alive.

“You have two people from the same state, the same county, literally neighbors who have spent so much time together and been on the same page politically, and when one of them starts attacking the other, it becomes personal,” said former state Rep. Gaston Cantens, who served with both men in Tallahassee and is backing Mr. Rubio. “It is the ugly side of politics.”