There is a poll that scares Donald Trump. According to Monmouth University in Iowa (where on Feb. 1, 2016, the primary race starts with the caucus), Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon, has moved ahead of Trump by 15 points. Carson is the preferred candidate with 32 percent of the vote against the billionaire’s 18 percent. Immediately after digesting the blow, Trump counterattacked by targeting the same Carson he would have chosen as his vice president a few weeks ago: “Carson is a low-energy candidate, even more so than Jeb Bush.”* Trump is worried that other polls have also found him lagging behind Carson.
Having spent not even $108,000 out of his own pocket between July and August — $1,740 per day — for his own electoral campaign, he will now have to spend much more if he wants to compete with Carson (who like him is anti-political) for the first spot in the Grand Old Party.
In the meantime, Trump has started to target Carson, not only by saying he is super low-energy, but also by criticizing his religion; Carson is a follower of the Seventh Day Adventist church. Trump continued attacking him: “I’m Presbyterian. Boy, that’s down the middle of the road folks, in all fairness,” he said. “I mean, Seventh-Day Adventist, I don’t know about. I just don’t know about.” Dr. Carson replied to Trump on Saturday: “My energy levels are perfectly fine. As I’ve said many times, there have been many times where I’ve operated 12, 15, 20 hours, and that requires a lot of energy. Doesn’t require a lot of jumping up and down and screaming, but it does require a lot of concentration.”
Jeb Bush is not ready to give up and hopes to rebound, moving the people and the infrastructure of his campaign in Iowa to New Hampshire, where the race for the nomination will start. Feeling strong with the $133 million he raised, he can still take part in the race, but he needs to reduce the distance and at least get closer to the first positions, coming back from behind (the last national polls gave him 8 percent — too little to be able to compete in the long run). “If this election is about how we’re going to fight to get nothing done, then … I don’t want any part of it.” This is not a retreat but rather an invitation to do concrete things. “I’ve got a lot of really cool things I could do other than sit around, being miserable, listening to people demonize me and me feeling compelled to demonize them. That is a joke. Elect Trump if you want that.”
*Editor’s note: This quotation, accurately translated, paraphrases what the candidate actually said.
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