Talking Points: Cruz, Trump Lead Crowded Republican Field
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- The latest polls on the Republican side show that Senator Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are leading the rest of the crowded field.
The Des Moines Register Bloomberg poll has Cruz 25 percent and Donald Trump with 22 percent. Senator Marco Rubio has 12 percent, Ben Carson has 11 percent and the other candidates are in single digits.
With Cruz and Trump appearing to pull away from the field, Republicans nationwide are wrestling with the possibility that one of these two outsiders could become the Republican nominee. In this year of the outsider, Donald Trump had dominated the headlines and the polls.
And while Ted Cruz is a United States senator, he has consistently clashed with the party hierarchy. Privately, Republican Party leaders fear Trump's statements on women and immigrants will alienate both those groups in the general election.
And while Cruz is winning with evangelical Christians, GOP leaders fear he is too conservative to win over swing voters. Publicly though, Republicans insist whoever they nominate can win.
Chris Fields, the deputy director of the Minnesota Republican Party, was a guest on WCCO Sunday Morning.
"When you go to our website the No. 1 best-selling item is a bumper sticker that we have that says '#ABH' and underneath it says 'Anybody but Hillary.' The fact that bumper sticker is so popular tells us that Republicans are ready to embrace a nominee that can win," Fields said.
"And Republicans can take comfort from the fact that the most recent national polls that show if the general election were held today, both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump would be in very close races with either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders," Fields said.
You can watch WCCO Sunday Morning with Esme Murphy and Mike Augustiniak every Sunday at 6 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.
