Cruz emerges from debate as GOP punching bag The Texas senator's rivals all came out swinging after the Fox debate.

Republican rivals, sniffing out a weakness after the Fox News debate, hammered Ted Cruz on Friday morning for shifting political positions as they sought to diminish the Texas senator going into the Iowa caucuses.

Cruz became the prize punching bag Thursday night, as Donald Trump breezed through his competing event raising funds for veterans down the road, and emerged with a few bruises at a critical time in the GOP race.


Moderator Megyn Kelly especially laid into Cruz for his amendment to the 2013 Gang of Eight immigration reform bill that he now says was a “poison pill,” with Kelly pointedly asking whether his prior talk of allowing people to come out of the shadows was “all an act.”

“When it comes to Ted, he’s kind of built this campaign on this false notion that he is the only true conservative and everyone else is an apostate, you know. That’s absurd,” Marco Rubio said on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” on Friday morning. “Ted on immigration used to support legalizing people over here illegally and did so for a long time. I mean, he helped design George W. Bush’s immigration approach, which had a path to citizenship, actually.”

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul further challenged Cruz’s authenticity Friday and accused him of dumbing down the debate over immigration by pointing fingers. “I think Ted wants to have it both ways, but he also wants to accuse everybody else of not being as pure as he is,” Paul said on “Fox & Friends.” “But in reality I think he’s creating a false narrative.”

Mike Huckabee, who was relegated to the undercard stage, likened Cruz to a “thermometer” when it comes to hot political issues. The former Arkansas governor conceded it was reasonable for someone who, say, took a stance a decade ago but now “sees things maybe differently” to have a changing understanding of an issue that, too, is changing.

“But when a person changes views time after time and is always moving with the political wind vane, when a person is a thermometer instead of a thermostat, that person’s not a leader,” Huckabee told CNN’s “New Day.” “And no, you can’t trust them.”

Huckabee rattled off a series of Cruz’s shifts, including on ethanol, immigration, H-1B visas, whether marriage is a state or federal issue and whether religious liberty would be a priority in his administration. “I think trust comes into question when a person starts changing their views on a whole variety of issues and they do it for political expediency — they don’t do it with any explanation of conviction — or when people change their views depending on the geography of where they happen to be,” Huckabee said. “If they say one thing in Manhattan and another thing in Marshalltown, Iowa, that’s when you start wondering about whether you can trust them.”

Cruz's spokesman Rick Tyler acknowledged that the Texas senator had sustained some blows, but said he wasn't worried. "Yeah, there was a little more attacks on Senator Cruz, but I thought he held up fine under the scrutiny. Part of this whole game of Iowa is showing up," Tyler said on Boston Herald Radio.

Tyler also said Cruz wasn't stewing over the intense questioning from the moderators. “You know, we've never been one to complain and to cry and, you know, we're playing in the big leagues here and things happen," he said. "We don't complain them. We just handle them, so it was fine.”

Trump used his Friday morning in New Hampshire to also pile on Cruz, and gloat about emerging from the night unscathed. The Republican poll leader walked from the debate after Fox refused to boot Kelly, who Trump accused of being biased and incapable of moderating a fair debate. He was especially incensed when Fox issued a mocking press release about his flirtation with a boycott. Ultimately, the billionaire businessman held a charity event just three miles down the road from the debate, at the same time.

"I think we're going to do really well in Iowa. We're leading in the Iowa polls. And Cruz is in the second place. He got really pummeled last night. I'm glad I wasn't there. And they didn't even mention that he was born in Canada," Trump told a rally at the Radisson Hotel in Nashua. "So he got beaten pretty badly last night. And I don't know what's going to happen to him."

And it wasn’t just Cruz’s rivals taking more potshots at him. Thursday was a “ROUGH NIGHT FOR CRUZ,” blared Friday’s front page of Iowa’s largest newspaper, The Des Moines Register — which has endorsed Rubio and Hillary Clinton.

GOP insiders from early-voting states agreed: 41 percent said Cruz had the worst night on stage, according to results from a POLITICO Caucus survey.

Cruz is heading into Monday’s Iowa caucuses with a strong second-place position in the polls, and is within striking distance of Trump. According to the RealClearPolitics average, Trump is ahead by about 6 points, 33 percent to Cruz’s 26, with Rubio in a distant third with about 14 percent support but showing signs of late momentum.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who failed to get a breakthrough moment on the prime-time stage Thursday night, chose to go after both Cruz and Rubio on Friday morning.

“You know, they showed video last night of Sen. Rubio and Sen. Cruz obviously having changed their positions on immigration, and neither one of them are willing to admit it,” Christie said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” making his case for having a governor in the White House. “And that’s why people are so frustrated with Washington, D.C. No accountability, and they try to tell you that what we just saw and what we just heard wasn’t really true.”

Cruz’s campaign, however, sought to counter the blows, shifting the discussion by touting its fundraising efforts. Campaign manager Jeff Roe said Cruz’s camp ended 2015 with nearly $19 million in the bank. “We’re funded to go the distance,” he said.