New polling shows Ted Cruz picking up major steam and looking very serious in challenging Donald Trump’s leadership in the Republican presidential candidate field.

A Bloomberg News/Des Moines Register poll shows Cruz now leading in Iowa. A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows Cruz jumping up 12 points from 10 percent in late October. Now, at 22 percent, Cruz is just 5 points behind Trump.

True to form, Trump is beginning personal attacks against Cruz.

“I have far better judgment than Ted,” said Trump on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. That same day Trump told Fox News, “You look at the way he’s dealt with the Senate, where he goes in there like — frankly, like a little bit of a maniac. You’re never going to get things done that way.”

Maybe it’s time for Republican voters to step back and think about what kind of leader Americans need in these troubling times.

Trump, a world-class salesman, hits an emotional bull’s-eye with his campaign theme “Make America Great Again.” This is indeed what we want.

This is what got the Tea Party started to begin with.

Now, with our economy growing well below historic average, with our national debt equal to the size of our entire economy, with Medicare and Social Security insolvent to the tune, by some measures, of $100 trillion, with the American family in shambles and almost half our babies being born to unwed mothers, you have to be on another planet, or a Democrat, to not know America is in decline.

But it takes a leader that’s “a little bit of a maniac” to take on turning this big ship around. It takes someone who cares more about country than about self to stand and fight against an entrenched status quo.

Ted Cruz has stood courageously alone since his day one in the Senate, shining light on what is wrong: about growing debt, about Obamacare, about taxpayer funds going to Planned Parenthood, about immigration. Donald Trump today is reaping the harvest of public awareness that Ted Cruz has been sowing for years. Trump should be thanking Ted Cruz.

When Trump compared himself a number of months ago to President Reagan, Stu Spencer, who ran Reagan’s presidential campaigns, and Ken Khachigian, Reagan’s chief speechwriter, wrote a column headlined, “Trump Is No Reagan.”

Speaking about Reagan, they wrote, “It was America that was great, not him — a studied contrast with Trump’s overwhelming self-absorption.”

While Ted Cruz has been fighting the lonely battle, what has Donald Trump been doing?

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Trump’s political contributions from 1989 to 2015 total $1.4 million. During the 19 years from 1989 to 2009, more than half went to Democrats. This includes thousands to Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid.

Trump justifies this by saying, “As a businessman you want to be friendly to everybody.” It’s exactly this unprincipled culture that has turned Washington into a cesspool.

At a time when we must rebuild our values, does a man who is on his third marriage, who has been all over the place on abortion and defining marriage, represent the kind of values we need?

Can we believe that Trump, who played football and baseball in prep school and then got a medical deferment to shield himself from the draft during the Vietnam War, and now questions whether John McCain, tortured for years as a POW, is a hero, is someone who puts America first? Or is his real love affair with Donald Trump?

We need a leader who is committed to a task bigger than himself, to values of which he is part. Not someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth and who is now on a massive ego trip.

America is about God, truth, freedom and personal responsibility. And we need a leader who can get these truths to minority Americans, trapped all these years by the lies of the left.

Frankly, between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, it’s not even a contest.

COPYRIGHT 2015 STAR PARKER
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