In debate, Ted Cruz pipes up on Iran deal, cutting off Planned Parenthood aid

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz Rally Against Iran Nuclear Deal | The New York Times

Early on, it didn"t look like tonight"s Republican presidential debate was delivering ample moments for Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texan remaining in the field.

Then came questions about Iran and defunding Planned Parenthood.

Around half an hour elapsed between Cruz"s opening statement and his response to a question enabling him to hammer his opposition to the Iran agreement. Saying he"d tear it up once he"s president, Cruz also said the deal hastens Iran"s path to having nuclear weapons.

That"s FALSE, PolitiFact in Washington, D.C., recently concluded. The deal may be less than perfect, but experts advised that its hard to see how implementing the agreement -- rather than doing nothing at all -- would actually "facilitate and accelerate" an Iranian nuclear weapon. The worst-case scenario would be that the deal throws up a couple years worth of roadblocks that would not exist otherwise.

After that fact check was published, Cruz responded in an article for the National Review in response to our fact-check after we published our findings. He disagreed with our rating and argued that our report was biased.

"As I wrote in my new book A Time for Truth, "PolitiFact"represents a new species of yellow journalism, where liberal reporters dress up as "facts"their liberal opinions and accuse anyone who disagrees with them of "lying," " Cruz wrote.

He also repeated his previous comments about why he opposes a nuclear deal with Iran."The notion that the terms of President Obamas deal will in any way prevent Tehran from getting a nuclear bomb is fanciful at best," he said.

In the debate, Cruz went on to say the Iran deal unbelievably lets Iran inspect itself. We"ve been looking into just such a claim by the senator, whose office advises he relied on this Associated Press news story to reach that conclusion.

Cruz also revisited his opposition to federal aid flowing to Planned Parenthood, whose employees have appeared in hidden-camera videos to be cavalierly discussing the use of fetal parts in research. Cruz has repeatedly indicated he believes Congress should stem money to Planned Parenthood this fall even at the risk of shutting down the government. In August, PolitiFact posted this story on eight things to know about Planned Parenthood.

Some time later--the debate ran longer than two hours--Cruz called the appointment of John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court a "mistake." Cruz has been critical of Roberts" role upholding the Obamacare law.

In the debate, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush shot back that Cruz had backed the Roberts" nomination when it happened (as this Washington Post news story relates). It"s true, Cruz replied, he backed Roberts once he was nominated.

Cruz said he"d place civil rights activist Rosa Parks on a revamped $20 bill. He called Parks "a principal pioneer that helped change this country."

Catch a lot more on PolitiFact"s site and enjoy the Austin American-Statesman"s coverage here.

See Ted Cruz"s Truth-O-Meter report card here.

What drew your attention?

Source: http://www.politifact.com/texas/article/2015/sep/16/republican-debate-will-it-star-ted-cruz-round/

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Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and you-know-who won the Google search war

Ted Cruz interviewed by MSNBC"s Chris Matthews on Hardball 7-8-2015

It will be interesting to see what the TV ratings for Thursday night"s presidential primary debate look like once they come out. It started out with enormous intensity, but quickly faded. It"s pretty safe to assume that viewership did, too.

We can see one potential point to reinforce that. The most Googled candidate in the debate at any point was Ted Cruz -- with 67 percent more searches at his peak than the next most-searched candidate"s peak.

It"s hard to see the sustained interest over the course of the two hours on that graph, but we can get some sense. The search volume is all relative to each other; a "100," the Cruz peak, is the most search in a minute for a candidate.

On average, Trump held the most sustained search interest, surprise, surprise. Notice that Ben Carson maintained steady interest, too -- followed by Cruz and Marco Rubio.

The key point: We have no idea what this means. We don"t know if the spike in Cruz searches will convert people to his cause, or the new attention to Carson will boost him in the polls. We don"t know.

But we do, at least, have some sense of who people wanted to know more about. We"ll see if this reveals anything more significant down the road.

Update 3: Strong closes

What the Republican field not named Trump needed to do during the Fox News debate was get people to spread the attention around a bit. With the debate over, it looks like at least some of them did.

In the first half hour, people Googled Ted Cruz. As the night progressed, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio started to attract some attention. Jeb Bush got people interested when the moderators mentioned his alleged comments about the businessman -- perhaps because they wanted to look up what he said.

Notice that circle, though. In the minutes after the first debate, interest in Carly Fiorina increased quickly as people presumably went to Google her after watching her performance. In the minutes right after the debate, the spike this time was Rubio and Carson.

Update 2: The doldrums

So, this thing slowed down a bit, right? We start off with Donald Trump and Rand Paul scrapping and then Trump and Megyn Kelly tussling and then ... the brakes.

But people still were checking candidates out. In the second half hour, it was Ben Carson and Marco Rubio"s turn to get a little interest. Nothing huge; nothing like what Ted Cruz got in the first half hour. But -- something. People were paying attention when Carson gave a sharp response on terrorism and Rubio talked about how to grow business in response to someone"s question from Facebook.

This thing is winding down. It was toward the end of the first forum that Lindsey Graham prompted everyone to go look him up. We"ll see if someone else can do the same.

Update 1: The most-searched person in the first half hour of the GOP debate? Ted Cruz -- by far.

For weeks, the 2016 candidate that has dominated Google searches has been Donald Trump. Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump.

But during the Fox News debate on Thursday night, that changed. First, Carly Fiorina and Lindsey Graham beat Trump in searches during the warm-up forum. Then Jeb Bush and Ben Carson beat him during their introductions.

And then Ted Cruz started talking.

Before the emergence of Trump, Cruz ruled the Republican social roost. This is something different, of course; this is people searching for Cruz to presumably learn more.

Trump had a few little spikes, too -- particularly when he had his difficult exchange on immigration with Chris Wallace.

All data in the graphs above comes from Google Trends.

From businessman Donald Trump"s slam on O"Donnell to Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) getting into it over hugs, here are some of the most memorable moments from first Republican presidential debate. (Fox News Channel)

Philip Bump writes about politics for The Fix. He is based in New York City.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/08/06/the-most-searched-person-in-the-first-half-hour-of-the-gop-debate-ted-cruz-by-far/

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