how can they convince us the u.s. will be in better hands and safer hands and cut off the kind of threat so many people are anxious about today? so in the past, as you well know, ted cruz and marco rubio have both distinguished themselves as smooth debaters, they know their stuff. ted cruz is very smart, very crafty. he s run a very smart campaign in iowa. but now that the spotlight is on him, his opponents say he s too arrogant, he doesn t work well within the system. people will start pushing him on those issues a lot more has suddenly become, as i say, the man to watch. what about donald trump? what do you think he does differently if anything? we talk about cruz vaulting into first place. trump s numbers have inched up in iowa, in the des moines register poll, gone up in the nbc news/washington journal poll. nothing has slipped as far as he s concerned. do you think he changes anything tuesday night? i think he s under more
groups including muslim-americans. i wonder if further underscoring that this poll this week shows that most americans oppose trump s proposal to ban muslims. however, republicans are more likely to support the ban according to this polling. how does that sit with you? it s actually what i just said, that i think republicans far long time have function on this motion of promoting a lot of ignorance about islam and other cultures and in a globalizing world you can t really survive and accept other cultures and other ways of life if you re close to educating yourself about other relations and other people. but i do think that, you know, i think this might be aed good thing in the end. who knows. i think donald trump might be separating the crazy people from the more reasonable people. so he might be a god send in some ways. why is it you associate yourself with the republican party give than you even admit here that there is work to be done? well, i don t believe that leaving the
front. he has a five-point lead over ted cruz, the best trump has done in that poll so far in this race. joining me to talk about all of this, cnn senior political analyst david gergen. let s talk about ted cruz. he has the momentum heading into tuesday night. what do you expect to see from him and what questions not from the moderators per se but what do you expect to see from his opponents on the stage in terms of how they deal with ted cruz on tuesday? certainly because of his surge in iowa, john, he will be the man to watch on tuesday night. can he maintain the momentum, can he increase it? and because so much of the focus is going to be on national security, he s going to get attacked mostly from his right as being too cautious, you know, too unwilling to use american force, not strong enough to really get the job done against isis. you ll be hearing that particularly from marco rubio. what we don t know is how trump
this is where it all happens, the venetian las vegas, the site of the last republican primary debate of 2015. it is only here on cnn. it is such an important moment in this campaign. the first debate after the attacks in paris, the first debate since the attacks in san bernardino, and national security will be the focus here on tuesday. as for the debate stage itself in the venetian theater behind me, donald trump will be center stage on the main stage, but this time, ted cruz will be standing right next to him. this is the first time cruz has moved to the center shift based on the polling like this one from the des moines register out this weekend that shows ted cruz moving into first place by a lot, a ten-point lead over donald trump in iowa. nationwide druch is still out
much like donald trump went after him this summer. that is one dynamic. a very new dynamic is the man standing to donald trump s left. that will be texas senator ted cruz. now all of a sudden the front-runner in iowa. not just the front-runner in iowa. man a lot of political insiders think is the prohibitive favorite to win in iowa. we ve seen the des moines register poll come out just last night. ted cruz saw a 21-point bump in that poll. he now is leading in iowa. he has 31% of the vote. donald trump is ten points behind him. donald trump has been leading in iowa. ted cruz needs to win iowa if ted cruz wants to go on to win the nomination. he s not going to do well in new hampshire, but he wants a bump out of iowa. that perhaps can catapult him to south carolina he s hoping and from there on and on. on that stage he ll have one eye looking at donald trump who i think will be on his right and the other, wherever marco rubio is standing. they have a thing going on too. they d