Cruz catches fire in Iowa

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Senator outlines his legislation to prevent ISIS operatives from entering the U.S. on 'Hannity'

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Buzz Cut:
• Cruz catches fire in Iowa
• Rubio ad highlights dad
• Rivals launch attack ads against Trump
• Trump brawls with facts, fact checkers
• ‘Rain the colour of blue with a little red in it’

CRUZ CATCHES FIRE IN IOWA
Who flipped a switch?

Sen. Ted Cruz doubled his support in Iowa in the past month, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll. Cruz now stands at 23 percent, a slim 2 points behind frontrunner Donald Trump.

Trump and Ben Carson have been swapping the Iowa polling lead since mid-October. But Carson drops to third place in the Q Poll with 18 percent, followed by Sen. Marco Rubio at 13 percent.

The survey of likely GOP caucus goers reveals potent support for Cruz, who leads among evangelical Christians, women, Tea Party members and those who described themselves as “very conservative.” Trump fared best among self-described moderates and liberals, men and voters without college degrees.

Seven other candidates registered single-digit scores, diving 19 percent of the vote between them.

[Cruz will begin a three day swing through Iowa on Saturday. Rubio wraps up a five days in the Hawkeye state today.]

Rubio ad highlights Dad - The Rubio campaign has released its first early primary state TV ad. Part of a $20 million buy, the ad tells the story of Rubio’s father working as a bartender to provide opportunities for his children. “My father stood behind a small portable bar in the back of a room for all those years, so that I could stand behind this podium in front of this room and this nation,” Rubio says in the ad. “That journey from behind that bar to behind this podium, that’s the essence of the American Dream.” The ad runs starting Thursday in Iowa and next week in New Hampshire. It follows a national spot on ISIS that started running Monday.

Christie climbs out of his hole in New Hampshire -  NYT: “[F]or the first time, a solid majority of Republican voters in the state have a favorable view of the governor, according to two polls, a remarkable turnaround from the depths of his unpopularity. …Mr. Christie keeps returning to the subject of Sept. 11, seizing on its emotional power and casting it as a singular moment of awakening that taught him to govern ‘the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.’”

[Christie delivers a homeland-security speech about dismantling ISIS in Washington today.]

PAC video pushes Fiorina’s foreign policy creds – Super PAC CARLY for America has put together a 2 minute web video touting the former Hewlett Packard CEO as the best possible leader on foreign policy. The video is titled “Carly Fiorina: Strength Against ISIS”

WITH YOUR SECOND CUP OF COFFEE…
On this day, in 1963 Dallas strip club owner Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, who had been charged with assassinating President John F. Kennedy. Many people recall seeing the film made by Abraham Zapruder of the young president slain, but there is another video few have seen. Orville Nix a General Services Administration employee was on the other side of the street that day in Dallas, and shot a different angle. Nix’s granddaughter is currently suing the federal government for the film, which was seized for preservation and review but never rereleased. WaPo reports: “‘According to the Warren Commission, the Nix film is nearly as important as the Zapruder film, yet the public is mainly unaware of its significance,’ the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., by Gayle Nix Jackson, Nix’s granddaughter, read. And: ‘Despite its significance and duty by the Government and its agencies who last possessed it to preserve the original Nix film and to turn it over the Plaintiff, it remains missing, stolen or destroyed.’”

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POLL CHECK
Real Clear Politics Averages
Obama Job Approval: Approve – 42.4 percent//Disapprove – 51.9 percent
Directions of Country: Right Direction – 28.3 percent//Wrong Track – 64.3 percent

RIVALS READY ATTACK ADS AGAINST TRUMP
Fox News: “Republican donors with links to several presidential candidates – as well as a prominent GOP operative – are pooling their resources in a new effort to go after Donald Trump and keep the party’s presidential front-runner from winning the nomination. The most recent bid is a reported ‘guerrilla campaign’ led by a group called Trump Card LLC and run by Liz Mair, former communications official for the Republican National Committee. The group’s goal, according to The Wall Street Journal, is to collect money from anonymous donors to ‘defeat and destroy’ Trump, who has essentially led the GOP presidential field since declaring his candidacy this summer. Further, the super PAC supporting fellow GOP candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich is planning to air attack ads against Trump in New Hampshire. And, in a sign of the project’s appeal among donors, it is starting to get funding from donors backing candidates other than Kasich.”

Repeats threat of independent run - Daily Caller: “In a tweet on Monday, Trump referenced a recent Wall Street Journal article about these anti-Trump efforts, tagging the RNC’s official Twitter account, @GOP, in his complaint. ‘@WSJ reports that @GOP getting ready to treat me unfairly—big spending planned against me,’ Trump tweeted. ‘That wasn’t the deal!’”

Brawls with facts, fact checkers - The Republican frontrunner has been in an increasingly pitched battle over some of his most audacious claims.

Over the weekend, Donald Trump stated that he saw “thousands and thousands” of Arabs cheering in New Jersey in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and doubled-down on that claim Monday citing a WaPo piece that mentioned one report of a small number of tailgaters watching the destruction from across the river in New Jersey.  Police investigated that claim, but didn’t find anyone. Trump, though, adamantly claims he saw huge crowds cheering in New Jersey.

On Sunday, Trump retweeted an erroneous statistic that cited 97 percent of blacks are killed by blacks according to the Crime Statistics Bureau…which does not exist. The number, per the FBI’s 2014 Homicide Report says approximately 7 percent of blacks are killed by other blacks.

And last week, Trump also claimed that the Obama administration was planning on bringing “hundreds of thousands” of Syrians to the United States, and would direct them into states with Republican governors. While President Obama did agree to increase the amount of refugees from 1,500 to 10,000 by the end of 2015 this is far from “hundreds of thousands.” And so far, California has taken the most refugees, and is run by a Democratic governor.

[David Drucker does his best to figure out what Trump’s foreign policy really looks like “An examination of dozens of interviews Trump has given since announcing for president in June, in addition to transcripts of the first four televised Republican debates, reveals rhetoric and philosophy that are boilerplate liberal fare and could have easily have been dispensed by Obama.”]

FORMER DEFENSE INTEL CHIEF SAYS OBAMA WAS WARNED
Fox News: The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency said the White House can’t say it was not made aware of the growing threat ISIS posed in the region in an exclusive interview Monday with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly on ‘The Kelly File.’ Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said what President Obama has received from the national intelligence system on ISIS is ‘very accurate,’ but may not have met a ‘narrative’ out of the White House. ‘It is a cancer inside of the Islamic religion, and the White House and the President have not wanted to say that,’ he said. … ‘Where the intelligence starts and stops is at the White House,’ he told Kelly. ‘The president sets the priorities.’ Watch here.

SOUND OFF: READERS REACT TO GOP 2016 INDEX
“Once again we seem to be forced into voting for a lunatic like Trump who will have us fighting someone everyday he is in office or another politician who talks a good talk and makes all kinds of promises but who really is working for the money that elected them.” – Ron Wietzema

“A simple set of metrics tells me Ted Cruz will be our candidate.  What is it?  Very simple, we need a person who is smart, savvy and can take it to our enemies, home and abroad.  No other candidate has that mix except Cruz. Ted’s my man!” –Tony Mrozak

“Perhaps Senator [Lindsey] Graham will be [Winston] Churchill to Obama’s [Neville] Chamberlain...” – Melene Dodson

“In an election cycle when none of the old bromides seem to hold, why do pundits continue to insist that the GOP winner ‘must’ take either Iowa or New Hampshire? Who says that’s going to be true this time? No matter what, I’m sticking with Jeb and Carly as the most sensible choice for the country that the party will eventually select, with Marco as my fall back guy.” – Dot Nuechterlein

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Reader Rick Melzing of Pahoa, Hawaii was moved by Monday’s “Second Cup of Coffee” story on Fred Rodgers. Melzing wrote in to tell us about his personal interaction with the Presbyterian seminarian turned childrens television pioneer: “Back in the ‘60s I worked as a then-FCC-required transmitter engineer at the public TV station in NY’s capitol district while in grad school.  Most of what we aired in the daytime were bad 16 mm prints of terrible in-school production. But, in late morning when Fred Rodgers walked in that door and unbuttoned/unzipped that cardigan sweater and told us how important we were and liked us just the way we are - I was transfixed even as a 20-something cynic.  I remember him so well now in my 70s.”

‘RAIN THE COLOUR OF BLUE WITH A LITTLE RED IN IT’
The Guardian: “Purple Rain, Prince’s self-mythologising ‘rock opera’ based loosely on his own journey to stardom, was a runaway box office success when it hit cinemas in 1984, grossing more than $80m and instantly becoming a cult classic…Now, the story is being remade in the most unlikely of places, the Saharan state of Niger, a place where ‘the guitar is king,’ explains Chris Kirkley, the man behind the project…But the effort to reference one of the western world’s most eccentric and captivating stars is largely lost on local audiences. ‘Is Prince big in Agadez? No, I’ve encountered a few of his LPs in west Africa before, but besides that he’s not known at all,’ says Kirkley. Drawing similarities between the two protagonists is not the only thing that’s lost in translation. There is no Tuareg word for ‘purple,’ so instead the film is titled Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai, or, ‘rain the colour of blue with a little red in it.’”

Chris Stirewalt is digital politics editor for Fox News. Want FOX News First in your inbox every day? Sign up here.