Boos and jeers haven't affected Trump's lead in South Carolina

Voters head to the polls thisSaturday in South Carolina for the first Republican primary in the South, and Donald Trump still holds a big lead in an average of recent polls. The closest candidate who conceivably could stop him is nearly 20 percentage points behind. South Carolina polls give Trump 37 percent of the vote and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, 18 percent. Trump’s support appears nearly unshakable.

Earlier this week, Trump seemingly threatened to go back on his pledge not to run an independent, third-party campaign for president. He got upset after the audience at Saturday night’s debate booed him several times. Trump accused the Republican National Committee (RNC) of filling the audience with donors and lobbyists hostile to his campaign. Therefore, he said, the RNC has defaulted on its agreement to treat him fairly in exchange for his pledge not to run against the GOP candidate, should he lose the nomination.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus addressed Trump’s complaints last night on Fox News. He said only 10 audience members were RNC donors, but more than 600 were invited by the candidates themselves.

“When you have 600 people that are in the room that are there as guests of the candidates, guess what, they’re going to be pretty excited to either be for their candidate or against other candidates,” Priebus said.

During the debate, Trump repeated his praise for Planned Parenthood. He was clear that he does not agree with their abortion business, but said they do a lot of wonderful work otherwise.

But the boos really came when he seemed to lay the blame for 9/11 at least partially at the feet of President George W. Bush. He went on to repeat the charges made by many liberal Democrats that Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But if past precedent holds, Trump’s unpopular comments won’t hurt his standing in the polls.

Cruz, for his part, has largely locked in the core of the conservative tea party vote. He focused on national defense in Mount Pleasant, S.C., yesterday in a speech aboard a decommissioned World War II-era battleship.

“It is clear now more than ever that, far from being the hectoring menace to multiculturalism that Mr. Obama set out to humble, the United States is an indispensable force for global order and stability,” Cruz said.

While Republicans vote in South Carolina on Saturday, Democrats will caucus in Nevada. A recent poll there of more than 1,200 likely voters has that race tied at 45 percent each for Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. South Carolina will be the next stop for Democrats, after Nevada. They’ll vote there a week from Saturday.

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