The fight between Republican presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz over a fake Facebook posting has now boiled down to a clash between the candidates’ surrogates, as former Texas Gov. Rick Perry accuses the Rubio campaign of using “deceptive, negative tactics.”
In a statement released by the Cruz campaign on Thursday, Perry said his fellow Texan is a “conservative of conviction, committed to his principles with a proven record of keeping his promises and leading fights on all of the issues important to conservatives across this country.”
While campaigning for Cruz in South Carolina where the next Republican primary takes place on Saturday, Perry said he’s seen “firsthand the deceptive, negative tactics being employed by the Rubio campaign and their allies to mislead voters on where Ted Cruz stands and to distract from Rubio’s own problematic record of supporting liberal issues.”
The latest point of conflict which centers around a Facebook post purportedly written by South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, lamenting his backing Rubio for president and consequently swapping his endorsement to Cruz. Gowdy responded earlier on Thursday in a video, calling out “Cruz and his allies” for spreading “false information and outright lies.”
While the Rubio campaign later said in a conference call that it had no evidence that Cruz was behind the misleading Facebook post, Rubio senior adviser Todd Harris did say, “What we do know is that there is a culture of dishonesty that goes from top-to-bottom in the Cruz campaign where telling lies is not only tolerated but seems to be encouraged. And so when you create a culture that puts no premium on the truth, this is the result of it.”
Perry accused the Rubio campaign of “feigning outrage” at the fake Facebook post while they have no evidence of Cruz being involved.
The Rubio camp has “hypocritically and falsely accused the Cruz campaign of negative push polling, while at the same time hitting South Carolinians across the state with their own negative and inaccurate push polls against Cruz,” Perry said, adding that they have also papered Cruz events with “negative, misleading literature.”
The reasoning behind Rubio’s attacks, Perry said, is because Rubio has nothing nice to say about his own record. Perry accused Rubio of missing defense authorization votes, backing then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s effort to overthrow Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi which led to instability and the Benghazi consulate attacks in the country, and supporting John Kerry’s nomination as secretary of state, whom Perry said thanked Iran after capturing and humiliating Navy sailors.
“How can Americans trust that Marco Rubio will stand firm in his principles?”, Perry asked. “They can’t because he’s never proven he will do so.”
