Club for Growth PAC to Bundle Donations for Five GOP Hopefuls

The Club for Growth PAC, the polit­ic­al arm of the con­ser­vat­ive group, “is step­ping up its in­volve­ment in the 2016 White House race, form­ally steer­ing dona­tions to five top Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial con­tenders sup­por­ted by its board,” in­clud­ing Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Marco Ru­bio (R-FL); Wis­con­sin Gov. Scott Walk­er (R); and former Flor­ida Gov. Jeb Bush (R).

“This marks the first time the in­flu­en­tial con­ser­vat­ive group has called on its mem­bers to write checks to pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates and co­in­cides with a sep­ar­ate ef­fort to curb the pro­gress of celebrity real-es­tate mogul Don­ald Trump (R) by draw­ing at­ten­tion to its con­cerns with his past state­ments.”

Dav­id McIn­tosh, pres­id­ent of the Club for Growth, “lauded the three sen­at­ors for their re­cords on ‘pro-growth is­sues,’” and “also hailed Walk­er’s fight with Wis­con­sin’s pub­lic-sec­tor uni­ons “¦ and he said Bush ‘amassed a sol­id re­cord on tax cuts as gov­ernor of Flor­ida.’” (Wall Street Journ­al)

GOP DE­BATE. The Peace Cen­ter in Green­ville, South Car­o­lina, was named the loc­a­tion of the “Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial primary de­bate sched­uled for sev­en days be­fore South Car­o­lina’s ‘First in the South’ primary” on Feb­ru­ary 13. (Green­ville News)

MORE DE­BATES. “Former First Lady Nancy Re­agan is in­vit­ing 16 Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates to par­ti­cip­ate in the CNN/Re­agan Lib­rary pres­id­en­tial de­bate on Septem­ber 16. “¦ Former Vir­gin­ia Gov. Jim Gilmore (R) “¦ has not yet been in­vited. Can­did­ates must achieve an av­er­age of at least 1 per­cent of sup­port in three re­cog­nized na­tion­al polls be­fore Septem­ber 10 to be in­cluded in the de­bate.” (CNN)

CLIN­TON AT­TACK. Both Ru­bio and Bush at­tacked former Sec­ret­ary of State Hil­lary Clin­ton’s (D) $350 bil­lion stu­dent loan plan, de­cry­ing it as a tax hike. “Ru­bio pro­posed cre­at­ing more al­tern­at­ives to tra­di­tion­al four-year col­lege pro­grams that award people based on what they have learned rather than how many hours they spent in the classroom. He ar­gued that more com­pet­i­tion and great­er flex­ib­il­ity is needed for work­ing-class people to get the kinds of de­grees they need.”

Ru­bio: “All that she’s talk­ing about is ‘let’s raise taxes and let’s pour a bunch of money in­to a 20th-cen­tury out­dated mod­el.’ This is the thing they al­ways do on the left — she has to fig­ure out who to raise taxes on.”

Bush: “We need to change the in­cent­ives for col­leges with fresh policies that res­ult in more in­di­vidu­al­iz­a­tion and choices, drive down over­all costs, and im­prove the value of a col­lege de­gree, which will help lead to real, sus­tained four-per­cent eco­nom­ic growth.” (New York Times)