Posted on 12/15/2014 6:54:07 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The Texas Republican has traveled to both coasts in the hopes of winning over skeptical donors.
There's a downside to digging in. Just ask Ted Cruz.
Since being elected to Congress in 2012, the Texas Republican has established himself as a conservative icon. On everything from spending fights to immigration policy and social issues, Cruz has been a powerful and reliable voice of the far right. His push last year to defund Obamacare—which shuttered the government—cemented his image as an uncompromising champion of the tea party.
But now, as he prepares a presidential bid, Cruz needs to round out the rough edges. While his confrontations on Capitol Hill continue to energize the activist class, his reputation as an ideologically driven renegade is scaring off a key set of influentials: the major Republican donors needed to finance a winning presidential campaign.
"I get the impression that Ted Cruz appeals almost exclusively to the far right of the base, and that he has not attempted to really reach out either to his colleagues in the Senate or to donors who are not in that group," said Fred Malek, a top Republican fundraiser who chaired Sen. John McCain's finance operation in 2008.
The foundation of a Cruz presidential campaign looks solid. He has brought in strong organizational talent. His alliances are multiplying in the early nominating states. And his standing among the grassroots has never been better. But one important area remains a source of concern: fundraising.
It's a vulnerability Cruz is working to address. Earlier this month, the senator slipped away to Los Angeles for a series of meetings with top GOP donors, a trip that included a dinner at the California Club with a group of some 20 Republicans who served as bundlers for Mitt Romney in 2012.
Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt moderated the event, and said many of the attendees—whom he described as "Steve Forbes Republicans"—came away impressed. "There were blunt electability questions," Hewitt said. By the time Cruz departed the dinner, he added, "they were all very, very pleasantly surprised."
Hewitt declined to repeat Cruz's argument for his own electability, but said: "He's in the process of proving to people that he's more Reagan than Goldwater. Opponents of his want to stick the Goldwater tag on him, so his challenge is proving that he's more Reagan than Goldwater."
The California swing came on the heels of a whirlwind tour through Manhattan in late November, which included a lengthy one-on-one meeting with GOP mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. Cruz aimed in both trips to correct what he calls a media-driven "caricature" of himself—one that took hold last year after he spearheaded a strategy to defund the Affordable Care Act that ultimately led to a government shutdown.
Despite the recent coastal visits, Cruz's charm offensive begins in his own backyard, with some of the same Texas donors who shunned him two years ago.
Cruz shocked the political world in 2012 with his primary victory over Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, an establishment favorite who outraised Cruz by a ratio of more than 3-to-1. Conservative outside groups helped drive a flurry of small, out-of-state donations to Cruz, but he was walloped among large-dollar donors. That experience makes for an inspiring David-versus-Goliath tale, but it's not a winning model for a White House campaign. Team Cruz knows that grassroots enthusiasm can only take a candidate so far; to be viable for a party's presidential nomination, major donors must be in play.
"Sen. Cruz's team is more recently—like, within the last few months—reaching out more to the donors and business leaders and community leaders to start building those relationships," said Republican Rep. Kevin Brady, a veteran of the Texas delegation. "His first year was really spent building a national persona and image, and it's my impression that he's now laying the groundwork in Texas."
Brady said it will take time for Cruz to make inroads with these donors, but added that the senator has "a wonderful, not-so-secret weapon" at his disposal: his wife. Heidi Nelson Cruz is a top executive with Goldman Sachs; she also serves on the Greater Houston Partnership Board, an organization full of political contributors. "She's well-respected and has lots of admirers," Brady said. "So that could be part of the reaching out—whether it's Wall Street or Texas."
Brady, himself a master fundraiser with deep connections to the political spenders in Dallas and Houston, said the donor community has taken notice of the freshman senator's newfound interest in their campaign dollars.
Cruz's outreach, however, has not produced an instant conversion among the GOP's donor elite. Adelson found Cruz to be "too right wing," according the New York Observer. (Adelson later disputed that characterization, but it seemed to be a recurring theme during Cruz's swing through New York. At another meeting in Manhattan, he answered a similar assertion by saying: "I don't think I'm all that conservative.")
And the senator's latest confrontation on Capitol Hill—provoking a weekend session of Congress that was aimed at making a point on immigration but resulted in more of President Obama's nominees being confirmed—will only play into the negative stereotype that's scaring off potential financiers of Cruz's presidential campaign.
"His views, as well as his actions," Malek said, "are a lot further to the right than the mainstream of Republican donors."
Cruz's allies acknowledge that he isn't likely to win over most of these donors anyway; his record of intra-party troublemaking is disqualifying for many establishment Republicans looking for a quick, clean primary contest. What Cruz hopes to accomplish, then, is perhaps something less tangible—if not converting neutral players into loyal supporters, at least softening opposition to the point where an "anyone-but-Cruz" campaign never gets off the ground.
Well if that is the rebuttal to the dynamics and damage that Cruz did to the Conservative cause and the nation, then we are now at the level of grade school taunting.
Again and again, for the last several days, supporters of Cruz keep repeating that Harry Reid was going to get those nomination through, all 23 the of them, anyway. He WASN'T go to be successful with jamming them all through until Cruz pulled his stunt, that is the point.
While I admire him standing up for principle, and speaking the truth that Obama's actions are totally outside the law and the Constitution, the fact is that those nominees will now damage America and hurt the American people.
Cruz needs to start owning his share of the role in making that tragedy happen, or he loses complete credibility.
Usually, the herd mentality involves trashing our best hopes to help insure we have nobody to rally around come election time. Quite often, this occurs due to a rumor or a jumped-to conclusion from a printed story.
Cruz hasn't let us down yet - he appears to be the real deal and is hell-bent on forcing change towards a more Constitutional/Conservative leadership. He still has to work within political realities and fight "his side" of the aisle at the same time. Mounting a campaign will require an infusion of funds before folks like me start to get behind him. Due to the fact that his own side will also trash him and try to prevent his viability, he will need funds from every source available. I have no reason to distrust his integrity, especially for the big picture. There have been a couple articles designed to tarnish him in the Conservative mind and several here have dutifully taken the bait and started to bemoan his flaws.
Unless one has a likelier and more Conservative option ready to step up to the plate, it is not the wisest gambit to start pissing in the bowl of oatmeal that he represents.
Again and again, for the last several days, supporters of Cruz keep repeating that Harry Reid was going to get those nomination through, all 23 the of them, anyway.
He WASN'T go to be successful with jamming them all through until Cruz pulled his stunt, that is the point.
It is already setting in as received wisdom among liberals both within the Republican party and without that Ted Cruz will be made to shoulder the blame for the nominations the Democrats rammed through the Senate this week. A good example of that comes from the arbiter of objective fairness to conservative Republicans, the New York Times:
But most of the day was consumed with nominations, none more irritating to many Republicans than the ones who received a vote because of an impulsive move by one of their colleagues. And with the book now closed on the 113th Congress, they could go down as the Cruz Confirmations — the batch of the president’s nominees who were confirmed by the Senate only after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Republican of Texas, forced his colleagues to stay in session for 10 hours on a bleak December Saturday.
“No, we would not have had all of these 24 confirmations, and I think most people know that,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, referring to the two dozen nominees that Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) of Nevada, the majority leader, forced votes once Mr. Cruz made his move.
The number one problem with believing this theory, as my colleague streiff pointed out yesterday, is that Harry Reid promised repeatedly and publicly before the Cruz-Lee point of order that he would keep the Senate open as long as necessary to confirm the nominations. So the whole notion that this idea came to him suddenly in a fit of rage over the Cruz-Lee point of order was invented out of whole cloth by people who didn't want to miss their weekend pass home.
Nevertheless, it’s at least possible to believe that not withstanding Reid’s promises, the Republicans might have been able to run out the clock on the year. Fine, I was willing to suspend judgment on that point, until now. It turns out, the Senate wrapped up business late last night and have now gone home for the year.
So let’s do a little math. It’s a matter of historical fact that the Cruz-Lee point of order bought Reid ten hours worth of floor time on Saturday. Given that Reid was able to wrap up the session last night, what you would have to believe is that Reid would have let over two dozen important nominees just die for the sake of going home Tuesday instead of Wednesday or Thursday.
I suppose it is technically possible to believe that Reid had something back home in Searchlight today that was so important that he would have allowed that to happen but I don’t think any objectively rational person who is willing to look at the facts instead of engage in ritualistic hate of Ted Cruz is buying that after today.
Again, I’m fine with criticizing Ted Cruz or just not liking him. But don’t try selling me that a) he’s an idiot or b) that he got these nominations pushed through. The math just doesn’t add up.
The bottom line is this: the nominations went forward before the budget or even a short term (even a few day) CR had been passed.
That put the Senate and Senators in a terrible bind - and Reid knew he had them all by the shorthairs.
The stunt pulled by Cruz (and that is all it ended up being) gave Reid, Obama, and the Democrats an incredible gift. And Cruz, by his action, harmed the American people. We have an Attorney General who will attack gun owners with impunity. We have Marxist judges who now have secure, lifetime appointments and will do untold damage.
Reid would have attempted to jam through some nomination, but he would not have gotten all 23 through had Cruz not done what he did. Period. I know you think that every other Republican Senator and their top aides are simply "lying" about that, but you are in error. They are speaking the truth, and are absolutely correct. I know that doesn't fit the Cruz narrative, but that's they way it is.
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/227362-leaders-gain-from-cruz-ploy
"We ended the year in the best possible way,” said a Senate Democratic leadership aide, who added Reid would have had to settle for confirming fewer nominees had Cruz not kept the chamber in over the weekend. “I could not imagine ending on such a high point five days ago.” McConnell watched Republican senators rain down abuse on Cruz after he got caught in the Reid trap. “Unfortunate,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). “Counterproductive,” said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who argued that without Cruz’s move, Vivek Murthy, whose nomination was opposed by the National Rifle Association, would not have won confirmation as surgeon general. GOP Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) and Rob Portman (Ohio), who had left Washington to attend his uncle’s funeral, both had to fly back to the capital, and Portman missed some of Saturday’s procedural votes. “I think we all saw that this place is a lot more complicated and for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” said Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas), adding that he hoped his colleagues would learn that creating divisions in the conference hurts the party’s objectives. “Obviously we’re more effective the more unified we are and we kind of lost sight of that,” he said. For Reid, the story of another errant Cruz missile is ending the lame-duck session on a high note."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.