The Ted Cruz surge is not a staged joke

The Examiner ^ | March 6, 2016 | Kareem Gantt

[2ndDivisionVet]

If you listen to Donald Trump, you would believe that Ted Cruz's huge victories in Kansas and Maine in Super Saturday were a fluke.

While Trump is still leading in delegates, he should be a little more worried about the Cruz surge.

While Kansas was always going to be a toss-up between the two, Cruz's surprising victory in Maine should not be overlooked. While Trump was spinning Mar. 5 as another resounding victory, in reality, it was a not such a good day.

Not only did Cruz obtain most of the 155 delegates that were up for grabs on Saturday, he also kept Trump from maxing out his delegates in his two primary wins in Louisiana and Kentucky. Cruz's strategy, to steal closed Republican primary states away from the New York real estate mogul, worked like a charm, and now, Cruz heads into the Mar. 8 primaries in Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan, and Mississippi with a wave that could keep The Donald from reaching the 1237 delegates necessary to win the GOP's nomination ahead of their convention in Cleveland....

[Kit cat]

OK folks so what are we going to do about this????

[EQAndyBuzz]

“Cruz is sure a democrat’s dream opponent - the RATS will remove him form the ballots since he is NOT constitutionally eligible!.”

Why? He hasn’t been removed yet.

[napscoordinator]

Huge victories? 20,000 voters and 8,000 voters? Wow. Trump has over 500,000 votes total then Cruz. Cruz can’t win the south....that has been proven. Trump has 13 states. Cruz has 6. Huckabee won 8 in 2008.

[dynoman]

I don’t think Trump even inferred that. I watched. THat’s why I want a quote from anyone who asserts that.

[SampleMan]

I thought his CPAC speech was outstanding, conservative and Constitutional, things that FReepers used to stand by. Which part gave you heartburn?

It’s sad that being for Trump requires hating everyone else. I don’t think that their is a single remaining conservative that the FRumpsters wouldn’t haul out to the guillotine.

[Kit cat]

Do you know How to retweet this to the Trump campaign??? I am NOT A Techie!!!! Trump is a Fighter WE NEED TO GET HIM THE INFO!!!!

[annieokie]

TED CRUZ to VICTORY 2016......

[dynoman]

Jeff Roe Linked Once Again To Political Lies
http://www.yeoldejournalist.com/23653-2/

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This is not the first time that a Jeff Roe run campaign has been accused of leaking to the press that a candidate running against them was quitting the race. In 2010, a press release was sent to KSPR that appeared to be from the Scott Eckersley campaign that noted he was dropping out. KSPR ran the story in the morning news and Eckersley was put in damage control in the final days of the campaign.

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[Elyse]

They can vote for whoever they want in the general election. I don’t want them having any hand in picking the nominee. That is just crazy talk.

[Utmost Certainty]

Also true.

Fully expect Dems to hammer the eligibility issue in a general.

[dynoman]

“It was Mr. Roe who hired Mr. Tyler to be the Cruz campaign’s spokesman. (In an interview this month, Mr. Tyler said he had “learned a lot” from Mr. Roe. “Jeff wins,” Mr. Tyler said, adding, “I don’t think anything we’ve done is underhanded or deceptive or anything like that.”)

But back home, Mr. Roe’s allies and opponents alike have seen a familiar imprint in the Cruz campaign’s recent exploits, which have included a Photoshopped image of Mr. Rubio and the misleading suggestion, on the night of the Iowa caucuses, that Ben Carson was leaving the race.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/us/politics/ted-cruz-campaign-manager-jeff-roe.html?_r=0

All been done before by Jeff Roe. Now Tyler is canned but Jeff is still in charge.

[napscoordinator]

Yeah sure. He just got another 3rd place today. Some surge....haha.

[beandog]

Why, so he can look stupid? You do know this is made up don’t you?

[dynoman]

"Political consultant Jeff Roe, who is based in Kansas City, is Ted Cruz's campaign manager — and the architect of the Texas senator's surprising first-place finish.

Roe is hardly a household name even amongst the political chattering class. (He has less than 6,000 Twitter followers.) Locally, he's most famous for commissioning the mean-spirited ad that upset State Auditor Tom Schweich and may have factored into his suicide, at least according to former U.S. Senator John Danforth, who blasted "politics that has gone so hideously wrong" in his funeral oration. Roe has been labeled "the Karl Rove of Missouri" — and the people calling him that don't consider it a compliment.

But as last night's results proved, he knows what he's doing. Cruz didn't just hold off all the other candidates vying for Iowa's large block of conservative voters. He did it even while beating Donald Trump. It was a wild, complicated race, and you have to respect the guy who figured out how to propel any candidate, much less one who's thoroughly loathed by everyone he meets, to victory.

In an interview with Chris Wallace a few weeks ago, Roe discussed a few secrets to his success — namely, a simple message and strong branding. Roe comes across as intensely analytical. He doesn't just know how long the average voter looks at a mailer (17 seconds); he knows how long he wants you to look at one touting Cruz (45 seconds). "When we communicate with the voter, we want it to be simple, clear and reinforce our candidate's brand," he says. For Cruz, that was "strong Christian conservative leader."

A recent New York Times Magazine piece delved more deeply into how Roe & Co. made those words resonate for Cruz, who'd hitherto been identified mostly as a conservative, not necessarily a Christian. Writes Robert Draper,

"One morning early in January, in the lobby of a public library in Onawa, Iowa, I listened to Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, as he explained a central challenge of his previous few months. ‘‘Prior to March 23,’’ Roe said, ‘‘if you were to word-cloud ‘Ted Cruz,’ which we do every day — take all the Google mentions and Internet searches, dump them into a file and form a cloud — you can’t find ‘evangelical.’ ’’ In other words, voters were largely unaware of the Tea Party firebrand’s religious faith. To convince evangelicals that Ted Cruz was the ‘‘righteous’’ candidate, Roe told me, his team needed to sell him as such, from the very beginning: ‘‘Regardless of what you’ve got in the bank, you’d better determine the narrative of the campaign, and show that’s who we are, every day."

Last night's results suggest that effort worked beautifully.

Yes, Iowa is unusually dominated by evangelicals, and yes, if Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum are any indication, Cruz faces an uphill battle to get the Republican nomination, much less win a single state. But we have to hand it to Roe. Never before has a candidate that so many Americans find this intensely annoying managed to make it this far."

http://www.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2016/02/02/missouris-own-jeff-roe-was-the-wind-beneath-ted-cruzs-iowa-wings

[dynoman]

It doesn’t matter, it’s over and done with. I don’t think Trump cares anyway - he wants to win it even inspite of the cheating.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Lame Cherry? What, Ulstermann, Alex Jones and David Icke were tied up?

[bigbob]

Well it will go to federal court, that’s for certain. Who thinks the RATs will NOT be able to find a federal judge who thinks this birthplace issue is a serious enough problem to tie the whole thing up in a legal challenge?

[skeeter]

You can cut & paste ‘till the cows come home. Cruz is building momentum.

[Kit cat]

The tweet has already been sent to Trump folks!!!

[annieokie]

TED CRUZ to VICTORY 2016.......GOD BLESS TED CRUZ and all his supporters......