This is How Ted Cruz Says He’ll Win the Middle By Running Right

National Journal ^ | 4/19/16 | Shane Goldmacher

[VinL]

It's no secret that Ted Cruz is running hard to the right as he pursues the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. The strategy is pretty clear: He's pushing to out-conservative the rest of the field. Cruz wants, as he says repeatedly on the campaign trail, to lead a "grassroots army" of "courageous conservatives."

But how would the tea party Texan win over the independents and Democrats needed in the general election?

That's the question Cruz got at a New Hampshire gun range Sunday afternoon from a Cruz fan who had driven up from Massachusetts to express his concerns, in person, about Cruz's crossover appeal.

The senator had a two-part answer, both elements of which are topics of debate.

The first is that "millions of conservatives who showed up in '04…stayed home in '08, and stayed home in even bigger numbers in 2012." (GOP strategist Karl Rove, notably, has disagreed with that analysis in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.) The second is that the bigger the ideological gap between Democrat and Republican – and the bolder the GOP candidate – the more likely the traditional Democratic-leaning voters will actually switch sides in 2016.

We've decided to print Cruz's answer in full because, in it, he describes in detail the unusual intellectual underpinning of his campaign and his strategy:

"Let's talk about how you win an election generally," Cruz began. "You know, what is maddening about politics is there is this group of consultants who keep running national campaigns. They keep losing. And then they keep coming back to Republicans saying support us while we go make the exact same mistakes all over again…

"If you compare 2004, the last race Republicans won, to '08 and '12, by far the biggest difference are the millions of conservatives who showed up in '04, who stayed home in '08, and stayed home in even bigger numbers in 2012. So how do you win? How do you win? I think the key question is how do we bring back those millions of conservatives.

"Now, here's what I called the Washington fallacy, which is what the consultants believe. They look at voters on a spectrum from right to left. And their view is if your opponent is here [he holds one hand up], you want to be infinitesimally to the right [he squeezes his other hand next to the first]. So you capture every marginal voter up until where they are. Now, I understand that theory in the abstract. It's not a crazy theory in the abstract. The problem is we keep trying. And we keep losing. Because every time you do that, millions and millions of people over here [moves his Republican hand to the right] say to heck with this thing.

"The way you win is you draw a line in the sand. You make a clear meaningful distinction why this election matters to you and two things happen. Number one, you turn out millions of [conservative] voters. But number two, and this goes right to your question, it's also how you earn crossover votes.

"You think about it, in the last 50 years, there's one Republican who has a group of Democrats named after him. Reagan Democrats. If the Washington theory were right, you'd have Gerald Ford Democrats [crowd laughs], or Bob Dole Democrats [crowd laughs louder]. They don't exist.

"You think about 1980 – and understand why. In 1980, Ronald Reagan didn't say I'm exactly like Jimmy Carter, except imperceptibly to the right. Reagan drew line in the sand. He said there is a fundamental difference between me and Jimmy Carter...

[DoughtyOne]

If you really want to know, ask all the people on the right who stayed home.

This guy was a pig an a poke. I didn’t have any confidence in him. Did you?

[painter]

HELL NO!

[lonevoice]

Very interesting read.

[Samurai_Jack]

“Reagan was “palatable” to the left in the sense that he was consistent and predictable.”

OH!!

Well from my point of view that’s not really ‘The Left’, that’s ‘The Democrats’. At the time, Reagan did work with the Democrats to get things done and yes it did cost him and us. That was when they tried to maintain a veneer of respectability. “The Left” didn’t really take over the democrat party until just after 9/11. When they were all forced to stand on the capitol steps and recite the pledge of allegiance, including Under God. Bush didn’t cut their jugular when he had the chance and it cost him.

That’s when they realized their vulnerability and cast out the Democratic Leadership Committee in favor of the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition and ACORN. Essentially The Communist Left has coopted the entire democrat party which is now pretty much a Zombie of what it used to be. They no longer possess a sense of Shame or Conscience. They will go to war until they win, and then inflict their policies until they are thrown out of office. Then they go to war again.

If we were all characters in Orwell’s 1984, how would it be much different?

[olezip]

Essentially The Communist Left has coopted the entire democrat party which is now pretty much a Zombie of what it used to be.

Looks to me like the Republican establishment has not yet noticed or changed their tactics to effectively counter this dramatic change in the Democrat Party.

[2ndDivisionVet]

National Journal is naturally leery of this, but it does underline my own thesis: In the new political world, there is a deep hunger to see a face-off between left and right, rather than the phony and failed bipartisanship of the Ruling Class Monolithic State ("Uniparty"). Ted Cruz understands that the more clear-cut he can make the choice – between himself and his GOP opponents, and then between himself and his Democratic opponent, the better he is likely to do. People are choosing up sides because they want to choose up sides. Cruz intends to give them a side to choose. And that’s why I support him, too.