Posted on 08/28/2015 6:54:52 AM PDT by VinL
Of all of the curiosities this presidential campaign has produced so far, add to the list a joint-candidate rally featuring two of the most polarizing candidates in the GOP. On Thursday, Ted Cruz announced that Donald Trump would join him at the Capitol next month to protest lawmakers supporting the Iranian nuclear deal. “Glad @realdonaldtrump accepted my invitation to rally in DC to stop the catastrophic #IranDeal,” Cruz tweeted from his campaign account.
It was the surest sign yet that Cruz's apparent strategy of wooing the controversial candidate — and positioning himself to win over Trump supporters if (or when) the businessman flames out of the race — is starting to pay off.
However Trump’s magic-carpet ride through GOP primary season ends, it will be remembered for (among other things) just how ill-prepared his fellow candidates were to take him on. Jeb Bush tried this week, in his characteristically genteel way, to respond to the insults that Trump has been hurling at him like spitballs all summer: “There’s a difference between Donald Trump and me: I’m a proven conservative with a record,” he told a gaggle of reporters last week with his hands clasped uncomfortably in front of him. Trump, not just undeterred but energized by the reaction, told the New York Times that Bush was a “low-energy person” — a phrase he’s repeated several times, knowing that it tweaks the younger Bush brother — and took to Twitter to mock him for rarely using his last name. Scott Walker has tried to ignore him, refusing to answer whether or not he supports birthright citizenship and declaring himself “unintimidated” so often it’s hard to believe him. But the Donald’s diatribes have caused him to slip in the polls, too.
Not so with Ted Cruz, who may be the only top-tier candidate willing to embrace Trump. Yes — Ted Cruz is a top-tier candidate — even though he’s been more or less ignored by the rest of the field since he launched his campaign back in March. The most important poll numbers right now come from Iowa: They’re the first state to caucus, and the momentum a candidate is able to pick up there will be important in determining who moves forward in the race. In Iowa, Cruz is averaging fourth place in polls. (He’s running fifth in the national poll averages.) In the last fund-raising quarter, only Jeb Bush out-raised him in the Republican field.
A key part of Cruz's gambit seems to be maintaining friendly personal relations with Trump. While everyone else is busy dodging, ignoring, or attacking him, Cruz has welcomed the Donald with open arms. "I am proud to stand with Donald Trump,” Cruz recently told one of his TV interviewers. “I like him and respect him." They’ve managed to keep it positive even though both are famously unfriendly with the other figureheads in their party, and even though Trump raised the uncomfortable fact that Cruz was born in Canada when he launched his campaign back in March. The affection goes beyond publicly stated admiration, too: As the Daily Beast’s Tim Mak reported, Trump and Cruz have met up at least five times and continue to keep the back channels open between campaigns. Trump’s madcap trip to the border was almost a joint press event, but Cruz had a scheduling conflict get in the way. Cruz is now trying out the unusual Trump strategy of attacking one of the right’s most beloved journalists, Megyn Kelly. On Tuesday, he responded to Kelly’s line of questioning about how he’d deport undocumented families with an attack: “Megyn, I get that that’s the question you want to ask,” he said when Kelly pressed him. “That’s also the question every mainstream-media liberal journalist wants to ask.”
But for Cruz this is all part of a bigger strategy and a longer game. He’s been working to secure the same voter base as Trump since being elected to the Senate in 2012 — the base of voters who hate the political Establishment so much that being a villain to Democrats and Republicans alike is the entire point. It’s the strategy that motivated his publicity-raising faux filibusters, his efforts to lead a government shutdown, and his most bombastic public statements.
Trump’s temporary advantage over Cruz is that he’s leveraging a well-established and decades-old public persona to appeal to many of the same voters, and he’s doing it in a wildly entertaining (and fact-free) way. But in the long run Trump's strategy can't work: Winning a fifth of the GOP primary electorate and actually being able to win the general election are two very different things, especially if the candidate has shown no allegiance to the party he’s trying to represent, as Jonathan Chait points out.
Cruz surely knows that Trump isn’t built to last, and when Trump finally exits the race, Cruz will be there to pick up his base. Unlike Trump, Cruz is a real conservative — and it’s not inconceivable that he could win the primary. While the rest of the party spends the fall trying to tear Trump down, you can be sure Cruz will keep up the good relations, all while raising millions of dollars behind the scenes and preparing for the inevitable moment Trump exits the race. If the rest of the Republican field isn’t worried about Cruz yet, they should be.
[Trump has pretty much tied the media in knots and that is something Cruz has never done. They are a complimentary set and I wish the hard core Cruzers would follow Cruz’s lead and embrace the situation rather than act all high and mighty and post screeds against Trump all day long. Why not follow Cruz’s lead if you admire him? I would say a person who likes Cruz and doesn’t follow Cruz’s example is a hypocrite.]
Cruz is an amazing person and would be hard to emulate, so it would be hard to expect most people — including his followers — to be like him.
No, he doesn’t.
Trump needs to stay in this until Jeb is knocked out. It’s not enough to beat him up a few rounds. And it’s likely that trump is the only one that can get him out
JFK won the electoral vote 303 to 219. Winning IL would not have put Nixon on top. IL had 27 electoral votes.
My point stands.
Cruz and Trump are both for a wall.
And your point is what? That we need a non conservative to get things done?
Why would Trump get out when he is on top?
Who knows why he might? I like trump / Cruz. But if trump gets out I hope it s not until Jeb is knocked out. Only trump can get that done
Cruz has never highlighted the American victims of illegal alien crimes. Trump has.
Trump is smart enough to know talent when he sees it. I suspect is not one of those people afraid to hire someone smarter than himself.
And I hope that if Cruz gets out, it is not until Jeb is knocked out.
Source?
Trump is not.
Trump is for an over-and-back legalization amnesty for ~19 million.
Trump wants to have legal immigration return to historical levels, i.e, 195,000 a year.
Source?
History shows that if you want any sort of conservative success at all, you find a former democrat who agrees with you.
I don’t think Cruz supporting a wall matters at all, because frankly, the problem is bigger than just a wall.
And beyond that, Cruz does not seem to be able to effectively sell his positions or himself to American voters.
So it really doesn’t matter what he supports, because it doesn’t appear that he’s going to be president.
Think you’re right.
Bears repeating...
Good post... I like both. I think Cruz is an honorable and humble guy. He is also one that really understands that the DC Cartel has to be taken down. I think Cruz surely would like to win but I think if Trump can take on the cartel he’d be okay with supporting Trump too to do the job. I think this why they are more or less working together.
That’s true,,can give you that. And does it really matter who starts it? Let’s finish it by getting along,,all of us.
Cruz Tries to Claim the Middle Ground on Immigration
What Mr. Cruz has tried to articulate in both word and deed is a middle ground. It got no support from Democrats in Washington, but it goes further than many on the far right want to go by offering leniency to undocumented immigrants here already: A path to legal status, but not to citizenship. A green card with no right to naturalization.
Immigration-reform legislation from the Senate’s so-called Gang of Eight passed that chamber in June and includes a 13-year path to citizenship. Mr. Cruz pushed unsuccessfully for amendments that would have, among other things, eliminated the citizenship component.
Asked about what to do with the people here illegally, however, he stressed that he had never tried to undo the goal of allowing them to stay.
“The amendment that I introduced removed the path to citizenship, but it did not change the underlying work permit from the Gang of Eight,” he said during a recent visit to El Paso. Mr. Cruz also noted that he had not called for deportation or, as Mitt Romney famously advocated, self-deportation.
Mr. Cruz said recent polling indicated that people outside Washington support some reform, including legal status without citizenship. He said he was against naturalization because it rewarded lawbreakers and was unfair to legal immigrants. It also perpetuates illegal crossings, he added.
Besides barring citizenship while instituting some level of legalization for those here already, Mr. Cruz has proposed increasing the number of green cards awarded annually, to 1.35 million from 675,000. He also wants to eliminate the per-country limit that he said left applicants from countries like Mexico, China and India hamstrung when they tried to gain legal entry to this country.
Trump is for an over-and-back legalization amnesty for ~19 million
No, he says he will allow the "good ones" to come back. He didn't put a number on it. He also said he would deport all criminal aliens and stop the practice of catch and release.
Source?
It is obvious you have not read Trump's detailed position paper on immigration. Here is the excerpt on the reduction of legal immigration.
Immigration moderation. Before any new green cards are issued to foreign workers abroad, there will be a pause where employers will have to hire from the domestic pool of unemployed immigrant and native workers. This will help reverse women's plummeting workplace participation rate, grow wages, and allow record immigration levels to subside to more moderate historical averages.
I understand your point but is it hard for his followers, and I am one also, to follow his lead and try to get along with Trump? That’s what I’m talking about.
“I just can’t get past this deep gut feeling that something isn’t ringing true with him.”
It’s because he’s a righteous man and were conditioned to expect politicians to be less to be much less than that.
The writer is behind the times—Trump’s already had his first poll giving him 40% of the GOP primary vote.
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