MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports
November 25, 2015
12:52 p.m. Eastern
ANDREA MITCHELL: Ted Cruz is moving on up in the Iowa Quinnipiac poll, pulling ahead of Ben Carson, who’s dropped to third. Marco Rubio competing with Cruz to be the alternative to Donald Trump and Carson, if and when the race gets real, so let's talk about that with MSNBC political analyst, Michael Steele, former Republican National chairman. What do you make of Ted Cruz moving up in Iowa? It seems as though he's got more ground troops on the ground.
MICHAEL STEELE: He does.
MITCHELL: A better organization, I should say, than Marco Rubio.
STEELE: Yeah, he does and I’d say probably better than most of the other candidates. The one thing about Ted Cruz that I find very interesting and smart is while everybody has been focused on the bright shining object that is Donald Trump, he has been methodically laying the ground for just such an occasion, to sort of move into a position to challenge for the lead and it's not — it's not about the national polls as you well know, Andrea, national polls mean absolutely butt kiss right now. They mean nothing. It's exactly what is going on in states like Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada that matter most and that's what he's focusing his energy on and he’s gaining the benefits from it.
MITCHELL: So, Rubio now trying to stake his claim to be the alternative if Ben Carson and Donald Trump fade away, but Cruz and Rubio really are the logical competitors for that role.
STEELE: They are. They have similar appeals to the base. You know, I think Ted has a stronger conservative advantage across the spectrum. He has been the one who has been in the well, fighting the hardest and the loudest so much so that his colleagues in the Senate don't like him and publicly have stated such. Rubio has baggage that he carries on immigration, and certainly even in terms of the war footing that he's claiming, there's going to be some challenge, not just from someone like Cruz, but also as you saw in the last debate with Rand Paul, which is, again, reflective of what is going on inside the party. So, Cruz has put himself, I think, in the best position to take on Donald Trump leading into the next debate in December.
MITCHELL: The conventional wisdom has always been that Ted Cruz had so alienated all his colleagues that he was a non-starter to be a national candidate, but this year, that could be an advantage.
STEELE: Oh, absolutely. In fact, that was something from the very beginning as far as Cruz was concerned that didn't matter to him. He didn’t — in fact, the less — the folks in D.C. liked him the better and that's going to benefit him going forward because he truly is outside both the establishment and what Washington has been talking about the last couple of years.