Cruz's Iowa Win in Part Due to Culture of Kindness and Courage at Campaign HQ

PJ Media ^ | Feb 5, 2016 | T. Elliot Gaiser

[JSDude1]

On Monday night, the Republican Party gave the first victory of 2016 to the first Hispanic candidate for president of the United States, Ted Cruz.

Sen. Cruz won for many reasons: his outsider appeal, disciplined message, and sophisticated get-out-the-vote operation. But after two trips to Iowa to volunteer for Cruz, I noticed something else about the Cruz campaign that probably made a difference.

I’ve worked on many campaigns. I started with George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign when I was 14, and I’ve volunteered at the grassroots level every year since. A wise mentor once told me the kind of organization a leader builds says a lot about him.

There was something different about the Cruz campaign, including many signs of kindness and courage:

•Cruz’s Urbandale headquarters were like many campaign headquarters – office space in a suburban strip mall. Streams of volunteers came in to sit in rows of phone bank tables, and went out with literature to canvass neighborhoods door-to-door. Staff bustled in and out of small offices. But people were relatively calm and quiet. There was orderliness.

•Unlike every other campaign I had worked on, the Cruz operation encouraged volunteers to engage. Plainly typed signs all around the phone bank said, please flag someone down if someone has you stumped with a Cruz question – we want to earn as many supporters as possible! This communicated not only a commitment to discipline, but also to rational persuasion and fearless confidence that our cause is what the voters are looking for.

•One of the offices had been cleared of desks and chairs and instead contained colorful foam mats, toy blocks, and coloring books. I saw four or five kids putting together puzzles or coloring quietly while a mother made calls from a folding chair. Someone told me

[xzins]

Time will tell.

The first pro-Trum0 state votes on Tuesday. If it’s real, then he’ll win. If it isn’t he won’t. Pretty simple in NH
Don’t think I dislike Cruz. I’ve donated hundreds to his campaign. If he wins out I’ll be all in with what I think will be a losing effort.

[Luircin]

There’s a big difference between ‘passing along’ and purposefully exaggerating the news story, especially after they’d already got a clarification that Carson wasn’t dropping out, AND after CNN had clarified that he wasn’t dropping out, the Cruz campaign once again kept spreading the rumor.

Worse, unless there’s a hell of an impressionist working the Cruz campaign, the false information came right from the top.

You would think that someone who supposedly holds himself to such a high standard like Cruz would have some qualms about making an announcement like this, ESPECIALLY with the exaggerated bits added on.

If it had been the Trump camp that had done this, you’d be screaming bloody murder.

[conservativejoy]

That was not Cruz on the audio. Carson has not been on the campaign trail since he left Iowa Monday night. To most folks that looks like a suspension of his campaign, especially since there are 2 more elections within less than a month. Every commentator who heard the CNN report thought he was suspending his campaign and getting out.

Carson is such a fraud he leased a campaign bus to drive around empty through the primary states to make it look like he was campaigning.