Anyone who wonders how Cruz will do in debates, has not been paying attention, and has very little knowledge of his background, when the debates start you will be delighted in his performance, no one should be surprised.
IMO...This is not the time to sit and wait, there are rare occasions when putting all your eggs in one basket is prudent, this is such a time, it should be more than obvious to the politically astute Cruz is the man for times such as these.
We don't need a repeat of 2012 where we had 8 to 10 challengers in the primary and one by one they fell like domino's all the money and resources sucked up for naught, with the last man standing was Romney, what's to learn we already know where every potential candidates stands, Cruz posses all the best attributes of the others, plus/plus, we need to choose NOW and stand with the candidate who's primary intentions is to Restore Our Constitutional Free Republic and vows to constitutionally tear down the progressive liberal bureaucratic institutions starting with obamacare and the IRS.
Well as far as Free Republic goes, Cruz seems to have the most support here. Of course FR has proven pretty horrible at picking winners. (Even of the more Conservative part of the contest). Hermain Cain, Sen. Thompson, Duncan Hunter and Alan Keyes were big favorites on FR in the past. FR pretty much hated both McCain and Romney (the latter, more) from the start. But, they still one. So even everyone on FR going all in for Cruz from the start probably won't mean much.
Your advice is good advice, but then again supporters of all the other candidates would say "everyone should rally around my guy NOW, so we can go in united and win!!" too.
It still comes down to "what's the compelling argument for / against them.
I think the willowing will be faster this time than in 2008 and 2012. But the process you describe, the last man standing, is still going to take place.
Here is some old-time conventional election geek wisdom that I think is useful:
Three tickets out of Iowa. Two tickets out of New Hampshire.
Cruz seems likely to get one of the Iowa tickets, and a little less likely to get one of the New Hampshire ones. SO then it goes to South Carolina. I can see him doing very well there.
But there are 19 people in Sababto's current list of GOP challengers. Even saying 1/2 of them drop out before Iowa, thats a lot of people running in Iowa, and a lot of people dropping out after Iowa and New Hampshire.
At this point it looks like Jeb, Rand, Cruz, Rubio, Walker and Huckabee have a shot at still being around in South Carolina. The rest seem unlikely. (I maybe discounting Santorum, he won Iowa, so he probably has a shot there to at least get 3rd and stay alive for a bit.)
Cruz posses all the best attributes of the others,
No, not really. Walker has more experience in an executive role, and has a proven record of winning in a Blue / Purple state. Rand has much lower disapproval ratings, he is often described as more likeable. Etc.
That's why we have primaries, after all.
“...This is not the time to sit and wait, there are rare occasions when putting all your eggs in one basket is prudent, this is such a time, it should be more than obvious to the politically astute Cruz is the man for times such as these...”
You are correct. Absolutely. We need to — desperately need to — coalesce around a conservative and Ted Cruz *should* be more than acceptable to most reasonable voters.
But we won’t unite behind Cruz, or any other candidate. Even here on FR where you’d think Cruz would stand out from the rest of the field as a conservative. But no. As usual, we will bicker and get tunnel vision on single-issue arguments, waste time with political peeing contests and making mountains out of mole-hills... until we end up with either Bush or something inconceivably worse. And when it’s all over and done with and we’ve lost to either Clinton, Warren, Bush or Christie (or whatever), *THEN* all the members of the circular firing squad on the right will suddenly come to the conclusion that, “Geeze, how did we end up with this soup-sandwich for a president? Cruz would have been much better. We should have gone all in for Cruz early...”
And I sincerely hope I am completely wrong about this, but I fear I am in the ball park of what’s going to happen.