Posted on 09/17/2015 10:33:37 AM PDT by conservativejoy
If the general environment fits Cruz nicely, the dynamic of the campaign is favorable to him, too.
Ted Cruz isn’t topping the polls or dominating the conversation, but he’s one of the winners of the past few months.
His odds of winning the nomination have increased more than anyone else’s besides Donald Trump, and if you believe (reasonably enough) that Trump isn’t built to last, more than anyone else’s, period.
Let’s review. There was always the danger of Cruz, who made his national reputation on the strength of a misbegotten government shutdown, seeming like too much of a bomb-thrower. That was before it began to look like the Republican Party is open to a candidate only slightly less disruptive than Auguste Vaillant, the 19th-century French anarchist who struck a blow against politics as usual by literally throwing a bomb into the French Chamber of Deputies in 1893 (the establishment wasn’t amused — it executed him).
Such is the disgust with the Republican leadership, that there is no longer such a thing as going too far. Cruz could burn John Boehner in effigy, and no one would bat an eye. Cruz could make a citizen’s arrest of Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor on grounds of gross crimes of omission against the constitutional republic, and the Luntz focus group would applaud his plucky initiative. In sum, there’s nothing Cruz could do short of pissing in the Yankee Bean soup in the Senate dining room that would be too outlandish, and even then his most devoted fans might say, “It’s about damn time."
This must be liberating for Cruz, who has already called McConnell a liar and blamed Boehner and McConnell for not stopping the Iran nuclear deal — and he’s just getting started.
If the general environment fits Cruz nicely, the dynamic of the campaign is favorable to him, too. There are few things Cruz should welcome more than the ongoing war between Trump, the anti-establishment gorilla in the room who is a major obstacle in his path, and the foremost establishment candidate, Jeb Bush, whom Cruz needs to be as weak as possible. Cruz can stand by and hope both sides lose, which isn’t a far-fetched bet.
While other campaigns have been flummoxed and discombobulated by the rise of Trump, Cruz hasn’t. He has a simple political True North — go where the base is. Once it became obvious Trump was catching on with the grass roots, Cruz’s play was obvious: Start acting as if Ronald Reagan’s only failure was not to have handed down a 12th Commandment — thou shalt not criticize Donald Trump.
Cruz can be very patient waiting for the mogul to come down to earth. The Texas senator has an ideological and geographical base that means he can play the long game.
Consider Iowa. Cruz is sitting in third place there, a comfortable place to be in the late-breaking state. He has captured the intense loyalty of a portion of the grass roots (evident in his consistently crowd-pleasing speeches) and lines up for the caucuses better than Trump does. Cruz is a preacher’s son who announced his campaign at Liberty University. He speaks forcefully on the social issues and is a down-the-line conservative, without a hint of a heterodoxy.
If he were to emerge and win Iowa, he would have a much stronger financial and institutional base to follow up his victory than the immediate past winners, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. Cruz has raised more hard money than anyone else, and has significant super PAC support. If he merely held his own until March 1, he’d be in position to sop up delegates in the SEC states, including Texas.
On top of this, Cruz is very smart, disciplined and doesn’t make unforced errors — if he gets an opening, he’ll make the most of it.
Getting that opening will depend on Trump and Ben Carson fading (and someone else, like Carly Fiorina, not rising). But all Cruz needs is for the voters to become slightly, and only slightly, more desirous of political experience.
The Overton window has shifted enough that Cruz, in the Senate less than three years, almost all of it spent in political pyrotechnics, looks like the sober statesman. Compared to Donald Trump, he’s practically Everett Dirksen. Compared to Carson, he’s a career politician — a veteran of the George W. Bush campaign and administration who ran for the U.S. Senate as soon as plausible, and apparently has no intention of leaving unless it’s for a promotion.
It once seemed that Scott Walker could best Cruz with his record of accomplishment, but so far Republican voters aren’t in an accomplishment mood. It’s possible to imagine Cruz’s team secretly thinking, “What good fortune that our candidate has never governed anything, or seriously tried to pass major legislation.”
Of course, Cruz’s potential may never be realized. He should, in theory, be the elected officeholder next in line to pick up support from the outsiders, but he is very different stylistically from them. While Trump always lets it fly extemporaneously, Cruz is extremely deliberate. While Trump and Carson ooze sincerity, Cruz can let his calculation show — he sincerely supported trade promotion authority, until the politics shifted, and then he sincerely opposed it. While Trump and Carson are refreshingly different as communicators, Cruz is practiced and stentorian. He could make ordering a ham-and-cheese sandwich sound like a speech. (Trump is also, in many respects, a raging moderate, whose support ranges much more widely across the party than Cruz’s.)
However shrewdly Cruz is positioned in the primary, his candidacy might be a heavy lift in a general election. But there’s time to worry about that later. Cruz certainly has a more intuitive theory of the case than Jeb Bush: to wit, you have to win the primary to have a chance to win the general.
Unlike Trump and Carson, Cruz doesn’t need the usual political rules to be utterly suspended to win the nomination. He just needs them to be different, and to get some lucky bounces along the way. That looks likelier than it did six months ago.
https://debate.princeton.edu/results/hall-of-fame/
Article from 1992
http://gotnews.com/breaking-ted-cruz-named-worlds-best-debater-90s-tedcruzcrimes/
Cruz “resume”
Don’t even think about telling us Cruz is not as good at debate as he is said to be, that is proven fact and what you saw last night can only laughingly be called a debate.
I’m waiting for a “Campaigning with the Stars” or maybe “Who’s the next U.S. President” show, where every week the candidates have to answer stupid, inane and embarrassing questions, and each week the “judges” and “online audience” get to kick off the least popular candidate. These freak shows are not much better than that. Why cant we have serious debates to learn more about the candidates?
I think the major problem that Cruz has to overcome is the deliberate marginalization and outright pretending that he doesn’t exist tactic being employed by the MSM and their political backers.
He may be building a base within the silent majority, but that won’t be quite enough.
At this point the goal would be to bury ¡JEB! and send the rest of the GOPe “spoilers” spiraling down the drain.
Another goal would be for the candidates to take charge of the debates, and stop falling for the MSM tactic of getting candidates to form a circular firing squad. Stick to Reagan’s 11th commandment, weed out the RINOs, and get back to fixing this country.
This is Rich Lowery California dreamin. :-)
Nice 1992.......I was quite a different person in 1992.....in fact, I used to run a 7 minute mile and a half and now I can do it in 11 minutes. All of us slow down and are not as good as we were 23 years ago. Cruz is fine just not an expert in debating. No big deal. He may still be able to get out of the middle who knows.
So why is he middle of the pack at best in these debates?
Uhhh, because these aren’t DEBATES. They are red meat free-for all’s meant to destroy one loud and boisterous candidate.
In a real, one-on-one, or 3 way debate Cruz destroys every clown in politics.
On Constitutional issues, no one on that stage can shine Cruz’s shoes. Period.
Silly excuse......same type of debates for 30 years. Oh well another pass for the wanna be.
Cruz is the wannabe?
You know, I tried to give your guy the benefit of the doubt in my post, even though I wouldn’t vote for him for dogcatcher at this point.
And yet here you are, on an article not about your candidate disparaging someone elses candidate.
It is truly sad to watch some of you rabid Trump people attack the one guy who has consistently fought for Conservative values his entire career.
To me that in itself drives me further, and further away from Trump.
You honestly believe a guy who couldn’t answer a simple question about his own immigration plan, posted on his website, beat anyone last night?
A guy who was called out on past statements, about vaccines, and about trying to get legal gaming in FL, and had to walk them both back, won last night?
Credit where credit is due, Trump’s answer on the 14th Amendment was good. But those Constitutional scholars he said he had gone to for that opinion, who do you think he was talking about?
Trump did do the impossible last night, he made Christie look informed, and I wouldn’t even entertain the idea of Christie for dogcatcher.
By the way, back up your assertion that anyone in America is a better Strict Constitutionalist than Ted Cruz.
You called him a wannabe, prove it.
Trump will do fine with out you. He has complete reinvigorated the Republican Party. If not for Trump, the ratings of the debate would have been at most 2 million people especially with your extremely boring candidate that you for some dumb reason supports. Slimiest guy on stage...EASILY.
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