One of the historic truisms in the past several election cycles is the Cruz Coalition, as currently assembled, is the first to stay home when their candidate doesn t win. The socially-minded voter will never vote for a populist fiscal conservative/socially moderate candidate. Cruz voters, and their advocates, are emotionally driven by social issues. Hence they yell a lot (See Mark Levin) and only respond well to others who are inside their echo-chamber.
Consequently neither Rubio nor Trump will try to gain/court Cruz voters. Why should they; the narrow-minded group will never vote for them, if they vote at all.
This non-voting truism is why the GOPe ignore the Cruz-like factions completely; because rarely will the GOPe be influenced by them. When Cruz-Clan get angry and don t get their way they don t vote.
Ahhh! Vote shaming. The hypocrisy is delicious. Cruz is dishonest but Trump people can use it.
Well I must say that this is a sad but true analysis of the Cruz voters. Basically if they can’t win why then let Hillary win:
What’s truly bizarre is all the threats to jump to Rubio from Cruzers. I thought the whole Senator Consistent Conservative thing was about principled conservatism? Rubio? Really?
If many Cruz supporters are to be believed this may be accurate. I do not actually believe this is true. In the last presidential election most of the conservatives now supporting Cruz, who were very upset about Romney being the nominee eventually fessed up... that actually held their noses and voted for him.
It was the evangelical voters who sat out that election. Many couldn't stand the thought of voting for a Mormon. This has been confirmed by numerous studies of why George in 2004 received over 4,000,000 more than Mitt Romney did in 2012.
This does not appear to be a factor with Trump. He actually received more evangelical votes than Cruz did in South Carolina. This is despite Cruz getting the support of more evangelical leaders and working very hard for their votes.
Most, but not all of the people here who prefer Cruz will still support Trump in the general. Cruz supporters know that if the Democrats win... the repercussions this time will be so incredibly awful that Cruz supporters will not sit out the election even if he is not the nominee.