Can Ted Cruz break into the top tier?

He's got $50 million behind him, a fervent following in Iowa, and a brand that he's worked hard to never muddy, but Ted Cruz has yet to have a breakout moment. Is that about to change?

The Texas senator may remain mired in the middle of the seemingly endless Republican pack, but his allies say he is poised to make his move. Doing just well enough nationally to make the debate stage and showing enough promise in early-primary to have a shot next winter, Cruz and his allies are unperturbed by surveys that show him sitting stagnant.

He is bracketed by social conservatives like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, and by Tea Party favorites like Rand Paul and Ben Carson. In order to stand out, Cruz has been willing to step out from the rest of the field.

"He should be capturing the archconservative vote in a way that he's not," said Noah Rothman, a conservative writer for Commentary Magazine, who sees Cruz tacking right for political purposes. "This whole summer could be setting up a Cruz resurrection in the polls."

He has become the most vocal defender of Donald Trump, the flamboyant businessman and presidential candidate who other Republicans have denounced....

Didn’t you read:

Here’s one article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/03/12/the-problem-with-modern-polling-in-one-chart/

Cruz is the best man, period! There’s still over a year left. I’ll wait. You can go ahead and trust the polls.

Yeah, sure I read that. But I've heard it for years, but it practice that theory is wrong, and the polls continue to accurately predict results to an almost scary extent.

For instance, here are stats for Nate Silver from the article about him at WIkipeida:

In the 2012 United States presidential election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, he correctly predicted the winner of all 50 states and the District of Columbia.[11] That same year, Silver's predictions of U.S. Senate races were correct in 31 of 33 states; he predicted Republican victory in North Dakota and Montana, where Democrats won.

Now I agree that polls this far out in GOP primaries can not predict winners. I have argued that can probably predict losers pretty accurately. Bobby Jindal and John Kasich and Carly Fiorina are not going to win the nomination.

But the demise of polls based on cell phones is a vastly oversold meme.

The Nate Silver stats are impressive and that’s also what I meant “polls this far out… cannot predict winners.” I also agree you don’t need poll numbers to predict that Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, George Pataki, John Kasich, Mike Huckabee, Lindsey Graham, Chris Christie and most of the other 32 that are running are not going to win. Trump seems on fire right now but that could very easily change. He has tapped into the frustration that many Americans feel (myself included) and he is stomping all over political correctness. But he is also on record for very liberal causes. Maybe he has the right mix of liberal/conservative flavors the public wants. But he is not the kind of guy I can trust. The cell ph thing might be over sold but the vote buying, cheating and voting by the dead isn’t. I’m too suspicious of the entire election machinery at this point to trust much in any of it - polls included. I still believe Cruz is the best man - but he may not be the man the country wants - but look at what most of our country does want(!). Let’s see how the debates go. I pray Cruz gets in them. If not, then, yea, he is finished. If he does get in I believe he will demonstrate that he has very reasoned answers that conservatives will relate to. Reagan didn’t win the first time he tried and you can’t say he wasn’t the best man at that time - the people just didn’t see it.

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