Posted on 01/14/2016 7:20:11 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Hide your kids. Hide your wife. Because the presidential bid of Rafael Edward Cruz--whom you may know by his stage name, "Ted"--is most definitely picking up steam.
The senator from Texas has been called a "charlatan" by Washington Post opinion writers and a "wacko bird" by Sen. John McCain. Although Cruz won't win any popularity contests in the Acela corridor, he has an excellent chance to win the Republican nomination.
First of all, his campaign is raking in dough. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that he raised $20 million during the fourth fundraising quarter of 2015, which was a 66 percent increase over his haul for the third. Just as importantly, Cruz has more cash on hand--$13.8 million--than any other Republican candidate.
Second, he has a clear strategy to acquire the 1,236 delegates that he'll need to become the nominee in Cleveland next July. Not only is the only candidate who has operatives in every county in each of the first four states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada), but his unimpeachable conservative bona fides will make him highly competitive in the March 1 "SEC Primary," when the people of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas will cast their votes.
By that point, he will have won a bevy of delegates, and the field will have thinned dramatically. While it seems highly likely that Cruz will inherit the deeply conservative supporters of the clearly doomed campaigns of Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, the "establishment" side of the GOP bracket--featuring Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and John Kasich--appears as competitive as ever. Eventually, however, one candidate will emerge from that scrum, and Cruz will dust off the playbook that launched him to the Senate in 2012, when he somehow cast the lieutenant governor of Texas, who was a multimillionaire ex-CIA agent, as a squish who couldn't be trusted to fight the left.
As in 2012, Cruz will frame the race as a contest between a conservative true believer and a moderate accommodator. Whether his foil is Bush (immigration), Rubio (immigration), Christie (gun control) or Kasich (expanding Medicaid), his opponent will have plenty of blasphemies to explain.
Cruz has also shown an adept political sensibility in handling the phenomenon that is Donald Trump. Rather than attack him head-on and see his campaign turn to dust, as Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal both did, Cruz has endorsed Trump's sentiments without aping his inflammatory word choice. By positioning himself as the acceptable alternative to the Donald (all of the conservatism with none of the vitriol), Cruz has quietly punctured the Manhattan mogul's balloon.
At this point, you may be thinking that even if he wins the Republican nomination, he doesn't have a chance against Hillary Clinton. But I wouldn't sleep on his chances in the general election either. A Quinnipiac poll from last month shows that matchup to be a dead heat, and a CNN poll from late December actually places him 2 points ahead. Plus, and you may be sensing a theme here, he's got a plan for this fall as well. In fact, he's already laid it out.
In January of 2013, Cruz, whose discussions of campaign strategy are reminiscent of Frank Underwood, advocated a platform of "opportunity conservatism." Get used to that phrase, you're going to be hearing it a lot. He urged Republicans to "conceptualize and articulate every domestic policy with a single-minded focus on easing the ascent up the economic ladder" and spoke favorably of simplifying the tax code, supporting charter schools and eliminating corporate welfare. Given that the big problem for Republicans in 2012 was the perception that Mitt Romney was an out-of-touch rich guy, Cruz's domestic priorities will make it a heck of a lot harder to pin him as some tool of the richest of rich.
Recently, he has also expressed a skepticism with Middle Eastern entanglements that could well resonate with a war-weary public. Moreover, most voters still haven't tuned in to election coverage, which means that Cruz will have a window next spring to introduce himself to the country.
To be fair, Clinton remains the favorite. The electoral map is still friendly for the Democratic Party, and demographics inch in its favor a little bit more each year. But the next time you hear someone dismiss Cruz as a Barry Goldwater-type who will lead the party to certain defeat, remember Sun Tzu's old adage, one that Cruz himself quoted in a New Yorker profile in 2014, as he discussed his approach to law and politics: "Every battle is won before it's fought. It's won by choosing the terrain on which it will be fought."
Cruz has chosen the terrain on which he's fought every political battle of his brief and highly successful political career. Are you sure he can't do it one more time against Clinton? The man is crazy, no doubt, but he's crazy like a fox.
Cruz slipped up with the immigration and the Obamatrade and Obamatrade was a biggie - an attack on our sovereignty.
Sen Cruz is not owned by the GOPe, but is bound by his faith and our founding documents. Mr Trump is owned by no one - which allows him to speak his mind without having to kiss anyone's backside. Very refreshing.
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For now, I'm in Trump's corner all the way.
Deal With It"
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“Obviously written pre debate.
Bye Rafael.
The mask came off, and people saw who you really are.”
Hmmmm, you must have been watching a different debate than the one I was watching.
Yeh not a good night for Felito. Look for Trump to move on up in the polls.
Could you please be more detailed and specific?
You need to substantiate that assertion.
He is so smart, but even Homer and Cruz nod. Cruuz slipped big time on immigration. He is bought and paid for by corporate interests I am afraid.
He knows the Constitution, but does have the spirit by which it came into being? America is about God ,people, freedom not license, hard work and the fruits thereof. It is not about as much cheap labor you can get at low wages and increased profits.
Corporate dough? Trump is corporate dough. And if he gets into the White House, he will get to enrich himself at the expense of the nation.
Keep challenging Trump — not on what he told Tim Russert (although that’s not good for Donald), but on the liberal he said within the last 6 months or so.
And loved it!
Yes. But Trump is his own boss. He has made it and is beholden to no one.
Trump may enrich himself, but so may all the other candidates and they will owe favors on January 27, 2017. Trump wil owe no favors to anyone, but the American people. Pick your poison.
Cruz — easily.
He does have a lot of liberal views, which he has expressed within the past 6 months.
Cruz has a tougher record on the subject than Trump does.
What Trump owes and what he feels he owes are different things. Trump has been unfaithful to 2 wives, both of whom bore him children, a serial fornicator and screwed any number of business partners. The only loyalty he's ever shown is to his personal balance sheet. But he will somehow be loyal to conservative voters based on political stances he took up a year ago, which are different from the stances he took the year before, which are different...? PT Barnum had it right. There's a Trump voter born every minute.
Cruz has a tougher record on the subject than Trump does.
Funny. Ask the man on the street about that.
Trump owns the Trump Wall. No one can compete with that.
Trump has advocated the very same touchback provision we fought so hard to defeat in 2007, and done so within the past few months. Cruz will enforce the law — and get the wall built.
Wrong. The LEGAL immigration process is NOT touchback.
Tell that to the thousands who are muddling through that process, now.
That IS touchback. It’s send them to their home countries, then let them in legally. Expedited. And that is EXACTLY what Trump endorses.
Based on tonight I don’t know about checkers, but the 69 year old mopped the floor IMO with Cruz who I like.
Trump proved he can be two or three steps ahead of Cruz. I can’t wrap my head around that easily because usually When Cruz enters a room he’s the smartest man in the room.
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