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.
“...choosing the terrain on which it will be fought.”
Cruz won his senate race by using that sure fire way to win the battle. We turned a Democrat county into a Republican County that had never had a Republican Primary until we started one by choosing the terrain on which to fight that battle.
As Cruz knows, “the terrain” is the election law. If you are going to play a game, you must know the rules to win. The rules in politics is the election law.
He is running his campaign for president using the election law in every county in the US. There may be millions of people in a state, but when they vote, they vote by COUNTY. Every county has a Republican County Chair who is responsible for holding the Republican Primary in that county.
Think about your county, not the state and not the entire United States. You vote in your county. A candidate needs to contact you in your county. You may see a TV ad or not. You may go see a candidate in a group of 20,000 people, but that is not where you vote.
A candidate who knows the election law in a county (the terrain), the early voting facts in a county, when to contact early voters, when to contact voters who vote by mail, how to put poll watchers at the polling places, what the laws are for that, how to put a watcher at the Early Voting Ballot Board that deals with mail in ballots, better yet how to get one of your people as a member of the Early Voting Ballot Board - all those answers are in the election law book of every state.
That is why Cruz won his senate election - he knew the rules and acted on them. Now, he is using every county terrain and the rules of the game (the election law), to win every county.
I do not know if a celebrity can use that celebrity fame to win against Cruz. After Iowa and South Carolina, I will know.
I lived in Iowa half my life and worked on two presidential campaigns. The people I know who still live there say it is Cruz’s to lose.
Do you really know that about Trump? Is it possible that Trump has had an epiphany?
The ignorance on FR is surprising me now after many years of responsiblity.
Just look at the campaign finance reports and you can see all the “really, really big donors” he will be beholding to!!!
Forgot to mention that you will be buying a pig in a polk with donnie, just like the nation did with Oslimeball.
He is not what you think he is.
Cruz flipped just recently. Trump longer ago. Cruz stil did flip with lawyer like tongue in cheek words. Abused H1b visas he said.I have been on the border and immersed in it. Until recently few people saw it for the problem it is.
I pick Trump. He came out first and had the good sense to go to Sessions for info.
Evidence not opinion please.
Who will be beholden? Trump or Cruz?
It is called due diligence. You might try it on all the candidates. It might surprise you.
Trump's various marital infidelities and evolving political positions are a matter of public record. We're all counting on the epiphany if he gets the GOP nomination, mainly because Trump's 2015 political pronouncements have made amnesty toxic. If he wins the nomination, I'll vote for him in the general, with my fingers crossed. Just in case, I'm backing Cruz as my first choice for the GOP nomination, with Trump as my fallback if Cruz gets knocked out.
My problem with Trump is not much that I don't know where he stands*. It's that I'm not sure Trump himself knows where he stands. When asked about the nuclear triad, he couldn't provide a response. Control over the nuclear football is the most important single responsibility of a president. It's unthinkable he hasn't made himself familiar, on a very general level, with the issues involved. This is a life-and-death responsibility that could literally affect the survival of the nation.
I understand he's a businessman who hasn't spent much time thinking about policy. But he's running for the presidency. It's time he delegated the management of his business to someone else and finally started boning up on what he needs to know before being sworn in.
* Whereas as far back as 1964, 16 years before he entered the White House, Reagan stood with Barry Goldwater.
Excellent and informative posting, M!
Won’t change your mind but here we go on Trump the crony capitalist.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/donald-trump-the-ultimate-crony-capitalist/
I hate everything *Care, no matter its origins, however I find a universal healthcare position to be at least logically consistent at some level rather than trying to approach full-on socialism by sneaky incrementalism.
I do appreciate your thoughtful words.
I have wondered about Trump and three marriages. He has been a wheeler dealer mouthy type.
I know that people at seventy can gain great wisdom even when their lives are fulll of mistakes and regrets.
But more than any other candidate Trump loves America. Obama hates America. Our next president needs a lot of feet on the ground love to make up for Obama. We need courage and fearlessness.
America needs God’s blessings again and although Trump is not a perfect candidate God can use him.
We do not have perfect candidates, but good will goes a long way and Trump is not owned by anyone. I am confident he will pick the best advisors and delegate wisely.
And you prefer which candidate and which group to which he will owe favors?
Are the majority of the voting people of America hoping for the most Conservative politician to be the next President??? I'll guarantee you that there won't be any crossover voters from New Your supporting Cruz...
I remember reading an article-—can’t recall where now-—in which some Iowans said they see through Trump and recognize him for what he is.
Cruz stood against amnesty in 2013. Trump was promoting “giv[ing] them a path” and his touchback provision just a few months ago, at least as recently as August 2015.
That’s the fact of the matter.
Cruz was using the no amnesty amendment as a poison pill if memory serves me. Lawyer manipulation if I am correct.
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