Posted on 08/18/2015 1:11:38 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
It's good to be Ted Cruz.
He may not have the buzziest campaign of the 2016 cycle thus far, ceding the stage to standouts — like Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina — who have hit a populist nerve. But Trump, Carson, and Fiorina — even more so than Sanders — are outsiders, and despite Cruz's penchant for making enemies and alienating people, he's playing a deeply inside game.
It's working like a charm. And his fellow insiders should be at least mildly terrified.
Here's the Cruz playbook. First, count on the other insider insurgents to flame out or fade. That's already happening to poor Rand Paul. (Things are so dire in the Paul camp that he's had to fall back on his father as a fundraising surrogate.) It's happening, in slow motion, to Scott Walker, whose lunkheaded approval of $80 million in public subsidies for a new NBA arena is just the latest indicator that he's not as conservative or compelling a candidate as his supporters had hoped.
The next puzzle piece to fall into place is Rick Perry. Even for Cruz, who has happily made himself a hate figure in the oh-so-collegial Senate, dumping on Perry would be bad form. It's essential to the Cruz campaign that Perry take himself out — and that's nearly a done deal, now, too.
With Cruz holding steady in the polls, the stage is just about set for him to emerge as the only "true conservative" in the race with the brains and the chops to match the purity. Although those qualities definitely prevent Cruz from beating Trump or Fiorina in the invisible populist primary, establishment types know full well that Cruz is the only viable candidate who the right's populists and elites can both stomach.
Of course, if Marco Rubio woke up tomorrow and decided to run to the right, that calculus would be upset in a hurry. But Rubio can't do that. He has to win the invisible elitist primary first. Rubio's playbook required that he keep pace with Jeb Bush, then let the party come to terms with the fact that Rubio had all the advantages of a Bush without the liability of the Bush name. But then Ohio Gov. John Kasich entered the race and showed surprising strength in the elitist primary, which makes Rubio's task more difficult and complicated — great news for Ted Cruz, because it means Rubio has to tack more to the center to protect his slice of the anti-populist vote from going either to Bush or Kasich.
Not long ago, people were convinced that more moderate candidates were destined to win GOP primaries. John McCain's and Mitt Romney's victories indicated that conservatives had to make do with vice presidential nominees. But neither McCain nor Romney had to contend with someone as savvy and put-together as Cruz. You don't have to be an Oscar-winning screenwriter to visualize how Cruz would have brought the boom down on those two.
Bush and Rubio are harder nuts for him to crack. But his ace in the hole is the populist vote, which at this point seems decidedly unwilling to settle for a Palin-esque consolation prize.
Then there are the billionaires. When Walker, Perry, and company falter and fail, the donors who backed them won't just take their marbles and go home. In fact, they're much more likely to bail beforehand, throwing their support to the most conservative candidate they think can stave off a full-blown populist revolt, sucking the disillusioned and disaffected back into the fold. And again, unless Rubio cuts right in a hurry, there's only one place for them to turn: Cruz.
That's why people jumped at the chance to believe recent (bogus) rumors that the billionaires, led by casino magnate Steve Wynn, had already decided to back Cruz. The logic behind that kind of backroom deal isn't some farfetched conspiracy theory. It's an open secret.
If you're a Republican who thinks Cruz can win in the general election, this is all great news. But if you don't, it's fairly scary. Because it means a sure loser has the surest path to the nomination — and the confidence to pursue it with no reservations.
Yes, that's right. Barring some unfathomable twist, Cruz will lose. For all his brilliant campaign strategy, that's one contingency Cruz still can't crack.
He has been attacking Ted Cruz for a while.
SCOTUS has never ruled on what is a natural born citizen as it applies to eligibility for the Presidency. Cruz claims his citizenship thru jus sanguinis as did McCain who had two US citizen parents. Obama has a dual claim presuming he was born in Hawaii, jus solis and jus sanguinis.
In the case of McCain, the Senate commissioned an opinion jointly written by Lawrence Tribe and Ted Olson to opine about McCain's eligibility to run for the Presidency. Cruz ought to do the same now to avoid problems later. If it looks like he might get the nomination, this issue will surface again in spades. An opinion from CATO institute is not good enough.
I have said many times that he is the most intelligent and articulate of all the candidates.
There's no such thing.
Cordially,
When I got to the line about GOPe liking Cruz, I knew I could stop reading there as the author had clearly been ingesting mushrooms.
What a maroon!
You can bring a pure and perfect sword to a siege but the first weapon you will use is a battering ram.
That sir, is a brilliant statement!
Well said.
SCOTUS has never ruled on what is a natural born citizen as it applies to eligibility for the Presidency. Cruz claims his citizenship thru jus sanguinis as did McCain who had two US citizen parents. Obama has a dual claim presuming he was born in Hawaii, jus solis and jus sanguinis.
In the case of McCain, the Senate commissioned an opinion jointly written by Lawrence Tribe and Ted Olson to opine about McCain's eligibility to run for the Presidency. Cruz ought to do the same now to avoid problems later. If it looks like he might get the nomination, this issue will surface again in spades. An opinion from CATO institute is not good enough.
I think you brought this issue up to create doubt in fellow FReepers about whether Ted Cruz was eligible to be POTUS.
CNN/ORC poll.
Be careful with this poll. Rush talked about it today.
CNN polls half Republicans, half Independents, not likely Republican voters.
CNN is trying to drive the narrative that Jeb isn’t losing support.
Once more into the breach, dear FRiends ;)
I totally agree. Success has a way of making mediocrity look really bad.
You are badly misinformed on Ted Cruz's position! He is the strongest supporter of the rule of law of any of the candidates. He has never suggested or supported amnesty.
There should be no pathway to citizenship for those who are here illegally. I don’t support amnesty. And I find it really striking at the Cleveland debate, that divide was evident for all to see. Let me step back for a second. Let me talk about the amnesty issue. Because I actually think the amnesty issue is broader than just another policy issue on which people can disagree. President Obama famously said his goal was to fundamentally transform the United States of America. And one of the critical tools he is using to try to do that is to allow millions of people to come here illegally. There’s seven billion people on the face of the planet, and an awful lot of them would like to come here. Now if they want to come here legally and follow the law, great. You and I both come from immigrant families who followed the law.
But the Obama plan is to allow millions to come in illegally and try to grant them amnesty, grant them a pathway to citizenship, and they believe they’ll vote Democrat in perpetuity to keep the big-government Democrats in power. It is a transformational policy, if amnesty goes through. It changes who we are as a country, if Obama and the Democrats succeed in this. And what’s striking in Cleveland, is a majority of the candidates on that stage have advocated amnesty, and not just advocated amnesty, but advocated it for years. Many of them vocally, vigorously, publicly. As you mentioned, you heard my friend Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) join Chuck Schumer in authoring the Chuck Schumer amnesty plan. In doing so, he was enthusiastically supported by Jeb Bush. In doing so, he was enthusiastically supported by Scott Walker. And President Obama.
Both CNN and Politifact did fact-checks of my statement that a majority of candidates on that stage have supported amnesty, and both of them concluded, yep, it’s true. They went through the records of one after the other after the other. And let me tell you why that matters so much. We remember back in 2012, where we nominated a candidate, Mitt Romney, a good man. But someone who had proposed Romneycare. And the problem was, when it came to the general election, when you have a candidate who’s been an advocate for health insurance plan almost exactly like Obamacare, our nominee wasn’t able to make the election about Obamacare. He wasn’t able to challenge Barack Obama effectively on Obamacare, because he had written a proposal just like it.
The same thing is true in this instance. If we nominate a candidate who’s been a vigorous, vocal, and aggressive advocate of amnesty, then the Republican candidate won’t stand up and challenge Hillary Clinton on amnesty, and certainly won’t do so effectively. Because anyone who tries to do so, the response will be: Gosh, just a couple of years ago, before you were running for president, you agreed with me [that] we should grant amnesty.
I have never supported amnesty and never will support amnesty. I believe in the rule of law. You know, at the end of the day, these principles aren’t complicated. When it comes to immigration: Legal, good; illegal, bad.
Dr. Ben Carson:
Actually, my stance has never changed. My stance was articulated in an awkward way early on, when I entered the political fray, I subsequently learned that when you talk about things like the 2nd Amendment, your first statement is, “The 2nd Amendment cannot, in any way, be compromised.” It is such an important part of our freedoms. It was Daniel Webster who said that people of America would never suffer under tyranny because they are armed, and I believe that with all my heart and would never compromise the 2nd Amendment.
He’s even stronger on abortion.
He hasn’t presented a policy on Immigration yet but he knows illegal immigration is causing part of the problems for black youth (unemployment) in this country, and is campaigning on it.
Carson is pretty solid, but seems too good of a guy to be ravaged by the DC cartel. I could see him as VP, or Sec. HHS to get rid of Obamacare.
Or close the wall up with our Republican dead!
I still feel that Walker is our best bet and I have come to see Cruz as an extraordinary supreme court justice.....for life!!!
He who laughs last......etc. We should be done experimenting with first term senators....we have one in office and he's not working out too well.
Let’s try one with an I.Q. over 80 this time. Lincoln was merely a one term (two years) congressman and he seemed to work out okay. Ted Cruz IS NOT Barack Obama and your boy is not New Reagan either.
I saw the same interview and Payne was a real "PAIN"...
Perry kept trying to convince him that it made no difference what you did with those already here until you secured the border....if you send them all back and don't secure the border, you will merely either have replacements or repeats...ship them out and they will walk back in....Payne couldn't seem to understand the concept of priorities.
Cruz Tries to Claim the Middle Ground on Immigration
Asked about what to do with the people here illegally, however, he stressed that he had never tried to undo the goal of allowing them to stay.
“The amendment that I introduced removed the path to citizenship, but it did not change the underlying work permit from the Gang of Eight,” he said during a recent visit to El Paso. Mr. Cruz also noted that he had not called for deportation or, as Mitt Romney famously advocated, self-deportation.
Mr. Cruz said recent polling indicated that people outside Washington support some reform, including legal status without citizenship. He said he was against naturalization because it rewarded lawbreakers and was unfair to legal immigrants. It also perpetuates illegal crossings, he added.
Besides barring citizenship while instituting some level of legalization for those here already, Mr. Cruz has proposed increasing the number of green cards awarded annually, to 1.35 million from 675,000. He also wants to eliminate the per-country limit that he said left applicants from countries like Mexico, China and India hamstrung when they tried to gain legal entry to this country.
No he's not...you really need to pay closer attention!!
Unfortunately.....yes.
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