Posted on 09/16/2015 7:10:46 AM PDT by VinL
Ted Cruz isn’t topping the polls or dominating the conversation, but he’s one of the winners of the past few months.
His odds of winning the nomination have increased more than anyone else’s besides Donald Trump, and if you believe (reasonably enough) that Trump isn’t built to last, more than anyone else’s, period.
Let’s review. There was always the danger of Cruz, who made his national reputation on the strength of a misbegotten government shutdown, seeming like too much of a bomb-thrower. That was before it began to look like the Republican Party is open to a candidate only slightly less disruptive than Auguste Vaillant, the 19th-century French anarchist who struck a blow against politics as usual by literally throwing a bomb into the French Chamber of Deputies in 1893 (the establishment wasn’t amused — it executed him).
Such is the disgust with the Republican leadership, that there is no longer such a thing as going too far. Cruz could burn John Boehner in effigy, and no one would bat an eye. Cruz could make a citizen’s arrest of Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor on grounds of gross crimes of omission against the constitutional republic, and the Luntz focus group would applaud his plucky initiative. In sum, there’s nothing Cruz could do short of pissing in the Yankee Bean soup in the Senate dining room that would be too outlandish, and even then his most devoted fans might say, “It’s about damn time!”
This must be liberating for Cruz, who has already called McConnell a liar and blamed Boehner and McConnell for not stopping the Iran nuclear deal — and he’s just getting started.
If the general environment fits Cruz nicely, the dynamic of the campaign is favorable to him, too. There are few things Cruz should welcome more than the ongoing war between Trump, the anti-establishment gorilla in the room who is a major obstacle in his path, and the foremost establishment candidate, Jeb Bush, whom Cruz needs to be as weak as possible. Cruz can stand by and hope both sides lose, which isn’t a far-fetched bet.
While other campaigns have been flummoxed and discombobulated by the rise of Trump, Cruz hasn’t. He has a simple political True North — go where the base is. Once it became obvious Trump was catching on with the grass roots, Cruz’s play was obvious: Start acting as if Ronald Reagan’s only failure was not to have handed down a 12th Commandment — thou shalt not criticize Donald Trump.
Cruz can be very patient waiting for the mogul to come down to earth. The Texas senator has an ideological and geographical base that means he can play the long game.
Consider Iowa. Cruz is sitting in third place there, a comfortable place to be in the late-breaking state. He has captured the intense loyalty of a portion of the grass roots (evident in his consistently crowd-pleasing speeches) and lines up for the caucuses better than Trump does. Cruz is a preacher’s son who announced his campaign at Liberty University. He speaks forcefully on the social issues and is a down-the-line conservative, without a hint of a heterodoxy.
If he were to emerge and win Iowa, he would have a much stronger financial and institutional base to follow up his victory than the immediate past winners, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. Cruz has raised more hard money than anyone else, and has significant super PAC support. If he merely held his own until March 1, he’d be in position to sop up delegates in the SEC states, including Texas.
On top of this, Cruz is very smart, disciplined and doesn’t make unforced errors — if he gets an opening, he’ll make the most of it.
Getting that opening will depend on Trump and Ben Carson fading (and someone else, like Carly Fiorina, not rising). But all Cruz needs is for the voters to become slightly, and only slightly, more desirous of political experience.
The Overton window has shifted enough that Cruz, in the Senate less than three years, almost all of it spent in political pyrotechnics, looks like the sober statesman. Compared to Donald Trump, he’s practically Everett Dirksen. Compared to Carson, he’s a career politician — a veteran of the George W. Bush campaign and administration who ran for the U.S. Senate as soon as plausible, and apparently has no intention of leaving unless it’s for a promotion.
It once seemed that Scott Walker could best Cruz with his record of accomplishment, but so far Republican voters aren’t in an accomplishment mood. It’s possible to imagine Cruz’s team secretly thinking, “What good fortune that our candidate has never governed anything, or seriously tried to pass major legislation.”
Of course, Cruz’s potential may never be realized. He should, in theory, be the elected officeholder next in line to pick up support from the outsiders, but he is very different stylistically from them. While Trump always lets it fly extemporaneously, Cruz is extremely deliberate. While Trump and Carson ooze sincerity, Cruz can let his calculation show — he sincerely supported trade promotion authority, until the politics shifted, and then he sincerely opposed it. While Trump and Carson are refreshingly different as communicators, Cruz is practiced and stentorian. He could make ordering a ham-and-cheese sandwich sound like a speech. (Trump is also, in many respects, a raging moderate, whose support ranges much more widely across the party than Cruz’s.)
However shrewdly Cruz is positioned in the primary, his candidacy might be a heavy lift in a general election. But there’s time to worry about that later. Cruz certainly has a more intuitive theory of the case than Jeb Bush: to wit, you have to win the primary to have a chance to win the general.
Unlike Trump and Carson, Cruz doesn’t need the usual political rules to be utterly suspended to win the nomination. He just needs them to be different, and to get some lucky bounces along the way. That looks likelier than it did six months ago.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/ted-cruz-sitting-pretty-213151#ixzz3luUtNY6A
What we're seeing here is just part of a very coordinated campaign to take out Trump. "Hey conservatives! Look over here!"
Politico is in no way a conservative source.
Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review.
I disagree. "They" no longer believe "dry and wonkish" can deliver.
Sure, there are plenty of voters who don't have the sense to pour piss out of a boot, but their existence is used as little more than a cliche to avoid the great mass of intelligent, insightful, concerned people who lack the "insider view" to make critical evaluation of the esoterica of government.
My friend, imo, the correct reply to the unthinking Cruz trolls is:
As to fast track, Cruz was always for it, and though ultimately he did cast a no vote, he did so only because he knew it would pass.
The effect of his vote is that now if he -or Trump- is elected President, that person will now have a steam line mechanism to pass their trade bills through Congress.
He was never going to vote for TPP or any Democrat trade bill-— why would he, when he wants to negotiate it himself?
I’m wondering if perhaps Trump is there to be bombastic and take the incoming fire, allowing Cruz to position himself correctly, and then Trump bails out, and tosses his support to Cruz? I hope so anyway!
I believe Trump and Cruz are in cahoots. This article also touched on another theory of mine that Trump is by design taking all the incoming flak from the media after watching election after election good candidates get picked off by the Democrat loving media. This is allowing the candidates to campaign without an excess of the gotcha questions
He voted for TPA authority for Obama. On trade, I prefer Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump.
Trump was a Hilary supporter. Are you?
Immigration is the defining issue of our time. If you don't get that right, everything else is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Trump is right on immigration, right on trade, and the only real leader of any of the candidates Rep or Dem. We need a leader who loves America.
Cruz is the most intelligent and articulate of all the candidates. He is just not a leader nor can he connect with the voters. He has no executive experience. We don't need another first term senator in the WH.
How much the GOPe paying you man?
FYI: I am not a supporter of Jeb, Rubio, Kasich, Hcukabee, Fiorina, Carson, Jindal, and Christie. I despise the GOPe and want McConnell and Boehner replaced immediately.
I support Cruz. Are you that stupid to consider him GOP(e)?
1987- GOP
1999- Independent
2001- Democrat
2009-GOP
2011- Independent
2012- GOP
Hell, this guy can't even stay focused on a political party. What makes you think he won't continue flip-flopping on everything? BTW, we all thought John Roberts (SCOTUS) was a conservative too, and we know how that turned out.
I will stand to the end, with a principled conservative like Cruz.
I would love to be proven wrong. But, Obama got into office twice. People like Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura & Al Franken win elections. And then there's Trump...
Again, you need to update your info. The authorization didn’t pass both chambers. When it came back to the Senate, Cruz voted no.
Now if you want to argue that Free Trade is bad, go right ahead. Just please do it with correct information.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/420181/cruz-now-no-tpa-andrew-c-mccarthy
Then why do you not want to discuss further Trump's support of Hilary? If it was 30 years ago, I'd give it a pass, but...............
While Trump and Carson ooze sincerity, Cruz can let his calculation show — he sincerely supported trade promotion authority, until the politics shifted, and then he sincerely opposed it.
I think Lowry is paying attention to the crowds Cruz is attracting and not the stupid polls, which are totally unbelievable and, indeed, incongruous.
Would that be the same National Review that publishes an anti-Trump article every day? The poster you are responding to is correct. Full court press by the GOPe to take out Trump.
I love this “no executive experience” claim. From 1999, 2003, Cruz was the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. Here’s the current flow chart.
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/attachments/office-policy-planning/opp-org-chart-june2015.pdf
Fair enough. I just insist upon veracity when discussing positions and votes.
It should be noted that too many folks think TPA gives a President carte blanche with trade deals. That is not the case. The Congress still gets a vote on the actual deal.
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43491.pdf
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