Posted on 01/18/2016 11:14:44 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Conway, N.H. - Ted Cruz says the Republican presidential primary has reached a "new phase." He's acting like it, too.
Less than a month ago, the Texas senator was predicting the contest would narrow, as it typically has, to a two-man race between a conservative and an establishment favorite. But it turns out 2016 may have surprises in store even for Ted Cruz.
On Monday afternoon, as his campaign bus barrels down the highway here, Cruz appears to be surveying an altogether different landscape from the one he'd anticipated: Instead of a potential showdown with Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush, he finds himself staring at Donald Trump, perhaps the one candidate with an even bigger claim to the outsider mantle.
"There's no doubt the contours of the race have changed," Cruz says, leaning back in the leather seat of his luxury bus, surrounded by campaign aides on all sides.
Cruz now sees Trump as the only man standing in his way. The collapse of their detente has scrambled the Republican race, forcing Cruz to make political calculations he'd planned on avoiding. But he delights in playing political strategist, and he is doing so now, analyzing the field anew, searching for Trump's hidden weaknesses, and, for the first time here in New Hampshire, going after them aggressively.
Cruz has long scoffed at the traditional notion that there are "three legs" of the Republican stool - that is, that a candidate must satisfy economic conservatives, social conservatives, and foreign-policy hawks. Instead, he has talked about the "four lanes" of Republican voters - Evangelicals, libertarians, tea-party activists, and moderates - and argued that he can win over enough voters in the first three lanes to capture the nomination.
Cruz admits that Trump has eaten into his base. "The voters supporting Trump are coming from multiple lanes," he says. "He's got a significant numbers of moderates and liberals that are supporting him. He's also drawing votes right now from some evangelicals, from some tea-party activists, and from some Reagan Democrats. From three of those four categories - evangelicals, tea-party activists, and Reagan Democrats - we have very, very strong appeal and strong support, and so we are battling him for support in each of those lanes."
Here in New Hampshire, where Trump leads in the polls, the contours of a Cruz offensive are coming into view. The senator tells me we're entering the phase of the campaign "when the voters begin seriously examining the records of the candidates."
He is quick to offer them his own help in examining Trump's.
"I understand that in the course of the presidential campaign, Donald has given a number of speeches on immigration and on amnesty, and yet, when the fight was being waged, he was nowhere to be found."
It's an iteration of the attack Cruz has delivered against other rivals - the champion debater and master rhetorician urges voters to ignore politicians' big talk. "The test I believe that they should apply, and that they are applying, is not to listen to the words we say on the campaign trail - not to listen to the words I say or that Donald Trump says or anybody else's - but instead to listen to our actions, to see who has been a proven conservative, a consistent conservative. And the distinction between my record and Donald's record is stark."
Moments later, Cruz's bus arrives at White Mountains Regional High School in Whitefield, N.H., and, with snow flurrying outside, Cruz tries out this broadside before dozens of supporters for the first time. In 2013, he tells the crowd, there was a bare-knuckled fight on the Senate floor over a controversial amnesty bill. "When the fight was being fought, he was nowhere to be found," he says of Trump. "You have reason to doubt the promises of a political candidate who discovers the issue after he announces as a candidate."
Trump sits atop the polls here in New Hampshire, but Cruz has been climbing. Some surveys put him in second place, though nearly all show him clustered together with the four "establishment" candidates - Rubio, Bush, Ohio governor John Kasich, and New Jersey governor Chris Christie - well behind Trump.
Nonetheless, Cruz's presence in New Hampshire - with the Iowa caucuses just two weeks away - speaks volumes about his political self-confidence and his view of the race: His advisers have raised expectations for Iowa, and anything but a win will be a disappointment. But with the clock ticking, the conservative firebrand is here in the Granite State, competing for votes among the moderates and independents who dominate its electorate. It suggests that, despite polls continuing to show a neck-and-neck contest between Trump and Cruz in Iowa, the Cruz team is so confident it has moved on to the task of over-performing in New Hampshire, where Caucus winners have floundered in recent cycles.
Cruz, who has spent most of his Senate career inveighing against moderates in his own party, has staked his candidacy on the principle of uniting the conservative movement. If he wins the nomination, will he actually court the party's moderate voters, whom he concedes aren't a natural part of his base?
For now, at least, it appears Cruz is counting on them to come around to him.
"Reagan didn't come hat in hand and say, 'I'm sorry,' and play the Washington game," Cruz tells me. "So, yes, I believe we can unify Republicans, but it won't be by abandoning principles. It will be by bringing Republicans home."
Inside Iowa’s “Camp Cruz”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/3381476/posts
New Hampshire
Trump: 25%
Kasich: 14%
Rubio: 14%
Christie: 10%
Cruz: 9%
Cruz today fell behind Trump in the RCP average of Iowa. He's losing badly in New Hampshire. He's being crushed by Trump nationally, in South Carolina, in Florida, everywhere. He's literally not leading a single state, he's a non-starter everywhere but Iowa. Even if he wins Iowa, it'll just be another Huckabee/Santorum scenario, where his propaganda victory only lasts until a bad loss in New Hampshire.
“But he delights in playing political strategist”
If Trump brings Palin on in IA, the above statement will be true. He’s “playing” political strategist while Trump out-foxed him.
And Jimmy Carter was going to roll over Ronald Reagan.
Didn’t happen.
*************
“...Remember when Jimmy Carter beat Ronald Reagan in 1980?
That’s right. Jimmy Carter beat Ronald Reagan in 1980.
In a series of nine stories in 1980 on “Crucial States” — battleground states as they are known today — the New York Times repeatedly told readers then-President Carter was in a close and decidedly winnable race with the former California governor. And used polling data from the New York Times/CBS polls to back up its stories.
Four years later, it was the Washington Post that played the polling game — and when called out by Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins a famous Post executive called his paper’s polling an “in-kind contribution to the Mondale campaign.” Mondale, of course, being then-President Reagan’s 1984 opponent and Carter’s vice president.
All of which will doubtless serve as a reminder of just how blatantly polling data is manipulated by liberal media — used essentially as a political weapon to support the liberal of the moment, whether Jimmy Carter in 1980, Walter Mondale in 1984 — or Barack Obama in 2012.....”
http://spectator.org/articles/34732/how-carter-beat-reagan
After all the predicting, Cruz had better win Iowa.
[1/18/16] Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) blasted 2016 rival Donald Trump on Monday, questioning his ties to Democrats and previous support for liberal positions as the two battle for the top spot in Iowa.
“If he’s giving checks to Democratic politicians and he supports their views... then it starts to suggest, ‘gosh if he publicly supports their views if he finances their causes,’” Cruz told Boston radio station WRKO. “Then suddenly when he announces as a candidate for president, every single one of his views changes - listen if he has had a change of heart, I am thrilled.”
Cruz, who is competing with Trump for the GOP nomination, added that if Republican voters want a nominee who will “cozy up to Chuck Schumer - by the way he’s written checks to Chuck Schumer, I never have - then you ought to be backing him.” .....
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/266242-cruz-blasts-trumps-ties-to-democrats
I thought Gov. Palin was “toxic” since 2008. Make up your minds.
Not to worry:
Ted Cruz’s Campaign Organization Leads GOP Field in Iowa
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/3385483/posts
Good.
Thus the reason why you have Cruz people at 4 AM spamming FR trying to convince you otherwise.
They have to constantly work to make a weak candidate seem like he is running away with the election, and that every screw up is actually a brilliant plan of his.
I’m not in anybody’s court. Just my $.02.
Confident of victory in Iowa? LOL. Cruz has been knocked back to second place. It looks more like he has given up in Iowa.
leaning back in the leather seat of his luxury bus ...
Cruz has long scoffed at the traditional notion that there are "three legs" of the Republican stool - that is, that a candidate must satisfy economic conservatives, social conservatives, and foreign-policy hawks.
Eliana ... Ted Cruz does NOT 'scoff' at the three-legged stool. This stool co-exists with the "four-lane" highway you twit. And you even say, THREE lanes INSTEAD of three legs to the stool. Duh. FAIL.
“Eliana is an Establishment mouthpiece. She hates Ted Cruz and it drips throughout her inane ‘reporting’ ..”
Yes. I’ve noticed that. Isn’t she a Rubio or Bush supporter - or is it Kasich?
And then Glenn Beck opened his mouth to endorse Ted Cruz meaning an open borders guy believes Ted Cruz is the man to lead this country.
Guess Ted really isn't serious about immigration.
Do they call you Chubby Checker, because you twist everything?
Do they call you Chubby Checker, because you twist everything?
When you’re pointing a finger, there are four pointing back at you.
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