Posted on 03/01/2016 5:05:59 PM PST by Maceman
Former top Ted Cruz adviser Rick Tyler says conservatives won’t stop making their case against the likely nominee.
The big, set-piece battle of the Republican primary is very nearly over – but the guerilla war against Donald Trump may have just begun.
Trump is poised to seize the Republican nomination today if the Super Tuesday polls prove predictive – but the spirits of the candidates he’s brutalized, ridiculed and (nearly) beaten are likely to haunt and harass him for the next eight months.
And Ted Cruz –clinging to hopes that a win in home-state Texas would forestall an Alamo moment – represents the greatest latent threat for Trump, who has seen a steady stream of I’ll-never-vote-for-him pronouncements over the last week. Some of those defections (former RNC Chairman Mel Martinez, to name one) have come from the party’s establishment wing. But Trump faces a far, far bigger threat if the right revolts – and the declaration by conservative Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse last weekend was an ominous one, auguring a possible (but not inevitable) second front against Trump.
Cruz isn’t likely to follow Sasse if he withdraws from the race, but he’s already proven himself to be the Che Guevara of the tea party movement. He turned on the GOP establishment in the Senate, whipped up House Republicans to rebel against former House Speaker John Boehner, and shut down the government over Obamacare. Cruz owes his brand to RINO hunting. He doesn’t like Trump despite their early-campaign flirtation – and will like Trump a lot less if he inches toward the center in a general election.
Enter Rick Tyler, a veteran conservative strategist who was, until recently, Cruz’s communications director. I sat down with Tyler for POLITICO’s “Off Message” podcast over the weekend and heard a message that should take some of the fizz from The Donald’s bubbly: Hard-core conservative Republicans may not oppose him publicly, but they could silently undermine his candidacy – and many of the party’s big-money donors, especially pro-Israel heavyweights like Sheldon Adelson, could take a far lesser role in Hillary-bashing than they might have otherwise.
“I think that Hillary Clinton… will hammer [Trump] and expose him for what he is… And if I had to bet, I would say that Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump,” said Tyler, who was defenestrated by Cruz last month after he retweeted an inaccurate story about Marco Rubio allegedly demeaning the Bible. The parting was amicable. And the dismissal of Tyler, who worked for Newt Gingrich’s super PAC in 2012, was widely viewed a PR move: Rubio, Trump and Ben Carson had been criticizing the Texas senator for what they deemed dirty tricks, and somebody had to be the sacrificial lamb.
Cruz signed a pledge, like every other Republican to support the eventual nominee – but they didn’t say how much, Tyler reminded me.
When I asked Tyler if his ex-boss would back Trump with “force,” he replied, “Not much because… because, you know, Donald Trump runs around and calls Ted Cruz a liar… That’s very personal.”
When I asked him how serious a problem tea party hostility would be for Trump, he said: “Oh, it’s very significant.”
Tyler outlines the case against Trump from the right – a case Cruz and others are likely to pursue even while “supporting” their nominee: “If you care about gun rights, having Donald Trump be aligned with Michael Bloomberg would be an anathema… he has been quoted as saying, ‘I don't like guns.’ He has been quoted as saying, ‘I support the assault weapons ban.’ And that's true on abortion, partial-birth abortion, gays in the military, homosexual marriage. You know, he’s gone — he’s supported TARP. He’s supported – I mean, it’s on and on and on. I mean, this guy has a contradictory statement for everything he now proclaims and professes to be.”
It seems unlikely that Cruz or Rubio or Bush or Carson or John Kasich will actively oppose Trump as nominee – their allegiance to the Republican Party is stronger than Trump’s. But they could sap his strength by sniping at him, issue-by-issue from the wings.
Tyler raised the specter of 2012, when eventual nominee Mitt Romney – whom many on the right viewed as an establishment sell-out – savaged Gingrich after the former speaker took the South Carolina primary.
“I am sorry to say that our party is going to engage in the politics of personal destruction and that we’re going to call each other names and not talk — it’s very Alinskyite to me,” said Tyler, who remains in close touch with Cruz’s team. “You know: Pick a target, freeze it, focus on it, and destroy it. You know, that seems to be how Donald Trump and now, to some extent, Marco Rubio has decided to run their campaigns. I think that’s a bad — I think that’s a bad omen for the future of the party.”
And there’s another factor: It’s not clear how enthusiastically the big GOP super PACs will support Trump; Tyler’s Gingrich-backing PAC was buoyed by cash from pro-Israel billionaire Sheldon Adelson. Tyler thinks Trump’s recent off-the-cuff comment that he was “neutral” in the Israel-Palestinian standoff was a major error. Could Adelson sit 2016 out?
Former Ted Cruz campaign official Rick Tyler says Donald Trump's bruising tactics may earn him the GOP nomination but could haunt him with Republicans for the rest of election season.
“I think it’s certainly possible,” he said. “I mean, because, on the one hand, you have Donald Trump who just doesn’t even — doesn't seem to understand the Middle East and its problems and how to move forward with it…”
Tyler, who signed up with MSNBC a couple of days after he was dismissed, looks pretty good for a guy who has just seen the bottom of his own campaign bus. The crime: Tweeting a false report alleging that Rubio had made a disparaging remark about the Bible – in the presence of Cruz’s evangelist father.
I talked a bit about the kerfuffle with Tyler (he says his boss is squeaky clean) during our 45-minute interview – and he expressed contrition. “I posted it, and it was poor judgment to post it,” he said. “The reason it was is because it was going to be blown up as, you know, I was criticizing Marco for not being a Bible-believing Christian. I never believed that. Of course, I still believe that he is. I took it as more of Marco was being — you know, it was teasing.”
He rejected, out of hand, my suggestion that he was a sacrificial flack – thrown over so Cruz could arrest the Tricky Teddy narrative. Yet he was candid, even a tad gloomy, about Cruz’s path to the nomination with Trump blocking the road.
“Yeah, it’s narrow,” Tyler told me.
“Ted — if Ted wins Texas and wins some substantial portion of the delegates, he will have a mass of delegates,” he explained, laying out a complicated, and in Tyler’s view, somewhat unlikely scenario. “He will have then had two wins. Rubio will — if Rubio doesn't win any on Tuesday and then goes on to lose his home state of Florida, which right now he would, it should be game over for him. Then maybe, then maybe there’s an outside chance we get a consolidation around Ted Cruz, and he could either accumulate enough delegates to get to the convention or at least stop Trump from accumulating enough delegates to get to the convention.”
Tyler, like almost every other operative gunning for Trump, is still scratching his head over the developer’s unprecedented, rapid rise. But he defends the campaign’s decision to play Eddie Haskell nice with Trump early on, telling me that Cruz needed to use those opening months to establish name recognition and create a likeable image in the minds of voters. And that – my point here, not his – hasn’t always been an easy task for Cruz, who has a far greater gift for combat than cuddling.
“First, they have to know your name, right?” Tyler adds. “Second… they have to like you. And then the final is the contrast phase. And if you skip around those steps, it doesn’t really work.”
That describes me to a T. This article is garbage.
Important though they be, TEA was not formed around the 2nd amendment, planned parenthood, homosexuality, etc.
It formed around the dire financial issues of TARP, the Bailouts, and Obamacare.
Period.
And fix our financial problems, and suddenly watch the magic hand fix many other bad things we all worry about. The economic destruction of the middle class has lead tp many other evils. Take the Hobby Lobby story. Trump believes in business and deal making. Think he will have his Justice Dept waste time to make sure they are crushed down?
I don’t.
Trump is very good for TEA.
The tea party is not and never was a monolithic entity beyond one idea - cut spending and cut taxes. I would like to think most of us understood that it was not a party in the true sense of the word - it was a singular idea, but everyone treats it as part of the conservative movement. Yes, conservatives supported it, but many who consider themselves moderates concerned about spending also did. While many vocal supporters espoused other conservative views it is fair to say those views did not represent everyone under the “umbrella”.
When people started to claim spokesperson status or “leader” credentials it did not work beyond their own perceptions (see Glenn Beck for example).
This headline is logically flawed. People can claim the mantle all they want, but the central idea that sparked it appears to have been lost in the aftermath and the candidates thrust to power by the idea have not cut spending. I consider myself a disillusioned Tea Party supporter because of that fact and I firmly view the GOP and the Tea Party as separate entities. I would be willing to bet more time has been spent on Cruz’s Canadian citizenship than the reality of our fiscal nightmare. Sad.
Amen. This partier has his back.
Everyone who accompanied me to DC on 9/12/2009 voted for Trump today, we had a five car convoy totaling 19 people.
He has Tea Party support.
Trump, a big government progressive, wants to tax the rich more to pay for his spending plans (Universal Health care, increased subsidies, support for pp, Global warming, etc.), but Cruz wants to get rid of the IRS all together.
The TEA Party base is against Trump, but those who are opportunists are for Trump.
#NeverTrump
Today’s “maybe this will be why Trump won’t win” story. As sad as it is predictable.
Is it #NeverTrump for you or more like #ForeverHillary? Enquiring minds wish to know.
You said...
“They’ll be working for Hillary even if they don’t admit that to themselves or anyone else.”
Just because some of us won’t be voting for Trump doesn’t mean we endorse Hillary...lol
Wonder if you Cruz supporters will ever wake up to the fact this sort of infantile attack post is why your side is losing.
I’m Tea Party. Or was before some tried to co-op it.
I’m rooting for Trump.
I want a pitbull.
Clinton or Trump will be President. Actively working to sabotage Trump if your candidate loses the nomination is the moral and intellectual equivalence of voting for Hillary.
You can rationalize it all you want, that does not change the basic facts.
Wonder if trump supporters will stop attacking people who disagree and know nothing about people they are accusing?
I would love to have been a fly on the wall when Momma Grizzly met with The Donald before his run.
Clinton or Trump will be President. Actively working to sabotage Trump if your candidate loses the nomination is the moral and intellectual equivalence of voting for Hillary.
You can rationalize it all you want, that does not change the basic facts.
Reagan said it best. “A man 80% on my side is a valued friend and ally, not my enemy”
Yours is childish ego and spite in action, not an intellectually defensible, rational position.
I was Tea Party before the Tea Party even existed. I am fine with either Trump or Cruz. Either one will generate wails of despair from the GOPe. Sweet, sweet music.
Trump has called Gore-Bull warming a hoax.
Your lying does not help your candidate.
I’m not going to sabotage Trump.
Just choose to vote the down ballot races just not president if it’s between Hillary or Trump. That’s all
Clinton or Trump will be President. Actively working to sabotage Trump if your candidate loses the nomination is the moral and intellectual equivalence of voting for Hillary.
You can rationalize it all you want, that does not change the basic facts.
1 in 5 Republican voters say they'll defect from the Republican party if Trump wins the primaries, because they were smart enough to do their homework and they know Trump does NOT represent them.
We're being given a choice - nationalistic authoritarianism (fascism) vs. progressive socialism, and 1 out of 5 Republicans are neither.
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