The Daily 202: Ted Cruz’s war with Matt Drudge could become a huge problem for his campaign

WaPo ^ | 12 Apr 2016 | James Hohmann

[mandaladon]

The Drudge Report has aggressively portrayed Ted Cruz’s sweep of all the delegates from Colorado’s Republican convention as a corrupt power grab.

The site named for Matt Drudge, who broke the story of Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and still runs it, links to nine stories this morning with salacious headlines about the convention. Among them: “Savage: Cruz should disavow rigged Colorado election … Buchanan: Apparatchiks thieve delegates for Ted … 1 MILLION REPUBLICANS SIDELINED … Border Patrol Agents: Colorado Voters Disenfranchised.” Keep in mind that this is three days after the Colorado convention.

Our analytics partners at Zignal Labs say the Drudge attacks are breaking through on social media in a significant way. This word cloud, which tracks all Cruz mentions since Saturday, shows the extent to which Drudge has shaped the conversation about Cruz’s win in Colorado. Note the prominence of the words “cheating” and “drudge”:

This kind of squabbling will only get louder as the delegate wrestling and wrangling intensifies. And it has clearly gotten under Cruz’s skin.

In a radio interview yesterday, the Texas senator ripped into Drudge as an arm of Donald Trump’s campaign. “In about the past month, the Drudge Report has basically become the attack site for the Trump campaign,” he told conservative host Mike Slater. “So every day they have the latest Trump attack. They’re directed at me. … Most days they have a six-month-old article that is some attack on me, and it’s whatever the Trump campaign is pushing that day will be the banner headline on Drudge.”

“By the way, they no longer cover news,” Cruz added of Drudge. “When we win a state, suddenly the state doesn’t matter. You know Colorado — there was no red siren on Drudge when we won all 34 delegates in Colorado.”

[visualops]

when we won all 34 delegates in Colorado

"Won"? You mean when the party handed them to you. Of course, they all come with a price, Ted.