Cruz is true GOP dark horse: How he’s winning over the fanatical right at exactly the right time

When Donald Trump's campaign collapses, as it almost certainly still will, Cruz is well positioned to fill the void.

While Donald Trump continues to inspire what he calls “the silent majority” (and everyone else calls the racist rump of the GOP) and the other assumed front-runners Walker, Rubio and Bush flounder and flop around, another candidate is quietly gathering support from a discrete, but powerful, GOP constituency. As Peter Montgomery of Right Wing watch pointed out earlier this week, Ted Cruz is making a huge play for the religious right. And they like what they’re seeing.

Montgomery notes that influential conservative Christian leaders have been getting progressively more anxious about the fact that they’ve been asked to pony up for less-than-devout candidates like McCain and somewhat alien religious observers like Mitt Romney when they are the reliable foot-soldiers for the Republican party who deliver votes year in and year out. With this year’s massive field from which to choose including hardcore true-believers Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal and Rick Santorum, these religious leaders are looking closely at all the candidates, but are homing in on Cruz.

One big sign came late last month, when news that broke that Farris and Dan Wilks had given $15 million to Keep the Promise, a pro-Cruz super PAC. Not coincidentally, David Lane told NBC News last year that, “With Citizens United…you can have somebody who gives $15 or $20 million into a super PAC and that changes the game.” The billionaire Wilks brothers from Texas have become sugar daddies to right-wing groups generally, and to David Lane’s Pastors and Pews events specifically.

A couple weeks later, Cruz stopped by the headquarters of the American Family Association. Lane’s American Renewal Project operates under the AFA’s umbrella, and Cruz sounded like he was reading Lane’s talking points. Cruz told AFA President Tim Wildmon that mobilizing evangelical Christian voters is the key to saving America, saying, “Nothing is more important in the next 18 months than that the body of Christ rise up and that Christians stand up, that pastors stand up and lead.”

Cruz held a “Rally for Religious Liberty” in Iowa last week that had the influential Christian right radio host Steve Deace swooning with admiration as Cruz carried on about Christian persecution. He thundered, “You want to know what this election is about? We are one justice away from the Supreme Court saying ‘every image of God shall be torn down!” to massive applause from the audience.

The religious right feels battered after their massive loss on marriage equality. And they expect their candidates to do something about it. It appears they’ve decided the destruction of Planned Parenthood is that crusade and Cruz is only too willing to play to the crowd. According to the Washington Post:

Sen. Ted Cruz, who has assiduously courted evangelicals throughout his presidential run, will take a lead role in the launch this week of an ambitious 50-state campaign to end taxpayer support for Planned Parenthood — a move that is likely to give the GOP candidate a major primary-season boost in the fierce battle for social-conservative and evangelical voters.

More than 100,000 pastors received e-mail invitations over the weekend to participate in conference calls with Cruz on Tuesday in which they will learn details of the plan to mobilize churchgoers in every congressional district beginning Aug. 30. The requests were sent on the heels of the Texas Republican’s “Rally for Religious Liberty,” which drew 2,500 people to a Des Moines ballroom Friday.

“The recent exposure of Planned Parenthood’s barbaric practices . . . has brought about a pressing need to end taxpayer support of this institution,” Cruz said in the e-mail call to action distributed by the American Renewal Project, an organization of conservative pastors.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Cruz says he plans to shut down the government this fall unless Congress agrees to stop all funding of Planned Parenthood. And he’s making a big bet that his campaign will benefit from it:

Cruz implored more than a thousand pastors and religious leaders on Tuesday to “preach from the pulpit” against Planned Parenthood and rally public support for an amendment defunding the family provider in the must-pass federal budget bill in November. If Congress attaches the defunding amendment to the budget instead of holding a vote on the standalone bill, it cannot keep funding Planned Parenthood without shutting down the whole federal government.

“Here is the challenge,” the presidential hopeful explained on the national conference call. “The leadership of both parties, both the Democrats and Republicans, want an empty show vote. They want a vote on Planned Parenthood that has no teeth or no consequence, which allows Republicans to vote for defunding, Democrats to vote for continuing funding, and nothing to change. But the leadership of both parties have publicly said they do not want the vote tied to any legislation that must pass.”

“It will be a decision of the president’s and the president’s alone whether he would veto funding for the federal government because of a commitment to ensuring taxpayer dollars continue to flow to what appears to be a national criminal organization,” Cruz said.

As I said, the religious right is bursting to reassert its clout in the GOP and this is where they’ve decided to stand their ground. Cruz is going to lead them into battle.

That’s not to say that he’s running solely as a religious right candidate. Byron York reports that at a GOP candidate event last Monday in South Carolina featuring Cruz, Ben Carson and Scott Walker, Cruz received the most thunderous ovation. His speech wasn’t solely focused on the Christian persecution angle but he delivered what York called “an almost martial address” beating his chest about Iran and railing against sanctuary cities with the same fervor he delivered his put-away line: “No man who doesn’t begin every day on his knees is fit to stand in the Oval Office!”

York asked 53 people afterwards who did the best and 44 said Cruz, 6 said Carson and 3 said Walker. (Poor Walker is so dizzy from his immigration flip-flops that he’s stopped talking about it altogether, which the crowd did not like one little bit.) Cruz, on the other hand, has a way of making everything from EPA standards to the debt ceiling sound like a religious war which pretty much reflects the GOP base’s worldview as well.

Cruz is a true believer, but he’s also a political strategist. He has said repeatedly that his base is Tea Party voters and religious conservatives. In key Republican primaries like Iowa and South Carolina nearly 50 percent of the voters define themselves as conservative evangelicals. Cruz is betting that he can turn them out to vote for him.

Nobody knows what’s going to happen in this crazy GOP race. If Trump flames out, his voters will scatter and it will matter who has lined up the other institutional factions in the party. While everyone else spars with Trump and tries to out-immigrant bash each other, Ted Cruz is quietly working the egos and the passions of the millions of bruised conservative Christians who are desperate for a hero. When all the smoke has cleared the field he may very well be one of the last men standing.

Like Reagan, Trump is pulling in the working class. middle class and probably union members (not their leaders).

He’s getting a lot of the working class and middle class because they are worried about the economic future themselves and the future of their children.

Part of that is the flood of illegal immigration and even visas for foreign workers coming in to replace Americans (as happened in the Tech Industry - Americans trained their foreign replacements) because it makes their jobs even more insecure, given the export of American industries in “global trading.”

People don’t trust the integrity of American industry and business leaders and trade negotiators. They are sick of the socialists we have in both parties. They don’t the the shame faced loser Uncle Sham game to please the left. They are capitalists and want to support themselves and their children and buy houses, etc. They want to be a wealth and powerful country...not a global cog in the socialist wheel.

Any citizen has to see the invasion is not to our advantage as a nation. Here in Texas, he’s appealing to working and middle class Hispanic and Black citizens who want to work. He’s not appealing to illegals and he’s not appealing to the welfare mob. The people of Texas know about the crime of South American and central American criminals and gangs.

Personally, I am not sure he will not turn liberal on us having held some radical New York Democrat positions in the past.

I trust Cruz on the constitution, which is the most important issue to me...not so much on economic globalism. But I wish he was not for bringing in foreign workers via visas with so many Americans are out of work and knowing that corporations CEO’s lie about not being able to find American workers...they want cheap rights-stupid, third world workers.

“I trust Cruz on the constitution...”

I use to like Cruz, until he voted for TPA (he was for it before he was against it). TPA handed Obama much more power He voted for the Corker amendment (Obama agenda) along with all the Republican senators except Cotton. That monstrosity has the potential of destroying us all. He sought a large increase in the H-1B visas, and has called for more legal immigration, if you can believe that.

Cruz has not hidden the fact that he will open the flood gates to H-1B visas. I think this is for donors. It’s wrong - against American workers. The CEO’s have been caught twisting the truth on their ability to find American workers. They want third world rights-dummies who are accustomed to being treated like slaves to master bosses.

He should set up a merit system for all visas into the US. We have enough foreign welfare queens.

Without even checking, I know that Trump was polling at between 1 and 3% just 3 months ago(that is around 1st of June), and was far far behind Walker who was leading all the national polls. The Iowa Caucus is not for another over 5 months to go. You can't assume that today's poll numbers for Ted Cruz or anyone else will be the same come Jenuary. Trump's own poll trajectory should tell you that. What we do know is that Ted Cruz has a solid organisation in all the states that count, strong grass roots support as confirmed by the fact that he has raised more from more people than anyone else on the Republican side(175,000 people contributed in the last quarter alone). He has the organisation and the money to fight for as long as it takes.

All true, but huge differences. First, Walker led a national poll or two, but very few state polls (IA for example). But Trump has steadily risen in EVERY national poll and almost every state poll (he trails favorite sons Kasich in OH and Walker in WI). So he’s up, and up big, in NH, IA, SC, NV, NC, TX, GA, AZ, FL, AL, and W VA. Now, that is just amazing, and his lead in all of these has been steady or rising. So, no, Ted isn’t going to come back. He may win a couple of delegates to barter away, but only if Trump needs them after Super Tues.

Maybe because Trump only announced three months ago. Not one other candidate has come from lower digits to even consistent double digits except Carson. He, like Trump, is an outsider---but he has been able to cruise along in Trump's shadow without answering hard questions. But Carson has not yet led in any poll in any state, while Trump has led in all the polls save two in every state.

Fiorina gained far more than Cruz---but has yet to crack double digits.

In other words, the minor churning in the lower tier is meaningless.

So, no, Cruz is not going to leap from 4% to 20%.

Still adding 2 plus 2 and promptly coming up with a 100 huh?

1. Trump declared on June 16. Scott Walker declared in July 13, nearly a month after Trump declared. Scott Walker was one of the last to declare, yet he was ahead in the polls for months with double-digit poll numbers running as high as in the 20’s, so you can't claim that Trump was polling 1 to 2 % earlier because he declared late. Nor can you claim it was lack of name recognition either. Everyone knows The Donald.

2. Take your mind back to this time in 2007 if you will. John McCain was polling at around 7% give or take and seemed to be stuck there. In fact pundits had started writing him off cause he couldn't seem to get his mojo going. Giuliani was polling far ahead of him. And it went just Giuliani either. Who ended up with the nomination in 2008? You tell me.

Yep, Guiliani was still ahead in October, but was always in the 19-22% range. He never got up to the 30s or a 3:1 even 4:1 like Trump is over his NEAREST competitor. But there were major differences---always not useful to compare election to election. I'm looping in DJ because he has a terrific specific memory of these kinds of things.

McCain, who announced in April of that year, was the immediate front-runner, then fell behind, largely because of the illegal immigration debate in the Senate (sound familiar?). He also ran short on cash in the late summer of 2007 (think Trump will have this problem?)

But Guliani had a number of damaging revelations already, most notably corruption with Bernie Kerick. So far, nothing has developed like that with Trump.

In fact, if anything McCain COPIED the Trump campaign by doing the talk show circuit and getting free press coverage for about two months until he reclaimed the lead in December 2008.

Guliani never, ever dominated every state the way Trump has. He led in one or two. The field also had two major jolts when Fred Thompson came in, then immediately crashed, and Mike Huckabee shot up in November.

If you want to compare Cruz to McCain (ideology aside) it's a huge stretch. McCain was early on the media darling, had been running his campaign for four years since Bush beat him, and had massive name recognition. So for him to go from 5-8 points into the lead wasn't nearly the challenge it is for Cruz.

Finally, Trump is 2:1 or 3:1 over nearest competitors. But the nearest competitor is never Cruz. He is 5:1 or 6:1 ahead of Cruz in most of these states. That's a far, far cry from where McCain was.

Giuliani’s problem was paramount, he was (other than being law & order, with a big caveat — he was open borders) a social leftist. Unlike Willard, at least he wasn’t trying to cover up the fact, only that he stated he would bring Conservatives aboard and appoint them once President.

It was too much a dichotomy to swallow. Why would you, if you occupied the highest office in the land, appoint and surround yourself with people with an agenda and ideology opposite yours ? He may very well have been sincere, but it made no logical sense. An administration that was doomed to failure.

Add to that, JimRob made it plain 8 years ago that he wasn’t going to cotton to Giuliani’s candidacy here and swiftly lowered the boom on his supporters. I only wish he had acted as swiftly with the far more dangerous Willard and his deranged brigade. At least Rudy would’ve run to win.

“Yep, Guiliani was still ahead in October, but was always in the 19-22% range. He never got up to the 30s or a 3:1 “

Chuckle!
Yeah?
Quote:In the beginning, few cracks were evident in the Giuliani campaign machine. He led the Republican field in polls conducted by The New York Times and CBS News throughout the summer, as his support peaked in August at 38 percent nationally in a four-way fight with Mr. McCain, Mr. Romney and Fred D. Thompson

Giuliani actually peaked at 38%, and that was in August, just like Trump actually. Funny enough, Giuliani had huge crowds in deep red, conservative south too, just like Trump did in Alabama.

Quote:
Mr. Giuliani often played to large crowds in New Hampshire and through the Deep South; everyone seemed to love his tough talk on terrorism. When Mr. McCain’s campaign nearly flat-lined last summer, as he ran low on money, Mr. Giuliani seemed poised to take advantage.

mobile.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/us/politics/30giuliani.html?pagewanted=all&referrer=

All because her editor put the word "fanatical" in the headline?

Obviously, the writer of the article is on the left, and likes to throw around words like racist. She writes for Salon after all.

But the article is surprisingly unhostile to Cruz so far as I can tell.

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