This is one time their playbook will fall flat. Once the public hears him in the debates, the “stupid” label won’t stick.
Ronald Reagan was able to successfully shake the label; W was not because he couldn’t speak clearly.
Once Cruz gets the chance to define himself to the people, instead of his enemies, they will be blown away and realize that everything they thought they knew about him was wrong.
People overestimate the stupidity of the American people. A passionate and articulate conservative reaching out with a plan for a better tomorrow will resonate, and the elitist mind-control trolls will seem even more foolish.
I dwell in a place often surrounded by the lower 47%. They get it that they're losing what little they have, and reasons are things like the government getting in the way of jobs and opportunity. They know that the police are on a tightrope between keeping the population safe and having to shoot someone, causing the staged protests.
Ted Cruz speaks to those concerns with a positive message. I think it plays with the younger population. And I think it plays with immigrants and second-generation who did it the legal way.
For a brief shining moment, when he spoke extemporaneously on the rubble at ground zero, W did shake that label. Then the next day he declared that Islam was a religion of peace and it went right back on him.