Posted on 12/13/2015 8:51:27 AM PST by Isara
Ted Cruz's strategy for winning the Republican presidential nomination is becoming clearer by the day.
The Texas senator continues to march toward primary season methodically cobbling together the segments of GOP voters, winning endorsements and rising at the polls particularly in Iowa.
But his increased appetite for taking on Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), as well as his repeated resistance to taking the gloves off with Donald Trump, sheds light on the senator's fourth-quarter strategy.
"This week was probably his best week," Ford O'Connell, an unaffiliated Republican strategist, said, noting the endorsement of major Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, who has backed the last two Iowa caucus winners.
And for the first time since June, Cruz overtook front-runner Donald Trump in an Iowa poll, adding to his momentum in the early voting state.
"It's been impressive to watch Sen. Cruz start to consolidate the anti-establishment conservative segment of the Iowa caucus electorate," former state GOP chairman Matt Strawn told The Hill.
"It's not just the bold-faced name endorsements that he's received...but it's been building out a large statewide network of local leaders that represent those various constituencies."
But as his numbers and profile continue to rise, Cruz has deepened his feud with Rubio, who has also seen a rise in polls and profile, through barbsin the media, in dueling statements, and through surrogates.
This week, Cruz has begun to try to paint Rubio as a liberal, framing his rival's foreign policy as in line with that of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, along with members of the GOP establishment.
And when Fox News' Bill Hemmer asked him about the battle with Rubio, Cruz noted a recent work by conservative columnist Mark Levin that called Rubio's attacks on his record in the vein of noted left-wing community organizer Saul Alinsky. Cruz and other conservatives have repeatedly sought to slight President Obama with comparisons to Alinsky.
"What Mark Levin said is that Rubio is engaging in Alinskyite tactics of simply lying," he said Wednesday on "America's Newsroom."
"That's Mark Levin calling him out, and the reason is understandable."
Kellyanne Conway, who heads the pro-Cruz super-PAC Keep the Promise Icontends Rubio sounds good, but is not sound in his positions.
"Rubio can win a debate, but you have to win the argument," she added.
"Every six or seven weeks, people will say, 'Rubio won the debate,' but the nominee is the person that ends up wining the argument. You win the argument by showing up in front of people in the states that vote early and engaging with them."
Most strategists see Iowa as Cruz's best chance at a victory in the first two nominating states.
Cruz has had 91 campaign events over 41 days in Iowa, good for fourth place out of GOP candidates according to the Des Moines Register, and ahead of every other candidate towards the top of the polls.
But Rubio has been criticized for not spending as much time as other candidates in the early states, especially New Hampshire, where he sits in second place. He's held 36 events in the Granite State, according to New England Cable News. That's three less than Cruz.
O'Connell said that their "inner squabble" is a big deal as far as who can emerge as Trump's biggest foil even though the "differences between them are so minute."
"Rubio wisely figured out that national security would be his ticket to the nomination, and with events lining up the way they are lining up, it was a very smart play. Cruz sees that and wants to find a way to tamp down Rubio," he said.
He added that the increasing emphasis on national security could be "extremely dangerous for Cruz-that's why he's busy...mitigating these attacks." Cruz repeatedly brings up Rubio's past support of a pathway to citizenship and casts him as a member of the party's establishment that have failed to win the White House over the last eight years.
But while the row with Rubio has bubbled straight to the surface, Cruz has repeatedly brushed aside every chance to take on Trump, even though he clearly stands in the way of the Texan's hopes of winning his party's nomination.
As fellow candidates piled onto the real estate magnate after he called on Monday to ban Muslim immigration, Cruz briefly noted his disagreement but refused to take it any further.
But Cruz's public face has been tested by a New York Times report that Cruz privately questioned Trump's judgment.
That prompted a rebuke on Twitter from Trump, who said: "Looks like [Cruz] is getting ready to attack. I am leading by so much he must. I hope so, he will fall like all others. Will be easy!"
But Cruz has repeatedly distanced himself from those comments by issuing a statement calling the Times "misleading," despite the paper posting audio from the fundraiser, and firing off a tweet of his own calling his rival "terrific."
Instead, Cruz hopes that Trump fades and that his decision to avoid attacking the front-runner means Trump's supporters will move to him.
"People don't like to see the schoolyard squabbles, particularly in a primary," Texas state Sen. Koni Burton, a Cruz supporter who knocked on doors for the campaign in Iowa this week, told The Hill.
Strawn, the former Iowa GOP chair, added that the calculus might also be based on the notion that a significant portion of Trump's supporters in the state have never participated in a caucus before. That means the main factor for Trump - turnout -- is out of Cruz's control, so there's little use in getting down in the mud.
Not only does playing nice with Trump have its benefits, but so does his extreme views, which have helped recast Cruz as more moderate by comparison.
"Who would have thought that the following sentence would come out of people's mouths: 'Ted Cruz is the reasonable alternative.' But it has because every candidacy is a reaction to the other candidates in the field," Conway said, noting the "surprise surges" by Trump and Carson.
"They are coalescing around Cruz because voters have a reasonable expectation that their nominee will have thought about policy at least as much as they have."
For a politician whose short career in Congress has been made in part by scorched-Earth tactics, it's an unfamiliar ground.
"Cruz has completely changed his M.O," O'Connell said.
"In Washington, he's always standing up and making spectacles on the Senate floor. Now that he's running for president, he's trying to paint the exact opposite of how he's acted in Washington."
While his allies are confident in the plan, they agree with strategists that Cruz just has to continue the methodical strategy with so many unknowns still looming.
"The greatest threat to Sen. Cruz right now is what we don't know. You can try to predict turnout, you don't know if there's going to be a 'January surprise,' will any drop out, will any fall flat on the debate stage?" Conway said.
"Nobody knows what the contours of the race will look like a month from now."
Cruz is the one who will fade. Now that he’s in the spotlight, his amnesty con will be exposed. He’s made a big deal out of fighting amnesty because he doesn’t want instant citizenship but that’s all he doesn’t want. Has been able to dodge questions that would corner him but that time’s gone.
Rubio is right on this one, he’s not that different from Cruz.
It is amazing to me how so many self professing conservatives fall for populist rhetoric being spewn out by a guy who is sounding more and more that “ well managed” government is the solution to all of our problems. Heck this guy might ramp up domestic spying to even greater levels than Bush or Obama.
Isn't Mister Trump a longtime, and unrepentant proponent of socialized medicine?
.
Love Boat? SS Minnow.
” I think I would place my bets on Cruz knowing the right course for his campaign over pretty much ANY message board junkie.”
I’m on a number of apolitical and leftist-dominated forums.
These people are NOT impressed with Cruz, and are more ready to take him on as they are with Trump.
Believe me, these people are more than happy to take on Cruz because they know that he will have none of Trump’s bravado, less cross-over appeal, and they see him as a pipsqueak with no governmental experience that can be held up against Hillary’s “vast career in service”.
And the thing that really chilled me was that coupled with the press protection, they will be able to paint her time in government from her time involved with Watergate, being first lady in Arkansas, and in DC, having been married to a still popular Bill Clinton, having been a senator, having run for president, having been involved with numerous political entities/groups, and having been Sec. of State as being a resume that no one can touch.
Yes, WE know that she’s been a snake and an opportunist, not to mention a failure in all of those positions, but she will also be running as the first women nominee for president. That affords her another wall of protection.
Can Cruz talk over that? I dont think so. It just isn’t his personality. He’s too insider baseball. Too formatted for a senate debate, and not for the brawl of the campaign trail.
He’s been careful up until not. Far too careful.
“As soon as I finish my latest new paper airplane design and test it, I’ll get back to you.”
Well, that would at least be sooner than any of the other times you’ve failed to refute any of my points.
I missed it.
Mark Levin should be ashamed of that phony chart.
As soon as he does that, the vagina card gets played and trump is done. She won her senate seat because Rick lazio handed her a freakin piece of paper during a debate....trump does ANY of what you say and the media will gut him like a fish and moderates the country over will swoon. She will have to be defeated with class and a smile and a surgeons scalpel not a meat cleaver.
Wow.
If you scroll the page up and down real fast, it *wiggles*.
Good job.
;D
No, there is the piano bar, some shuffleboard, a nice buffet, a swimming pool and lounge chairs. All very clean and packaged and indulgent. But going nowhere without the functional, hard nosed icebreaker.
“Mark Levin should be ashamed of that phony chart.”
It is rather patronizing and stupid.
It was not the act of handing her the paper that won her the seat.
It was that the media was looking for something, anything, with which to slam him for the voters in NY, and they harped on this little nonsense as a great big invasion of her vaginal space.
Worse, he slinked away like a meek puppy that just got yelled at for crapping the carpet.Oh, they will try, they have been all along. But it requires the candidate to be submissive, lay on the back and pee in the air.
Don't see trump doing that anytime soon.
Oil, pomade, and annotated footnotes?
Trump isn’t Rick Lazio.
Try coming forward to the present time, it’s where reality is currently transpiring.
ITLF, That’s good. :)
Trump is not lazio. He’s less polished and more bombastic. Both of which are detriments when this happens. Just my .02
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