Trump: Letâ€™s face it, Cruz is a â€œlittle bit of a maniacâ€ in the Senate with poor judgment

In case you missed it yesterday, here’s Trump doing his version of “I know you are but what am I?” after Cruz got caught on audio at a fundraiser questioning Trump’s judgment. (Cruz already laughed off the “maniac” line on Twitter last night.) I’ve seen righties on social media today scoffing at the idea that this criticism, indicting Cruz for not getting along with the rest of the Senate, will do Cruz any harm. Voters hate Congress, especially tea-party voters. How does it damage Cruz to remind them that he shares that hatred?

Okay, but Trump’s pitching himself to his own voters as a sort of hybrid, a strongman who’ll decimate their enemies but also a world-class dealmaker who’ll convince his opponents to go along with his plans. Sometimes, like in what he said last week about imposing the death penalty via executive order, he emphasizes the strongman approach. Other times, like when he talks about trade and China, he emphasizes his skills as a negotiator. His attack on Cruz here is clumsy but I think he could develop it into something that’d play better with his own supporters, that Cruz is really nothing but a grandstander with no strategy for getting his many enemies in Washington to give him what he wants on policy. Elect him and there’ll be more paralysis; elect Trump and he’ll use his Trumpian superpowers to convince Democrats to give Trump fans the things they want, like more protectionism.

For all the blather about how Trump and Cruz are running similar “burn it all down” anti-Washington insurgent campaigns, their core messages are different. Cruz, the Reaganite, is promising to get the government out of people’s way. Trump, the statist, is promising to get the government to start working for people like you instead of for people like “them.” Convincing his fans that Cruz can’t make the government work, period, would give some of them pause. (Plus, the idea that Cruz doesn’t have the strength to impose his will on his opponents would also square with the “Cruz is a beta male” attack from Trump that will inevitably come, maybe as soon as tomorrow night.)

Trump’s problem now, though, is that it’s not enough to keep his own supporters in the fold. This is wishful thinking:

Trump’s 10 points behind in Iowa now according to the new Selzer poll. He can’t win anymore simply by keeping his own voters in his tent. He needs to start bringing other people’s voters in. And when you look at Selzer’s crosstabs, you find that Cruz is more likely to poach Trump voters than Trump is likely to poach Cruz’s. I’ve written half a dozen posts over the last few months wondering if it’s really true that Trump fans, who tend to be less dogmatically conservative than the average Republican, would shift to a rock-ribbed conservative like Cruz potentially. Yep, it’s true. In Iowa, at least.

The new CW as of Saturday night, when the Selzer poll came out, is that Trump might be done if he loses Iowa. Trump’s mystique depends on being the consummate unconquerable winner; once that mystique is shattered, the theory goes, then all of his support crumbles. I don’t buy it, though. Iowa’s not known for picking nominees anymore; it’d be easy for Trump and his fans to dismiss it as a socially conservative outlier if he turns around and wins New Hampshire a week later. What might do him in, though, is if he gets roundly crushed by Cruz in Iowa, of which there now seems to be a nonzero possibility. Trump the strongman may lose a battle here and there but he always wins the war. Trump the strongman is not supposed to be routed, though, under any circumstances. If he is, the media’s going to go berserk during the week leading up to New Hampshire about how Trump is a paper tiger, Trumpmania is a fad, etc etc. Frankly, given how useful Trump might be to Cruz in New Hampshire in holding Rubio back, I wonder if Team Cruz is hoping they don’t win Iowa in a giant blowout either.

Exit question: Politico claims more leaked audio from one of Cruz’s fundraisers is coming this week, this time showing Cruz striking a “more moderate and inclusive tone on social issues than he does when speaking to Iowa audiences.” Does anyone think that’ll do any damage? What I mean is, does anyone think Ted Cruz doesn’t realize he’s being recorded at these things and is watching his language with that in mind? (Even in last week’s audio questioning Trump’s judgment, he was careful to say that he likes and respects Trump.) If anything, it’s probably Team Cruz itself that’s leaking this stuff. They know that many center-righties don’t like him but will consider supporting him if he and Trump are the final two. Leaking “moderate”-sounding stuff on social issues is Cruz’s way of winking at them that he’d govern less dogmatically than they might fear.

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What Ted Cruz Really Stands For

By Mark Salter
October 01, 2015

Although I find Sen. Ted Cruzâ€™s â€œlonely man of principleâ€ act as tired as it is phony, I should give the devil his due. Cruz has given Americans exasperated with Washington gridlock hope that Congress can, when sufficiently motivated, find consensus and act.

In this instance, the consensus is that Ted Cruz is a jackass. The bipartisan action taken was to deny him a vote on the Senate floor, and the additional speaking time he desired for another unctuous tribute to himself, courtesies that are routinely granted all senators. But hey, itâ€™s hard to get Democrats and Republicans to agree on anything these days. So, congratulations, Senator Cruz, you trailblazer.

I worked on Capitol Hill for the better part of two decades. There might have been other occasions when a senator couldnâ€™t get a colleague to â€œsecondâ€ his amendment, but I canâ€™t recall any. Itâ€™s also unusual for senators not to agree to give a member who has exhausted his allotted speaking time a few more minutes to finish his remarks.

Then again, I canâ€™t recall any senator who was as nearly universally loathed by his colleagues as Cruz. There have been others who werenâ€™t likeable. There were plenty who were self-interested and who preened and blustered as often as Cruz doesâ€”and who routinely elicited senatorial smirks and rolled eyes. There have been senators who frequently forced their colleagues to cast difficult and unpopular votes. And, of course, there is a long list of senators who ran for president and treated the Senate floor as a campaign stop. (And for some of them it worked). But no senator in my memory did all that with such abandon and was disliked with as much intensity as is Ted Cruz.

The late Minnesota progressive Paul Wellstone took lonely stands on the Senate floor that ended in missed flights and embarrassing votes for his colleagues. Recently retired Sen. Tom Coburn did, too. They often irritated their fellow senators, but that was usually temporary and mitigated by the wide admiration they enjoyed in the Senate on both sides of the aisle. Senators respected them as genuinely principled politicians who had the courage of their convictions.

Wellstone and Coburn risked their positions to advance their political values. Cruz is their opposite. He risks his principals to advance his position. I donâ€™t think any senator really believes Ted Cruz is a conviction politician, save for his conviction that he ought to be president.

I know that Cruz and his minions boast that he wears the establishmentâ€™s animosity as a badge of honor. But before anyone adds more brushstrokes to Cruzâ€™ self-portrait as a modern day Edmund G. Ross, let me point out that at the heart of colleaguesâ€™ contempt for him isnâ€™t their distress at finding themselves confronted by a principled conservative, but their belief that he is an imposter.

He deliberately sets up conservatives to fail by goading them into empty gestures and self-defeating stunts like shutting down government, which make it harder to persuade more Americans to embrace conservative policies. They canâ€™t even be described accurately as Pyrrhic victories. Theyâ€™re just abject failures.

And Cruz bets on them to fail. He stokes the anger of grassroots conservatives in the hope that it devours everyone but him. He offers false hope and misinformation as a plan, stands defiantly in the imaginary breach, and scurries to blame others for his singular lack of success.

Now heâ€™s playing lickspittle to Donald Trump, a candidate without a single conservative or even serious political principle, in the hope of grasping a few crumbs of support from Big Daddyâ€™s table when the notorious Internet troll tires of pretending to run for national office. Cruz claims allegiance to Ronald Reaganâ€™s famed 11th Commandment about not speaking ill of fellow Republicans, and wonâ€™t cock an eyebrow as Trump attacks the rest of the 2016 Republican field with insults that would embarrass a mature sixth-grader and offers decidedly non-conservative policy prescriptions. But Cruz will call Mitch McConnell a liar for not playing along with his latest deception, and he crows and struts when Speaker John Boehner, a man who gave decades of service to his country and party, is obliged to retire.

Many grassroots conservatives believe that Republicans in Washington think theyâ€™re better than the people who sent them there. No politician has ever fit that description better than Ted Cruz. He hasnâ€™t done anything for anyone other than himself since he came to town. He thinks if he promises you the impossible, and identifies a few scapegoats, you wonâ€™t notice heâ€™s faking it. He thinks youâ€™re that easy to fool.

Are you?

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