“Wow. Interesting.”
That is what I am thinking. Ted must be looking in his rear view mirror and sees Marco gaining on him. Otherwise I do not see him spending his resources on Marco.
The Times’s hypothesis may be correct, but there is another point of view equally credible if not moreso.
Cruz may be seeing Rubio peeling votes away from him - votes that he needs to beat Trump. Trump wins only if conservatives split their votes. Cruz needs to hang onto every bit of the conservative anti-Trump vote.
Cruz may just as well be going after Rubio in order to keep Rubio from denying him an outright win in Iowa.
Cruz needs to win Iowa. He needs to collect eight outright wins in order to have his name placed into nomination at the Convention - so does every other candidate. Other than Trump and Cruz, which candidate has a chance of pulling this off?
Also, between now and mid-March most of the primaries allocate delegates on a percentage basis - but half or more don’t award ANY delegates to candidates who get less than 15% or 20% of the vote, depending on the state. This is going to savage the 2 to 15 percenters. And will quickly drive the race to one between two men; hopefully Cruz and Trump, before we get to the big winner-take-all primary state.
I think Cruz wins one-on-one against Trump. That’s Cruz’s plan, I’m sure, but he needs to bank Iowa next Monday to position himself for South Carolina and beyond - and the threat to that is coming from Rubio, not so much from Trump, who is more or less static.