As many candidates of both parties have found out, the nomination contest and the general election contest are two (very) different chess games. You’ve got to win both of them to govern.
If Cruz wins the nomination, don’t worry, the GOP will rally around him, and doubly so if he wins the election. In terms of positions on issues, there is really very little daylight between him and the Rubio-Bush-Kasich ‘Establishment’ wing of this race. If Cruz were to win and the GOP holds the Senate, the Koch brothers would get everything on their wish list in 2017. There’s no reason for the GOP Establishment to not throw their weight behind Cruz in the general election campaign, and have a good working relationship with him if he wins the Presidency.
But since Cruz is much more obvious in his extreme conservatism than Rubio etc., the Establishment would prefer that he not be the nominee, because while they might be able to sell Rubio to the public as a sane and reasonable Republican, despite his being essentially as conservative on most things as Cruz is, they doubt that they can sell Cruz as all that.
And so do I. I’d expect Cruz to lose to Hillary by a bigger margin than McCain lost to Obama. I don’t think it would be a Goldwater-level landslide, but I think it would put the House within reach for the Dems in 2016.
I think Cruz is the un-Trump of the month. Carson had his turn in the sun, he crashed and burned, now it’s Cruz’s turn to die on the vine. Trump will attack him shortly.
The difference is Cruz is a seasoned politician and might fare better than Carson at deflecting whatever Trump throws his way. The biggest mistake Cruz could make now would be to start attacking Trump. That could get ugly. Let Trump do what he does and I think he’ll eventually be overtaken.
I agree with Barkis on this point. Carson’s a rank amateur at politics who got lucky for a while. Cruz has a clue about what he’s doing in this race.
And it’s hard to see what Trump’s going to throw at him that will stick: Cruz has been pretty consistently the one who isn’t interested in accommodation of any sort with Dems, the one who’s the biggest thorn in the side of the Establishment Republicans, the one who’s most willing to shut down/blow up government over whatever trivialities are the right wing’s shibboleths this week.
Cruz is the guy who’s the ‘nobody’s more conservative than me’ guy in the race. If Trump attacks him from the left, Cruz will wear the attacks as a badge of honor. And it’s damned hard to see how Trump can attack him from the right.
If Trump attacks on policy, then yes he’ll have to come from Cruz’s left. But Trump could give a rat’s ass about policy. His team will dig up some asinine story or old quote from Cruz and toss that bone to the media. And yes, I do think Trump’s team had a hand in the constant barrage of crap thrown at Carson. We never heard peep about him until he posed a threat to Trump.
Regarldess of how Trump attacks Cruz, he will be better prepared than Carson ever was.
If I were running a GOP campaign, I would be perfectly confident with a “let Trump shoot himself in the foot” strategy. There just aren’t enough crazy people to win Trump the nomination.
I believe only Trump can beat himself, but ultimately he will. If nothing else, he’ll be the guy who won’t have an organization to get his supporters to the polls, and won’t understand the delegate rules well enough to do a good job of translating votes into delegates.
(After a 2nd place showing in Iowa, Trump comes out to make a rousing and supportive speech to his supporters)
“What the hell happened?? What is wrong with you people - you’re a bunch of losers!! How could you vote for Cruz? I want to look into all of your fat ugly faces and tell each and every one of you that you’re fired!”
Trump is getting around 25% in the polls today. His problem will be that as the GOP field winnows out, which it will, his numbers will not increase. We’ve already seen a chunk of Carson’s support go to Cruz. If Christie, Kasich, Paul, Huckabee, Bush and others at the kiddie table would drop now, that’s almost 20 points that will go anywhere but Trump.
I predicted a few years ago on this board that Cruz would win the nomination and the subsequent contest between himself and Hillary Clinton. I’d like to take this moment to refine that prediction.
Allow me to qualify my prediction as follows: my bold prediction was a pre-Trump-Meteorite prediction. All bets are off in a Trump world. That being said, Cruz is the only candidate that has a path to victory besides Trump and barring a brokered convention (the heightened possibility of which I will not go into right now.)
Refinements:
Cruz will win in Iowa.
Trump will win NH.
Rubio and Bush will team to get as many delegates as possible going into the convention.
Cruz will not attack Trump,and will handle Trump’s attacks deftly.
Actually, I could see some of the Huckabee support going to Trump. Huckabee stopped being the fat Arkansas governor a while ago and became the Muslim-basher-in-chief (at least until this year). He’s not going to win Huckabee’s evangelical cohort, obviously.
Not entirely separate pools. Yes there is considerable overlap, but the establishment money will keep offering both flavors to the electorate. I don’t see this strategy panning out for them, to be clear.
They will both stay in the race because they have a lot of money, but their strategy will be to force the brokered convention because they own the party hacks. Trump would love this however, allowing him to run as an independent.
The real show is going to be Cruz vs Trump in my opinion, Trump being favored at this point for obvious reasons. In the back of my mind, I gotta think that Trump is just having fun and will bow out at the last minute. As I have said this will be the most entertaining race in over 100 years.