Shhhh.... don’t say “Reagan Democrats” to Cruz supporters!
They don’t like that!
Cruzers should read this. The playing field has been set to allow a true-blue conservative like Cruz to take Iowa and some other early states (but end up with very few delegates as they are allocated proportionally) and then bump up against a glass ceiling in the form of the Mason-Dixon line, as the establishment candidate racks up delegates in all kinds of places that won’t be voting red in November (but which award large numbers of delegates on a winner-take-all basis).
That “playing field” didn’t contemplate a Trump, who’s an outsider candidate who actually plays pretty well in the Deep South also, but plays strongest in the industrial North. If Trump wins Iowa, it’s over. If Cruz wins Iowa, then they can take out Trump based on his “bubble bursting”, “lost momentum”, etc., and then they can take Cruz out with a flood of big delegate winner take all Northern blue state primaries.