Posted on 11/16/2015 5:11:56 AM PST by VinL
He has more cash than any other Republican candidate. He is organized in every county in the first four voting states. And he has served up one strong debate performance after the next.
Now, not three months from primary season, rivals concede they have begun to fear Ted Cruz has an increasingly clear path to the Republican nomination.
"Anybody who thinks differently," said an operative with a rival 2016 campaign, "is lying to you."
The 2016 field’s reluctantly bullish outlook on Cruz marks a dramatic about-face for Republicans weighing the divisive senator’s odds. For months, Cruz was considered a long-shot at best – a hardline conservative with a niche audience of angry evangelicals, mired in the middle of the polls and overshadowed anyway by Donald Trump. Allies of, and operatives on, campaigns as varied as Jeb Bush’s and Mike Huckabee’s dismissed the Texas senator’s ability to court enough supporters to defeat a more mainstream Republican.
No longer.
The same Republican rivals who relegated Cruz to a second tier in discussions this summer now see this insurgent firebrand as the candidate who benefited most from Scott Walker’s exit and the one who stands to gain should Donald Trump or Ben Carson decline. Indeed, Cruz is seen by most of his competition as one of the few likely to still be standing in March
"He's the longer-term threat,†said Fergus Cullen, the former chair of the New Hampshire GOP and a Republican who does not support Cruz. “I suspect once Trump goes down, people like me will have Cruz to deal with."
During the bulk of the pre-primary season, Cruz languished in the polls behind Trump and Carson, two candidates who appealed to voters furious with Washington. This was the bloc Cruz had been expected to dominate. Deprived of oxygen, Cruz largely faded from the Republican presidential spotlight over the summer weeks.
Saddled with a lower profile, Cruz focused on fundraising and building deep organizations. Instead of living in Iowa all of August, he embarked on a bus trip through the South, a move that surprised other Republicans at the time but allowed him to lay the groundwork for mounting a turnout operation across a region that will vote early this cycle, on March 1. Cruz, eyes on a delegate count, even developed infrastructure to compete in the primaries and caucuses in the U.S. territories, dispatching a representative to places as far-flung as Guam and American Samoa.
Cruz also cleaned up as Walker broke down, said Tom Rath, a New Hampshire Republican who is aligned with Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Even though many of Walker's more high-profile endorsers and donors went to Marco Rubio, his departure opened up a slice of the conservative vote that is now more inclined toward Cruz.
All of this laid the groundwork for a strong autumn. Cruz ramped up his public activity in the early states, particularly in Iowa with a high-profile religious liberty rally, an event he replicated Saturday in South Carolina. He rolled out the endorsements he had been quietly seeking for months, and his poll numbers and his cash flow ticked up in tandem. When he offered a blistering critique of the media at the CNBC debate in Boulder, Colo. late last month, the tide turned.
“He’s done really well on the debate stage, raised a whole bunch of money, his campaign has done a good job organizing, and he does have these super PACs—they don’t seem very active, but at least they have money in the bank,†said a source working for the rival campaign, referencing the cluster of super PACs backing Cruz that have amassed tens of millions of dollars.
Now, Cruz enters a crucial week. The 2016 field will return to Iowa on Friday for another cattle-call, this one hosted by prominent Iowa social conservative Bob Vander Plaats, who will offer a coveted endorsement soon after. That endorsement could be pivotal for Cruz, who has worked for months to emerge as the consensus choice of evangelical conservatives.
Carson represents Cruz’s biggest obstacle to that end, but in Iowa, Cruz has already lined up a number of well-known conservative activists and is working toward engaging pastors on his behalf in all of the state’s 99 counties. Vander Plaats, along with Iowa Rep. Steve King, are among the most sought-after conservative names in the state who are still up for grabs, and Cruz is thought to have a good chance with both of them. “He spent much of the early season building organization in key states, and so there was some hit on him initially, that, ‘He’s not here enough, we don’t see him enough,’†Vander Plaats said, discussing Cruz’s strategy. “What he was doing is putting up, nationally, an infrastructure to be successful long term. Add to that the cash on hand…and the most recent debate performance. It seems more and more people are warming to a Ted Cruz candidacy.â€
The week will also bring new Cruz ads to the Iowa airwaves – some bought by one of his affiliated super PACs and others by the campaign itself. All of them will be used to reach the evangelicals who appear eager to reward a conservative outsider.
Certainly, Cruz still lags Trump and Carson. But friends and foes alike say Cruz is the candidate best positioned to benefit should either of those poll-leaders stumble. He has refused to attack the candidates and in fact invited Trump to co-headline a rally opposing the Iran nuclear deal. Thanks to a reputation built by being a thorn in the side of GOP leadership, he has managed to create an image of a true outsider with an insider’s understanding of policy.
"People are increasingly saying he has one of the better potential paths" to the nomination, said a source from another rival campaign. “There's lots of people in D.C. who shudder at the prospect of Cruz being the nominee. He's ruffled so many feathers in town, there's a healthy dislike of him in the institutional operative class … He wears that as a badge of honor, and he should. It helps him project the outsider image even though he's a sitting U.S. senator."
Since last week’s Republican debate, GOP odds-makers are increasingly talking up the possibility of a Cruz-Rubio primary fight, a contest that would see two young Cuban-Americans running for the nomination of a party historically led by older white men. Indeed, this could be the outsider vs. insider, conservative vs. establishment face-off that so many on the right have been angling for.
"They appear," said Doug Gross, an Iowa Republican who sees Cruz as unelectable, "to be the two biggest talents in the party."
Indeed, Cruz and Rubio are on a collision course. They argued last week over their records on immigration reform as Rubio’s campaign sought to cast doubts on Cruz’s conservative bona fides while Cruz dismissed Rubio's characterization of his position as "laughingly, blazingly, on its face false.â€
Still, as Republicans working for other candidates admit Cruz is gaining steam, rivals argue his nomination would give the White House to the Democrats.
“I don’t think he can win a general election. I think he would get beat really bad,†said the first source from another campaign. “But I think he can win the nomination of the Republican Party.â€
The Grand Master.
GO TED GO!!!! GOD be WITH US!!!!!!!
Good news.
bttt
....true, but there was no way to contemplate the game changer Trump has been. The next few months will be a very interesting history lesson we will all live.
Equally important but seldom reported is the zeal of Sen Cruz supporters. Many work for free and are already active in recruiting other Republicans to Sen Cruz’s cause. Also they will crawl through burning flames to vote and drag others to vote.
Money is important but it is not the only thing.
Yes. Cruz is brilliant!
Being principled has its advantages.
At the very least, the intelligence and planning as well as communication skills this guy has shown during this campaign should be enough to convince he would make a great president.
Cruz is just what this nation needs to wake up and become great again.
Ted is playing the long game. Remembering where he started (near the bottom) in this campaign, he’s been steadily gaining steam and support.
When Trump directs his guns at him, that’s when we’ll know Ted is in the zone.
Go get ‘em, Ted!
Good to see Cruz being recognized.
With the Paris carnage as a background only Cruz and Trump can say they are the candidates who oppose illegals crossing open borders.
As Cruz rises in the polls, I do not see a battle between he and Trump.
.
Ted Cruz : EPIC Plan to DEFEAT Obama-GOPe Illegal Immigration and HALT-PROSECUTE H1B Visa Abuse
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3360258/posts
Strategic Result:
ALL 30-plus million Illegal Immigrants leave the United States ...
and NEVER VOTE in elections (Schummer-Rubio plan to turn Texas and Florida into Democrat-controlled political fortresses like California is today.
Listen to the speech ... it’s GREAT !
.
Except one!
I suspect once Trump goes down, people like me will have Cruz to deal with.”
LOL.
I like that Cruz is surging....but Trump ain’t going down, especially not in New Hampshire which votes essentially in the lives of real people...basically tomorrow.
in any event, that gem of an insight was from a former NH state party chair. And no, Fergus, no one will have to deal with you b/c you are irrelevant.
It’s a Trump/Cruz push to the finish line, and hopefully, a Trump/Cruz ticket.
no way to contemplate the game changer Trump has been
***************
Perhaps... in any event, it will certainly be an intriguing retrospective for you. For instance, where Trump indicts Iowans for their stupidity in supporting Cruz’s main Iowa roadblock, while leaving Cruz unscathed— then maybe, one may ultimately have to consider what was or was not initially in the realm of contemplation.
I know one candidate that isn’t afraid of any of the candidates, money or anything else...TRUMP....
100% Trump support...GO TRUMP GO!!!
By all accounts Ted Cruz is a genius. He got a close to perfect score on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), which is roughly estimated to be akin to about a 150 IQ.
During high school (age 13), Cruz participated in a Houston-based group called the Free Market Education Foundation where he learned about free-market economic philosophers such as Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Frédéric Bastiat and Ludwig von Mises.
He graduated from Second Baptist High School in Houston as valedictorian.
While at Princeton, he competed for the American Whig-Cliosophic Society’s Debate Panel and won the top speaker award at both the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championship and the 1992 North American Debating Championship
Cruz graduated cum laude from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1992.
Cruz’s senior thesis investigated the separation of powers; its title, ‘Clipping the Wings of Angels’, draws its inspiration from a passage attributed to US President James Madison.
While at Harvard Law, he was a primary editor of the Harvard Law Review, and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and a founding editor of the Harvard Latino Law Review. Referring to Cruz’s time as a student at Harvard Law, Professor Alan Dershowitz said, “Cruz was off-the-charts brilliant”. At Harvard Law, Cruz was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics.
Cruz graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1995 with a Juris Doctor degree.
If he loses the primary to someone like Trump, Trump could make his presidency by appointing Cruz to the Supreme Court, taking the place of one of the liberal justices, most likely Ginsburg. This would guarantee for at least a decade or two that the court was solidly conservative.
The presidency is a difficult thing, requiring a lot of balancing interests and resulting in very few slam dunk wins. However, Cruz on the Supreme Court could mean that no matter who the president nor how fickle the congress, conservatives would control an entire *branch* of the government.
Well, duh...Cruz is a conservative. A Red Hampshire fop like Cullen would never support a conservative.
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