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Could Ted Cruz Win?
The New York Times ^ | The March 25, 2016 Issue | Ross Douthat

Posted on 03/18/2016 7:03:37 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

No, I don't think he will -- not the nomination, not the presidency. But since that's what just about everyone thinks, let's play around a little and try to imagine how Cruz could at least imitate Barry Goldwater and become the G.O.P. nominee. Here's The Federalist's Ben Domenech with three reasons why the conventional wisdom on Cruz might be wrong:

First: Ted Cruz matches up with the activist base better than any other significant candidate in a long time. I don't think people outside of that base really understand how powerful Cruz's appeal is to the populist energized conservative voter, which is of course just a faction of the right, but is a sizable faction ... And he doesn't just match up with them on policy, he matches up with their brashness, their yearning for someone who loves the taste of blood in his mouth ...

Second: To the degree that this is a nomination battle about who has done the most to fight the Obama administration about two key issues - amnesty and Obamacare - Ted Cruz can claim that mantle and beat his opponents over the head with their stances on these topics. We underestimate how going soft on both of these issues is going to play in the GOP primary this cycle, particularly in the early going. As I've noted before, most of the candidates this time around are in roughly the same position on immigration: either full throatedly in favor of reform or tepidly in favor of it. But there is no indication that the position of the party base is at all moderated compared to 2012, and Obama's approach to executive amnesty has made the issue all the more toxic. Cruz can argue that his only fault is boldness....

(Excerpt) Read more at douthat.blogs.nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: canadian; cruz; cruzie; ineligible; tedcruz; trump
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To: BagCamAddict
So many people are sick of being told who to vote for, that the more they are told not to vote for Trump, the more they want to vote for Trump.

Exactly what happened with me. I started out with Rand, but I figured he didn't have much of a chance given that most Americans don't actually want freedom.

After Rand dropped out I noticed how much I can't stand the people who hate Trump. As more and more Trump haters came out of the woodwork and became more and more hysterical my support for Trump solidified.

Other than a few Cruz supporters who are either delusional or just too angry or myopic, virtually all of the Trump haters are people that I simply deplore.

81 posted on 03/18/2016 11:58:01 PM PDT by douginthearmy
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To: mabelkitty

so true. I would have voted for Bush back then. I voted for all Bushes. But that was only because back then we had no clue that they were all actually working together against the Great Unwashed.

Now that the puzzle pieces are starting to come together, I realize that I could never vote for a Bush, or any other establishment candidate.


82 posted on 03/19/2016 2:27:55 AM PDT by Right-wing Librarian (We are Trump. WE are Trump. WE ARE TRUMP!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Nobody thought he would win the Senate race in Texas either.


83 posted on 03/19/2016 3:33:21 AM PDT by Rummyfan (Let us now try liberty.)
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To: Mechanicos
No, hes not going to win directly or by convention.

I want some of the drugs you're on.

He's only in to play spoiler because he can't win straight up. If he manages to stop Trump, and "win" by contested convention, he's going to piss so many off that Hillary will take the WH.

He needs to get with the real goal of keeping Hillary out and show he's for the People and not for Ted Cruz.

84 posted on 03/19/2016 3:47:04 AM PDT by trebb (Where in the the hell has my country gone?)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

It is too late for Cruz to win but be VP is another story.


85 posted on 03/19/2016 7:02:11 AM PDT by Lady Heron
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To: douginthearmy
Other than a few Cruz supporters who are either delusional or just too angry or myopic, virtually all of the Trump haters are people that I simply deplore.

Yep. As my buddy said this morning, "The people who hate Trump confirm for me that 'HE'S OUR GUY.' What more proof do we need?"

86 posted on 03/19/2016 7:04:44 AM PDT by BagCamAddict
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To: itsahoot

Well yes, that.... But that’s what Cruz wants people to believe. So Cruz won’t get Moderate voters as long as that’s what he wants people to believe.

“And in tonight’s showing of the 2016 Election, the role of the Far Right Radical, pro-life, pro-gun nutcase will be played by Ted Cruz.”


87 posted on 03/19/2016 7:08:54 AM PDT by BagCamAddict
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To: cookcounty

Thank you for the mention.

That’s the first attempt at it that I have seen.


88 posted on 03/19/2016 11:32:01 AM PDT by DoughtyOne (Facing Trump nomination inevitability, folks are now openly trying to help Hillary destroy him.)
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To: magna carta

Very insightful post and a big thank you for sharing this with us ... this is what it’s all about


89 posted on 03/19/2016 8:18:03 PM PDT by Neu Pragmatist (Stop the GOPe and DIMS ...Defeat Cruz , Vote Trump)
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To: digger48

Trump is the opposite of Goldwater politically. Trump is a statist, and Goldwater was a libertarian.


90 posted on 03/19/2016 8:34:18 PM PDT by Persephone Kore
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To: Persephone Kore
Trump is a statist, and Goldwater was a libertarian.

Someone once pointed out that Goldwater stood at the head of both "branches" of modern conservative, the social conservatives (Christian conservatives, Moral Majority, also Christian Identity and similar ethnic-identity and/or racist fringe groups like VDARE, Covenanters, etc.) and the libertarian conservatives (Paulbots, marketarian or economic conservatives [19th-century liberals and ordoliberals], and land-use and tax-resistance groups).

All these groups can point back to Senator Goldwater and hils conservative movement, who were the Main Street Republicans who'd fought with the Gilded Age plutocracy (the "Stalwarts") since the 1880's -- and been derided for their troubles as "Mugwumps" and "Bull Moosers" for generations before they rallied around Bob Taft and then Barry Goldwater against the "Me-Too'ers" and "good government Republicans". The latter were Bush-era "moderates"/"economic conservatives" who were at pains to distinguish themselves from the "socons" whom the Bush family have always derided and despised as barely-disguised KKK kleagles, n/w/s that they had before their disbelieving eyes two of the biggest, both Democrats, sitting on the Supreme Court and in the Senate Majority Leader's office back in the 1970's.

But Manor Bush is part of the old "Stalwarts" who started and won the Civil War to protect Yankee political power for a time and to aggrandize the newly risen manufacturing and financial moguls and their managerial-class hangers-on (like the infamous Henry Clay Frick, who liked to break strikes by breaking faces and shooting people, and his successor in infamy, "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap, the modern "turnaround specialist").

Therefore the "economic conservatives" are not and have never been "conservative" in the sense of "classical liberals", but rather the access-capitalist class against whom classical liberalism was a reaction: against permanent class advantage, structural advantage, privilege, classism, statism, fascism, and all that went with them.

91 posted on 03/20/2016 4:56:33 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutierrez)
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To: lentulusgracchus; Persephone Kore
Addendum to my last: The term "economic conservative" needs clarification. There are economic conservatives, marketarians would be a better word for them. The people around the "Stalwarts"/"Me-Too'ers"/Bushbots who are access/crony capitalists like to call themselves "economic conservatives", but actually they are not, they are instead a very different thing.

Example of the latter: A magazine article I read once described the early days of Zapata Corp., a firm founded by George H.W. Bush and colleague Hugh Liedtke in the 1950's, old classmates from Yale who'd come west to help colonize Texas for the Ivy League. (Another day, I'd sat in an airliner and listened to a fellow passenger explain how his west Texas congressman had been pitched by a Yale faculty member before the congressman left Yale to move out West to, as it was phrased by my interlocutor, improve the quality of congressional representation by running for Congress as soon as he felt able to do so. Funny thing about that .... that congressman, Bush 41, and (my former) Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee all attended Yale .... then came to Texas to run for public office, among other things. I might have to check on the total number of Texas congressmen who've been "processed" and indoctrinated by Ivy League privilege academies.

In any case, while Bush 41 was still at Zapata Corp., he and Liedtke happened to attend a cocktail party of very wealthy people ..... and there they were offered a drilling deal. I don't remember where the deal was, I would assume it was somewhere in Texas, and it was a 50-well proposition. Which for me was a showstopper. A 50-well deal?! I'm used to thinking of "deals" as being a one- or two-well deal, followon wells being contingent on technical success and a lot of other things. But 50 wells? That was exorbitant, absolutely a huge deal, with entailed investment in the $20-50 million range depending on where the wells were to be located (lower costs in some parts of onshore Texas, much higher costs in South Texas, higher still offshore in Texas state waters, and still higher again if they were to be in the deeper parts of the Fort Worth or Midland Basins). And this deal was being passed around at a Texas cocktail party for Ivy League ring-knockers as if it were a canape platter. That begins to characterize both the deal and the gathering. This was serious favor-currying and enrichment for the junior members of the Permanent Ruling Class. (Bush 41 was Sen. Prescott Bush's son, remember; "Pressy" was still sitting in Congress as 41 clinked glasses and graduation rings and exchanged the secret Bonesman handshake at a party in neocolonial Texas.)

I seized on that episode as an example of how the PRC gets along and goes along and enjoys entree to wealth-building opportunities unavailable, and even inconceivable, to non-members. It is quite precisely what is meant by "crony capitalism".

92 posted on 03/20/2016 6:10:45 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutierrez)
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To: DouglasKC
CRUZ DONORS---financed by the Washington Cartel he swears he/s running against.


93 posted on 03/20/2016 6:16:57 AM PDT by Liz (SAFE PLACE? A liberal's mind. Nothing's there. Nothing can penetrate it.)
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To: All
If Cruz wins the nom, then you know he cheated.

TRUMP BALLOT SECURITY PROJECT
Committee to Restore America’s Greatness PAC
FR Posted 3/19/16 by Albion Wilde

The Trump Ballot Security Project (TBSP) was formed when the main stream media reported dozens of voting irregularities in the Texas Republican primary. This ultimately totaled over 600 reports in at least six counties including Dallas County and Travis County.

In virtually every case votes cast for Donald J. Trump were tallied for Senator Marco Rubio. The TBSP established a Toll Free number to collect further reports of voter irregularities.

Almost immediately there were over 300 complaints from Oklahoma. Only a week later the Kansas and Maine Caucuses brought hundreds of more complaints including claims of double voting by supporters of Sen. Ted Cruz.

Now we are focused on Arizona, Utah, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and California. To the extent possible, we are attempting to place trained poll watchers in those counties with a recent history of voter fraud.

The Trump Ballot Security Project is committed to investigating all complaints of voter fraud. In the event a pattern can be determined, the seating of these delegations can and will be challenged before the Credentials committee of the Republican National Convention.

We have dispatched lawyers and election law experts to all of the states mentioned above to investigate and document voter fraud. NOTE The Trump campaign is not currently devoting resources to this important function.

TBSP is a project of the Committee To Restore America's Greatness
CONTACT 1-855-245-4634 TO REPORT IRREGULARITIES OR VOTER FRAUD.

94 posted on 03/20/2016 6:18:49 AM PDT by Liz (SAFE PLACE? A liberal's mind. Nothing's there. Nothing can penetrate it.)
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To: All
If Cruz wins the nom, then you know he cheated.

TRUMP BALLOT SECURITY PROJECT
Committee to Restore America’s Greatness PAC
FR Posted 3/19/16 by Albion Wilde

The Trump Ballot Security Project (TBSP) was formed when the main stream media reported dozens of voting irregularities in the Texas Republican primary. This ultimately totaled over 600 reports in at least six counties including Dallas County and Travis County.

In virtually every case votes cast for Donald J. Trump were tallied for Senator Marco Rubio. The TBSP established a Toll Free number to collect further reports of voter irregularities.

Almost immediately there were over 300 complaints from Oklahoma. Only a week later the Kansas and Maine Caucuses brought hundreds of more complaints including claims of double voting by supporters of Sen. Ted Cruz.

Now we are focused on Arizona, Utah, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and California. To the extent possible, we are attempting to place trained poll watchers in those counties with a recent history of voter fraud.

The Trump Ballot Security Project is committed to investigating all complaints of voter fraud. In the event a pattern can be determined, the seating of these delegations can and will be challenged before the Credentials committee of the Republican National Convention.

We have dispatched lawyers and election law experts to all of the states mentioned above to investigate and document voter fraud. NOTE The Trump campaign is not currently devoting resources to this important function.

TBSP is a project of the Committee To Restore America's Greatness
CONTACT 1-855-245-4634 TO REPORT IRREGULARITIES OR VOTER FRAUD.

95 posted on 03/20/2016 6:18:50 AM PDT by Liz (SAFE PLACE? A liberal's mind. Nothing's there. Nothing can penetrate it.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Sorry, but there is no math based in reality that can get Cruz to 1237. He needs to win close to 90% of the remaining delegates to get there and in no universe based in reality will that happen.


96 posted on 03/20/2016 6:23:01 AM PDT by HamiltonJay
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To: Mariner
The Republican Party has a new base, and has discarded the old.

And who would that "new base" be? Professional GOP wiseguys and "consultants"?

Dope-smoking soccer moms, and Jewish princesses with net personal worth north of $30,000,000? Sea captains, maybe?

97 posted on 03/20/2016 7:48:51 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutierrez)
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To: lentulusgracchus
"And who would that "new base" be? Professional GOP wiseguys and "consultants"?

Everybody but you and those who think as you do.

98 posted on 03/20/2016 8:13:25 PM PDT by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: ebshumidors
During home from work the other day I saw “Trump” written in the dirt on the back of an eighteen wheeler. Never before.

That clarifies a lot.

Bernie's the Socialist.

Hillary's the Communist.

Trump's the Democrat.

Cruz is the Conservative.

Guess that means Kasich is the "good-government" Bushbot "Stalwart" Old Guard Yacht Club Republican.

99 posted on 03/21/2016 12:00:14 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutierrez)
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To: Mariner
Everybody but you

Bite me, jerk.

100 posted on 03/21/2016 12:24:08 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutierrez)
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