Posted on 12/19/2014 9:07:03 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
National Review’s Eliana Johnson, in writing about Texas Senator Ted Cruz, begins her article this way:
To hell with the independents. That’s not usually the animating principle of a presidential campaign, but for Ted Cruz’s, it just might be.
His strategists aren’t planning to make a big play for so-called independent voters in the general election if Cruz wins the Republican nomination. According to several of the senator’s top advisers, Cruz sees a path to victory that relies instead on increasing conservative turnout; attracting votes from groups — including Jews, Hispanics, and Millennials — that have tended to favor Democrats; and, in the words of one Cruz strategist, “not getting killed with independents.”
Ms. Johnson went on to quote a Cruz adviser saying, “winning independents has meant not winning,” with the argument being that doing what it takes to win over independents has the effect of dampening enthusiasm among the base.
This approach has been tried before. In his masterful book The Making of the President 1964, Theodore White wrote:
One must begin with the political theory that accompanied the cause Goldwater championed. The theory held that for a generation the American people had been offered, in the two great parties, a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee; and that somewhere in the American electorate was hidden a great and frustrated conservative majority. Given a choice, not an echo, ran the theory, the homeless conservatives would come swarming to the polls to overwhelm the “collectivists,” the liberals, the “socialists,” and restore virtue to its rightful place in American leadership. The campaign of 1964 was to be the great testing of this theory.
The result was that Lyndon Johnson won with what at the time was the greatest vote, the greatest margin, and the greatest percentage (61 percent) that any president had ever drawn from the American people. By the time the dust settled, Democrats held 68 out of 100 Senate seats, 295 out of 435 House seats, 33 governorships, and Republicans had lost more than 500 seats in the state legislatures around the country.
The political theory that is accompanying the cause Cruz is championing sounds similar to the one that guided Goldwater’s. To be sure, there are differences between now and then, including the fact that Goldwater was running against a popular sitting president at a time when the economy was growing and LBJ was was running as the successor of a beloved president who had been assassinated only a year earlier. Still, some of us worry the results would be too similar.
A campaign in which strategists openly declare that winning independents is a trap for losers foreshadows what’s to come. It’s hard to see how it would lead to victory in a nation in which the core supporters of the GOP are shrinking with every election (since 1996, the white share of the eligible voting population has dropped about 2 percentage points every four years). Nor is it clear how Cruz would have any special appeal to traditionally non-Republican voters. Someone like Senator Marco Rubio or Governor John Kasich would have a good deal more success, I would think.
I could be wrong, of course, and if Senator Cruz gets his way, the campaign of 2016 will be the great testing of his theory.
Absolutely true. But the current media are far more pervasively and overtly aggressive against conservatives, and EVERYONE in the media (including FOX) will be trying to bring Ted down. While Ted is my candidate, I don’t kid myself into thinking his victory will require anything less than a Herculean effort and an unprecedented groundswell of grassroots support.
I will raise $2million dollars or die trying. It is relatively easy to raise $50,000 to $100,000 with some effort.
Do these people realize, we have spent over two decades suffering through the following moderate losses....GHWB re-election once he abandoned Reagan’s views, Dole, McCain and Romney? GWB ran as a conservative, both socially and on defense and tax cuts, and squeaked by once...riding 9/11 to a closer than necessary reelection.
The only template to look at is Reagan. Whoever is closest to that blueprint has the best chance of winning, period.
This is at least the third article on this in a major political publication.
It is a full court press coming from Prince Rebus’ office.
True and decent and intelligent and 100% Americans will vote for a man like Cruz. Those who vote otherwise, whether they know it or not, will be voting for America to continue on the path to disaster.
If this is indeed Cruz’s strategy, it’s very odd.
Really difficult to imagine a campaign that ignores independents and still draws votes from normally Democratic groups.
The reason the conventional wisdom is the conventional wisdom is that it’s right.
The path to victory is to rally the base and pull enough independents to win.
Recent GOP candidates have attempted to appeal to independents while ignoring or denigrating the base. That doesn’t work well.
I remember the little flower girl and the A-Bomb ad. It seems as if that was all people were talking about. It sure did help sink a good candidate.
True, and that election based on national mourning, was the last time the white vote went democrat, and it was only the third time that the democrats won the vote of Protestant America, the other two times being 1932, and 1936.
We know that Romney cleaned up with independents, he easily won them, yet lost an election that the republicans couldn’t lose against what was Jimmy Carter’s second term.
And the theory was correct!!!, when it was employed by the right person (Reagan). Reagan ran on the exact same issues as Goldwater and won the most lopsided victories in presidential history. A victory given to him by... “the silent majority” Goldwater knew existed, but couldn't get to vote for “him”. You see the man and the message are two different issues. You can agree 100% with what someone is saying and still not like “them” but when the same message is espoused by the “right” person, they will win overwhelmingly.
The rest are disaffected conservatives or liberals too pissed off that their party isn't far enough right or left.
When a REAL conservative runs, he will pick up ALL of the disaffected conservatives that only call themselves “independents” because they are disgusted with how liberal the GOP has become. The base will then come out in mass, the silent majority will vote and the remaining independents seeing the writing on the wall of who's going to win, will also vote for the conservative.
I agree with you and the comment by 2DV as well. The real question for me is pretty simple. My assumption is that Ted Cruz is going to be the overwhelming Free Republic choice for President in 2016. I could wrong about that - it's happened a few times. But if I'm right then:
What can we do and should we do to further his campaign that goes beyond sending our hard earned $Bucks to Ted Cruz For President?
We have to see who’s actually running.
I’ll vote for him in the November election but likely not in the primary.
I’m hoping (probably in vain) for a hiatus from lawyers and Ivy Leaguers.
28 straight years is enough.
And if this comes down to a populist shootout with Warren, we’ll probably lose because the journ-0-lists will make Cruze the “official candidate of Goldman Sachs” due to his wife.
I agree. I see no evidence Cruz does not care about independents. I also see little evidence he is going after democrats. Cruz has no grand strategy that I can see. He just plays by the book and calls them as he sees them.
Right, because Mitt pissed all over his base to suck up to the media and independents.
Thanks, this will help people to remember it.
How rinos lose elections, including to Jimmy Carter’s second term on the edge of a depression.
The governor who gave America gay marriage, who had been running on homosexualizing the military and Boy Scouts since 1994, who was the most passionate, and sincere, pro-abortion republican that any of us have ever seen, and who ran against the GOP pro-life platform and being pro-abortion, he even ran pro-abortion ads in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Virginia.
Romney was the first nominee in history to win hugely among the independents, yet lose the race, and he did it in an election that couldn’t lose.
—Romney first to win independents big, lose election
—”Whoever wins independent voters in Ohio, wins Ohio,” Beeson said on “Fox News Sunday,” two days before the election.
He was, of course, wrong. Romney won self-identified Independents in Ohio by a overwhelming 10 points, according to exit polls, but lost the state to President Barack Obama by 2 points.
A similar trend was seen across much of the country — Romney won among Independents by 5 points, 50-45, but lost to Obama, 51-48.
—INFOGRAPHIC: Obama Lost Independent Vote In Almost Every Swing State
The president only won the independent vote in one battleground state: North Carolina.
Things looked very different for Obama in 2008, when independent voters came out in huge numbers to support him.
Just before Election Day, the Wall Street Journal reported those polling numbers had hardly changed, with Romney overwhelmingly leading among independent voters across the country. Republican pollster Bill McInteruff told the Journal the Democrats were “really flirting with trouble if you’re losing independents by this margin.”
Your Post 18 is very insightful. Thanks.
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