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.
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.
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. 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.