TED IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT
Five reasons Cruz, not Trump, is your real GOP frontrunner.
By Scott McKay – 4.8.16
When Ted Cruz said, in the aftermath of Tuesday’s bombshell 13-point rout of Donald Trump in the Wisconsin primary, that those results represented a “turning point” in the Republican presidential campaign, he was wrong.
The race had already turned. It turned when Marco Rubio dropped out just before the Arizona primary. Rubio’s name remained on the Arizona ballot and he collected a sizable share of the early vote there. But since the senator from Florida has been fully off the ballot Trump has not won a primary contest; in fact, he hasn’t come close.
In the Utah caucus, which was the same night as the Arizona primary but, being a caucus, didn’t allow for early voting, Cruz took 69 percent of the vote. At the North Dakota state convention, Cruz’s slate of delegates covered 18 of the 23 winners; the other five were unbound. In the Colorado caucuses selecting delegates for two of the state’s congressional districts (the rest of the delegates will be selected at the state convention later this month), Cruz’ delegates carried out a sweep. And then in Wisconsin, an open primary in a purple-to-blue state defined by a mostly-white, mostly-blue collar demographic profile very similar to that of Michigan, where a month earlier Trump had walked away with an easy win, Cruz nearly topped 50 percent.
Yes, the New York primary is the next major contest (the Wyoming and Colorado conventions on the next two Saturdays can be expected to produce the majority of their delegates for Cruz, but they’ll do so largely out of the media’s notice), and yes, Trump will win New York handily. And yes, after New York there will be much focus on the five East Coast primaries in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware and Maryland.
But going forward, Cruz will increasingly be the Republican standard-bearer rather than Trump. Here’s why that’s going to become apparent in the coming days.
1. As Margaret Thatcher said, first you win the argument. Then you win the election. Cruz is winning the argument. He won it convincingly in Wisconsin, a state that on its face should not have been his to win. Cruz beat Trump badly, 65-28, with voters who consider themselves “very conservative.” But he also beat him 47-36 among “somewhat conservatives” and was within 11 points of Trump among moderates. Cruz also tied Trump at 40 among independent voters in the Wisconsin GOP primary, which is telling — Trump has won convincingly among interlopers in open GOP primaries prior to Tuesday.
That’s evidence Cruz is beginning to attract votes from people outside his voting base. He certainly needs to do more of that, but we’re not in a general election yet and his competition isn’t Hillary Clinton yet — it’s Trump.
And while Cruz might need to hone his message, Trump is just losing the argument altogether. How can he win it? He’s spent the last month defending his campaign manager against criminal charges of assault, botching an answer on abortion which inflamed opposition from both the pro-life and pro-choice sides, offering opinions on NATO and Japanese and South Korean nukes far removed from the mainstream, promising to pay off the national debt in eight years when nobody believes that’s possible, tying himself to theNational Enquirer’s sloppy smears against Cruz’s marital fidelity and threatening to sue state Republican parties for following rules his own campaign agreed to.
With all that taken into consideration, one candidate comes off as professional, dignified, intelligent, organized and professional and the other comes off as a boob. Cruz, almost by default, is the former.
2. Cruz isn’t going to the Establishment. The Establishment is coming to him. It’s clear they don’t want to, and this week is a last-gasp of the Stupid Party inside the Beltway as it attempts to gain some leverage over Cruz by planting stories about a “fresh face” parachuting in as the nominee in a brokered convention. But despite Cruz giving his Senate colleagues the finger when he was asked to apologize for having called majority leader Mitch McConnell a liar over the Export-Import Bank being reauthorized in violation of a promise made to the Senate GOP caucus, he’s attracting a small modicum of support there. He’s gaining more support in the House, where he always had some. He’s picking up support from several of his former presidential opponents — Rick Perry, Carly Fiorina, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham.
Have deals been cut for that support? Perhaps. We know Trump cut a deal to get Ben Carson’s support, because Carson admitted it. Cruz will at some point need to soften his rhetoric in order to bring the middle aboard and he’ll want to give the remaining uncommitted Republicans in D.C. an opportunity to come aboard his bandwagon without abandoning his basic message of change to how Washington does business, but accusations that Cruz is a sell-out or some sort of Trojan Horse, as Trump declared in a petulant sore-loser statement after losing to him in Wisconsin, don’t really wash.
3. The East Coast isn’t as solid for Trump as Trump thinks. He’s going to win New York, but New York isn’t a winner-take-all state. Only 14 of the 95 delegates at stake are based on the statewide vote; the other 81 are allocated, three apiece, in the state’s 27 congressional districts. If Trump can top 50 percent in those districts and statewide he’ll capture the three (in districts where he manages a majority) or 14 (for the statewide vote). But if he’s short, the delegates will be apportioned on a proportional basis to candidates receiving 20 percent.
That might not help Cruz a lot. The most recent poll, by Monmouth University, of the Empire State showed him in third place at 17, and Trump over 50. But Trump’s share of the vote by both Monmouth and CBS News is only 52; if his current slide continues and/or he underperforms, he could well drop below 50 statewide and bleed delegates in those congressional districts. Cruz, meanwhile, is camping out in New York City; on Wednesday he was in the Bronx, because while there are heavily-Democrat congressional districts throughout some of the tougher parts of the Big Apple, the vote in those districts counts toward the same number of delegates as heavily-Republican areas. It may be paradoxical, but Iowa-style retail politics in New York could be the best way to pick up delegates in Trump’s home state.
Beyond New York, the Pennsylvania primary yields a vast majority of unbound delegates — winning the popular vote there doesn’t mean much. Connecticut and Rhode Island have few delegates and are proportional anyway. And what little polling there is in Maryland and Delaware indicates Cruz could well be competitive. Trump should rack up a nice victory in New Jersey; that might end up being his best state of those remaining.
(article continued on next post)
Five reasons Cruz, not Trump, is your real GOP frontrunner.
By Scott McKay – 4.8.16
When Ted Cruz said, in the aftermath of Tuesday’s bombshell 13-point rout of Donald Trump in the Wisconsin primary, that those results represented a “turning point” in the Republican presidential campaign, he was wrong.
The race had already turned. It turned when Marco Rubio dropped out just before the Arizona primary. Rubio’s name remained on the Arizona ballot and he collected a sizable share of the early vote there. But since the senator from Florida has been fully off the ballot Trump has not won a primary contest; in fact, he hasn’t come close.
In the Utah caucus, which was the same night as the Arizona primary but, being a caucus, didn’t allow for early voting, Cruz took 69 percent of the vote. At the North Dakota state convention, Cruz’s slate of delegates covered 18 of the 23 winners; the other five were unbound. In the Colorado caucuses selecting delegates for two of the state’s congressional districts (the rest of the delegates will be selected at the state convention later this month), Cruz’ delegates carried out a sweep. And then in Wisconsin, an open primary in a purple-to-blue state defined by a mostly-white, mostly-blue collar demographic profile very similar to that of Michigan, where a month earlier Trump had walked away with an easy win, Cruz nearly topped 50 percent.
Yes, the New York primary is the next major contest (the Wyoming and Colorado conventions on the next two Saturdays can be expected to produce the majority of their delegates for Cruz, but they’ll do so largely out of the media’s notice), and yes, Trump will win New York handily. And yes, after New York there will be much focus on the five East Coast primaries in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware and Maryland.
But going forward, Cruz will increasingly be the Republican standard-bearer rather than Trump. Here’s why that’s going to become apparent in the coming days.
1. As Margaret Thatcher said, first you win the argument. Then you win the election. Cruz is winning the argument. He won it convincingly in Wisconsin, a state that on its face should not have been his to win. Cruz beat Trump badly, 65-28, with voters who consider themselves “very conservative.” But he also beat him 47-36 among “somewhat conservatives” and was within 11 points of Trump among moderates. Cruz also tied Trump at 40 among independent voters in the Wisconsin GOP primary, which is telling — Trump has won convincingly among interlopers in open GOP primaries prior to Tuesday.
That’s evidence Cruz is beginning to attract votes from people outside his voting base. He certainly needs to do more of that, but we’re not in a general election yet and his competition isn’t Hillary Clinton yet — it’s Trump.
And while Cruz might need to hone his message, Trump is just losing the argument altogether. How can he win it? He’s spent the last month defending his campaign manager against criminal charges of assault, botching an answer on abortion which inflamed opposition from both the pro-life and pro-choice sides, offering opinions on NATO and Japanese and South Korean nukes far removed from the mainstream, promising to pay off the national debt in eight years when nobody believes that’s possible, tying himself to theNational Enquirer’s sloppy smears against Cruz’s marital fidelity and threatening to sue state Republican parties for following rules his own campaign agreed to.
With all that taken into consideration, one candidate comes off as professional, dignified, intelligent, organized and professional and the other comes off as a boob. Cruz, almost by default, is the former.
2. Cruz isn’t going to the Establishment. The Establishment is coming to him. It’s clear they don’t want to, and this week is a last-gasp of the Stupid Party inside the Beltway as it attempts to gain some leverage over Cruz by planting stories about a “fresh face” parachuting in as the nominee in a brokered convention. But despite Cruz giving his Senate colleagues the finger when he was asked to apologize for having called majority leader Mitch McConnell a liar over the Export-Import Bank being reauthorized in violation of a promise made to the Senate GOP caucus, he’s attracting a small modicum of support there. He’s gaining more support in the House, where he always had some. He’s picking up support from several of his former presidential opponents — Rick Perry, Carly Fiorina, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham.
Have deals been cut for that support? Perhaps. We know Trump cut a deal to get Ben Carson’s support, because Carson admitted it. Cruz will at some point need to soften his rhetoric in order to bring the middle aboard and he’ll want to give the remaining uncommitted Republicans in D.C. an opportunity to come aboard his bandwagon without abandoning his basic message of change to how Washington does business, but accusations that Cruz is a sell-out or some sort of Trojan Horse, as Trump declared in a petulant sore-loser statement after losing to him in Wisconsin, don’t really wash.
3. The East Coast isn’t as solid for Trump as Trump thinks. He’s going to win New York, but New York isn’t a winner-take-all state. Only 14 of the 95 delegates at stake are based on the statewide vote; the other 81 are allocated, three apiece, in the state’s 27 congressional districts. If Trump can top 50 percent in those districts and statewide he’ll capture the three (in districts where he manages a majority) or 14 (for the statewide vote). But if he’s short, the delegates will be apportioned on a proportional basis to candidates receiving 20 percent.
That might not help Cruz a lot. The most recent poll, by Monmouth University, of the Empire State showed him in third place at 17, and Trump over 50. But Trump’s share of the vote by both Monmouth and CBS News is only 52; if his current slide continues and/or he underperforms, he could well drop below 50 statewide and bleed delegates in those congressional districts. Cruz, meanwhile, is camping out in New York City; on Wednesday he was in the Bronx, because while there are heavily-Democrat congressional districts throughout some of the tougher parts of the Big Apple, the vote in those districts counts toward the same number of delegates as heavily-Republican areas. It may be paradoxical, but Iowa-style retail politics in New York could be the best way to pick up delegates in Trump’s home state.
Beyond New York, the Pennsylvania primary yields a vast majority of unbound delegates — winning the popular vote there doesn’t mean much. Connecticut and Rhode Island have few delegates and are proportional anyway. And what little polling there is in Maryland and Delaware indicates Cruz could well be competitive. Trump should rack up a nice victory in New Jersey; that might end up being his best state of those remaining.
(article continued on next post)