Why Cruz Would Be Better for the GOP
Not only would he have a shot at beating Clinton, he’d give down-ballot Republicans a chance to hold onto Congress.
AP Photo/Darren Hauck
By: Josh Kraushaar@HOTLINEJOSH
March 27, 2016, 11:54 a.m.
This week, I wrote about the looming disaster that a Trump nomination would create for House and Senate Republicans, but I didn’t address the other elephant in the room: Ted Cruz. The conventional wisdom suggests that Cruz is only slightly more electable than Trump—with some party leaders viewing him as even more toxic than the front-runner. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham famously said picking between Trump and Cruz is like choosing between being “shot or poisoned” (even though now he says he’s on the “Ted train.”). But the reality is that Cruz, while a traditionally weak candidate, has a shot to win a presidential election against Hillary Clinton and would give leaders a fighting chance to hold their congressional majorities.
It’s easy to forget that most of the big-picture fundamentals favor Republicans in 2016. Most voters believe the country is headed on the wrong track, Clinton’s favorability numbers have been poor for many months, and there’s a natural desire for change after seven years of one party in power. Even as the Republican Party’s brand has been dismal, the generic congressional ballot has shown that GOP candidates do as well as the Democratic alternatives. This, despite the chaotic clown show that has defined the Republican presidential primary.
If Cruz somehow wins the nomination and presidential election, it won’t be because of his charm, ideological positioning, or ability to attract new Republican voters. It will be because the Republican base united behind him, swing voters couldn’t get behind Hillary Clinton, and the public continued to believe that the country was badly off track. This week’s gruesome terror attacks in Brussels won’t help matters for a Democratic Party whose base doesn’t view national security as a top-tier issue.
At the very least, Cruz wouldn’t be a drag on the party. He’d turn out the Republican base, try to use Clinton’s negatives to drive undecideds his way, and make a credible play for some Hispanic voters. For battleground Senate races, a Cruz candidacy means that Cuban-Americans would show up in south Florida, conservatives would rally behind him in the Milwaukee suburbs, and evangelical voters would be enthused in Missouri. That base-ginning alone isn’t enough for him to win the presidency—or even hold the party’s tenuous Senate majority—but it should keep enough vulnerable GOP Senate candidates within reach of winning their own reelections. And given the GOP’s partisan advantage in enough congressional districts, it’s unlikely that Cruz would cost Paul Ryan his speakership (unlike Trump).
Cruz’s main challenge, however, is winning the nomination without alienating Trump supporters. If Trump doesn’t win the GOP nomination, odds are he’ll run kicking and screaming out of Cleveland and will lambaste the party’s eventual nominee. That underscores how damaging Trump’s candidacy has been to the Republican Party. There’s a good chance that the party will be irrevocably divided no matter who emerges from the convention. And if that’s the case, party officials will be looking to Cruz merely to hold down the damages.
TRAIL MIX
1. Sign of the times: A vulnerable freshman House Republican said he wouldn’t rule out voting for Clinton, if Donald Trump is the Republican presidential nominee. Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo’s surprising comments are a sign of Trump’s toxicity with Cuban-American voters, who traditionally vote Republican. A majority of voters in Curbelo’s district are Hispanic, and the redrawn seat he’s running for in 2016 is more Democratic than his current one. His statement comes less than two weeks after the Florida presidential primary, in which Trump lost the Cuban-American vote by 46 points to Marco Rubio.
Needless to say, if Trump can’t win over Cuban-American Republicans in Florida, it’s almost impossible for him to win Florida and its 29 electoral votes in a general election.
2. One of Trump’s favorite talking points on the campaign trail is his ability to compete in Rust Belt swing states that Republicans haven’t won for decades. His ability to rally low-propensity, blue-collar voters in the primary has even convinced some experts that he’d be able toredraw the electoral map. But there’s no evidence that Trump is any more competitive in the Rust Belt (or his home state of New York) than any other Republican.
Let’s look at the polling. This month’s Keystone poll of Pennsylvania voters showed Clinton leading Trump by 13 points (46-33 percent), a larger margin than her 10-point lead over Ted Cruz. A whopping 65 percent of Pennsylvanians view Trump unfavorably, with 56 percent holding deeply unfavorable views of him. Last month’s Marquette Law survey of Wisconsin voters showed Clinton leading Trump by 10 points, even as she trailed Ted Cruz by 1 point. The only encouraging Rust Belt poll for Trump was out of Ohio, where Quinnipiac found him leading Clinton by 2 in February but suffered from a dismal 35/59 favorability rating.
As The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent reported, Trump would have to improve on Mitt Romney’s margin of victory with blue-collar whites by double-digits in most Rust Belt states to have a shot at winning them—all while not losing any support from college-educated white voters. And for every voter that Trump may win over in Youngstown, Ohio or Macomb County, Michigan, he’d lose even more support among suburbanites in the Philadelphia suburbs and Columbus. Put simply, expecting Trump to run more competitively than Romney in the Midwest relies on fuzzy math.
3. A tale of two presidential insurgents, by the numbers: Trump has won 37.11 percent of the Republican primary and caucus votes so far (7,857,955 votes). Bernie Sanders has won 41.07 percent of the Democratic votes (6,447,450 votes). This, according to the indispensable Green Papers website, one of the top resources for tracking the nomination.
Not only would he have a shot at beating Clinton, he’d give down-ballot Republicans a chance to hold onto Congress.
AP Photo/Darren Hauck
By: Josh Kraushaar@HOTLINEJOSH
March 27, 2016, 11:54 a.m.
This week, I wrote about the looming disaster that a Trump nomination would create for House and Senate Republicans, but I didn’t address the other elephant in the room: Ted Cruz. The conventional wisdom suggests that Cruz is only slightly more electable than Trump—with some party leaders viewing him as even more toxic than the front-runner. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham famously said picking between Trump and Cruz is like choosing between being “shot or poisoned” (even though now he says he’s on the “Ted train.”). But the reality is that Cruz, while a traditionally weak candidate, has a shot to win a presidential election against Hillary Clinton and would give leaders a fighting chance to hold their congressional majorities.
It’s easy to forget that most of the big-picture fundamentals favor Republicans in 2016. Most voters believe the country is headed on the wrong track, Clinton’s favorability numbers have been poor for many months, and there’s a natural desire for change after seven years of one party in power. Even as the Republican Party’s brand has been dismal, the generic congressional ballot has shown that GOP candidates do as well as the Democratic alternatives. This, despite the chaotic clown show that has defined the Republican presidential primary.
If Cruz somehow wins the nomination and presidential election, it won’t be because of his charm, ideological positioning, or ability to attract new Republican voters. It will be because the Republican base united behind him, swing voters couldn’t get behind Hillary Clinton, and the public continued to believe that the country was badly off track. This week’s gruesome terror attacks in Brussels won’t help matters for a Democratic Party whose base doesn’t view national security as a top-tier issue.
At the very least, Cruz wouldn’t be a drag on the party. He’d turn out the Republican base, try to use Clinton’s negatives to drive undecideds his way, and make a credible play for some Hispanic voters. For battleground Senate races, a Cruz candidacy means that Cuban-Americans would show up in south Florida, conservatives would rally behind him in the Milwaukee suburbs, and evangelical voters would be enthused in Missouri. That base-ginning alone isn’t enough for him to win the presidency—or even hold the party’s tenuous Senate majority—but it should keep enough vulnerable GOP Senate candidates within reach of winning their own reelections. And given the GOP’s partisan advantage in enough congressional districts, it’s unlikely that Cruz would cost Paul Ryan his speakership (unlike Trump).
Cruz’s main challenge, however, is winning the nomination without alienating Trump supporters. If Trump doesn’t win the GOP nomination, odds are he’ll run kicking and screaming out of Cleveland and will lambaste the party’s eventual nominee. That underscores how damaging Trump’s candidacy has been to the Republican Party. There’s a good chance that the party will be irrevocably divided no matter who emerges from the convention. And if that’s the case, party officials will be looking to Cruz merely to hold down the damages.
TRAIL MIX
1. Sign of the times: A vulnerable freshman House Republican said he wouldn’t rule out voting for Clinton, if Donald Trump is the Republican presidential nominee. Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo’s surprising comments are a sign of Trump’s toxicity with Cuban-American voters, who traditionally vote Republican. A majority of voters in Curbelo’s district are Hispanic, and the redrawn seat he’s running for in 2016 is more Democratic than his current one. His statement comes less than two weeks after the Florida presidential primary, in which Trump lost the Cuban-American vote by 46 points to Marco Rubio.
Needless to say, if Trump can’t win over Cuban-American Republicans in Florida, it’s almost impossible for him to win Florida and its 29 electoral votes in a general election.
2. One of Trump’s favorite talking points on the campaign trail is his ability to compete in Rust Belt swing states that Republicans haven’t won for decades. His ability to rally low-propensity, blue-collar voters in the primary has even convinced some experts that he’d be able toredraw the electoral map. But there’s no evidence that Trump is any more competitive in the Rust Belt (or his home state of New York) than any other Republican.
Let’s look at the polling. This month’s Keystone poll of Pennsylvania voters showed Clinton leading Trump by 13 points (46-33 percent), a larger margin than her 10-point lead over Ted Cruz. A whopping 65 percent of Pennsylvanians view Trump unfavorably, with 56 percent holding deeply unfavorable views of him. Last month’s Marquette Law survey of Wisconsin voters showed Clinton leading Trump by 10 points, even as she trailed Ted Cruz by 1 point. The only encouraging Rust Belt poll for Trump was out of Ohio, where Quinnipiac found him leading Clinton by 2 in February but suffered from a dismal 35/59 favorability rating.
As The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent reported, Trump would have to improve on Mitt Romney’s margin of victory with blue-collar whites by double-digits in most Rust Belt states to have a shot at winning them—all while not losing any support from college-educated white voters. And for every voter that Trump may win over in Youngstown, Ohio or Macomb County, Michigan, he’d lose even more support among suburbanites in the Philadelphia suburbs and Columbus. Put simply, expecting Trump to run more competitively than Romney in the Midwest relies on fuzzy math.
3. A tale of two presidential insurgents, by the numbers: Trump has won 37.11 percent of the Republican primary and caucus votes so far (7,857,955 votes). Bernie Sanders has won 41.07 percent of the Democratic votes (6,447,450 votes). This, according to the indispensable Green Papers website, one of the top resources for tracking the nomination.
