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This Could All Be Over Very Fast
The latest poll shows Ted Cruz opening his lead over Donald Trump in Iowa to nine points — nine points. If Cruz does indeed win in the Iowa caucuses on February 1, he’ll have enough momentum going into the February 9 New Hampshire primary to place second or third. The next primary will take place on February 20 in South Carolina, where the GOP primary voters are deeply conservative — and, I suspect, likely to give Cruz first place. Three days later the caucuses in Nevada will take place. Receiving little attention in the press, this event will be determined largely by organization on the ground — giving the advantage to Cruz once again.
Which brings us to March 1 and Super Tuesday, when two states will hold GOP caucuses and another ten — including southern states, where Cruz polls well, and his home state of Texas — will hold primaries. If by then Cruz has indeed won Iowa, done well in New Hampshire, and won again in South Carolina, then on Super Tuesday he’s likely to prove dominant.
It stands to reason that Marco Rubio will do well in the Florida primary on March 15 — but it could all be over by then.
All this is predicated, again, on Cruz’s winning in Iowa five weeks from now — and that makes five weeks in which anything might happen, including a collapse in his numbers. But as of now it looks to me as if Ted Cruz will indeed win in Iowa — and that the scenario I sketched out above is entirely plausible.
Published in General
If Ted Cruz is clever enough to win the Republican nomination, I think that means he’s clever enough to win the general election (or at least have a good shot at it). He’s extremely intelligent.
If Cruz is not clever enough to win the Republican nomination, then I’ll feel a lot better with Rubio as the candidate, since he would presumably have the charisma and appeal to be the best shot at beating Hillary. I like Rubio, but I like Cruz better.
The only thing that makes me nervous is Trump. I’m sort of grateful for Trump, in that I don’t know that Cruz would be ahead like he is without the disruption caused by Trump. But if Trump actually gets the nomination, or causes a brokered convention, then I will be very ungrateful.
A good summary of where I stand, though I lean Rubio.
Keep up Majestyk. We got moving and shaking going on. Pay attention.
Quite. The result of the primary will be its own predictor about success in the general.
The world has become even more dangerous without Grahambo in the race.
Agree. Contrast Ted Cruz calling Mitch McConnell a liar on the Senate Floor and his cutting demeanor in the last debate with what HRC had had to endure during the dem primary.
The media can soft ball her all they want. If Ted Cruz makes it to the general I don’t think he will repeat the mistake of Mitt Romney after the first debate.
I think it is more likely he puts his cowboy boot on her throat in the first debate and leaves it there until November. She hasn’t experienced that this cycle.
I often wonder who might have entered the race if not for Jeb’s entering early, hogging all the money and big-footing around. I remember when Rubio entered, there were nearly audible gasps that Rubio would dare challenge Jeb. Were there other, better ‘compromise’ candidates that were discouraged from entering to give Jeb ‘clear sailing’?
Just something I’ve been wondering.
Who? Mitch Daniels was not going to run.
I think everyone jumped in – Perry, Walker, etc. They just never convinced enough people.
Well, Casey, I’d call that fair enough.
Long live the status quo!
Yes, that was sarcasm. I don’t see much a reformer under Rubio’s highly polished, but very thin, veneer.
The only thing this poll clearly shows is that Ben Carsons voters have moved to Cruz.
Now we have to get the other poser out of the race.
I keep running into statements like “Cruz, Rubio. I’d happily vote for either.” That reflects my feelings, even tho I won’t ever vote for either one.
But it could be a problem for the Republican cause. This is a first-past-the-post match, not a tag-team. Cruz-Rubio, each with 30%, won’t beat Trump at 40%. One of them has to gather the other’s supporters. With people feeling kind of balanced between them, the shift might not happen until too late.
I don’t know sir. I can think of pluses and minuses for each of the remaining participants.
I also think we need to get through at least New Hampshire for clarity.
I often learn things and formulate opinions based on how candidates handle victory or defeat during actual primaries.
Christie is placing above Rubio in NH.
Rubio is dead. He is winning the Ricochet poll and we all know that the Ricochet poll is death on candidates otherwise Scott Walker would be way ahead right now.
So in summation 3 steps secure a quick Cruz nomination:
1. Win the Iowa caucuses (entirely doable for Cruz)
2. Parlay that into a strong showing in the next 3 contests (This is less likely and where your argument breaks down. the number of Rubio/Christie/Bush/Kasich voters more than triples Cruz’so poll numbers in NH most likely they will coalesce around 1 or 2 candidates who will get a significantly larger total than Cruz. SC might swing heavily for Cruz but I don’t see how he has a distinct advantage in Nevada.)
3. Shellac everyone in the SEC primary. (These votes are still mostly proportional, though some have high thresholds, leaving a real blowout unlikely.)
It’s important to remember that of the thousand or so delegates before the 15th proportional delegation could leave all of the candidates with less than 500 pledged going into the winner take all contests. I expect Rubio, or maybe even Bush/Christie/Kasich, to take in 200 on the first day alone.
I think the idea of a quick Cruz sweep is plausible but unlikely.
Lindsay Graham is still alive?
I hear a lot of people (mostly pundits and analysts) pushing the Rubio mystique, but right now he is Mr. 12%. He reached that plateau back in October and has yet to break it. Seems telling.
It is interesting to me that it looks like he has picked up almost none of the retreating Carson poll responders.
And that would cost him a whole lot- causing sympathy for Hillary, an otherwise difficult process. Reagan won because he was a happy warrior, not a dour cutthroat, take-no-prisoners scolder. The broader electorate does not vote for sword-wielding lecturers.
Actually, Cruz just got the social conservative evangelical endorsements in Iowa (Van Der Plaats and Steve King) after Carson had peaked. I expect Iowa to be as irrelevant in 2016 as it was in 2012 and 2008. NH and Florida will tell us a lot more.
You forget that the “scold” in this mix is Hillary — almost by definition. Interesting choice of words on your part.
I think both of his supporters will go to Rubio.
That’s an improvement over past years. It used to be that the “you should like” candidate would be someone like Kasich.
I agree with all of this, and wish we had more like it on Ricochet. It fixes the chief problems with Peter’s post (forgetting about Nevada, failing to spot the degree to which this primary has moved away from having the early states dominate, and offering some math on how those delegates work). It’s not overly strong: there’s no “X cannot win!” or “Y will win” here.
It even has something I can quibble with; the SEC primary isn’t all that Southern this year. There are seven Southern states (AL, AR, GA, OK, TN, TX, and VA), and seven states from the Northeast, Midwest, and the West (WY, VT, ND, MN, MA, CO, and AK). Cruz is likely to win on delegates on the day, because Texas is pretty big. So far, Texas polling doesn’t show Cruz doing all that much better than he does nationwide (UT had him equal with Trump at 27%, a week earlier a larger poll by CBS had him at third place with 14%), but he’s likely to improve a little. What’s less likely is that it will be a landslide; Cruz has a lot of friends in Texas, but also a lot of enemies, many of them in positions to help narrow his margin.
Similarly, polling doesn’t put him a long way from Rubio in Georgia, there hasn’t been polling since September in Alabama (when Cruz came in at 4%), August in Arkansas (8.7%), Oklahoma had him at 18.3%, Rubio at 16.3% in November. Polls have generally shown Rubio leading Cruz in Virginia and Kentucky. So far as I know, no non-Southern Super Tuesday state has had Ted beating Marco in the polls in the last six months.
We don’t know how Super Tuesday will go, but if things were at that level of polling (and no other candidate was getting votes), it appears before Super Tuesday Cruz and Rubio would have two contests each (NH/NV, IA/SC), and on the day Cruz would likely win 6/14 states and Rubio 8/14, with Cruz winning the most delegates, but his success there being diminished by Texan home state expectations. More importantly, he’d look a lot like Huckabee; a regional candidate for the Deep South plus Iowa. That’d be a problem going forward, since there wouldn’t be many contests in the deep south thereafter.
Cruz has more money, so I suspect that things will look better for him than that, and Rubio is more vulnerable to an early knockout (Christie finding a source of money and spending big with his Union Leader endorsement in New Hampshire, for instance, could still win it for him, etc. etc. etc.), and all of this is on the assumption that Trump collapses. If Trump doesn’t collapse, no one knows what will happen.
Yes, this is a big unknown, isn’t it? We are either entering new territory for the GOP or we will see things slam down quickly into a more standard race. Very interesting election season so far.
Go, Ted!
I’m for whoever first says, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.” Then I’ll know we have a winner.
New Q-Poll is good news for Cruz:
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/12/22/new-national-q-poll-has-cruz-four-points-behind-trump/
To all who wonder if Cruz could ever spend enough time at the gym to buff up his likeablity, take a look at last week’s SNL skit which I think nails it.
“If I’m president, I can promise you ISIS will hate me. And how do I know? Because everyone who knows me hates me. Democrats hate me. Republicans hate me. I have what doctors call a punchable face.”
And the bonus is the Ben Carson bit. I won’t spoil it, just make sure you use the ladies/mens room before watching. Oh, and “Jebra.”
Here ya go:
Sounds good to me.
Paul Rahe: “It ought to be a Republican year. The Republicans are running against the Party of the Living Dead. Watch the Democratic debates, and you will see what I mean. But will it be a Republican year? If Cruz is the nominee, will the mainstream Republicans do to him what they did to Goldwater in 1964?”
I see no evidence that it “ought to be a Republican year.” Clinton has the electoral edge that any Dem would. Her support is loyal no matter how many servers she used. Benghazi isn’t sticking, nor the other screw-ups. And the debates are a fiction that only solidifies her acceptance among Liberals. They don’t care about anything other than beating anyone who would threaten the growth of gov’t.
The mainstream will jump on a Cruz bandwagon in the general. They are politicians who fear being left behind should he pull it off. I think the element of patronage is often overlooked/underestimated by conservative posters in these threads.