Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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
Cruz isn’t my preference–Mitt Romney is–but at least, it he gets the nomination, I can again needle everyone thought the 2013 Shutdown was a bad idea–I thought it was a wonderful tactic.
Amen to paragraph 2.
The critical question is Senator Cruz electable and if he gets the nomination can he defeat Hilary Clinton.
Other than the media, David Brooks, James of England and some of the establishment types in the GOP and NR — who says he can’t get the nomination AND beat Hillary? And why can’t he?
There just seems to be an echo chamber about Cruz not being liked and the usual suspects are repeating it whenever they get the chance. Very little of substance is ever given. James seems to think that he’s changed his positions and been slippery on some issues. Why did James then support Mitt? There must be something more, surely. Even Mark Steyn isn’t going full against Cruz.
The critical question for me is whether I will support Cruz. I had some reservations – still do in fact – but I have recently learned, after having finally listened to him and watched him – that some of the people had misled me about his likability and intelligence. I suspect it was done out of bad motives, and I suspect that other people will come to like him more, the more they actually get to hear and watch him. So while I was disappointed that Walker and Perry dropped out of the race (and Jindal, too) I am glad that at least one person worth supporting is still in it.
Cruz’s recent stand on ethanol subsidies makes me think I had badly underestimated him as recently as six weeks ago.
Mitt changed his position on fewer issues, over a longer time and generally by very small degrees.
My distaste for Cruz preceded most of his flip flops; he hadn’t been in the Senate long enough to both formulate and repudiate his policies when he started behaving poorly. Indeed, it’s kind of astonishing that he’s been able to clock up his shifts as swiftly as he has.
Still, the shifts are merely evidence for a conclusion that I had come to previously, from speaking to people who spent time with him and from watching him act, that the man has no principles. This combines with my sense that the man has no decency, and my bitter experience of knocking on doors and being told that voters won’t turn out for Ron Johnson, Matt Bevin, and other clear conservative causes because Cruz has persuaded them that non-Cruz Republicans aren’t worth it.
Contrast Romney’s principles and decency. There is a reason that no one who has known Cruz after college is endorsing him, and that Romney was endorsed by swathes of people, with volunteers turning up in huge numbers from incidental contact with what they could tell was a great and good man. Contrast Romney’s incessant campaigning for others, in all factions of the party.
Romney was also brilliant on substance, with a record of political jujitsu that saw him repeatedly getting conservative measures through an 85% Democratic legislature. On the matters closest to my heart (trade and Iraq), Romney understood the issues in detail and arrived at similar conclusions to me. Cruz, on the other hand, seems reluctant to learn anything but the most superficial details of either issue, and has taken deeply regrettable stances on both (although, to be fair, he has abandoned his initial stances on both issues). It is in large part thanks to opposition from Cruz that Obama did not launch air strikes in 2012 that could easily have prevented ISIS from ever developing into a problem in Iraq. TPP can probably survive his perfidy, but it’s still regrettable that he would choose pandering over his previously claimed principle.
Running by continually proclaiming one’s honesty and trustworthiness would make one a paper tiger even if one were actually an honest man. For Cruz, it marks him as following in the footsteps of his predecessor, John Edwards, and his St. Elizabeth campaign.
I agree that the ethanol stance is good news, but only because it clarifies that the polls support an anti-ethanol stance.
Romney lost. Get over it.
All of our 2012 candidates lost. I wasn’t expressing discontent with this, merely explaining why I feel differently about Cruz and Romney in response to the implied question from Larry.
I am a veteran of Reagan’s successful campaign– I started off as a foot soldier, and but had been promoted to be the equivalent of an NCO, so to speak, when Reagan finally triumphed over Jimmy Carter.
I was young then. But, one of the things that is rarely commented on when discussing that campaign was the presence of so many YOUNG PEOPLE who flocked to Reagan’s banner and did battle for him. Reagan was old. And some of the people at the top were fairly old, also. But the overwhelming majority of the people who fought through the primaries and then the general election on Reagan’s behalf were just kids, like me.
Legend has it that young people reflexively flock to Democrats. That’s nonsense, of course. And Reagan’s two campaigns should have put the legend to rest, once and for all.
For me, personally, the truly striking feature of every Republican presidential campaign (I’ve been involved in all of them) since Reagan has been the absence of young people.
Based entirely on my casual observations, George W. Bush had a fair number of young people working for him– more so than any other candidate since Reagan, but far fewer than Reagan had.
I’m not sure that this really means much, at all. And i have no idea what it was about Reagan that inspired so many of us to go to work for him. But, over the years, I have sort of come to the conclusion that candidates who cannot generate this sort of enthusiasm among young people are pretty much destined to lose their elections.
I prefer Rubio to Cruz, for a number of reasons. But, having watched Ted work a crowd on numerous occasions, I have to acknowledge that Ted generates much more excitement among young people than any other candidate this season– including Rubio.
I was at some conference a number of years ago where Ted was one of the speakers. It was my first opportunity to hear him speak to an audience. When listening to political speeches, I never watch the speaker– I watch the faces of the crowd and try to gauge their response to the speech. On this occasion, as soon as Ted wrapped up his speech and headed off the stage, I watched every member of the audience under the age of, say, 35 immediately get up out their seats and head towards Ted– to meet him, or to be close to him, or something. It was astonishing. He was like a magnetic force pulling all of these kids towards him. I hadn’t seen anything like this since Reagan. And it made a huge impression on me.
I’ve seen Ted in action numerous times since then, and I always see the same thing: Ted wraps up his speech and all of these magnificent and beautiful young people flock to his side to express their enthusiasm and support.
No other candidate has this sort of thing going on. Trump’s crowds are all bitter old people. Rubio’s crowds are a good mix of young and old, but after Marco talks, the young people remain seated.
I would advise anybody who gets a chance to attend a Cruz event to note the phenomenon that I am describing here. Go to any Cruz event and watch him being smothered by young people afterwards– just as Reagan used to get smothered by young people after his speeches.
Maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all. But, my intuition tells me that something is going on with Cruz that others are not observing.
Reagan was considered very unlikable by the “experts” when he ran. But when he ran he generated wild enthusiasm among the young people like me. To us, he was a rock star. And countless numbers of us pretty much dropped everything that we were doing in order to help impel him into the White House.
Yes, Marco has one certain kind of “it” factor. And Ted has an entirely different kind of “it” factor.
If, as i suspect, generating wild enthusiasm among the young is a reasonable predictor of electoral success, then I am going to give Cruz the edge in any Rubio/Cruz matchup. And I say this in spite of the fact that I think Rubio is, in most ways, a better candidate than Cruz.
Raconteur: very interesting.
James: thanks for responding. I still don’t know what is so bad about these things:
Still, James — interesting items but not a lot of explanation nor description of what he actually did (see bolds above). I trust that you can back each of these statements with some anecdote or article and I don’t insist on this at this time because of that trust in you. But, I have also noticed two things about your serious level of hatred for a candidate or historical figure:
So, James, my approach is fundamentally different than yours and the GOP elites. I think the frog is fully being boiled right now and they don’t. There should be alarm bells going off all over the capitol but there aren’t. This is where the GOP has really let us down. They need to get people who are able to fight on the ground where the enemy really is. But, instead they fight the ones who agree with me on the how bad things are in the country.
I was amused that you have been putting up posts that talk in optimistic terms about the fundamentals in the country and how they are improving. I understand this way of thinking and if it’s not Pollyanish then I can understand doing this.
But, our side has lost some fundamental battles that have deeply damaged society in America and we don’t have to lose these:
Very interesting. I hadn’t heard any of this before, though I’m not surprised at the lack of young enthusiasm for Dole/Bush/McCain etc.
I was less than half my current age when Reagan won, though maybe still older than the people you’re talking about. Maybe I was already too old to understand this phenomenon.
I actually preferred Ford to be the candidate in 1980, but he didn’t get anywhere. I got enthusiastic about Reagan after election, when he went to work on his agenda.
I was 29 in 1980 and I started the election season as a Carter Democrat (I voted for him in 1976) and ended after the 2nd debate (or so) fully in support of Reagan. So, I was working and a little older too but I knew a lot of super enthusiastic young people who really loved Reagan.
I was 32 in 1980.
It would be good if Raconteur’s comment could be made into a post, and then put on the main feed.
Agreed.
Raconteur? What about it? Put it up and let’s see what happens.
Regarding Churchill, you seem pretty ticked at Obama for far smaller constitutional infringements than eviscerating a chamber of the legislature. If you find Obamacare irksome, I don’t see why you can’t see me as being legitimately irked by the creation of an individual mandate in the UK. If you find Obama’s damage to the economy worthy of ire, why object to complaints about tax hikes larger than any US President has ever achieved? What is it about Obama that makes his miniature versions of Churchill’s reforms that makes it obnoxious when he does it?
I should note that I don’t hate Churchill, I’m sad that the UK lost its constitution at his hands, but I think that that was just because he was misguided. It’s generally the case that I don’t hate progressives for being wrong. I don’t hate Newt, either, although there is more dislike there; Newt did what Newt believed to be wrong, to great cost to the country.
Regarding Newt, his breach of his own ethics, as he described it, was one of the primary factors in re-electing Obama. Again, I cannot imagine how would you not only find that not to be irritating, but not see how others might find it so. Obviously, in both cases, this is just a part of my reason for disapproval, and in both cases there were mitigating factors.
It’s not true. I volunteered for the Romney ’08 campaign, but I didn’t take part in the Romney ’12 campaign.
Almost everyone can tell that candidates they don’t like won’t win elections. They also generally believe that candidates they do like will win them. They’re right some of the time and they’re wrong some of the time. As Kasich’s plausible path to the Presidency opens up reminds us, no one can predict elections reliably before they happen. Had things gone differently, they’d have gone differently (with Newt being one of the key unfortunate variables).
Thankfully, Newt knew better than his dead enders, and did not run this cycle; I don’t believe that he will run again.
Fortunately, while I don’t think that Cruz has Newt’s ethics (I really believe Newt did struggle before doing the wrong thing, as he says he did), Cruz has a future career to protect, so it seems likely that he will not produce a King of Bain and that he will participate in the Convention in a positive manner if he loses.
Did you comment on my border security post? Do you believe that border security has ever been comparably good? I’ll have one on internal enforcement soon.
Our abortion rate has gone down to 1973 levels. It appears likely to continue to decline. The 1960s and 1970s were bad decades, but we’ve been winning since then; the abortion legal and cultural climate is significantly better now than when Reagan took over. Hence, if Reagan wasn’t fully boiled, we’re at least some distance from being fully boiled on this issue now.
We appear to have won it. I get that you’re sad that we didn’t win it in the way that you prefer, but we win most elections and most issues using the approach that you decry. I feel like you should accept that it doesn’t always fail.
Sure. On the assumption that you mean the withdrawal of support from the Vietnamese, Kerry, and such, then I don’t see how we could disagree here.
Well, maybe. I don’t know how things would have gone if Nixon had remained. The GOP elites in the 1970s were quite a long way to the left of the GOP elites today, though. Reagan had to pick Schweiker as VP in ’76. There’s no comparable pressure today. The Schweikers have left the party and the closest alternatives (Pataki, Collins) don’t appear on any VP shortlists I’ve seen.
I agree that Kerry was a lousy guy. I’m glad we beat him. I agree that Clinton behaved badly in that, and I hope we beat her. I think the Bill sex stuff probably has more impact for being fresh now, though. What else should have been done?
The other party really does get to choose its champions. No party has ever been able to deny that to its opposition (except, I guess, through criminal trials for DeLay and such; is that what you’re calling for?)
I’m pretty sure that we won convincingly in 2004, with coattails. Maybe another approach would have worked better, but it doesn’t seem like enough to assert that it obviously would have done.
But I gather I’m not allowed to be irritated by this.
We should work to defeat them, but we shouldn’t be angry that they exist. We’ve always had bad guys in America; American success comes through victory, not through a lack of obstacles.
Larry– My comment above was dashed off quickly and haphazardly, and it only vaguely suggests some of my thoughts on the subject of how a candidate can win an election.
It’s something that I have been thinking about a lot, ever since I first witnessed Ted’s allure for young people. And it is something that I have been talking about in private conversations for some time now. I’ve thought about clarifying my thoughts on the subject and writing it up for Ricochet– but I have hesitated, because I wasn’t sure that my ideas were of much interest to the folks on Ricochet.
Personally, I think that there is still a lot to be learned from Reagan’s first run for the WH… Having been a participant, I am very aware of many aspects of that campaign that have been ignored by historians– and have been forgotten by some of the operatives who waged that campaign with me.
If you really think that I might have something relevant to say, than I will attempt to put together a post tomorrow.
Yes, I think it is an important aspect of Reagan that as you put together the story seems to be worthy of more discussion. Put it out there and see what it generates.
Larry– I just put up a post on the member feed.
I’m reading it now. Thanks. And thanks to
The Reticulator for thinking of it.