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A Tale of Two Senators
He was the most conservative of senators; He was nearly the most conservative of senators. He rode to office on a wave of anti-establishment support; He also rode to office on a wave of anti-establishment support. He supported amnesty (or lied about it); He also supported amnesty. Really, there wasn’t a dime’s worth of policy difference between them. Yet one was the darling of the right, and one was the establishment hack.
Narratives can take on a life of their own. Nowhere is this more evident than the contest between Senators Cruz and Rubio. By any objective measurement, the two are remarkably similar in terms of voting records and preferred policy positions. Despite this reality, it has become almost a cliché that Cruz is the anti-establishment hero of the right, while Rubio is a puppet of GOP leadership.
Cruz boasts an impressive 100% rating from Heritage Action. Rubio holds a meager 94%. For reference, the average Republican in the Senate scores a 60%. Perhaps you feel the Heritage Foundation is just an arm of the illuminati establishment, and uses these score cards to trick you into voting for their preferred lapdogs. We can instead look at the American Conservative Union’s ratings if you prefer, though they rate the contest closer. Rubio’s 98% lifetime rating is technically lower than Cruz’s 100%, though in practice you need a magnifying glass to detect the differences. Club for Growth has Rubio at 93%, to Cruz’s 96%.
Rubio’s detractors often point to National Journal’s ranking of him as only the 17th most conservative senator as a sign that he is not far enough to the right to get their support. “Establishment tool!” they exclaim, seemingly unaware that the National Journal bases it rankings on how members vote in relation to party leadership. Rubio’s low rating is innately tied to how often he disagrees with Mitch McConnell. Scoring poorly on a loyalty ranking is now considered evidence of being too deferential to party leadership.
Rubio’s problem with many voters on the right is no mystery. He supported the Gang of 8 immigration bill, which included amnesty for illegal immigrants. It is a black mark on his record matched only by Cruz’s support for the same bill. Cruz promised to support the bill once certain amendments were made. None of the proposed changes altered the bill’s amnesty.
Cruz’s defense is rather amazing to behold, as he claims the amendments were a poison pill. He says he knew the Democrats would find them unacceptable, and their passage would kill the Gang of 8 bill in the Senate chambers. This leaves Cruz in the humorous position of claiming he was lying in a half dozen television interviews when he said he wanted the bill to pass. Try this is court if you ever find your own words being used against you. “But Your Honor, I was lying when I said that.”
Of course, Rubio is not off the hook for his support of this bill. He deserves criticism for being so thoroughly played by Chuck Schumer. And yet, these facts have not affected the narrative all that much. Rubio is considered the amnesty traitor, while Cruz is presented as the conservative stalwart. Both are presently incredibly hawkish on border security. If I could detect an actual difference between their present positions, or their past positions, perhaps this issue would prove useful in choosing between them.
If the two are so similar on substance, how does one choose between them? The answer is Style.
Rubio is clearly the more electable candidate. Nearly every poll over the past year has shown that Rubio scores better against Clinton than Cruz does. His likability ratings also score significantly higher. The liberal wonks at FiveThirtyEight.com have consistently raised warning bells that Rubio is the biggest threat to the Democrats holding the presidency in 2016.
If Republicans nominate Rubio, they would have an excellent chance to beat Clinton by broadening their party’s appeal with moderates, millennials and Latinos. The GOP would also have an excellent chance to keep the Senate, hold onto a wide margin in the House and enjoy more control of federal government than they have in over a decade.
If they nominate Ted Cruz, Clinton would probably win, the GOP Senate majority would also be in peril and GOP House losses could climb well into the double digits.
This chart proves FiveThirtyEight’s point. Across nearly every category of voter, Rubio outperforms Cruz. Republican voters often must choose between an electable candidate and a conservative candidate. It is extremely depressing. Today, we have the opportunity to choose a man who is both electable, and extremely conservative. This is called having your cake and eating it too.
Stop telling me that the chocolate sprinkles don’t taste as good as the rainbow sprinkles, and eat your delicious cake.
Published in General
I don’t want an electable conservative, whether extremely conservative or mildly conservative. I want a winning conservative who will move the ball.
How will that conservative move the ball if he isn’t even in the game? You have to get elected before you can start winning.
Are you using “electable” in the sarcastic sense then (as in “some nebulous description nobody can define but which the other guy’s supporters say my guy doesn’t have”), rather than in the literalistic sense of “capable of getting elected”? Because to the literal-minded, winning without getting elected is rather tough.
Cruz is not a winning conservative, as evidenced by his poor head to head poll numbers against democrats, and his low favor ability ratings among the electorate.
If the claim is that Cruz will fight, where as Rubio won’t, their voting records do not bear this out.
Furthermore, if you believe the shutdown was an awesome strategy, and you disagree with those of us who thought it was foolish (and primarily just a fund raising vehicle for Cruz (Read his book if you doubt that is why he does these things)), when you have the presidency you don’t need such strategies.
Where is the evidence that he is a winner compared to Rubio? Rubio is on record supporting the Ryan plan (which privatizes medicare for goodness sake). How can you conclude he isn’t going to move the ball?
I have repeatedly said, on this thread and elsewhere, that I oppose a path to citizenship, and that this is the main problem with the Gang of 8 bill. I think that Rubio was wrong to support it.
But I think that it is different from amnesty as it’s generally being used here at Ricochet and elsewhere. I think that we need to use language more precisely, or we obscure various policy options.
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Part of the problem in policy debates is conflation of terms, especially when the terms are capable of use in a pejorative or demagogic way.
In accordance with the common definition of the term, amnesty means allowing illegals to obtain legalized status without the imposition of a serious penalty, such as a substantial fine. I oppose amnesty, but I don’t think that the Gang of 8 bill did this, because it included a $2,000 fine. I’d like to see a bigger fine in the $5,000-$10,000 range, but not something unrealistic.
A path to citizenship is something different. You can have a path to citizenship with or without amnesty. I oppose a path to citizenship in either case (with an exception for military service).
Ditto. Here’s Charles Krauthammer today, describing the “three-way fight” for the GOP nomination …
Trump’s personalized strongman populism and two flavors of conservatism — Marco Rubio’s more mainstream version and Cruz’s more uncompromising take-no-prisoners version.
Given the past 8 years of 0bama and a compliant gOp congress, I’ll take the “uncompromising take-no-prisoners version” all day long.
If its going to deter future law breaking – its going to have to be painful. Otherwise its just the ‘price of entry’.
I heard a funny assessment of Trump’s appeal: People know he’s a bully, they just think he’ll be their bully. Yeah, I see the appeal of this given how people feel abused by the current political class (not sure, in the end, that he’ll ‘bully’ for them, but but I see the appeal !)
I lean Cruz, because I don’t like/trust Rubio and Trump is….Trump. But Cruz has an uphill battle – the ‘establishment’ and media are appear against him (I’m starting to find Fox’s Rubio ‘boosterism’ unwatchable), and I believe he does need to work on his style a bit to broaden his appeal.
Why oh why do people insist on setting up a false dichotomy between ‘conservative’ and ‘electable?’ As demonstrated by Reagan’s two landslides , they can be one and the same.
For the record … Knowing what a candidate’s current position on an issue is has no relevance whatever if that candidate has a history of reversing his positions and reneging on prior assurances. Rubio did both. He ran in Florida as a tea-party conservative absolutely opposed to amnesty. Yet within a year he was part of the Gang of Eight working hand in hand with the likes of Chuck Shumer, Dick Durbin, Bob Menendez. What an embarrassment.
Oh, if he’s the nominee I’ll do the right thing. He’s waaaaay better than the Socialist or the congenital Liar. But still, I’d feel like I’d need to watch him like a hawk.
As someone who has followed Rubio for six years and looked fairly closely at his record from State legislator days I think the rating is way overstating his conservatism. Then again Rubio has a lot longer voting record at the federal and state level than Cruz so we have more history to go on.
However, there is one reason why I voted for him in the Republican Primaries 6 years ago and why he has always been on the top of my list who I have been planning on voting for at lest six months now. He is a really good politician. He knows how to get things done. His record as speaker of the Florida house is impressive. He wrote a book laying out 100 goals to pass as speaker and the Florida house passed 57 of them while he was its leader. That is impressive even if quite a few of them did not become law especially considering he did it in two years in a body that only meets two months out of the year.
I know everyone want a radical who is going to make drastic changes including myself. However our system is not designed for that to be possible which is a good thing. We need someone who is going to be good at inching the policies to the right. It is a long hard fight that takes a lot of time and effort.
Yes I felt absolutely betrayed about the gang of eight bill was a slap in face of small government and conservative principles, which I thought Rubio stood for (the amnesty bothered me less, than adding hundred of pages to the existing law making an already perverted complicating system even more complicating which meet giving bureaucrats even more power and we would also have to hire more of them.)
Also I just think Rubio has more integery. That is the one thing I still admire the most about G.W.B, and is why I would vote for him over again (although probable not in a primary like this one), he is an honest politician. From what I can tell Rubio is more in that vain than Cruz is. Yes I could be wrong but I rather vote for someone knowing there are bleeding heart compassionate conservative in some areas(Rubio) than pretending not to be(I could be wrong but I get this from Cruz). To me I rather know what I am getting than hoping someone who claims to be more conservative turning out to be a lot less. Remember Regan was a lot less conservative than we have remember him for on the Domestic side (Foreign policy wise we have never had a more conservative president).
It’s a lot clearer than that: “He went back on an explicit promise. So, we can’t trust what he promises now.”
And I say this as a former Rubio supporter.
So, as I remember it:
Ford: Electable!
Reagan: Not electable.
G HW Bush: Electable!
Dole: Electable!
G W Bush: Electable!
McCain: Electable!
Romney: Electable!
So, 2 out of 7. ( except HW only got elected because of the ‘not electable’ Reagan presidency… then lost reelection when he was on his own. Make it 1.5 / 7 )
Can we stop pretending that anyone really knows what candidate is electable until the election?
if ‘electable’ is your main criteria for choosing a candidate, you will never get anything but a middle of the road pushover type as your candidate. And they don’t get elected anyway!
I understand what the great Bill Buckley was trying to say, but he has really messed up the cause of advancing conservatism by opening up this ‘not electable’ attack against anyone who stands for anything beyond
compromisegiving in to democrats.For the third time in the comments, my argument is not to sacrifice conservatism in order to gain elect ability. It’s that there are trivial differences between Cruz and Rubio in terms of conservatism, and Rubio is far more electable.
based on the same logic that said the list above was electable. That is nothing more than your personal opinion, it is not based on anything verifiable or factual.
Furthermore, being electable is a necessary but not sufficient condition. You still have to face an opposition whose candidate might be even more appealing to the public than yours. That doesn’t mean you go into the election handicapped by picking someone even more likely to lose.
My argument is based on the facts that I have repeatedly listed in both the post and comments. Rubio polls better head to head against the democrats than Cruz. Rubio has far better favor ability ratings than Cruz.
These are not my opinions. These are facts.
Translating “polls better right now” into “is more ‘electable’ in November” is an opinion, though. An understandable and perhaps justified one, but an opinion nonetheless.
Václav Havel begs to differ.
ExIm. He was given an easy test when it was important, and he failed.
I agree that incremental reform is the way to go, but the increments have to be in the right direction. Getting sacked for a 20 yard loss is incremental reform, too, but in the wrong direction.
My current idea of incremental reform is to first burn GOPe to the ground. With it out of the way, we will then be free to take on the hardcore socialists.
Rubio voted against Ex/Im. Twice.
How utterly meaningless. Havel was a dissident under Communist Dictatorship and once the Czech Republic became a democracy again he was elected president.
That’s nice. That’s exactly what I mean by people manipulating and massaging their voting records to make the term “conservative” meaningless. Thank you for saving me the trouble of looking up an example.
By which time, most of the winning had already taken place.
Ummm what exactly is a Senator supposed to do to assuage you about Ex/Im? Storm the Bastille? Take McConnel’s family hostage until he pledges never to bring it to a vote? Sneak into the National Archives with a sharpie and write “NO EXPORT IMPORT BANKS” into the bill of rights?
Again, utterly meaningless. We live under a completely different set of circumstances.
He could have taken the trouble to vote against ExIm reauthorization last time instead of pulling an Obama and refraining from voting.
Ted Cruz did not vote against Attorney General Lynch’s nomination. Back then, Cruz felt that missing symbolic votes wasn’t a character issue. Later, those principles didn’t suit him, so he got some new ones, which I see you’ve adopted; or perhaps they were yours before. Still, I’m not sure how radically different flavours the different missed votes were.