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Ted and Carly — and Daring
Naming a running mate some three months before the convention makes Ted Cruz look desperate — so goes the charge I’ve encountered on Drudge, in half a dozen reports of the event, and at saturation levels on Facebook and Twitter. You know what? Ted Cruz was — is — desperate. After Cruz’s victory in Wisconsin, a lot of observers (I include myself here) thought that Trump had peaked. He’d win in New York, but probably fail to take much more than 50 percent of the vote even there, in his home state, then sink. Instead Trump won big in New York — very big, even carrying all the upstate congressional districts — and then just yesterday he swept five out of five northeastern primaries. Ted Cruz had to do something. He had to.
Given that exigency, how has Cruz performed? In my judgment, impressively.
Carly Fiorina will give Cruz a couple of entire news cycles, and at a time when Trump would otherwise have dominated the news, that’s invaluable in itself. She also extends a certain appeal to Republican women, among whom she has higher favorability ratings than Cruz himself. She’s also a very fine campaigner — well spoken, endlessly energetic; the kind of performer who may very well make a material difference in coming days in Indiana. Most important? Carly is a believer. She adds credence and a certain new energy to what has always been Cruz’s fundamental appeal: devotion to the Constitution and an insistence — a really very fierce determination — to roll back the administrative state to protect the liberties of the people.
Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina are both, as I say, believers: and one tenet of their belief is that despite the importance of this or that tactic or maneuver, politics in a democracy is in the end something noble, and that whether you win or lose you owe it to your countrymen to stand on principle.
Win or lose — and as they themselves are both surely acutely aware, the latter, alas, is far more likely — Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina did something brave and fine today.
Published in General
And still very much a possibility that they don’t lose.
It will be the only chance we have to not have an absolute disaster in November.
Looks like the McCain / Palin desperation / Hail Mary pass to me. Looks like it is all but officially over.
You just described every great success story.
Let’s hope.
As a Conservatarian I’ve always liked Cruz, one of the best of a very good field, sans Trump. And I’ve long thought Carly makes a great VP candidate and probably a very good VP. Cudos to both of them.
I’ve never much understood how Conservatives could see much to disagree with in Cruz’s positions. I get the optics problem, though that isn’t a problem for me but this is about really important stuff, can’t we see past the optics?
Peter, don’t forget that Drudge is enthusiastically committed to Trump.
Cruz made an excellent choice with Carly, but he continues to disappoint as an alternative to Trump. I agree with Nate Silver that the decrease in Republican participation on Tuesday was due primarily to the “Never Trump” supporters staying home because they were dissatisfied with both Cruz and Kasich as alternatives.
Cruz has failed to broaden his message, continues to give the same speech every day so he gives the press nothing to write about, doesn’t have an aspirational message, and does not court the press. He also continues to sound like a Baptist preacher giving the Gettysburg Address with every sentence he speaks. Also, why hasn’t Mike Pence come out to support Cruz? Up for reelection, is he afraid of the consequences of backing the wrong horse?
Also, please see Rich Danker’s memo as reported by Bill Kristol. It’s very insightful.
As much as I am praying for a different result, I’m afraid Cruz is going to lose Indiana, which will get Trump close enough to be the inevitable candidate. What a disastrous state of affairs for America.
Great write up Peter.
The volume of negative reaction to this is sad.
I submit that it only looks like that at first glance. Looking more closely: Fiorina is a much more substantive pick than Palin was. (Even thinking of Palin at the time McCain picked her, ignoring subsequent reality show ventures, etc.)
Wishful thinking my friend. This one goes to the bell.
I like Carly. I really began to like her more during her campaign.
That said, I think this is really inside baseball at this point. Trump grabbed something stewing in the culture that has a self-propagating energy of its own.
That kind of resonance is impossible to beat. You can only hope to remain standing when its energy eventually dies out.
A VP pick cannot do much to counter that. While I understand the need to keep hope alive and sometimes find myself trying to find such hope in these moves, when I take a step back, out of the fulcrum of those who engage and analyze these things daily, and just observe how these things play with the casual participant, I find it near impossible to maintain any hope that Cruz is viable at this point.
He is fighting against something that has permeated the culture with moves that energize the analytically inclined. It won’t even work on delegates, nonetheless primary voters.
Oh please, please let Katie Couric or Charlie Gibson try an ambush interview on Carly.
I’ll take the funny looking guy and the smart broad against the cartoon character and anybody dopey enough to say “yes” to the cartoon character.
Nothing is over until a majority of delegates have been secured.
Already happened. Search ‘Fiorina Couric’ and you’ll find the original interview plus lots of commentary on it. Fiorina shows Couric is the Lefty clown show that she has always been.
I find it interesting that you cannot name or describe this something you mentioned in this comment. What sort of mandate Will trump have if his mandate cannot be described?
Maybe once upon a time, like other fairly tales. What’s noble about the Incumbency Party (whether its Democrat wing or its GOP wing) doing everything it can to stymie the will of the people? What’s noble about giving goodies away to voters now, helping you get reelected, while charging the cost to the labor of people not yet born?
Politicians’ greatest achievement is persuading us to believe they are public servants.
If you really mean that you are praying, keep praying. Your prayers are sustaining those on the ground in Indiana.
Amen
Lucy, I am praying for Cruz to win big in Indiana. Carly is very popular among Republicans in my state of California, so I am hoping she will also be a boost to Cruz in the primary there. Good showings in Indiana and California for Cruz will make a contested convention more likely and deny Trump the nomination before the convention.
We’re Cruz doing better in the delegate count, I doubt that Fiorina would have been his choice.
Any attention is better than no attention, I suspect.
I disagree. She has been a prominent surrogate for him for nearly two months, and she has had the longest leash of all Cruz surrogates. The substance of the speech he gave introducing her revealed just how much he trusts Carly’s judgment and Carly’s instincts. I expected this pick as soon as I heard her stump for Cruz as a surrogate leading up to the Wisconsin primary.
Trump’s mandate will be Trump. That is how demagogues work. They can be very electorally successful, without ever providing details, based on sheer force of personality.
You keep applying traditional political analysis to someone who is breaking all of the rules. I feel like I need to keep saying this. I am not backing Trump. I am simply observing that he has tapped into something that I am aware cannot be stopped by conservatives.
So if you are a conservative, why vote for him? A Chris Matthews-esque tingle?
I actually agree that this cannot be stopped by human intervention, which is why I am recommending prayer. If it is stopped, we need to credit something larger than our own feeble efforts.
This is why. The only path to getting conservatives back to a governing coalition is through Trump’s supporters. And the only way to pull in their supporters is by swallowing hard and supporting them now. You then get the chance of rebuilding later.
I suspect you are right as usual, but it feels like there is almost as much exasperation as there is fear and loathing of Trump.
I guess these voters are not very good at being “Never Trump”. If they really wanted someone not named Trump to win they would voter for Cruz or even Kasich. Instead they stayed home an helped insure that Trump won.
I don’t know why anyone believes it really makes a difference anymore. Either Trump wins the nomination and hands the GOP an historic loss in November, or Cruz wins the nomination in a disastrously ugly convention fight and the split party loses disastrously in November.
It just doesn’t matter what happens in the GOP contest anymore
Help me understand this. I have heard this time and again, but I honestly do not grasp this logic. Trump is not a conservative. He and his supporters, by and large, seem hostile to or unconcerned with conservative principles. Trump is inconsistent even in his own stated policy goals, as much as he has any, and again, seems hostile to conservative principles. Help me see how bringing in anti-conservatives will help get conservatives back to a governing coalition.