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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
That really would be something to behold, wouldn’t it?
I’d agree. There’s basically only a matter of days left in the race–if Cruz fails to win Indiana, stopping Trump in Cleveland will prove nigh unto impossible–which means that anything at all that Ted and Carly can do to attract the attention of the press away from The Donald is more likely to help than to hurt. Or so I reason. We shall see….
It’s a smart move, and it shows that at least some of the real Republicans still have some fight. Now if only Mike Pence would stop playing the coward and join the battle, we could win this.
If we lose in Indiana, and thus the nomination, and thus the election, it will because of the contemptible cowardice of Mike Pence.
Speaking as someone who has mostly been lukewarm on Ted Cruz, I have to say that he has overall impressed me this last month. I think he still has a real chance, and even if he doesn’t pull it off, is conducting himself admirably and leaving it all on the field.
That’s more than a whole lot of other Republicans will be able to say this electoral season.
Because I firmly believe that there is no majority now, and won’t be a majority in the future, for conservative candidates, any more than a socialist would be able to get a majority on the left. We had possibly the best set of circumstances this cycle, with a large selection of conservative candidates from all walks of life, and not one of them can get anything close to a working plurality, nonetheless majority, of REPUBLICAN voters. That candidate couldn’t succeed against a generic Democrat in the general. That is what Trump taught me. There are too many parts of the country where conservative candidates are toxic.
Many of Trump’s supporters are on the right side of the political spectrum. Some aren’t. But they tend to stay home when we nominate candidates who are too conservative. I know this is going to cause the Ricochetti to go ballistic, but McCain and Romney lost because they were too conservative. That’s another thing Trump has taught me. All of these new voters he is bringing in are the missing voters from 2008 and 2012.
We need to build a political party that includes conservatives AND the Trump voters in order to get a workable majority. At that point, we will be able to get a candidate who is at least partly conservative and who can win. But first, we need to bite the bullet and bring the Trump supporters into the Republican Party.
I have no illusions about Trump. He is to the right of Hillary, but he is not a conservative on many issues, trade being the most obvious. But the Republican Party will remain intact through the Trump years and exit with enough voters to rebuild.
If we choose to make a break now, it is conservatives who will be the ones left out as the minority third party. Not the Progressives. Not the Nationalist Trump supporters. It’s us. Think Green Party in Europe. That’s the future if we stick to purity.
Because it doesn’t matter that Cruz is a terrible candidate. Let’s face it Cruz is failing and failing miserably.
You go to war with the army that you have.
Ted and Carly are standing. Are we?
YES!
Great, so now I will get to hear bad jokes and immature taunts about Lyin’ Ted, that nobody likes and his funny looking woman with her terrible past.
Along with the fact that he backed down over the “religious freedom” indecent, why on Earth would conservatives support Mike Pence after this?
I adore Carly, and like Cruz more and more. I just hope it works.
Hope you’re wrong. Regardless, Fiorina has proven to be a better man than Gov. Mike Pence so far.
I use to be a fan of Gov. Pence.
This long time Trump supporter can only look puzzled, then shrug at Cruz’ move.
After The Donald swept every county in five states on Tuesday, it’s become obvious that Republican primary voters are once again ahead of the politicos and pundits in conceding the nomination to him. Their message: unify behind the candidate.
Even if you buy the desperate dead-ender hope of the #NeverTrump crowd, that somehow the convention will deny Trump the nomination on an early ballot, this move makes no sense. In the unlikely, voter-defying scenario that Cruz somehow rises to Trump’s level of support among delegates, he would still need the establishment faction for the final push. Candidates like Rubio and Kasich would logically demand the VP slot in return. Barely a breath after making a shaky alliance with Kasich, Cruz is now telling him, Rubio, and all the others that he’ll have nothing to trade.
It’s not like the establishment types would be eager to join Cruz. On Politico today we learn that John Boehner says of Cruz “I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.” And that’s the friendly part of what he had to say.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is soaring. Yesterday, Trump’s foreign policy speech earned supportive words from no less than John Bolton. Later in the day, in Indiana for a Town Hall On the Record with Greta, Trump unveiled a sterling endorsement from that state’s most popular citizen, Bobby Knight. The basketball coach understands Trump’s fierce competitiveness and will to win.
That ferocity, not antipathy toward conservatism, drove Trump’s combative campaign against his primary opponents. His amazing journey from long-shot to nominee is nearly complete. The sooner the field is cleared, the sooner he will direct all his energies against the common foe.
I’ve noticed this trend among some folks lately. The more they pay attention to him the more they like him or at least object to him less.
I have my own issues with him, but the caricature in the media and broadcast by Donald Trump is incorrect and shows how much they fear him.
Don’t expect much from Mike Pence. Mitch Daniels was such a strong leader and cast such a strong shadow that part of it hung around after he left. After a while people noticed that the Mitch’s shadow was still governing and decided to called it Mike Pence. It still has some conservative instincts but in the end it is just a shadow and has about the same level of substance.
You’ve boiled it down to its essence, the ugly choice facing us but I believe it does matter. I watched Trump’s foreign policy (?) speech – that was really embarrassing, as an American having that ass as a serious contender. I watched Carly speech, the whole thing – not just the clip. Do yourself a favor and watch it. I found her inspiring. It made me feel good as an American and a conservative (it’s been a while). If we go down, I’d rather go down with Cruz and Fiorina.
Whom you support, says something about you and what you believe. What does having Trump as our standard bearer say about us?
Show me any evidence that Trump is interested in gathering up the ‘unity’ votes of people who oppose him. Rather, he seems determined to insult and belittle them at every turn. The phrase ‘sore winner’ comes to mind.
The other day, somewhere or other, (I think this was after the NY primary, but before the ones on Tuesday of this week), about 8,200,000 more votes had been cast to this point in the Republican primaries this year versus votes cast in 2012.
Then I observed that Donald Trump’s total vote count was, yes, about 8,200,000.
This led me to speculate (whimsically)– –what if, every vote cast for Trump has been from one of these new people, and perhaps there just aren’t any more Trump voters out there (one can only hope) . . . .
On a more serious note, I think that if Trump does not take, at the very least, Newt Gingrich’s advice and start acting with some humility and magnanimity, he’s going to have a very hard time scaring up the additional 53 million or so more votes he’s going to need to win the general election once the primaries are over. Republicans are notorious for ‘walking’ when they feel a candidate has been shoved down their throats. I don’t expect this year to be any different just because the mechanism, and the demographic, are different.
(The bizarre shadow world inhabited by Trump’s major endorsers starting with Ben Carson and Chris Christie also causes me to wonder about Trump’s long-term relationships with people who’ve opposed him in the past. No doubt he made them both offers they couldn’t refuse.)
I look forward to the new, sincere, humble, unifying, Trump, acting as if the votes of his opponents, and their supporters, matter, coming soon to a center ring near us.
In my dreams.
Bad pick, bad strategy, but I guess it was all he could do? I would have preferred a softening on the tone against Trump and just stay in to provide conservatives a voice, and then drop out quietly after Trump wins Indiana. Unite the party instead of hyper-focusing on his own aspirations.
Regardless, Fiorina is a terrible pick. For one, her shining moment in this primary was, ironically, playing the woman card against Trump. She took the feminist line of “He never would have said that about me if I was a man!” and got burned for it (her poll numbers tanked after that). She is weak on charisma, looks like everyone’s third-grade teacher, and is in no way ready for the big-stage.
I remember her Senate run in California. Pathetic is too kind a word for it. Her presidential run has been similarly unimpressive. She is robotic, flavorless, and an obvious pander to women. The only reason she’s even close to the stage is because she’s a woman and conservatives are overly defensive about the sexism charge. Otherwise she’d be another also-ran like Jindal or Perry (both of whom had the good sense to get out when they read the writing on the wall).
I know Carly is popular with a subsection of conservatives, but they are the minority. Most people either don’t like her or couldn’t care less.
The only pick that would have made sense was Rubio.
This memo is indeed really insightful. Among other great points, it answers the question as to why, if Cruz is the closest we’ve had to Reagan in a while, he doesn’t feel like Reagan on the campaign trail.
If they are supporting Trump because they think Trump will protect them from Muslims, Latin Americans, Chinese workers, and will preserve their social security, I’d rather have another nominee who is conservative like Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, or Mitch Daniels.
The author of this group is trying to attract money to campaign for Trump in the general. This is revealed by the following pull quote –
The author of this memo is perpetuating a lie started by the Trump campaign. There has been zero evidence that I am aware of to suggest that the Cruz campaign’s repackaging in a tweet of CNN’s reporting on Carson effected any of Carson’s vote.
Indiana is the last stand against the tyranny of Donald Trump. Cowards cave, conservatives fight.
A further flaw in this self-serving, premature Cruz post-mortem –
Ted’s slogan is “Reignite the Promise of America.” The biggest tactical difference between Ted and Trump has to do with the fawning media coverage and the electorate’s unwillingness to ignore a buffoon. Ted assumed a buffoon couldn’t win, the electorate said I like stupid. That’s why Trump is doing as well as he is, people don’t listen to the words he speaks, they just feel the emotions he evokes.
I agree with every word of that. He’s leaving it all on the field.
And that is your prerogative. I am just convinced, based on results from this primary and the past 4 elections (yes, including the Bush elections, in which Bush lost the popular vote the first time around), that such an approach would almost always result in a Democratic president. Conservatives need to draw the electoral equivalent of an inside straight by winning OH, VA, NC, and FL, plus one of CO or AZ, as well as retain all of the traditionally red states. Democrats would just need one of those to win. And its getting worse. VA is moving blue. NC is coming next. I no longer think even Mitch Daniels, who was my ideal candidate for years, would win against a generic Democrat, unless he figured out a way to bring the Trump supporters in.
I don’t think it constitutes supporting conservatism to nominate candidates that result in Democratic presidents. If Trump is the price I have to pay for maintaining conservative influence (albeit significantly less than desirable), then I will pay that price.
If you are not willing to pay that price, I understand. He is a hard pill to swallow. I am just convinced that means quitting on conservative influence in government for quite a while. These Trump supporters are not going to come back to your conservative candidate after conservatives abandon them when their guy is nominated. Especially since the problem is that they have not voted for the conservative in recent elections. Opposing them for supporting Trump will take generations to heal. And in the meantime, conservatism atrophies as a result of its inability to have any electoral success in a national election.
I think you are under-estimating the limitations of Cruz’s appeal. Even without Trump, I don’t think he could have pulled together sufficient support to win.
I think Trump supporters are listening to what he says. I just don’t think they care much about the details. In some sense, they are correct to do that. The last few presidents gave a lot of details in the campaign. None of it was relevant to their presidencies. Bush in 2000. Obama in 2008. Just a bunch of fiction to fatten the goose.
If conservative really cared about defeating Donald Trump, Rubio and Cruz would have kissed and made up after SC. Now Rubio is rumbling about voting for Trump should he be nominated. I’ve worked in legislatures and I will tell you right now that these people care more about personalities than they do about policies, almost to a person. If you care about policy, you are shunned and called a stick in the mud. The fact that, with Trump as nominee being the downside, conservatives could not form a consensus earlier has put us where we are today – on the razor’s edge of nominating a candidate opposed to free speech, free religion, private property, peace through strength, and free trade. Egos were way, way too large and needed to be swallowed.
While I would prefer to have Cruz/Fiorina be the nominee so I could at least have someone I could vote for on the ballot in November, I think Trump has already ruined the GOP brand beyond rehabilitation. The image of the GOP was already in tatters before this election season, Trump has has officially poured gasoline on it and lit the match. The fact that he will have gotten 3-4 million more votes than the closest competitor in the primaries and, if we’re extremely lucky, come up a handful of delegates shy of winning the nomination has proven to anyone not already committed to voting Republican that the GOP is a clown car of a party, full of kooks, bigots, thugs, conderate flag wavers, and generally backward troglodytes.
The GOP I once believed in is dead.
These two sentences are spot on.
That is why I keep reminding people that the majority of Trump’s voters are not previously registered Republicans.
I don’t think that’s a distinction the average voter really knows or would believe, really.