Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) suggested yesterday that his congressional colleagues should tap a conservative talk-show host as House speaker John Boehner’s successor.
“I think the next speaker should be Mark Levin,” Cruz said in Iowa on Monday.
Don’t look for Cruz to devote significant time to drafting Levin — “it was just an off-the-cuff remark at a campaign event,” one campaign aide tells National Review — but the comment follows the logic of Cruz’s campaign through the summer, especially as he has worked to ensure a strong showing in the Iowa caucuses.
For one thing, Levin has a lot of fans among the kind of highly-motivated conservatives most likely to turn out on a January day and spend hours caucusing. He has touted Donald Trump’s candidacy. “I’m not endorsing anybody as you well know, but the fact of the matter is I like the way this guy talks,” Levin said in August.
#share#Cruz, for his part, has avoided criticizing Trump as part of a strategy of appealing to voters who favor such outsider candidates. “I don’t believe Donald is going to be the nominee and I think, in time, the lion’s share of his supporters end up with us,” Cruz said during a radio interview last week.
#related#Put those two together and you have the makings of a method to Cruz’s off-the-cuff remark. “No surprise here: Levin has a huge following, he’s been boosting Trump for months, and Cruz has not exactly been subtle in his desire to get Trump’s supporters when and if Trump collapses,” as one unaligned GOP strategist says. “Makes total sense.”
In the meantime, most House Republicans hope that Ways and Means Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) agrees to run for speaker, a campaign that would be more coronation than contest given the level of energy devoted to drafting him for the job. “If he decides not to do it, then we’re in for quite a ride,” says one GOP lawmaker. “The group will change and the disposition will change, but it will change only as a result of suffering.”
— Joel Gehrke is a political reporter for National Review.