Cruz didn’t commit career suicide last night, but his public stand is more likely to redound to another Republican’s benefit in 2020.
Apologies for the delay in writing. Problems with WiFi and an excessive enthusiasm for cocktails kept me from posting yesterday. Fortunately nothing exciting happened. Oh. Wait.
By now you’ve seen the endless run of cable talking heads asking why Ted Cruz ungratefully encouraged voters to vote their individual consciences instead of endorsing the guy who called his wife a hag and his father the closest thing we have in America to a regicide. Shocking, I say. Shocking.
The Trump campaign has handled this incident with its customary aplomb. We knew what Ted was going to say. Not a big deal. Also he’s a loser. We don’t need his endorsement. But we let him speak anyway. And did you hear about Sheldon’s booth? Also, this McIver lady. We’re magnanimous. What? Mike Pence? Talk to Donny, Jr. He’s a peach.
Meanwhile in conservative corners Ted is getting feted, albeit tepidly. Walker’s Trump endorsement plus Rubio’s night-school-lawyer statement of support by video certainly made Ted the man of the moment in righty circles. But these folks have been burned before. Cruz always has a plan, those plans usually feature stunts, and this stunt contented the #NeverTrump crew for once. Yet his stunts rarely pay dividends long-term for Cruz himself, let alone his friends. So the embrace is cautious — a political side-hug.
So the truth of the matter is somewhat more complicated. Cruz certainly didn’t commit career suicide. Unpopular as he is with several circles of the party, he’s an incumbent senator from Texas. Denying him access to the national political stage will be damned near impossible. Nobody in his right mind will primary Cruz, and there isn’t a great argument policy-wise to do it. So Cruz will remain. But will he remain a credible presidential candidate in four years?
POLL: Was Cruz Wrong Not to Endorse Trump?
Cruz has set himself as the sane man decrying Trump to the braying masses. He’s counting on a Trump implosion to preserve his operating theory that Republicans lose races because they alienate conservatives. The very tactic that lost Cruz his floor revolt over the rules — using a guy like Cuccinelli, who the establishment hates — is the sine qua non of keeping his argument for his candidacy alive. In short: You. Need. Us. Cruz must prove that without the Right, no Republican can win.
But that’s not why Cruz got booed heavily last night. It’s not because he said “vote your conscience” to a conservative crowd that had sold out to a charlatan. We all know this to be the case. Nobody’s happy about it. The point is that Ted Cruz — Ted Cruz of all people — decided to get preachy about doing the right thing. A man who shut down the federal government for his own personal benefit, imperiled the GOP’s brand, and actively undermined its Senators to grow his e-mail list and donor base, is telling people to do the right thing. Physician, heal thyself.
#share#More broadly, however, Cruz is running against the ethos of many rank-and-file Republicans. You don’t have to read Jonathan Haidt to understand that many Republicans value loyalty and respect for institutions as fundamental, moral foundations of their worldview. The friendly folks from Wisconsin and Texas who love the Republican party, who work their tails off year in and year out to get voters to the polls, don’t appreciate a preening blowhard undermining the hours and the dollars they’ve put into this operation. Sure they’ve got mixed feelings and reservations about Trump. But the party matters to them, not just as a vehicle for pursuit of policy ends, but as an institution of long-standing importance in their country and their lives.
In this, politics is like a professional sport in which you sometimes get to leave the sidelines to block and tackle.
Cruz will remain. But will he remain a credible presidential candidate in four years?
Cruz isn’t the first person to kick this particular moral nest at a convention. Rocky stood there in ’64 having every obscenity known to man screamed at him by angry delegates — and not just from the sagebrush Au-H-2-O true believers. Teeth gnash, feet stomp, and spit rains down from the rafters. The rank-and-file delegates and attendees stood there, watched a man defy their nominee and gore the party they love, saw him in his naked political hypocrisy, and heaped the wrath of the jilted upon him. And four years later, they went mad for Nixon, who jettisoned his rock-ribbed past for Nelson’s accommodation of the Great Society. Rockefeller threw his presidential ambitions on a pyre fueled largely by his own vanity, but it gave birth to a phoenix.
Ted Cruz is Nelson Rockefeller. Rocky has his Bullwinkle.
Like Rockefeller in ’64, Cruz probably has blown up his chances in 2020, but in detonating them, he’s set an alternative path: a conservative with an academic pedigree as impressive as his ideological one. Not a lot of sizzle, but plenty of steak.
Tom Cotton probably thinks that’s him. Harvard, McKinsey, Iraq. Build The Wall. Arrest ’em all.
But Cotton suffers from many of Cruz’s limitations as a candidate. Though he’s impressive, and much better in person, he can seem cold, even cruel on television. And he’s gone in too quickly for the Trump catnip. At this point, his best bet is to be the sane populist and protectionist — a deliciously ironic betrayal of the Kristol network that seemingly raised Cotton in a candidate petri dish.
#related#No. The Nixon to Cruz’s Rockefeller will be the anti-Cruz in personality just as Nixon was to Rocky. I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I’d look to Sasse. I know, I know. It’s a small state with no money. He’s new to politics. He’s an unabashed nerd. Sasse is a solid conservative in the ideological mold of Cruz, but he’s a better team player and a genuinely likable guy. Where Cruz makes people bristle, Sasse makes them smile. Cerebral and self-deprecating, his bookishness hides real retail chops. And the turnaround job he did at Midland University gives him pragmatic chops Cruz can only dream of.
I get that it runs against the conventional wisdom. But you people have doubted my judgment in the past. How’d that turn out?
— Luke Thompson is a Republican political consultant. This piece was originally published on Medium.com and has been reprinted with Thompson’s permission.