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Thread: NYT hit piece: Ted Cruz is "extreme long shot", "zero chance at winning"

  1. #1

    NYT hit piece: Ted Cruz is "extreme long shot", "zero chance at winning"

    Why Ted Cruz Is Such a Long Shot

    By NATE COHN
    MARCH 23, 2015

    In nearly every presidential primary, a few candidates attract a lot of news media attention even though they have almost no chance to win the nomination. Sometimes they even lead national polls or win states, but invariably their appeal is too narrow to allow them to build the broad coalition necessary to unite a diverse party.

    Ted Cruz, the Texas senator and Tea Party favorite, who on Monday became the first major candidate to formally enter the race, has seemingly been on track for this role since he first ran for the Senate in 2012. He is the darling of conservatives in a conservative party. But he remains a long shot, at best.

    The most interesting question about Mr. Cruz’s candidacy is whether he has a very small chance to win or no chance at all.

    Political scientists argue that the single most important determinant of the outcome of the nomination is support from party elites: those operatives who can staff a winning campaign; the donors who fund it; the elected officials and interest group leaders who bestow the credibility necessary to persuade voters and affect media coverage.

    The candidate with the most support from party elites doesn’t always win the nomination, but support from elites is probably a prerequisite for victory.

    “A candidate without substantial party support has never won the nomination,” said John Zaller, a political-science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and one of four authors of “The Party Decides,” an influential work on the role of parties in the nominating process.

    Mr. Cruz has done nothing to endear himself to the elites. He won the party’s nomination for the Senate by defeating David Dewhurst, an establishment favorite and the sitting lieutenant governor of Texas. He led congressional Republicans to shut down the government to prevent the inevitable enactment of the Affordable Care Act.

    In April 2013, he was identified as “The Most Hated Man in the Senate” by Foreign Policy magazine, which described him as “the human equivalent of one of those flower-squirters that clowns wear on their lapels.” And that was before he led the government shutdown. If you did a web search for “Senators Hate Ted Cruz” on Sunday, that Foreign Policy article wouldn’t have even come up on the first Google page. It was supplanted by titles like “Why Senate Republicans Hate Ted Cruz,” “GOP Still Despises Ted Cruz,” “Everybody Hates Ted Cruz” and the generously titled “How Unpopular Is Ted Cruz Right Now?” Answer: very.

    Mr. Cruz is not an outsider, grass-roots version of President Obama in 2008. He is unacceptable to many conservative officials, operatives, interest group leaders and pundits. If they don’t take him seriously, voters won’t either. The elites would rally to defeat such a candidate if he ever seemed poised to win.

    I can already hear the conservative, grass-roots activists complaining about this establishment, elite-driven model of Republican primary politics. I can hear them promising to prove the mainstream news media, and every one of Mr. Cruz’s detractors, wrong. But much of the Republican rank-and-file has reached the same conclusion as the party’s elite, whether they’ve done so because of elite signaling or by some other means.

    Just 40 percent of Republicans in an NBC/WSJ poll last month said they could see themselves supporting Mr. Cruz, while 38 percent said they couldn’t. That two-point margin in the plus column was the second worst among the elected officials who are thought to be major contenders for the nomination. Only Chris Christie fared worse.

    Despite considerable national media attention, Mr. Cruz holds only about 6 percent of the vote in national polls. Early national polls aren’t exactly predictive of the nomination, but every presidential nominee since 1976 except Bill Clinton has reached about 15 percent of the vote by this point in the campaign.

    The point isn’t that Mr. Cruz’s low level of support precludes him from winning the nomination. But he clearly hasn’t entered the race as the favorite of conservatives, and there isn’t much reason to assume that he will eventually become the favorite. The fight for conservatives will be hotly contested. Viable candidates with a far more plausible shot to win the nomination, like Scott Walker and Marco Rubio, or even Bobby Jindal and Rick Perry and Mike Huckabee, will all be competing for these voters.

    Mr. Walker’s early surge is a telling reminder that the conservative grass roots aren’t just interested in finding an arch-conservative, but in finding a conservative who can win.

    That’s not to say Mr. Cruz wouldn’t still play a role in the nominating process. He’s intelligent and a charismatic speaker. It wouldn’t be surprising if he managed to build a base of support in Iowa, where 47 percent of Republican caucus goers identified as “very conservative” and 57 percent identified as born-again or evangelical Christians in 2012.

    If he did manage to gain momentum in Iowa, it would have real consequences for the race. In a fractious party like today’s G.O.P., the outcome of a presidential primary can turn on the strength of factional candidates who can easily deny states or voters to a more viable alternative. Think of Mr. Huckabee in 2008, who denied Mitt Romney a win in Iowa and therefore weakened a candidate who might have otherwise been positioned to defeat John McCain.

    If Mr. Cruz won Iowa, he would deny a more mainstream candidate the opportunity to become the primary challenger to Jeb Bush. Even if Mr. Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he could conceivably draw enough conservative voters to give a candidate like Rand Paul or Mr. Bush a real shot to win the Iowa caucuses instead of someone like Mr. Walker.

    If Mr. Cruz won Iowa, he probably still wouldn’t have much of a shot at the nomination. He would face relentless criticism from other Republicans. His opponents would probably coalesce around anyone else to stop him. The “very conservative” wing of the Republican primary electorate is not large enough to swing the nomination without additional support from the relatively secular, moderate and “somewhat conservative” voters who decide the party’s blue and purple state primaries.

    You could perhaps conjure a scenario in which Mr. Cruz pulls it off. The Republican Party is conservative and populist, and Mr. Bush is hardly a perfect fit for the primary electorate. Forty-two percent of voters say they could not see themselves supporting him. Mr. Cruz runs a reasonable campaign, presents himself in a manner more in line with his Princeton-Harvard Law pedigree (he was a champion college debater), and ultimately earns grudging acceptance from party elites.

    Maybe this isn’t impossible. But it’s hard to say it’s likely. Mr. Cruz’s appeal to the party’s most conservative voters will probably cement the opposition of the rest of the party. Mr. Bush will work to address the concerns of conservatives. And many candidates — like Mr. Walker and Mr. Rubio — will be better positioned to exploit whatever reservations about Mr. Bush remain.
    Last edited by randomname; 03-23-2015 at 12:44 PM.



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  3. #2

  4. #3
    Even in that Cruz could give Paul/Bush a real shot at winning Iowa as opposed to Walker?

  5. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by randomname View Post
    Even in that Cruz could give Paul/Bush a real shot at winning Iowa as opposed to Walker?
    Yeah, he might take some socon support from Walker thus splitting that vote

  6. #5
    He'll write it off as the liberal media trying to stop a hard-earned conservative from running. We know a lot of Republicans just use negative media attention as a way to embolden them to do what they do even more.

  7. #6
    Even if Mr. Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he could conceivably draw enough conservative voters to give a candidate like Rand Paul or Mr. Bush a real shot to win the Iowa caucuses instead of someone like Mr. Walker.
    Interesting pairing. So, since the hand-picked Champion of Nepotism is obviously set to fail in a spectacular manner, the press is going to sling stealth mud at Rand Paul by trying to associate him with Bush in the minds of the public?
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...

  8. #7
    Perhaps Ted is really aiming at VPOTUS. The GOP requires carrying Texas for POTUS.

  9. #8
    I agree Cruz is a long shot. I don't think he will win.



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  11. #9
    "Zero chance" sounds like an overestimation of his odds.

    Gonna be a fun year, witnessing this clown crash and burn.

  12. #10
    Jan2017
    Member

    Quote Originally Posted by randomname View Post
    Even in that Cruz could give Paul/Bush a real shot at winning Iowa as opposed to Walker?
    fyi, Iowa ain't so hot on the Green Eggs and Ham Man . . .
    but CPAC results third for Cruz was not bad tho.

    the born in Canada Texas Senator Cruz as President (or VP for the record) of the USA . . . is not happenin' -
    unconstitutional and he'd get voter "nullification" if the GOP elite were stupid enough to have him on the ticket v. the Dimocrat nominee



    .

  13. #11
    blah blah blah....as soon as they say long shot, i dismiss the whole story even if they have a solid premise. i cant stand that phrase for obvious reasons. seems its used to bury someone rather than be accurate with the use of the word. $#@! em!

  14. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Ronin Truth View Post
    Perhaps Ted is really aiming at VPOTUS. The GOP requires carrying Texas for POTUS.
    Putting Cruz on a ticket would be about as politically dumb as selecting Dan Quale as your running mate.

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by satchelmcqueen View Post
    blah blah blah....as soon as they say long shot, i dismiss the whole story even if they have a solid premise. i cant stand that phrase for obvious reasons. seems its used to bury someone rather than be accurate with the use of the word. $#@! em!
    No, regardless of the author's intentions, they're absolutely correct. Just because SOME Republican voters will eat up Cruz's red meat talking points, he'd suffer just as bad of a fate as Goldwater.

  16. #14
    They are right. No chance in the general election, BUT he does have a chance at getting the GOP nomination. GOP voters were stupid enough to elect Romney and Mccain.
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  17. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Ronin Truth View Post
    Perhaps Ted is really aiming at VPOTUS. The GOP requires carrying Texas for POTUS.
    Miley Cyrus would carry Texas if she ran as a Republican.
    Quote Originally Posted by dannno View Post
    It's a balance between appeasing his supporters, appeasing the deep state and reaching his own goals.
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  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by RonPaulFanInGA View Post
    "Zero chance" sounds like an overestimation of his odds.

    Gonna be a fun year, witnessing this clown crash and burn.
    I thin that too. One of the news stations said he was polling #8 or something which really surprised me. I now lots of people in the GOP that like him a lot more than they like Bush. I would have thought Cruz would be in the top 3.

    Eh. Hope he pulls a Perry and fumbles hard.



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  20. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by angelatc View Post
    I thin that too. One of the news stations said he was polling #8 or something which really surprised me. I now lots of people in the GOP that like him a lot more than they like Bush. I would have thought Cruz would be in the top 3.

    Eh. Hope he pulls a Perry and fumbles hard.
    Walker reminds me more of the Perry hype from last time. A supposedly beloved Republican governor that surges instantly and has never been media tested.

    Cruz reminds me of Herman Cain from last time, perceived as more of an outsider but doesn't have a chance and will try to steal Paul's light support.

    Carson might be like Gary Johnson, sort of a wing man for Paul.

  21. #18
    Called it. 'How dare a newspaper's views not line up with mine!' I imagine Cruz must have thought at least once.

    Disparaging the New York Times is fast becoming a rite of passage for Republican presidential candidates.

    In an interview with St. Louis's FM News Talk 97.1 on Tuesday, Ted Cruz argued that Republicans shouldn't listen to "The New York Times and other leftist rags" when picking their presidential nominee.

    Cruz's remark comes one week after former Florida governor Jeb Bush told Fox News Radio that he didn't read the Times -- despite the fact that he once told Esquire he read the paper every day.
    http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/...3.html?hp=l2_4

  22. #19
    No chance at being president. I will personally campaign to make sure that doesn't happen. All I need to know about Cruz was in his speech at Liberty University. Another 4 years of being the lapdog of the rouge State of Israel.
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  23. #20
    Negative coverage from a liberal publication just feeds into Ted's argument that he is utterly hated by the left because he is the most "conservative" and will therefore energize the base. The most damaging thing the media could do to Cruz is to just ignore him. Unfortunately they won't.

  24. #21
    Cruz is going no where outside Iowa

  25. #22
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    I am very glad that Rand has been positioning himself to be taken seriously since 2010. In my opinion Rand has done what he has done so that he won't be hailed as an extreme long shot. Its a different approach than Ron and I think it is a winner.

    Cruz can suck it.
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  26. #23
    Cruz's biggest impact will be felt in Iowa if he shaves enough votes off Rand to deny him a win. Rand, like Ron before him, needs to win an early primary or caucus, to show that he's a conservative that can win. If not, he'll be buried by the media as they pour coverage and credibility onto the frontrunner who is winning.
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