I’d seldom heard a voice as ripe with self-regard — as juicy with it — as his. He’s pomposity’s plum tomato.
.. We continue to underestimate him. He’s even craftier than we appreciated. He’s more devious than we realized.
.. By one calculation, just the super PAC supporting Bush has lavished nearly $25 million on attack ads against Rubio
.. Less than half that amount has been spent on all ads against Cruz, and spending on New Hampshire ads against Rubio since January 1st has been quadruple that of spending on those against Cruz.
.. Cruz is to some extent Santorum’s second coming, but with more guile, more gall, more money and a better organization.
.. two of the bluntest, smartest Republican strategists I know confided to me that while they think the race is still unpredictable, they’d wager on Cruz as their party’s nominee if forced to make a bet.
They cringed as they said it. He appalls them. But he also impresses them. He knows what he’s doing and he’ll do what it takes.
Ted Cruz & Ronald Reagan’s Political Bible Verse
Five candidates can plausibly imagine themselves taking the oath of office. “Left hand on the Bible, right hand in the air,” Rubio told his supporters, pantomiming the scene, inviting them to imagine it. Ted Cruz went further, specifying the very Bible verse that his finger would rest on: 2 Chronicles 7:14. The same one, of course, as Ronald Reagan.
Context:
12 Then the Lord appeared to Solomon by night, and said to him: “I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. 13 When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people,
Ronald Reagan & Ted Cruz’s verse:
14 if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
Jesus’s view of drought in Matthew 5:44-46
44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
.. Cruz works in a very narrow range—he is either a crusader for the religious right in the culture wars or a crusader for the libertarian right in the anti-government wars—but he knows all of its dimensions. Yesterday, adapting to the place, he emphasized the libertarianism.
Dirty Tricks. Blue-Collar Economics
There was nothing subtle about his disgraceful attacks on Ted Cruz’s eligibility to run for president, although Trump at times tried to wrap them in a hilariously transparent tissue of concern about Cruz’s welfare.
.. The Cruz tactic wasn’t admirable, yet it is hardly unprecedented for campaigns to spread rumors favorable to their interests.
The fact is that the Republican Party can’t be dependent on working-class voters at the same time that its default economic agenda has little to say to them. If Trump has opened up the space for a conversation in the GOP about how to connect with these voters and their concerns, then his carnival show will have had some significant upside.
The Plausibility of Ted Cruz
On foreign policy, too, Cruz’s Jacksonian, “bomb ’em all” positioning on the Middle East seems more in tune with the party’s post-Iraq war mood than Rubio’s tendency toward a George W. Bush-style crusading idealism.
.. His tax plan, which would raise the cost of living significantly for seniors, is vulnerable to potentially devastating attacks. If it came down to a two-man race, he would probably lose big in the late, blue, winner-take-all states, potentially overwhelming whatever delegate lead he’d accumulated up to that point.