Why Cruz Would Be Better for the GOP

This week, I wrote about the loom­ing dis­aster that a Trump nom­in­a­tion would cre­ate for House and Sen­ate Re­pub­lic­ans, but I didn’t ad­dress the oth­er ele­phant in the room: Ted Cruz. The con­ven­tion­al wis­dom sug­gests that Cruz is only slightly more elect­able than Trump—with some party lead­ers view­ing him as even more tox­ic than the front-run­ner. GOP Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham fam­ously said pick­ing between Trump and Cruz is like choos­ing between be­ing “shot or poisoned” (even though now he says he’s on the “Ted train.”). But the real­ity is that Cruz, while a tra­di­tion­ally weak can­did­ate, has a shot to win a pres­id­en­tial elec­tion against Hil­lary Clin­ton and would give lead­ers a fight­ing chance to hold their con­gres­sion­al ma­jor­it­ies.

It’s easy to for­get that most of the big-pic­ture fun­da­ment­als fa­vor Re­pub­lic­ans in 2016. Most voters be­lieve the coun­try is headed on the wrong track, Clin­ton’s fa­vor­ab­il­ity num­bers have been poor for many months, and there’s a nat­ur­al de­sire for change after sev­en years of one party in power. Even as the Re­pub­lic­an Party’s brand has been dis­mal, the gen­er­ic con­gres­sion­al bal­lot has shown that GOP can­did­ates do as well as the Demo­crat­ic al­tern­at­ives. This, des­pite the chaot­ic clown show that has defined the Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial primary.

If Cruz some­how wins the nom­in­a­tion and pres­id­en­tial elec­tion, it won’t be be­cause of his charm, ideo­lo­gic­al po­s­i­tion­ing, or abil­ity to at­tract new Re­pub­lic­an voters. It will be be­cause the Re­pub­lic­an base united be­hind him, swing voters couldn’t get be­hind Hil­lary Clin­ton, and the pub­lic con­tin­ued to be­lieve that the coun­try was badly off track. This week’s grue­some ter­ror at­tacks in Brus­sels won’t help mat­ters for a Demo­crat­ic Party whose base doesn’t view na­tion­al se­cur­ity as a top-tier is­sue.  

At the very least, Cruz wouldn’t be a drag on the party. He’d turn out the Re­pub­lic­an base, try to use Clin­ton’s neg­at­ives to drive un­de­cideds his way, and make a cred­ible play for some His­pan­ic voters. For battle­ground Sen­ate races, a Cruz can­did­acy means that Cuban-Amer­ic­ans would show up in south Flor­ida, con­ser­vat­ives would rally be­hind him in the Mil­wau­kee sub­urbs, and evan­gel­ic­al voters would be en­thused in Mis­souri. That base-gin­ning alone isn’t enough for him to win the pres­id­ency—or even hold the party’s tenu­ous Sen­ate ma­jor­ity—but it should keep enough vul­ner­able GOP Sen­ate can­did­ates with­in reach of win­ning their own reelec­tions. And giv­en the GOP’s par­tis­an ad­vant­age in enough con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts, it’s un­likely that Cruz would cost Paul Ry­an his speak­er­ship (un­like Trump).

Cruz’s main chal­lenge, however, is win­ning the nom­in­a­tion without ali­en­at­ing Trump sup­port­ers. If Trump doesn’t win the GOP nom­in­a­tion, odds are he’ll run kick­ing and scream­ing out of Clev­e­land and will lam­baste the party’s even­tu­al nom­in­ee. That un­der­scores how dam­aging Trump’s can­did­acy has been to the Re­pub­lic­an Party. There’s a good chance that the party will be ir­re­voc­ably di­vided no mat­ter who emerges from the con­ven­tion. And if that’s the case, party of­fi­cials will be look­ing to Cruz merely to hold down the dam­ages.

TRAIL MIX

1. Sign of the times: A vul­ner­able fresh­man House Re­pub­lic­an said he wouldn’t rule out vot­ing for Clin­ton, if Don­ald Trump is the Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial nom­in­ee. Flor­ida Rep. Car­los Cur­belo’s sur­pris­ing com­ments are a sign of Trump’s tox­icity with Cuban-Amer­ic­an voters, who tra­di­tion­ally vote Re­pub­lic­an. A ma­jor­ity of voters in Cur­belo’s dis­trict are His­pan­ic, and the re­drawn seat he’s run­ning for in 2016 is more Demo­crat­ic than his cur­rent one. His state­ment comes less than two weeks after the Flor­ida pres­id­en­tial primary, in which Trump lost the Cuban-Amer­ic­an vote by 46 points to Marco Ru­bio.

Need­less to say, if Trump can’t win over Cuban-Amer­ic­an Re­pub­lic­ans in Flor­ida, it’s al­most im­possible for him to win Flor­ida and its 29 elect­or­al votes in a gen­er­al elec­tion.

2. One of Trump’s fa­vor­ite talk­ing points on the cam­paign trail is his abil­ity to com­pete in Rust Belt swing states that Re­pub­lic­ans haven’t won for dec­ades. His abil­ity to rally low-propensity, blue-col­lar voters in the primary has even con­vinced some ex­perts that he’d be able tore­draw the elect­or­al map. But there’s no evid­ence that Trump is any more com­pet­it­ive in the Rust Belt (or his home state of New York) than any oth­er Re­pub­lic­an.

Let’s look at the polling. This month’s Key­stone poll of Pennsylvania voters showed Clin­ton lead­ing Trump by 13 points (46-33 per­cent), a lar­ger mar­gin than her 10-point lead over Ted Cruz. A whop­ping 65 per­cent of Pennsylvani­ans view Trump un­fa­vor­ably, with 56 per­cent hold­ing deeply un­fa­vor­able views of him. Last month’s Mar­quette Law sur­vey of Wis­con­sin voters showed Clin­ton lead­ing Trump by 10 points, even as she trailed Ted Cruz by 1 point. The only en­cour­aging Rust Belt poll for Trump was out of Ohio, where Quin­nipi­ac found him lead­ing Clin­ton by 2 in Feb­ru­ary but suffered from a dis­mal 35/59 fa­vor­ab­il­ity rat­ing.

As The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Greg Sar­gent re­por­ted, Trump would have to im­prove on Mitt Rom­ney’s mar­gin of vic­tory with blue-col­lar whites by double-di­gits in most Rust Belt states to have a shot at win­ning them—all while not los­ing any sup­port from col­lege-edu­cated white voters. And for every voter that Trump may win over in Young­stown, Ohio or Ma­comb County, Michigan, he’d lose even more sup­port among sub­urb­an­ites in the Phil­adelphia sub­urbs and Colum­bus. Put simply, ex­pect­ing Trump to run more com­pet­it­ively than Rom­ney in the Mid­w­est re­lies on fuzzy math.

3. A tale of two pres­id­en­tial in­sur­gents, by the num­bers: Trump has won 37.11 per­cent of the Re­pub­lic­an primary and caucus votes so far (5,776,992 votes). Bernie Sanders has won 41.07 per­cent of the Demo­crat­ic votes (6,447,450 votes). This, ac­cord­ing to the in­dis­pens­able Green Pa­pers web­site, one of the top re­sources for track­ing the nom­in­a­tion.