![Republican candidates Ted Cruz (left) and John Kasich have an exchange during the March 10 debate.](https://cdn.govexec.com/media/img/cd/2016/03/21/032116presidents/860x394.jpg?1626859836)
Republican candidates Ted Cruz (left) and John Kasich have an exchange during the March 10 debate. Wilfredo Lee/AP
Cruz and Kasich Are Playing Right Into Trump's Hands
Instead of strategizing to stop Trump, his rivals are still acting like he isn’t the front-runner in the race.
Even as Donald Trump’s strong performance Tuesday night was a serious setback to the anti-Trump movement, the biggest obstacles to stopping Trump are his own Republican rivals. Instead of working together and denying Trump delegates, both Ted Cruz and John Kasich have pursued self-destructive, self-interested strategies that seemed designed more to one-up each other than take on the front-runner in the race.
According to The Cook Political Report’s delegate scorecard, despite Trump’s successful night last Tuesday, he is now (slightly) off track to securing the 1,237 delegates necessary to clinch before the convention. And, according to the delegate math, Cruz and Kasich have no path to winning a majority. If both Cruz and Kasich are looking to deny Trump his necessary delegates (and press their luck with a contested convention), they should be coordinating to their advantage. Kasich would cede most of the Western states, with more-conservative electorates, to Cruz. Cruz, whose social conservatism doesn’t sell well above the Mason-Dixon line, would allow Kasich free rein in the Northeast battlegrounds.
Instead, we’re seeing Trump’s opponents employ strategies that mainly help Trump. Cruz spent valuable time in the campaign’s last week in Florida and Ohio, seeking to deny Marco Rubio and Kasich victories in their home states. (It had no impact: Kasich won comfortably; Rubio lost badly.) That time would have been much better spent in Missouri, where Cruz lost by less than 2,000 votes, or in Illinois, where Cruz could have secured more delegates with a stronger showing.
Meanwhile, Kasich is spending valuable time and campaign cash on ads in Utah, a state where Cruz is well-positioned to win big on Tuesday. But while Cruz would win all the state’s delegates with an outright majority, falling short of the 50 percent mark means Trump takes home 20 additional delegates. Kasich’s resources would be much better utilized in preparing for the round of Northeastern primaries on April 26, when Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and Rhode Island Republicans head to the polls. Kasich is well positioned to consolidate support with the region’s many suburbanites, and he has specific appeal in the Pittsburgh area; he grew up in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania (the son of a mailman, as his stump speech goes).
But instead of thinking strategically, Kasich and Cruz are behaving as if they have a logical shot at winning a majority of delegates. Cruz naively believes that, if the race were a one-on-one battle with him and Trump, he’d prevail. These assumptions are delusional. Cruz would likely lose badly to Trump head-to-head in the Northeastern battlegrounds, where his brand of conservatism is as disliked as Trump’s populist spiel. And Kasich is mathematically eliminated from winning a majority of delegates; it’s near-impossible for him to even come close to Trump.
Their path to victory lies in denying Trump enough delegates to have a majority entering the convention. The math shows such an outcome is very possible. The question is whether Trump’s rivals have the strategic discipline to pull of the task.
TRAIL MIX
1) The biggest fear among Republican operatives is that, if Trump wins the GOP nomination, around one-quarter of GOP voters will stay home and not cast ballots for downballot Republican candidates—a significantly greater number than those who would be drawn to the polls by Trump’s candidacy. It’s a much bigger concern than the prospect that a lopsided Hillary Clinton victory over Trump would carry downballot Democratic coattails. If close to one-quarter of rank-and-file Republicans don’t even show up to vote, not only is control of the Senate endangered, but fairly safe GOP-held seats in Missouri, Indiana, and Arizona could suddenly come into play. And control of the House, which until recently looked gerrymandered beyond Democratic control, would also be in play. Democrats would need to net 30 House seats to win back a majority. That’s exactly how many seats the party won in the 2006 wave, one that many Republicans didn’t see coming until it was too late to do anything.
That’s precisely why some party leaders believe having a third-party conservative candidate is something of a necessity with Trump as the nominee. Even if a split Republican Party costs them the presidency, getting enough GOP voters to the polls will be crucial with the Senate and the House both potentially in play.
2) For a third-party conservative candidate to have any chance of success beyond being a spoiler, he/she needs to bring three skills to the table: a) high name identification, since such a candidate can’t spend valuable time getting voters to know him or her; b) personal wealth and/or access to top donors; and c) ability to straddle the ideologically wide divide of Trump critics, from the establishment center to grassroots conservatives convinced Trump is a fraud. That’s hard for nearly anyone to accomplish under normal circumstances.
Many names have been floated, including Mitt Romney, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn — all of whom have flaws as a third-party alternative. (Romney’s too establishment, Perry is too conservative, and Coburn is too unknown.) But the Republican who best fits the bill is House Speaker Paul Ryan. This week, Ryan furiously denied any interest in pursuing a candidacy at the convention. But he had been equally adamant that he would never run for speaker. If Republicans get to the unlikely point where none of the actual candidates could muster a majority, Ryan would be the only contender who’d have a shot at bridging the divide.
3) Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will be the most interesting politician to watch in the next few weeks, in the run-up to his state’s critical April 5 primary. He’s one of the few Republicans not to be damaged in the Trump tornado, since he dropped out of the race early and presciently warned that others should follow his lead to stop Trump. Walker has a chance to demonstrate his clout by rallying his state’s voters against Trump and endorsing a favored challenger. If he decides to endorse, Walker’s dilemma will be the same as other anti-Trump Republicans — deciding which alternative to rally behind. While Cruz looks like the strongest anti-Trump challenger nationally, he has limited appeal in Wisconsin, where only 37 percent of GOP voters are evangelical and fewer than one-third define themselves as very conservative. Kasich could well be the more natural alternative to anti-Trump Republicans.
And if Walker wants to run for president again in 2020, alienating Trump’s supporters would cause him problems down the road. Walker is one of the shrinking number of Republicans with appeal among the establishment and blue-collar populists. That didn’t do him any good in a race that Trump took over from the beginning. Whether he spends his remaining political capital to stop Trump in his home state or saves it for the future will go a long way in showing where the nomination is headed.