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Ted Cruz Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 17, 2016 109 Comments
It's not often that a Republican presidential primary in New York matters. This year it does. It's a time for choosing, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan. The choice is between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, though John Kasich is on the ballot too. The real race to the nomination has been Trump v. Cruz for at least several weeks and it is likely to remain that way. Faced with that choice, it's easy. Legal Insurrection started in October 2008 in anticipation of the Obama presidency. We were part of the Tea Party movement (though aligned with no specific group) since the beginning. We worked hard through Operation Counterweight and campaign coverage to find and elect candidates who would push the window towards conservatism. Sometimes we were disappointed once they took office, but the window opened wider.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 16, 2016 269 Comments
Ted Cruz racked up another big delegate win, this time in Wyoming. CNN reports:
Cruz won 14 of 14 Republican National Convention delegates up for grabs at the Wyoming state convention here Saturday. The crowd here was clearly in Cruz's corner, as the Texas senator was the only candidate to make the trip to Casper -- ahead of a major snowstorm -- and Sarah Palin, scheduled to speak for Trump, previously canceled.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 15, 2016 36 Comments
It was going to be yuge. There was going to be a march on the Colorado State Capitol the likes of which had not been seen before, reflecting seething anger among voters over Ted Cruz "stealing" Colorado in a "voterless" process. It was pure media manipulation based on a lie spread by Trump and his campaign about how the Colorado process worked. And it was aided and abetted by Trumpmedia, that hyperbolic group of formerly conservative websites and media personalities who are riding the Trump horse. Turns out the massive rally didn't get thousands, not even hundreds. A few dozen showed up.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 13, 2016 77 Comments
Donald Trump inexplicably waited until YESTERDAY to name a State Political Director in California. The California primary on June 7 could determine whether Trump reaches the magic 1237 majority delegate number prior to the July convention. By all reports, Cruz is far ahead in the ground game in California, which awards delegates not only on the statewide vote but also by congressional district. Even if Trump wins the state, he may underperform in enough congressional districts due to Cruz's superior campaign preparation that Trump is stopped short. Or he may fail to file delegate slates in all districts. Erick Erickson reports:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 13, 2016 111 Comments
Noted liberal Harvard Law School professor (retired) Alan Dershowitz was on the Kelly File last night, and repeated what he has said before via News Max): "He came into my class, literally his first day in law school with his right had up – not his left hand, his right hand," Dershowitz said Tuesday on Fox News Channel's "The Kelly File." Cruz challenged his professor on everything, which made his job easier, Dershowitz said. "I was against the death penalty, he's in favor. I was in favor of the exclusionary rule, he's against it," he said. "And he made such brilliant arguments that I never had to play the devil's advocate." Cruz "was one of the best students I ever had," Dershowitz said.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 13, 2016 45 Comments
An Administrative Law Judge in New Jersey has rejected a challenge to Ted Cruz's eligibility to be president in rejecting an attempt to remove Cruz from the NJ primary ballot. The Judge's decision (full embed at bottom) is very similar to my analysis in my September 3, 2013 post, natural born Citizens: Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Ted Cruz. NJ.com reports:
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is a "natural-born citizen" under the U.S. Constitution and therefore can run in the June 7 New Jersey primary, a state administrative law judge said Tuesday. "The more persuasive legal analysis is that such a child, born of a citizen-father, citizen-mother, or both, is indeed a 'natural born citizen' within the contemplation of the Constitution," Administrative Law Judge Jeff Masin wrote....

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 12, 2016 21 Comments
Californians are thrilled at the prospect of having their votes actually matter during the presidential primary season, especially when every delegate is critical. So many Republicans in the southern California area headed to various rallies yesterday to see aspirant Senator Ted Cruz. I joined two of our local Tea Party bloggers (W.C. Varones and Left Coast Rebel) and 2000 other interested voters at his San Diego event yesterday.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 12, 2016 222 Comments
Donald J. Trump got crushed at the Colorado Republican state convention, where Ted Cruz swept the national delegate selection. This sweep happened not because the convention was rigged, but because Trump did a horrible job of working the caucus process that led to the convention. Trump all but ignored the electoral process leading up to the convention, and didn't even bother to go make a pitch himself at the convention, unlike Cruz who gave a speech on stage as Trump surrogates were furiously working to convince delegates to vote for Trump. Throughout the process, there was no discernible complaint by Trump and his supporters so long as they thought they had a shot at winning, or at least eating into Cruz's likely win. Only after it was over, and Colorado together with Wisconsin created momentum for Cruz, did Trump and his supporters start alleging fraud and deceit. This was a classic "change the narrative" Trump ploy, much as he would roll out high-profile endorsements that morning after a debate. Had Trump done better, there would not have been a peep. This controversy is not about principle, fairness or anything other than Trump losing and fearing his chance to win on a first ballot is slipping away.

Posted by New Neo on April 11, 2016 167 Comments
Here's one plausible scenario for Cruz's prospects in a general election. It's worth reading the whole thing, but here's an excerpt:
...[T]he assumption is that Cruz cannot improve his image among the broader electorate, but that's hard to know for sure, because he's never had to do it. While opinions on Clinton are deeply entrenched after her decades in the public spotlight, Cruz isn't as universally known and has more of an opening to get a second look. Cruz would enter the general election campaign with a reputation as an extremist, which the Clinton campaign would do everything to play up. But the risk of such a strategy comes if Cruz is able to defy such a caricature during the election among voters getting to know him for the first time. To quote Shakespeare's Prince Hal: "By so much shall I falsify men's hopes/And like bright metal on a sullen ground/My reformation, glittering o'er my fault/Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes/Than that which hath no foil to set it off."
In other words, Cruz is much less of a known commodity to most voters, and he is therefore more likely to be able to improve his image if he can just soften up just a bit.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 10, 2016 86 Comments
As I noted yesterday, Donald Trump is having problems with delegates, and it sometimes seems that he doesn't understand how GOP nomination rules work or that the rules are different in different states or even that there are rules at all.  Whatever the reason for this impression, it's backed up by the fact that he's only recently begun to organize his team to work on delegates. One Trump campaign shake-up following his discouraging last month or so is his new hire Paul Manafort, a move announced less than two weeks ago.  Manafort is a long-time GOP political operative who has served as an adviser on the campaigns of Bob Dole, John McCain, and Gerald Ford, among others. The New York Times reports:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 09, 2016 25 Comments
Last December I noted the fear I've seen voiced among progressives, particularly on Facebook, that Donald Trump was making Ted Cruz acceptable, Is Overton Window wide open for Ted Cruz?:
I noticed this Facebook comment on the page of a local Ithaca liberal Democrat, on a post criticizing Donald Trump:
Donald Trump looks like the warm-up act. Whoever follows him from the Republican party looks reasonable (and sane) by comparison.
The commenter didn’t use the term, but she was describing how Trump has moved The Overton Window. The Overton Window has been described as follows:
The Overton window is a political theory that refers to the range (or window) of policies that the public will accept. The idea is that any policy falling outside the Overton window is out of step with public opinion and the current political climate, and formulated to try and shift the Overton window in a different direction, or to expand it to be wider.
As Republicans move toward a contested convention, at which Cruz has a strong likelihood of prevailing, I'm noticing more progressive concern. Heather Digby Parton at Salon writes, Ted Cruz’s terrifying reinvention: How America’s most detestable senator is repackaging himself for November:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 09, 2016 51 Comments
As we await final results from Colorado, it appears that Ted Cruz will obtain more delegates in addition to the 17 he already has. ABC News reports:
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz has locked up the support of 21 Colorado delegates and may scoop up even more Saturday. Slates loyal to Cruz won every assembly in the state's seven congressional districts, which began April 2 and culminated Friday with 12 delegates selected. The Texas senator is well-positioned to pad his total Saturday, when 13 more delegates were to be chosen at the party's state convention. According to an Associated Press count, Trump has 743 delegates, Cruz has 532 and Ohio Gov. John Kasich has 143. It takes 1,237 to clinch the nomination, though there's a real chance no candidate will reach that mark by the national convention in Cleveland in July. Of Cruz's Colorado delegates so far, only 17 were formally pledged to him, and in theory the other four could change their vote in Cleveland. But they were all included on the senator's slates and are largely state party officials who said they were barred from signing a formal pledge for Cruz but have promised to back him in balloting at the convention.
ABC goes on to note that Cruz's "superior organization" has helped him substantially in Colorado, and NBC News is reporting that Trump's performance in Colorado reveals a "chaotic, overwhelmed Trump campaign."

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 08, 2016 88 Comments
If you've spent any time on social media, particularly in the politicalsphere, chances are you've encountered an internet troll or two. This election cycle has been er, um... interesting. I never thought I'd long for the days the so-called Paulbots would troll my feeds lecturing me about liberty and the Constitution and Dr. Paul. At least most of those accounts were real. Alas... Not so in 2016. The Trumpbots, or accounts that seem to exist solely to attack those with unfavorable views of The Donald, are a special breed of vicious. I've learned it's best to ignore, block, and move on. Why waste time on people, or bots rather, not interested in positive engagement, I say. I've also suspected there was a concerted effort to derail conversation on social media and to attempt to fluster influencers. It all reeked of some kind of psychological web warfare. Turns out, I might have been right.

Posted by New Neo on April 08, 2016 9 Comments
On the face of it, answering the question as to what happened in the GOP primary in Wisconsin seems like a no-brainer. As Edward Morrissey writes, Trump shot himself in the foot---dissing popular governor Scott Walker, and flubbing abortion questions---and ended up losing by 13 points, 35 to Cruz's 48. To shore up this argument about a Trump reversal in Wisconsin, Morrissey cites a Wisconsin poll from late January and one from late February, the first of which had Trump leading by 6 and the second by 10. So the narrative seems to make sense---that is, until you actually look a bit deeper, when you find that something additional might have been going on.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 08, 2016 134 Comments
I still can't stand even the sound of John Kasich's voice. Now that we have that out of the way, it's pretty clear that the Republican primaries and convention come down to a choice between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Speculation otherwise -- including conspiracy theories -- does not seem to live in the real world, according to Charlie Cook:
Whenev­er I hear Re­pub­lic­ans wax on about the pos­sib­il­ity of nom­in­at­ing someone oth­er than Don­ald Trump or Ted Cruz — talk­ing up John Kasich, Paul Ry­an, Scott Walk­er, Mitt Rom­ney, or some oth­er less po­lar­iz­ing fig­ure — it makes me won­der: Ex­actly how would that hap­pen? We all have mem­or­ized two num­bers. The first is 1,237, the num­ber of del­eg­ates needed to win a ma­jor­ity at the GOP con­ven­tion. The second is 40, as in Rule 40, re­quir­ing that a can­did­ate win primar­ies or caucuses in eight states to have his name placed in nom­in­a­tion. (It was ad­ded to the party rules in 2012, pushed by al­lies of Mitt Rom­ney to stifle Ron Paul.)

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 06, 2016 190 Comments
Remember when Ted Cruz (or Marco Rubio, or Jeb Bush, or any other Republican) lost a primary and accused his opponent of criminal election activity, and then hid from the media on election night? Neither do I. You get out there on election night, congratulate the other side and give a speech to rally for the next battle. Or at least you don't act like a two-year old brat who just had a half-finished candy bar taken away. Last night Donald Trump acted like the two-year old. For the first time in his adult life he was speechless and camera-shy after getting crushed in the Wisconsin primary. Wisconsin Republican Primary 2016 Results No graceful concession speeches there. Instead Trump issued a vitriolic, bizarre statement (emphasis added):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 05, 2016 98 Comments
All eyes are on Wisconsin. Before I get to today's primary, let's take a look back at one of my favorite political periods in the history of the world - the defeat of the Recall against Governor Scott Walker after over a year of protests against the public sector union collective bargaining reform bill. It was what I called Wisconsin's Long, Strange Trip, linking to our exhaustive coverage of all the crazy:
Police insurrections.  Palace guards.  Catch a Senator contests.  Doctors behaving badly.  Massive national solidarity protests which weren’t.  Identity theft as political theater.  Shark jumping.  Legislators who run away to other states.  Busbang bangs.  Protesters locking their heads to metal railings and pretending to walk like Egyptians.  Beer attacks.  Canoe flotillas.  (alleged) Judicial chokeholds.  Tears falling on Che Guevara t-shirts at midnight.  Endless recalls.  And recounts.  Communications Directors making threats.   Judges who think they are legislators (well, I’ll grant you that one is common).  V-K Day.  Hole-y warriors.  Cities namedSpeculation and Conjecture.  And the funniest blog headline so far:
First They Came For The Right To Retire After 30 Years On Full Salary With COLAs
When Walker defeated the Recall late in the evening of June 5, 2012, it was Oh what a night. That was a time when the Legal Insurrection community was more united and cohesive, and thousands of us celebrated the win with the inaugural launch of website fireworks and John Phillip Sousa music:
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