This blog won't always be political in nature but since it's election season there are just so many opportunities to break down what's going on in the political world beyond the rhetoric and back and forth you typically see from headlines and Facebook banter so I'm going to do my best to explain what's now happening in the GOP primary.
As I predicted months ago, the GOP basically had four options in this primary.
The first was to embrace nationalism and Donald Trump, the first candidate since Ross Perot to speak to the concerns and interests of lower middle class white voters or conservatives primarily concerned with losing the nation's identity and values due to immigration (which is an increasing percentage of conservatives out there).
The second was to finish what the tea party started in holding Republicans accountable to their failure to enact conservative legislation with what would be the the first conservative, outsider candidate to lead the party since Ronald Reagan...Ted Cruz.
Third was to go with Marco Rubio, a more conservative candidate than many establishment types who has a knack for being personable and policy-fluent in a way that would likely resonate with moderates and people outside of the conservative base while maintaining strict values on social conservative issues like marriage and abortion.
If Marco Rubio hadn't staked so much of his reputation years ago on the Chuck Schumer "gang of eight" bill that would have allowed illegal immigrants a pathway to staying in the country while doing nothing to address border security, and infuriating the party's base, he would be a shoo-in right now to win the primary.
Finally there's Chris Christie, who's still hanging around and hoping for a strong performance in New Hampshire to make him the choice of the establishment. Christie's play is to be the tough, law and order candidate in a time where Americans are concerned about border security, increasing violence in the inner city, and ISIS.
Christie would likely have been the leader from the beginning of the primary season if not for a scandal in New Jersey where it seems that his office closed a bridge to punish a political rival.
Up till now, Ted Cruz had been very cleverly working behind the scenes and avoiding a ton of national attention while using Donald Trump as a stalking horse to position himself as the winning candidate in a primary where "let's hold Washington accountable!" sentiment is driving the race.
Donald Trump completely flustered and disordered the more established parts of the Republican party and made their favorite son, Jeb Bush, look like a weakling...
Now the GOP establishment is trying to figure out how to position themselves to seize control back over the primary. Unfortunately for their efforts, they are no longer united in determining how to do so.
Jeb is still the nominal leader to be their guy and his plan is a stupid one, namely to attack every other candidate besides Trump in the hopes that when Republican primary voters have to choose between the loud-mouthed mogul and a third Bush that he'll finally appear as a preferred option. It's just plausible, and if different candidates split the early states while Jeb hangs around he could surge late and take over, but it's more likely that he'll just hurt the people who could have won the primary and hand things over to the less moderate candidates.
Which brings us to Ted Cruz and the conservative movement.
In the last Republican debate, Ted Cruz hammered Donald Trump for the first time but he did so in a different way than Jeb, Rubio, Kasich, or anyone else had done.
Cruz needs to attack Trump and knock him down because he's not going to build a coalition that can win the primary against Rubio, Christie, or Jeb if he's splitting anti-establishment conservative votes with Donald Trump. However, that meant that Cruz's attack on Donald is designed to invalidate Trump without invalidating his supporters. He's essentially looking to co-opt the Trump movement.
His method for doing so started with the #NewYorkValues comment that has driven liberals, New Yorkers, and establishment folks around the country to frothing with rage:
In the media this has been described as a defeat for Cruz, because the media is driven by people from New York, but it was a brilliant rhetorical tactic that is now serving as the vehicle for Cruz's larger attack.
Which is that he's tying Trump to the establishment by noting his background and the fact that historically Trump has not been a conservative at all. Other candidates have tried to question Trump's conservative bonafides but they didn't do so from the position of strength that Cruz is now operating from and they didn't do so in the weeks immediately preceding the Iowa caucuses when more voters start to pay attention.
Not only has Cruz moved with good timing and with an attack that can have the effect of plying Trump's supporters away from the mogul without insulting them for preferring Trump in the first place as Jeb's condescending attacks did, he's also doing so with the full coordination and weight of the tea party and conservative movement behind him.
Immediately after launching these attacks on Trump, Ted Cruz immediately got support from several major conservative figures and outlets.
-The National Review's David French wrote a front page article asking "what is driving the Establishment's preference for Trump over Cruz?"
Implicitly tying Trump to the establishment that he has campaigned to take down and framing the battle as between Cruz the outsider vs Trump, who's actually an insider.
-Talk radio tycoon Rush Limbaugh did the same, starting to frame the issue as Cruz: the true conservative outsider trying to bring reform vs Trump: who speaks truth to power on immigration but doesn't have a trustworthy track record of standing up to liberalism and the establishment.
These conservative figures are ready to go all-in on Ted Cruz because he's demonstrated the ability to build a coalition that could win the primary and because he'd be the final solution to their efforts to take control of the Republican party. The 2010, 2012, and 2014 elections were described as "wave elections" in which conservatives were able to take down moderate candidates in the primaries and then win general elections against Democrats, leading to the GOP now controlling both houses of congress.
However, despite those efforts, they have been unable to get anything done to promote their own agenda or even fully block the agenda of Obama due to weak leadership and the power of the presidency.
Getting Cruz into the White House would be the ultimate wave election that would seize control over the direction of the country from white liberals and place it in the hands of traditional Americans.
Now, in the face of multiple conservative outlets joining in and framing the debate in a way that will inevitably favor Cruz and allow him to co-opt Trump's movement and become the standard bearer for angry Americans wanting to take back the country, Donald has completely played into their hands.
First he fought back against the charge of #NewYorkValues by pandering about 9/11, as though the fact that the city was attacked by terrorists 14 years ago had anything to do with whether he could be relied upon to set a conservative policy agenda from the powerful seat of the presidency.
Secondly, he's ended up garnering a ton of support from the people who love and embody #NewYorkValues. People such as Mayor De Blasio and former NY senator and democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
So now the debate over #NewYorkValues has become Ted Cruz and average Americans vs big city New Yorkers, Donald Trump, and major liberal politicians.
Offered a chance to apologize about this comment, Cruz went for the kill in a fashion you might have expected from Trump:
"I apologize to the millions of New Yorkers who have been let down by liberal politicians in that state..."
As someone who knows some New Yorkers from upstate and outside of the city, I can tell you that the people in the city are often regarded as self-obsessed and keen to inflict policies that work for their city on everyone else in the state regardless of whether it works for them or not.
New York city and it's people are fairly insulated, and so while they are furious about this charge, Ted Cruz has used a rhetorical trick that is going to resonate with Americans all over the rest of the country who resent New Yorkers sense of self-importance and entitlement about their own qualifications to lead the country.
The next step for Cruz is to take down Donald Trump in Iowa, which team Cruz assumes is a task already in the bag, and then use the major blow to Trump's ego and mythos of greatness and inexorability to surge and exceed expectations in New Hampshire as well.
If Trump loses both of these states, the air will release out of him and Cruz will be in position to pick up the pieces as the chosen reform candidate to go clean up Washington. Then it'll be up to the establishment to give up on Jeb and choose between Rubio and Christie who is the better choice to fend off Cruz and the conservative movement.
If the battle between Trump and Cruz is prolonged, than the establishment will have plenty of time and should be able to take advantage of them splitting the conservative movement vote and win late.
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