Ted Cruz Is Stalking Donald Trump

[bkepley]

Tim Alberta
National Journal

Four days after Don­ald Trump drew tens of thou­sands of sup­port­ers to a mod­est, mul­tipur­pose foot­ball arena in this state, Ted Cruz stood 200 miles away in­side a glass-en­closed suite over­look­ing the north end zone in­side le­gendary Denny-Bry­ant Sta­di­um. Here, in the home of the Alabama Crim­son Tide, Cruz offered blis­ter­ing cri­tiques identic­al to those de­livered by Trump—a na­tion in de­cline, an im­mig­ra­tion crisis, a gov­ern­ment cor­rup­ted by ca­reer politi­cians in both parties.

Yet Cruz, speak­ing to sev­er­al hun­dred suit-and-tie Re­pub­lic­ans at a plated din­ner, offered key dis­tinc­tions of style and sub­stance. In a rhet­or­ic­al routine per­fec­ted in Ivy League de­bate com­pet­i­tions and ar­gu­ments be­fore the Su­preme Court, Cruz told his audi­ence to be­ware of “cam­paign con­ser­vat­ives” who “talk a good game” while run­ning for of­fice. It’s not enough to dia­gnose the prob­lems ail­ing Amer­ica; Re­pub­lic­ans can only win, Cruz said, if they nom­in­ate “a con­sist­ent con­ser­vat­ive” with a proven track re­cord.

It wasn’t dif­fi­cult, on the heels of a Trump event that left the state buzz­ing, for at­tendees to pick up the mes­sage Cruz was lay­ing down: It’s great that Trump is ex­cit­ing the elect­or­ate and draw­ing voters’ at­ten­tion to con­ser­vat­ive causes. Just don’t ex­pect those causes to be cham­pioned by a can­did­ate who long sup­por­ted lib­er­al politices be­fore mak­ing a re­cent con­ver­sion to con­ser­vat­ism.

“Trump’s mes­sage is res­on­at­ing with people. They’re up­set about a lot of things, and he ex­presses the frus­tra­tion they feel. But if they ex­am­ine his stances on a whole range of is­sues, they’d find they are in dis­agree­ment with him,” said Bill Stew­art, the re­tired chair­man of Alabama’s polit­ic­al-sci­ence de­part­ment, who sat in on Cruz’s speech. “In the end, I think Trump will have gen­er­ated the in­terest—and then Cruz will be­ne­fit from it

This is pre­cisely the en­dgame that Cruz and his team now visu­al­ize. It ex­plains why Cruz has co­zied up to Trump at a time when most of the Re­pub­lic­an polit­ic­al class shunned him. It ex­plains why the Texas sen­at­or re­fuses to ut­ter a neg­at­ive word about the real-es­tate mogul. And it ex­plains why Cruz is stalk­ing Trump—if not geo­graph­ic­ally (the Alabama trips were co­in­cid­ence) then ideo­lo­gic­ally and rhet­or­ic­ally, mak­ing sure the two stay in lock­step on is­sues of the day so that voters who are en­er­gized by Trump’s mes­sage but look­ing for a more pol­ished mes­sen­ger dis­cov­er a nat­ur­al trans­ition to Cruz.

From the top down, in fact, Cruz’s cam­paign has come to view Trump as an as­set. Equipped with uni­ver­sal name-iden­ti­fic­a­tion and celebrity ap­peal, Trump has a mega­phone that Cruz could nev­er dream of—even from his perch in Con­gress—to preach a fiery pop­u­lism to angry voters. He has demon­strated a unique abil­ity to gal­van­ize con­ser­vat­ives (Cruz’s base) and steer the 2016 con­ver­sa­tion to­ward sub­jects like il­leg­al im­mig­ra­tion (Cruz’s wheel­house) that may oth­er­wise have been sec­ond­ary.

“The me­dia dis­missed il­leg­al im­mig­ra­tion as a prob­lem, and be­cause of Don­ald Trump they’re ac­tu­ally talk­ing about il­leg­al im­mig­ra­tion. I think that is very be­ne­fi­cial to our cam­paign,” Cruz told me after the event in Tus­ca­loosa. “Be­cause once the con­ver­sa­tion shifts to il­leg­al im­mig­ra­tion, the dis­cus­sion nat­ur­ally turns to ‘What is the re­cord of the dif­fer­ent can­did­ates when it comes to stand­ing up and fight­ing to stop il­leg­al im­mig­ra­tion?’ I’ve been lead­ing the fight to stop il­leg­al im­mig­ra­tion—and my re­cord is markedly dif­fer­ent from oth­er Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ates in that re­gard.”

Or, as one Cruz ad­viser put it: “Without Trump in the race, we’d be hav­ing a nice de­bate over tax policy right now. In­stead we’re talk­ing about ‘an­chor ba­bies.’”

More here: http://www.nationaljournal.com/twentysixteen/2015/08/27/ted-cruz-is-stalking-donald-trump?