http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/01/20/bob-dole-warns-of-cataclysmic-losses-with-ted-cruz-and-says-donald-trump-would-do-better/?_r=03:34 pm ET By Maggie Haberman
Bob Dole Warns of ‘Cataclysmic’ Losses With Ted Cruz, and Says Donald Trump Would Do Better
Bob Dole, the former Kansas senator and 1996 Republican presidential nominee, has never been fond of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. But in an interview Wednesday, Mr. Dole said that the party would suffer “cataclysmic” and “wholesale losses” if Mr. Cruz was the nominee, and that Donald J. Trump would fare better.
“I question his allegiance to the party,” Mr. Dole said of Mr. Cruz. “I don’t know how often you’ve heard him say the word ‘Republican’ — not very often.” Instead, Mr. Cruz uses the word “conservative,” Mr. Dole said, before offering up a different word for Mr. Cruz: “extremist.”
“I don’t know how he’s going to deal with Congress,” he said. “Nobody likes him.”
But Mr. Dole said he thought Mr. Trump could “probably work with Congress, because he’s, you know, he’s got the right personality and he’s kind of a deal-maker.”
The remarks by Mr. Dole reflect wider unease with Mr. Cruz among members of the Republican establishment, but few leading members of the party have been as candid and cutting.
“If he’s the nominee, we’re going to have wholesale losses in Congress and state offices and governors and legislatures,” said Mr. Dole, who served in the House and Senate for 35 years and won the Iowa caucuses twice. He described Mr. Cruz as having falsely “convinced the Iowa voters that he’s kind of a mainstream conservative.”
The only person who could stop Mr. Cruz from capturing the nomination? “I think it’s Trump,” Mr. Dole said, adding that Mr. Trump was “gaining a little.”
He said he had met Mr. Trump only once, 30 years ago. “But he has toned down his rhetoric,” he added. As for Mr. Cruz, he said: “There’ll be wholesale losses if he’s the nominee. Our party is not that far right.”
Mr. Dole repeatedly said he was strongly supporting Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, although he acknowledged that Mr. Bush has had trouble gaining traction.
“He needs to break out, and he hasn’t done it yet,” said Mr. Dole. But he was openly concerned that Mr. Cruz would win the presidential nomination but then lose the Senate for the Republicans in the process.
The animosity between the two men began after Mr. Cruz invoked Mr. Dole’s name as an example of the missteps the party had made with past presidential nominees — as in, “Remember President Dole? Remember President McCain? Remember President Romney?”
“In other words, we weren’t right-wing like he is, and I didn’t like that very much,” Mr. Dole said in the interview. “It kind of hurt, because we worked hard, we did the best we could. We are conservatives, we are traditional Republican conservatives. And then, of course, he doesn’t have any friends in Congress. He called the leader of the Republicans a liar on the Senate floor.”
“If you want to call somebody a liar in the Senate, you go to their office — you don’t go on the Senate floor and make it public,” Mr. Dole said.
He described Mr. Bush as well qualified to be president, but he also described Senator Marco Rubio and Gov. Chris Christie warmly. Mr. Bush, he said, “doesn’t scream and yell in the debates, so I guess that’s a minus, but he’s a decent, honest guy who’s had experience, and he’s dealt with a legislature.”
“He’s got a lot of friends in this town, and in the Congress,” Mr. Dole said.
Mr. Dole added that he thought it would be harder for Hillary Clinton to defeat Mr. Trump in a general election than Mr. Cruz.
“I think she’d be a pretty easy target in the general, if we nominate the right person,” Mr. Dole said. Was Mr. Cruz in that category, just in case there was any doubt? “No, he’s not that person,” said Mr. Dole. “If he does it, I think she’ll win in a waltz.”
Mr. Dole’s comments came a day after the governor of Iowa, Terry E. Branstad, said in an interview that Mr. Cruz’s opposition to federal ethanol mandates would erode his lead in polls heading into the state’s caucuses on Feb. 1.
Mr. Dole is one of the most prominent members of the Republican “establishment,” a term he described as meaningless. “Cruz is in the Senate, so maybe he’s part of the establishment. You know, I’ve never really known what the establishment was.”
He sounded a sorrowful note about how difficult a time people like Mr. Bush have had in an election cycle dominated by voter anger.
“Experience is important,” Mr. Dole said. “That’s the one thing that the voters don’t seem to care about this cycle, and I don’t know – there’s no substitute for experience.”
