The Briefing Room
General Category => Editorial/Opinion/Blogs => Topic started by: mystery-ak on February 07, 2016, 12:01:51 am
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/opinion/sunday/ted-cruz-wont-be-denied.html?ref=opinion
Ted Cruz Won’t Be Denied
Frank Bruni FEB. 6, 2016
MANCHESTER, N.H. — ANOTHER Ted Cruz rally, another Ted Cruz rant about the media’s failure to give him his due. I endured one in the tiny town of Weare, N.H., on Thursday afternoon and had two thoughts.
The first was that I’d seldom heard a voice as ripe with self-regard — as juicy with it — as his. He’s pomposity’s plum tomato.
The second thought was that he’s right.
We’ve sold him short. We continue to underestimate him. He’s even craftier than we appreciated. He’s more devious than we realized.
And he has a better chance to win the Republican nomination than we want to admit, because he’s not just a preternaturally slick political animal. He’s an uncommonly lucky one.
He’s getting huge, unintended breaks from Republican elders and rivals who mostly detest him and rightly believe that he’d lead the party to ruin in a general election but are distracted by other quarry — Donald Trump, Marco Rubio — and are letting him slither by.
At first Trump was their obsession. The self-appointed caretakers of conservatism at National Review went so far as to pack the sum of their energies and anxieties into an entire issue devoted to taking down Trump, even though their readers aren’t his supporters and their exertions only underscored his pitch that he’s not part of the system.
“It was a mistake,” the Republican strategist Alex Castellanos told me. “If they really wanted to create space for an electable conservative like Rubio, they should have disqualified Cruz. Just dumb.”
For most of last week it was Rubio’s turn as preferred target. Usually the victor of the Iowa caucuses winds up in the cross hairs in New Hampshire, and Cruz certainly took plenty of shots over his operatives’ spreading of false news in Iowa that Ben Carson was ending his candidacy and that Carson’s evangelical supporters should move quickly to a pew in the Church of Cruz.
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Cruz is not likable. Period.
The most likable candidate wins the general, every time.
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Cruz is not likable. Period.
The most likable candidate wins the general, every time.
YOU don't think he is likable but there are many millions out there, myself included, who find him VERY likable and will vote for him!
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YOU don't think he is likable but there are many millions out there, myself included, who find him VERY likable and will vote for him!
I know I will vote for him if nominee.