funinspace
Don't Panic
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2004
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- Oregon
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- functional atheist; theoretical agnostic
I thought this was a good summary of the difficulty facing Ted Cruz at this point.
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/...why-ted-cruz-is-south-carolina-biggest-loser/
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/...why-ted-cruz-is-south-carolina-biggest-loser/
It will be interesting to see how Super Tuesday turns out. Rubio might start catching up to Trump now with Bush out. Though with Kasich not giving up, it might just siphon off enough votes that Rubio still won’t get many delegates, and even be stymied as a close second in most (or even all) of the races where Cruz ins't leading. Carson’s Don Quixote sloooowwwww waaaallllkkkkk toooo tttthhhhheeeee eeeexxxxxxiiiittttt will bleed Cruz a little. Though some of Carson's crazed supporters may also go Trump's way as his campaign unwinds. Cruz will still probably hold on to Texas, denying Rubio a chance at it, along with 1 or 2 others. I don’t have any real clue as to the calculus for Rubio or Cruz after Super Tuesday, but unless one of them can seize most of the votes from the demise of Bush and maybe Kasich, the chances of a brokered convention will start increasing after that. It will be interesting to see new poll numbers in these states as they will probably come out towards the end of the week.Cruz’s assumption was that once other candidates that appealed to social conservatives like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum dropped out, he could count on a united evangelical vote. But what Trump showed us in South Carolina is that there is no such thing as a united bloc of religious conservatives. Or even of Tea Party voters that should, in theory, also be flocking to Cruz. What’s killing Cruz is that a lot of people who ought not to be voting for someone with Trump’s record are doing so. Cruz is right that he is the principled conservative that represents the beliefs of these voters. But they are still voting for Trump.
Trump may be hitting a ceiling at about one-third of the vote. But that bloc is largely composed of the Tea Party and evangelicals that Cruz assumed would never stick with the frontrunner. If this pattern is repeated in the SEC states, Cruz will lose them. And once you get past that point in the calendar, the GOP race moves to Northern, Midwestern and southern states where Cruz’s brand of conservatism has even less of a constituency. Trump may triumph there too, especially if Rubio is forced to compete with Kasich. But whatever happens in those states, the least likely outcome there would be victories for Cruz.