A perfect complement to last week’s “Romney 2016?” migraine-starter. For the first time in the tea-party era, conservatives will have someone on the primary ballot who could galvanize enough voters to win the nomination. The donor class is wetting itself thinking that that might be the same guy they blame for the shutdown last year. They need a heavyweight from the center to take him on. If Jeb won’t get in the ring, why not drag ol’ Mitt out for one more round? Even as a presidential loser, he’s probably a better bet than Christie.
The linchpin of Cruz’s budding primary strategy: Foreign policy, with a heavy emphasis on Israel to draw a contrast with Rand Paul.
“At this point it’s 90/10 he’s in,” one Cruz adviser said. “And honestly, 90 is lowballing it.”…
“If and when military action is called for, it should be A) with a clearly defined military objective, B) executed with overwhelming force, and C) when we’re done we should get the heck out,” [Cruz] said. “I don’t think it’s the job of our military to engage in nation-building. It is the job of our military to protect America and to hunt down and kill those who would threaten to murder Americans. It is not the job of our military to occupy countries across the globe and try to turn them into Democratic utopias.”…
Sources close to Cruz say much of [his frequent mentions of Israel] is meant to exploit the anxiety within the pro-Israel movement about Paul, who once echoed his father in suggesting an end to Israeli foreign aid. Paul has been laboring to repair relations with Jewish leaders. But Cruz allies, confident that “they aren’t buying it,” say the Texas senator has contacted some of the same parties to emphasize his commitment to their cause.
“It’s no accident that Cruz is sponsoring bill after bill, making speech after speech, about Israel and mentioning Israeli citizens and Israeli causes—all with Rand right there in the chamber,” said one Cruz adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the senator’s strategy.
Foreign policy is an … interesting point of distinction in a field where everyone will be loud-and-proud hawks, even (to some extent) Paul. Cruz’s Jacksonian “bomb ’em and get out” approach might play marginally better than Rubio’s McCain-ism, but no one in the field is going to embrace nation-building whole hog after Iraq and Afghanistan, Jeb Bush very much included. They’ll all be variations of Jackson. But then, Cruz isn’t really running against the entire field, at least in the early states. He’s running against Paul. If he can finish ahead of Rand in Iowa and New Hampshire, the thinking goes, conservatives who prefer Rand will abandon him as a lost cause and line up behind Cruz for South Carolina. If Cruz can get to that point, he’ll take his chances against the centrist champion, no matter who it is. If it’s Jeb, Cruz will add an anti-dynastic note to his broader “return to Reagan” message. If it’s Romney, he gets to pound Mitt for having blown his and the GOP’s chance of regaining the White House once before. And if it’s Christie, he’ll count on the right’s disdain for the big guy plus Christie’s personal abrasiveness to alienate voters. All of which makes me wonder if the donor class won’t decide to skip those three and back Rubio instead. Cruz can hammer Rubio for amnesty and for nation-building, but that probably won’t bother the “somewhat conservative” niche of voters that Rubio’s aiming for. And Rubio’s probably acceptable to most conservative voters, albeit not the passionate grassroots types. That amnesty stain will never wash away for them, but oh well. He can without them.
Per National Journal, Cruz may be planning to jump in as early as the end of this year. Tough, tough break for Rand, who’s been running for president for at least two years now and was hoping to enter the race as the preferred choice of all but the most hawkish grassroots conservatives. Not sure what he does now to refine his message to counter Cruz. Probably nothing: The temptation will be to emphasize his libertarian positions more in the interest of distinguishing himself from Cruz, but there are likely few more libertarian votes to be gained and some conservative votes to lose in doing that. Meanwhile, if he tacks any further right on foreign policy to keep pace with Cruz, he’ll alienate libertarians and gain little respect from conservatives who already question his motives for making hawkish noises lately. Maybe his best bet is to stand pat on his policies but to start hammering the fact that he’d represent Something Different for the party. That’s the key subtext of all of his messaging about reforming sentencing laws, practicing a more “modest” foreign policy, and so on, but maybe it needs to become text. Cruz comes from the conservative tradition; Paul really doesn’t, but that’s not a total liability for him in the primary. Even Republicans don’t much like Republicans these days. If Rand can convince voters that he’d be a clean break with the last 20 years of conservative leadership while the rest of the field, Cruz included, would not, that Something Different appeal will get him a hard look even from skeptics.
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