The plan is obvious enough: to emerge as the next acknowledged political leader of American conservatism in the apostolic succession that begins with Robert Taft, continued through Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp, and has had no agreed successor since Newt Gingrich’s retirement from Congress in 1998. Since then, radio and TV talking heads have displaced politicians as the standard bearers of the conservative cause. But a political movement inescapably requires political leadership—and that position has been vacant too long. The electric response among conservatives to Rand Paul’s drone filibuster—despite the many ways in which Rand Paul’s libertarian politics slant against the grain of conservatives in the country—shows the avid hunger among conservatives to see that vacancy filled.
Obviously, Ted Cruz is going to lose his confrontation over Obamacare. In losing, however, he will taint his possible rivals—including Rand Paul—as pitiful members of the “surrender caucus.” Only he will stand brave and true, like Mel Gibson playing Braveheart. The Wall Street Journal calls his campaign “kamikaze.” But the art of political leadership includes a shrewd understanding of how to engineer the right political defeat, for the right audience.
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