The week will also bring new Cruz ads to the Iowa airwaves – some bought by one of his affiliated super PACs and others by the campaign itself. All of them will be used to reach the evangelicals who appear eager to reward a conservative outsider.
Certainly, Cruz still lags Trump and Carson. But friends and foes alike say Cruz is the candidate best positioned to benefit should either of those poll-leaders stumble. He has refused to attack the candidates and in fact invited Trump to co-headline a rally opposing the Iran nuclear deal. Thanks to a reputation built by being a thorn in the side of GOP leadership, he has managed to create an image of a true outsider with an insider’s understanding of policy.
“People are increasingly saying he has one of the better potential paths” to the nomination, said a source from another rival campaign. “There’s lots of people in D.C. who shudder at the prospect of Cruz being the nominee. He’s ruffled so many feathers in town, there’s a healthy dislike of him in the institutional operative class … He wears that as a badge of honor, and he should. It helps him project the outsider image even though he’s a sitting U.S. senator.”
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