Why Ted Cruz Will Defeat Hillary Clinton

With Ted Cruz’s rise in the polls, the false narratives abound.

We are being told that Ted Cruz can’t win, or so says Salon “ragazine.”

As Salon writes:

That loud, low rumbling noise you hear outside isn’t another fracking earthquake. Indeed, it’s political internet going indiscriminately bananas after a new poll showed Ted Cruz leading Donald Trump in the forthcoming Iowa caucus. But clearly anyone predicting Cruz’s ascendancy in Iowa, including very serious pundits like Chris Cillizza, is suffering from a tragically short attention span.

The article then goes on to explain why Cruz’s ascension in the polls is no big deal.

A few points:

1) Iowa isn’t a GOP bellwether. Recent history has proved that winning the Iowa caucus is no indication of a broader victory, at least for the Republicans who’ve handed meaningless Iowa victories to both Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum in 2008 and 2012 respectively. Sure, digging deeper into the record books shows candidates like George W. Bush and Bob Dole winning in Iowa then moving on to the nomination. This trend could change again, but the last two caucuses show that even if Cruz holds onto his lead and wins Iowa, it could be a one-hit-wonder victory. This leads us to the next point…

I agree that Iowa is not the predictor of presidents. However, in the case of Cruz, he climbed the polls differently than most. He just drafted behind Trump, hanging back. Cruz’s ground game was in motion, and it’s stronger than any other presidential candidate. While Trump took the heat, Cruz stood in the glow. Simply put, Cruz has played the best hand of poker to date, and Iowa is only the beginning.

2) The Republicans love their flavors of the month. I’m old enough remember when Dr. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina were showing signs of becoming a threat to Trump’s presumptive nomination. However, both candidates famously peaked and then faded. If you recall the 2012 process, nearly every candidate, including Santorum and Newt Gingrich, had their fleeting windows of success — nipping at Mitt Romney and forcing establishment columnists to ballyhoo the upstart challengers, only to disintegrate under scrutiny as both Carson and Fiorina have. While many onlookers have suggested that Donald Trump represents the same kind of phenomenon, he has already demonstrated far more staying power than someone like Michele Bachmann ever did in 2012. Like it or not, he’s here to stay. (More on this later.)

The idea with the Point 2 is that Cruz is a flavor of the month, and the author cites examples. But none of the people mentioned have the organization of Cruz. He successfully orchestrated the win in Texas, and he is doing the very same thing at the national level. Less than a month ago, Cruz had over 77,000 people on the ground across the country. Now that he’s gaining traction, that number has almost doubled. Frank Luntz did a focus group after the last Republican election, and Cruz had some of the highest numbers registered. Terror has changed the complexion of the race, and Cruz’s believability factor should have Hillary Clinton shaking like a Chihuahua pooping peach pits.

 

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