...Certainly, Cruz isn’t ascending on the basis of warm feelings from his colleagues. Cruz portrays his unpopularity within the Senate as establishment distaste for him as a lonely man of principle. But it’s a genuine personal dislike. Not that Cruz cares. In fact, a key to what he has been able to achieve is his apparent immunity to the reflexive desire to be liked by people around you, a weakness to which almost all of us fall prey. Cruz is free of the peer pressure that typically makes all senators, at some level, team players.
...Is all the effort on Cruz’s part only in the cause of a 1964-style ideological blowout? No. The country’s too evenly divided for another Goldwater-style landslide loss, and Hillary Clinton is a deeply flawed candidate. But Cruz has major vulnerabilities. He’s more ideologically defined than George W. Bush in 2000 or Barack Obama in 2008, and his current theory of the general election — that he need turn out only conservatives — is a comforting fable.
...Cruz penned an op-ed with Paul Ryan last April that was a ringingly stalwart argument for trade-promotion authority. Two months later, when a brush fire erupted on the right over “Obamatrade,” Cruz abruptly reversed course and came out against trade-promotion authority — he cited procedural reasons — and then opposed the underlying trade agreement as well. The country’s too evenly divided for another Goldwater-style landslide loss. Or consider immigration. Cruz used to make stirring professions of his support for legal immigration, demonstrated by his advocacy for drastic increases in the H-1B visa program. As soon as Trump attacked H-1Bs last August, the odds of Cruz’s changing on the issue were quite high. Sure enough, he now opposes greater legal immigration and wants a moratorium on H-1Bs. The way insiders and the primary electorate view Cruz is vastly different. Where political insiders can see the gears whirring and hear the practiced lines in each Cruz speech, the average voter sees and hears only a smooth, pitch-perfect performance.
But Cruz has major vulnerabilities. He’s more ideologically defined than George W. Bush in 2000 or Barack Obama in 2008, and his current theory of the general election — that he need turn out only conservatives — is a comforting fable. Marco Rubio and Chris Christie are both, in their own ways, more winsome, and it’s easier to see how each of them could pick off Obama states. But Cruz has always understood that you have to win the primary to win the general. He has set about to do it in truly impressive fashion. Whoever is going to beat him better know what he’s doing — because Cruz certainly does.
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