Cruz starts to plot convention strategy
WASHINGTON — Riding a wave of momentum into a Wisconsin primary Tuesday that could trip up Donald Trump’s march to the GOP nomination, a confident Ted Cruz is looking ahead at the mechanics of a contested election.
On Monday, the U.S. senator from Texas said he likes what he sees.
“If we get to a contested convention, I believe we’ll be in a very, very strong position to earn a majority of the delegates,” Cruz said Monday in Madison, Wis. “The choice will be between me and Donald Trump, and I believe we will win that election if there is a contested election.”
Cruz’s remarks reflect a week of Trump missteps that have seen the New York billionaire slip in the polls,
exposing potential cracks in his coat of celebrity invulnerability.
Trump remains the only candidate with a realistic chance of clinching the Republican nomination ahead of the national convention in July, but a big win by Cruz in Wisconsin would significantly narrow the businessman’s path.
Looking to win the lion’s share of the state’s 42 Republican delegates, Cruz also sought to foreclose on Trump’s suggestion that he should win the nomination with the largest number of delegates, rather than the 1,237 majority required under current rules.
“He doesn’t want the standard to be who can win a majority, because he can’t earn a majority,” Cruz said.
Though Trump has won a majority of the Republican primaries so far, Cruz said the real estate mogul has generally faced a vote “ceiling” of 35-40 percent of voters in what was until recently a crowded field.
A loss to Cruz in Wisconsin on Tuesday could knock Trump off the pace he needs to win a majority of the delegates before the convention, possibly leading to an open convention in Cleveland where Cruz — likely still behind in the delegate count — believes he would have the organizational muscle to win.
Trump scoffs at ‘last rites’
But Trump, campaigning in Wisconsin on Monday, sounded an optimistic tone, reminding voters of the many past predictions of his demise.
“You know how many times I’ve been given the end?” he said in Superior. “I’ve been given the last rites, how many times? Like 10? Every week, it’s the end of Trump.”
Going into Wisconsin, where Cruz and Trump held a series of dueling rallies on Monday, the reality TV star has built up a lead of about 736 delegates, compared to 463 for Cruz and 143 for Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Kasich, seeing better prospects in the East, spent the day campaigning in New York, which holds the next primary on April 19. Trump, looking for a rebound, brought in Sarah Palin to stump for him in Wisconsin over the weekend and crisscrossed the state himself Monday, scheduling rallies in Superior, La Crosse and Milwaukee.
Cruz also went full-bore in the Badger State on Monday, scheduling four major campaign events, including a town hall with Gov. Scott Walker moderated by Fox News’ Megyn Kelly.
Cruz has benefited from the backing of Walker and many of the state’s top conservative talk radio hosts. Trump, taking shots from all directions, fired back in La Crosse on Monday with a personal shot at Cruz and Walker, whom he called “average.”
“He hates Cruz. They all hate Cruz,” Trump said about Walker, who endorsed Cruz last week. “Everybody hates Cruz. Lyin’ Ted Cruz.”
Cruz has proved more adept at using his superior ground game to navigate the arcane rules of local and state party elections to scavenge extra delegates and loyalists even in states he lost.
One example came over the weekend in North Dakota, where a state GOP gathering nominated 28 technically unbound delegates, 18 of whom the Cruz campaign considers to be loyal to him.
‘Fevered pipe dream’
In Louisiana, where Cruz narrowly lost to Trump, the Texan was able to win a majority of the delegates by wooing some who had been bound to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who dropped out.
Trump has threatened to sue the party over the result, possibly a sign of a litigious turn in the primary race as the two camps duel over complicated party rules in the run-up to a contested convention. Another likely point of contention: the insistence by both Cruz and Trump that under cur- rent rules Kasich could not even be on the ballot at the convention unless he wins at least eight states. So far, he has won only Ohio.
Amid the intensifying head-tohead rivalry — with Kasich mathematically out — Cruz and Trump both issued similar warnings against a brokered convention that might give the nomination to a unity candidate presumably chosen by party leaders from outside the primary field.
The name most often mentioned: U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who has disavowed any interest. Without naming names, Cruz echoed Trump’s controversial warnings about the potential for riots.
“This fevered pipe dream of Washington that at the convention they will parachute in some white knight who will save the Washington establishment — it is nothing less than a pipe dream,” Cruz said. “It ain’t gonna happen. If it did, the people would quite rightly revolt.”
Whatever the visceral reaction of Cruz and Trump delegates if one of them is not the GOP nominee, Cruz said it would spell electoral defeat in November.
“Under what universe do 1,000 Trump delegates or 1,000 Cruz delegates go vote for some uber-Washington lobbyist who hasn’t been on the ballot?” Cruz said.
Negative backlash
In Wisconsin, Cruz carries a significant lead in the polls, overcoming a big Trump lead as recently as just a month ago. Cruz also has become the rallying point for a well-funded “Never Trump” movement of party insiders who fear that Trump’s outlandish style could lead to GOP electoral disaster in national and local elections in the fall.
Those fears intensified in the past week as Trump faced a torrent of criticism for controversial statements he made about nuclear weapons, penalizing women who have abortions, defending a campaign manager charged with manhandling a female reporter, and tweeting an unflattering photo of Cruz’s wife along with an image of Trump’s wife, a former model.
Trump since has acknowledged that the tweet was a mistake that he wouldn’t repeat. He also bought radio time in recent days to counter what he calls “misinformation” about him in a slew of attack ads by anti-Trump Super PACs, including one for the influential Club for Growth.
The negative backlash — and Trump’s rare backpedaling — have given Cruz and his supporters the sense that Wisconsin could signal a turnaround in Trump’s fortunes, possibly ending a long run of political gravity-defying acts by the populist outsider.
“What’s Trump been doing the last two weeks?” said Cruz spokeswoman Alice Stewart. “All he’s been doing is talking about himself, insulting women and cleaning up his mistakes.”