To hell with the independents. That’s not usually the animating principle of a presidential campaign, but for Ted Cruz’s, it just might be.
His strategists aren’t planning to make a big play for so-called independent voters in the general election if Cruz wins the Republican nomination. According to several of the senator’s top advisers, Cruz sees a path to victory that relies instead on increasing conservative turnout; attracting votes from groups — including Jews, Hispanics, and Millennials — that have tended to favor Democrats; and, in the words of one Cruz strategist, “not getting killed with independents.”
Twenty-three months from the presidential election, it seems all but a given that the freshman senator, who has been in Congress just two years, will mount a bid for the White House. “He’s looking at the race very seriously,” says a senior adviser, who confirms that Cruz’s campaign headquarters would be based in Houston. Cruz strategists see a way to win both the nomination and the general election. They are assiduously cultivating the party’s top-dollar donors, almost all of whom remain uncommitted. Internally, the senator has shaken up his staff to address problems and to set the stage for a presidential bid. All that’s left, it seems, is an official announcement.
It’s almost conventional wisdom now that presidential candidates woo the party faithful in primary contests and tack to the middle in the general election to attract more-moderate voters. Not Cruz......
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
