Sen. Ted Cruz will give the keynote speech Friday night at Iowa’s Reagan Dinner, riding a wave of attention and sudden celebrity that’s shot him to the top of the pack in the extremely early 2016 sweepstakes. The early comparison some activists are making is to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who hung back during the government shutdown and, by comparison, looked more reasonable to some of his party’s leadership and donors. But 2012 was the cycle of the rise-and-fall candidate with a base in search of the next Sarah Palin. Any number of anti-Mitt Romneys crashed about as quickly as they took off — Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry. The question for Cruz is whether he can sustain his current trajectory — burning bright and fast — without burning out for another two years, until the Iowa caucuses. Cruz has left little doubt he’s considering a presidential run in private conversations with GOP elite. And despite the damage to his party caused by the government shutdown — which Cruz, as the leader of the damn-the-torpedoes strategy to defund Obamacare, was seen as largely responsible for — the Texan is riding higher than ever with the activist base. “When you have a Republican senator like Cruz come in and really stand on principle and fight for what Republicans believe in, it really fires up the party,” said Iowa Republican Party Chairman A.J. Spiker, who will host Cruz at the Reagan Dinner, the party’s fall fundraiser. “I would say, at this point, Cruz’s stock is probably a little higher than Rand’s in Iowa,” Spiker added. “Obviously, you’ll see things fluctuate between now and the caucus, but you saw him take center stage during the fight against [Obamacare].” Bob Vander Plaats, an Iowa social conservative who’s run for office in the state himself, said Cruz is seen as “a breath of fresh and air, and somebody who’s leading the way [that] he said he would when he campaigned.” The establishment sees him as a serious threat, Vander Plaats said. “He’s very bright, he’s very articulate — and he’s very hard for others to debate. And so they resort to calling him names,” he said. “That probably signals to us that he’s doing something right and he’s won the debate. Quite frankly, if the caucuses were held today, he’d lap the field. I don’t know who’d touch him.” Cruz has made repeated visits to Iowa this year, though he has stayed around the Des Moines area instead of moving around the state. Such travel around Iowa is crucial for any candidate, and some activists privately pointed out that Cruz has yet to do it. Yet there’s no doubt that the establishment views him with concern, including in Iowa, where officials have worried for the past two cycles about The Hawkeye State maintaining its first-caucuses-in-the-nation status. Few represent the establishment side of Iowa Republican politics more than Gov. Terry Branstad, who was muted about Cruz earlier this week. “He’s just one of 100 members of the Senate,” he said. “I don’t think one freshman senator can turn this all around,” Branstad added, referring to the GOP’s larger problems. Indeed, Cruz’s novice status in the Senate has been derided by some, who see him as showboating instead of trying to effect change. “I’m sure there’s a lot of folks from the base who are fired up that he’s standing up on principle,” said Brian Kennedy, former chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa. “There are a lot of folks who are wondering whether the strategy and tactics backfired. … Most of us are more focused on ’14 [than] ’16, and hopefully, he is too.” David Kochel, who was Romney’s top adviser in the state in 2012, said Cruz’s visit reveals the senator’s intentions behind his actions of late: “positioning Ted Cruz” for his political future. And for all the fire Cruz has come under, he was successful in that regard, Kochel said. “Even though it was a short term PR disaster for the GOP brand and did nothing to stop Obamacare, he managed to jump straight to the head of the line of the anti-Washington, tea-party rage masters, which is no small feat,” Kochel said. “The faux filibuster, shutdown and ensuing media tour capped off with his Iowa speech is the political equivalent of a 2016 hat trick.” Cruz is speaking at the same dinner where Palin delivered remarks praising insurgent candidates in the fall of 2010. Iowa GOP officials touted that Cruz had sold out the dinner, with 600 tickets. That’s about 400 less than were sold ahead of time for Palin. “Coming off a cycle that saw an unprecedented string of boom-bust candidates, it’s absurd to suggest anyone is a 2016 Iowa caucuses front-runner at this point,” said former Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Matt Strawn. The idea that the shutdown aftermath has been entirely positive for Cruz was disputed by several Iowa operatives, who see the Texas senator as damaged and limited in his appeal after an episode that GOP leaders have since faulted as a tactical failure. One veteran activist in the state was blunt about where Cruz finds himself now, after a 21-hour speech on the Senate floor featuring his reading of Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham.” “The whole national spectacle has endeared him to base activists but also disillusioned more traditional Republicans and money types,” said the activist, noting that some of those donors — not the ones on the two coasts, but GOP bundlers elsewhere in the country — “were actually open to him. So, he has damaged himself with that crowd.” Craig Robinson, a former state party executive director who runs a news website called The Iowa Republican, said Cruz has lost some of his sheen since the shutdown . He’s become “polarizing,” Robinson said, adding that his methods are of concern to pragmatists in the party who want to win. “I kind of think Cruz is going to [appeal to] that social conservative world [more] than Rand Paul would, and that I think is where he has growth potential,” Robinson said. “And that, I think, is what’s going to make him different than Rand Paul. “ Indeed, Paul allies say they don’t see Cruz as a major threat. Cruz is likely to appeal to a narrower set of voters, they believe — not just in Iowa, where his base would be more in line with Santorum’s, but with voters in other early states. Paul backers believe he has positioned himself in a smarter way, one that gives him appeal in places like New Hampshire. Cruz’s critics believe he is more in the model of Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa caucuses in 2008, then sputtered. What Cruz’s repeat visits undeniably show — he was last in the state in August — is that Iowa, despite the desire of donors and establishment members to curtail its primacy, remains as important as ever.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 16:08:52 +0000
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