Can the GOP stop Ted Cruz and salvage 2016?

"So now put the two surveys together: Half of the most loyal Republican voters approve of Cruz at 90-percent levels (74 is nine-tenths of 82). Still think he couldn’t win the nomination?

You better believe he can. The chance that he could win a presidential election is as close to zero as any plausible candidate’s chance could be. I think he tops out at around 180 electoral votes. But the nomination? Not. Impossible. At. All.

So I ask again: What are the establishmentarians going to do? What, for example, can Mitch McConnell do? Not a whole lot. Individual senators are pretty autonomous. Remember when liberals were screaming during the health-care debate, “Why doesn’t Obama give Ben Nelson the Johnson Treatment?” Because the Johnson Treatment doesn’t work anymore, least of all on the serenely messianic, of which Cruz is definitely one.

Can a group of establishment senators break him, as a previous cohort, led by Margaret Chase Smith, broke Joe McCarthy? They can try, and that might make some difference. Their success will depend to a great extent on where the right-wing media decide to land. Will Roger Ailes and the rest of them do what’s right for the party and the country, or for the ratings and the bottom line? Why do I not want to know the answer to that question?"

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/18/the-ted-cruz-armageddon-is-coming.html

Naturally, Tea Party is the most helpful ally the Democrats have. Followed closely by Talk Radio and Fox...however, remember that Fox is more Republican than rightwing, and if they see Cruz actually getting a shot at the nomination, you could see it swing to supporting the Party's Choice (a Romney,McCain)....or atleast support the strategy the GOP used in 2012 to stop the Crazies...

that being, 'divide and conquer"...have a number of "Tea Party candidates" in the mix, dividing the Looney vote and thus letting the Sane Candidate win on pluralities. (Thus the use of Gingrich, Santorum, Perry, Cain, even Minnesota Mickey With The Crazy Eyes).

Keep the TPers split among two or three candidates, until the Party's Choice racks up enough delegate wins to become "inevitable" (a la Mitt in 2012).

One other thing that will help...the Ron Paul Cultists, who'll remain utterly loyal to the Prince Heir Apparent with the Shatner Turbo 2000 to the bitter end.

 

LoL the Liberals, or Progressives (whatever they want to be called) are absolutely terrified of Cruz.

Like I said in another thread. When the liberals start telling conservatives to stick with the establishment GOP instead of going with these new guys... you know you're doing the right thing and they're scared out of their minds.

 

With the foaming at the mouth that Cruz elicits out of the rabid Left, I'll definitely vote for him - just to amuse myself over the howling.

 

If you actually read the entire article...the author would be SAD if Cruz didn't get the Nomination.

He figures Cruz would get 180 electoral votes in 2016, tops.

I think...he's being too optimistic.

 

If you think Clinton has even a remote shot at beating Cruz... I say let's do this thing and find out.

Progressives and liberals are absolutely terrified.

As Chris Matthews said about Cruz: "We are witnessing, I think, the greatest challenge to Progressives, to Moderns and "Reasonable Conservatives" in modern memory.

 

Great strategy....yet, never actually pans out. Used to hear the same thing about Michele Bachmann from guys like you.

Then when the actual Republican primary voters go in the booth....they aren't as concerned with "rabid leftists"...and more concerned with picking a sane candidate.

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Beck fan, huh?

Bought any more gold or Food Insurance lately?

 

With the loathing that traditional Republicans are currently feeling toward the wacko birds after their impotent shutdown of public services, I'd expect that comprehensive immigration reform will be the next issue to send them even deeper into their ideological twilight zone.

Yet more obstructionist nonsense from the extremists will further disgust the American People and will further alienate the business community that bankrolls the GOP.

Besides being overdue on the national agenda, the timing is right for Democrats, and for Boehner who would dearly love to kick the TPs while they're down.

 

A Beck fan? I'm just talking about Matthews on his show the other day.

Not a fan of Beck actually. He tends to be a little too on the dramatic side. Mark Levin is the man.

 

Everybody notice how the left talks about Cruz. They always say how they aren't even concerned with Cruz because he'll never win.... but then they start talking about what the GOP needs to do to stop him.

It's funny... you're not making threads about Dick Christie or Rand Paul or Jeb Bush or Paul Ryan. You know why? Because you think you can beat them... so any of them would be fine as the republican candidate. But you want to make threads about Cruz and what needs to be done to keep him from being the nominee.

 

Many times the crazy see the sane as insane. But that's beside the point. Why fight insanity with sanity??? "Fight crazy with crazy" may be the rallying cry in 2016!

 

Fortuantely win or lose...the Nativists will be VERY LOUD and thus show Latinos the "true face" of the Republican Party, even as some of them try to push for immigration reform.

It'll be fun to watch Marco Rubio....IR has proven a millstone around his neck with the Right. With Cruz's star rising, does Marco dump his support for reform....to try to win in the '16 Primaries? And thus join the rest of the crowd and see the Party go to demographic doom in the next 20 years?

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Yeah, Brer Fox....please don't throw us in that briar patch and nominate Calgary Ted. He'd win 45 states and 70-30% of the popular vote. Oh, please, don't do that to us. Show mercy!!!!!

 

Joe Biden's DOG would win 40 states over Ted Cruz. The Right want to compare him to "Reagan in 1980"?...guess again. Reagan was charismatic AND didn't have a record as a nutjob as Governor of California (He was more liberal than Mitt Romney).

Cruz comes off as the worst of Joe McCarthy and a Talk Radio show host combined.

 

Nominating Ted Cruz would be incredibly stupid. He would have no chance at all of winning a general election in 2016. Literally no chance.

 

I'm not sure about Biden's dog but at least Cruz can speak coherently and at length without a teleprompter. That may not top Biden's dog but certainly tops our current Bozo-in-chief.

 

One more dimension of the GOP's fragmentation, on top of the ineluctable, adverse age and ethnicity demographics, and the increasing repugnance for TP extremism amongst the American public, is unbridled-influence peddling. As long as there was a coherent, disciplined Party machine, the big bucks could be coordinated and directed toward a common cause. Now, the Shelly "Carrot Top" Adelsons can dump a fortune to keep a comatose Newtie on life support, or a Foster Friess can make Rooster Santorum his personal stooge, and drive a possibly otherwise viable candidate over the edge into berserker territory.

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An excellent discussion of the GOP's excess of riches aired this morning and should be available on line later:

 

I think you nailed it. They are terrified. Probably more terrified than they were of Palin.

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There is 0 chance he gets the R nominee.

 

Other than you, I haven't heard anyone talk about stopping him. IMO, he'd be a boost to the D getting in the white house again. So I doubt they want to stop him.

 

He's a unifier.

Cruz's nomination is one of the few causes that mainstream Democrats and wacko bird Republicans can both rally behind.

It would be like having Sarah Palin ... minus the macho bravura, of course.

 

Did you not read the title of the thread?

 

[video=youtube;sXKn3ZmxEfs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXKn3ZmxEfs[/video]

 

It was a question. Not a way to stop him, but can they? And do they? I don't think they'd have to try.
He can NOT get the R nominee. He will be out faster than Palin or Bachman.

 

I don't think he said that at all. Liberals are itching for a shot at Cruz. He might carry Texas and the reactionary Cuban vote in S. Florida in a general.

 

Sure he can read "Green Eggs & Ham" at his acceptance speech at the '16 GOP Convention.

 

At least it would be refreshing not to have to listen to an hour full of bs. I'll take Dr Seuss any day.

 

But look at those examples....neither Santorum nor Gingrich really came close. Newt won South Carolina...and then Romney buried him in negative TV ads in Florida and that was the end of his campaign (in reality, if not declaration). Santorum bounced to the #2 spot for a while, but then quickly faded, as again Romney buried him in TV ads and cut his momentum.

If we accept that the Big Money Boys are powerful...then they were powerful enough to buy the Nomination for Romney, the more moderate of the GOP candidates. While guys like Friess and Adelson lost backing their Moon Base Builder and the Archbishop of Bestiality America.