Ted Cruz's Strategy
The national media appears convinced he will never get anywhere close to the 2016 GOP nomination, but fortunately for Cruz, his plan doesn’t involve catering to the pundit class, fixated as they tend to be on daily polling figures and related ephemera.
The tactical wisdom of launching a campaign at Liberty, the powerhouse Evangelical outpost in Lynchburg, Virginia, could be seen as dubious insofar as it risks balkanizing Cruz into a Christian exclusivist box, closing him off from other constituencies in a Republican primary contest. And it’s true that Liberty is fairly removed from the cultural mainstream: Here, rumors of alcohol consumption are conveyed in hushed tones, gleaned from a friend of a friend. (One student, a junior, told me he’d heard of drinking-related incidents only once or twice, and was flabbergasted by tales of intoxicated debauchery from elsewhere.) The melodies of Christian rock anthems stream throughout campus even in the early morning hours via speakers attached to lamp posts. Cruz was clearly appealing to a very specific element here.
But another way to see the venue selection is that Cruz wants to nail down the conservative Christian contingent early in the process—preempting Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and others—and then proceed to court national security hawks and Club for Growth types. Cruz seems to be betting that he can assemble an historic GOP primary coalition; religious conservatives customarily fracture and allow the “establishment” to get its way. But the “establishment” could also find itself fractured this time around, as Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and Scott Walker jockey amongst themselves. Evangelicals, while not a monolith by any stretch, tend to be attuned to cultural signaling. And the historic nature of Cruz’s announcement, the first of its kind at Liberty, won’t soon be forgotten. So they will serve as his natural base, and from there he can make forays into other constituencies, consolidating just enough of a bloc to undermine the “establishment.” That’s the Cruz logic, anyway.
