The Pundits Have It All Wrong. Ted Cruz Is a Real Threat For the Nomination.

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Politico:

Ted Cruz gets no respect. At least no respect in keeping with the impressiveness of the campaign he’s built and his increasing odds of winning the Republican nomination.

 

The press and the political class are beginning to catch on to Cruz’s strength, and there has been more talk of a prospective Cruz-Marco Rubio race over the past two weeks, but his coverage and his buzz have been lagging indicators — and they are still lagging.

 

Consider the POLITICO survey of Republican insiders in the early nominating contests. After Tuesday night’s GOP debate in Milwaukee, it had as many respondents saying Cruz won (6 percent) as Ben Carson and John Kasich (6 percent each). This is an extraordinary finding, given that Kasich showed up for the debate wearing a suicide vest.

 

Cruz tends to be an afterthought in the Sunday show chatter, and on TV generally.

 

The Atlantic tracks candidate mentions on cable TV. Over the past 100 days, Cruz ranks ninth among all presidential candidates from both parties, well behind Chris Christie and just above Kasich. Christie may begin to get some traction, but he was relegated to the undercard debate in Milwaukee and is looking to throw a Hail Mary in New Hampshire. Kasich wants to complete the same unlikely pass in the same place.

 

Maybe the mentions of Cruz have picked up lately? No. Over about the past 30 days, he’s still ninth, just ahead of that juggernaut Martin O’Malley.

 

Well, Cruz is still pretty low in the polls, and coverage tends to follow the polling. Maybe that’s it? No. A Washington Post analysis specifically looked at the amount of cable TV coverage devoted to each candidate compared with his or her position in the polls. It found that Cruz got 60 percent less coverage than you’d otherwise expect from July through October.

 

From October to November, as the seriousness of his campaign has become even more evident, the disparity has gotten worse. According to the Post, “He’s on the air 70 percent less than his polling would suggest, even as he’s climbed past [Jeb] Bush and into fourth place in the race.”

 

Donald Trump, as you might expect, gets more coverage than warranted by his polling. So does Bush. It’s as though the media still haven’t been able to adjust the level of coverage of the former Florida governor to account for their erroneous initial presumption that he’d probably be the nominee.

 

The indications of the strength of Cruz’s operation and the shrewdness of his positioning are mounting.

 

He had more cash on hand at the end of the third quarter than any other Republican.

 

He has major super PAC backing.

 

He assessed the anti-establishment mood in the party more accurately than any of the other traditional Republican candidates.

 

He reacted to the rise of Trump very deftly for his purposes.

 

He has seen a couple of key potential competitors, Scott Walker and Rand Paul, either hit a wall or badly underperform.

 

He has a discernible ideological and geographic base.

 

He has, relatedly, a path to the nomination that is simple and intuitive (win Iowa, consolidate the right and beat an establishment that might be too fractured and unpopular to prevail this time).

 

He lights up pretty much every conservative audience he addresses.

 

He is an excellent debater, and he simply doesn’t make tactical or rhetorical mistakes.

 

And yet, while many of these qualities are duly noted, he doesn’t really get his due. Why? For a number of reasons.

________

 

Nomination by stealth?

[Valin]

@WestVirginiaRebel

 

 

Well, Cruz is still pretty low in the polls, and coverage tends to follow the polling.

 

 

One mans opinion...waaay to much emphasis on poll numbers. It seem to me all these polling number stories just mens reporters are lazy.