Thread: Cruz: Trump triggers general election 'bloodbath'

Cruz: Trump triggers general election 'bloodbath'

By Katie Glueck
04/09/16 10:58 PM EDT
Updated 04/10/16 07:57 AM EDT

LAS VEGAS — Ted Cruz on Saturday offered his most detailed electability pitch to date as he urged a crowd of influential center-right Republican donors and activists to rally behind his campaign.

Donald Trump’s nomination would mean a “bloodbath of Walter Mondale proportions — double digits everywhere” in a general election, Cruz warned at the Republican Jewish Coalition gathering. (Incumbent Ronald Reagan carried 49 of the 50 states in defeating Mondale in the 1984 presidential race.)

But, Cruz argued, with the support of Republicans like those in the room, Trump could be stopped. The Texas senator said he could defeat Hillary Clinton, citing polls that show him tied with or beating the Democrat in head-to-head matchups and pointing to opportunities to improve GOP prospects in Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania and with young voters. Cruz, the son of a Cuban immigrant, also noted that he notched a strong showing with Hispanics in Texas during his 2012 Senate race, and, seeking to connect with a crowd in which many embrace a welcoming approach on immigration, praised both America and Israel for being “beacons of hope for the oppressed to be able to flee to and live according to their dreams, live according to their faith, live according to their hearts.”

Cruz’s appearance Saturday came as part of a bigger push from the Texan during the weekend to court RJC leadership, a group that includes some of the party’s most influential fundraisers and operatives, many of whom harbor doubts about Cruz’s viability in a general election. Cruz’s hard-line position on illegal immigration, his pugnacious style in the Senate and his stringent, ideological views on many social issues put him out of step with many of the more centrist RJC board members and other leading figures within the organization, though they do share his strongly pro-Israel views and support for a muscular foreign policy.

Cruz mounted an aggressive push over the weekend to bridge those differences in a crowd that initially supported other candidates, including Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker. Cruz courted the group’s members over drinks on Friday, and in a private roundtable meeting Saturday afternoon with several dozen top RJC members, where he delved into foreign policy and detailed what he saw as his path to the nomination.

“What Ted really accomplished here was making them feel good and right about becoming supporters of Ted Cruz, as opposed to, ‘Ted’s too controversial, Ted’s too divisive,’” said Ari Fleischer, an RJC board member and former George W. Bush White House press secretary, who was in the meeting and predicted that Cruz picked up significantly more support over the weekend, though he remains neutral. Noting that Cruz came across as “less the preacher walking the stage and more the policy wonk,” he continued, “Ted was very effective here.”

Cruz made his very explicit public pitch on Saturday, where he acknowledged, in the face of some skeptical questioning over illegal immigration and social issues, that there were divergent opinions in the room. But he sought to signal that he was interested in finding common ground.

“Tone matters a great deal,” he said, when one attendee noted that many in the room were liberal on social issues. “Nobody wants to elect a hectoring scold. I am not here running to be pastor in chief, I’m running to be commander in chief, which is a very, very different job.”

Again and again, Cruz argued that it was Trump who would be the “disaster” in a general election, and said that he had a plausible path to beating him in the primary, citing recent delegate wins and saying he would be in a strong position to win the nomination on a second ballot — a shift in emphasis for Cruz, who previously has made a point to stress his ability to win outright.

“I believe the first ballot will be the highest vote total Donald Trump receives. And on a subsequent ballot, we’re going to win the nomination and earn the majority,” Cruz said.

And the Texas senator, who was the only presidential candidate to attend the RJC, received a warm reception from the crowd, earning a standing ovation near the top of his speech when he promised to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — and said that while “Donald even read that promise off the teleprompters" at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s recent conference, it was Cruz who really meant it.

“One of the things we are working very much to do is to welcome everybody who supported somebody else,” he said. “Welcoming them with open arms as part of the team, on the ground floor, an integral part of our team. The math is real simple: 65-70 percent of Republicans recognize nominating Donald Trump would be a disaster, would hand the general election to Hillary Clinton. If we can unite that 65-70 percent of Republicans, we win. If we can’t, we lose.”

But some RJC board members and attendees, burned out after supporting multiple other candidates, are considering sitting out the election all together, or focusing only on down-ballot races. Cruz had an answer for that, too.

“This ain’t complicated,” Cruz said. “If the top of the ticket is getting blown out of the water by 10 points, we’re losing the Senate, and there’s not a thing that can be done to stop it.”

http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-g...oodbath-221768

I think Ted is promising that he's not going to do anything about illegal immigration which would of course fit with his record to date. Pursuing this particular group RJC who apparently are "welcoming" having supported Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, these are the people who would want legalization, with or without citizenship. You don't win a Senate race in Texas running on legalization, cite your heritage as a son of a Cuban immigrant, state in Senate testimony you support legalization, state in Senate testimony you want more H1B visas by 500% and want to double green card immigration .... and not mean it.

Ted Cruz is not one of our friends on the illegal immigration issue. He sounded like it when he was drafting behind Trump, whatever Trump said, then Ted said, but Ted doesn't mean it, he doesn't want to solve the problem, because his donors don't want to solve the problem. The same thing on trade deals. And frankly when you are a first generation son of a Cuban immigrant who came to the US, then blew off to Canada during the Vietnam War, became a Canadian citizen there, then blew back after Amnesty for draft dodgers, but still didn't become a US citizen until 2005 ... 48 years after he first came to the United States ... Ted Cruz is someone who was raised to believe in floating between countries to suit one's own end. When you're raised with dual or even possibly triple citizenship you are multi-citizen and global in your view. It's a keep my options to maximize them for oneself kind of deal, which of course is the reason he's not eligible to be President of the United States to begin with.

Americans who want to stop the ravages of illegal immigration and the disaster of these free trade deals only have one choice in the Republican primary and will only have one choice in the General Election to solve these problems for US, and that one person is Donald J Trump.

Donald Trump will do great in the general election. Why wouldn't he? He actually wants to fix our country and make it great again. What American would be opposed to that? Honestly, people need to stop buying the media KOOL-AID.

But it was interesting to see Ted Cruz give up on an outright win through the voters and not at all unexpected to see him rummaging through the leftovers trying to dig up some delegates he couldn't win fair and square in an actual election. Someone who wants to win a nomination that way, well, lets just say the will of the people isn't on their list of priorities.