What's Cruz's Biggest Roadblock, Trumpf or Rubio?

There will be 2,470 delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and the number ti win the magic Republican nomination is 1,236 (50% +1). The first 4 races, all next month, that everyone talks about-- Iowa (30 delegates), New Hampshire (30), South Carolina (50) and Nevada (30)-- will decide 140 delegates split up between several candidates. Then comes the Confederate Super Tuesday (March first) with 595 delegates at stake in 11 states (including Texas' 155). The rest of March is huge as 15 states decide, including delegate-rich Michigan (59), Florida (99), Ohio (66), Illinois (69), Missouri (52), North Carolina (72) and Arizona (58).

Ted Cruz predicted on a strategy call with some of his big donors on New Year's Eve he'd have it all wrapped up in March, although he told them to expect desperate candidate to pile on him with vicious attacks that get "uglier and uglier and uglier... We’re winning right now, and as a result, I want to tell everyone to get ready,” he said on the call. “Strap on the full armor of God. Get ready for the attacks that are coming. We’ve already seen hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in attacks directed at us. Well I went to tell you that come the month of January, we ain’t seen nothing yet."

Yesterday Iowa's biggest right-wing website, the IowaRepublican, let loose on Cruz terming him The False Prophet of Social Conservatism and warning, ominously that "Contrary to popular belief, the 2016 presidential campaign of Texas Senator Ted Cruz does not present socially conservative and evangelical voters their best chance to put one of their own in the White House. Instead, a Cruz presidency may usher in the total demise of social conservative movement in America... Like other candidates before him, Cruz is living off the perception of the brand that he has built over the past few years. There is little doubt that he’s a fighter, but the real question is, is he really the socially conservative leader many believe him to be? By acquiescing on cultural issues to the constitution instead of, say, “the law of nature and of nature’s God,” Cruz may win an argument in a court room, but he’s going to lose religious conservatives who adhere to a higher law than that of man."

Ostensibly, when Cruz warned his supporters about more attacks, he was talking about an establishment and neoCon effort around Rubio going for the jugular. But what everyone is really wondering is when does the uneasy, slightly frayed, truce end between Cruz and Herr Trumpf. Mark Campbell, Cruz's political director indicated that he expects the "establishment wing" to bite the bullet and back Cruz over Trumpf. Wednesday we speculated that as early as February 23 (the Nevada caucuses) Rubio could face a proverbial last stand if he does as badly in his former "home state" as the new Gravis poll shows, which has him a distant third (11%) to Trumpf's 33% and Cruz's 20%. If Cruz is showing dominance over Trumpf by then-- between Iowa and South Carolina-- Trumpf will either be looking towards a graceful exit or launching a slash-and-burn, take-no-prisoners attack on Cruz. Campbell told the Cruz backers that "We wish Donald Trump a happy New Year and hope he had a wonderful holiday season, but all of us believe very firmly that Ted Cruz will be the next President of the United States."

Cruz is no defenseless wimp on a Jeb level who will curl up into a ball with a pouty face. He's expected to handle Trumpf's trademarked bullying with far more alacrity and with more success than any of the other candidates have. And it's what the whole country is waiting for. Despite Cruz's rosy scenario of a March wrap up, there are still those in the GOP establishment hoping for-- working towards?-- a brokered convention that will give the party a "respectable" compromise candidate, presumably Paul Ryan. For observers who watch politics like a reality TV show or a sports competition, that's the ideal way this would turn out. Yesterday, Robert Reich mentioned on his Facebook page that he had "heard today from my friend, the former Republican member of Congress, who tells me GOP leaders-- desperate to dump Trump (whom he describes as an 'unguided missile') and defuse Cruz ('a total jerk')-- are reexamining Party rules that bind delegates to candidates who win state primaries and caucuses. 'There’s no law that says we have to nominate an asshole,' he says. 'We’ll wait until it’s too late for either of them to file as a third-party candidate, and then flush them down the toilet.'" Flushing is good.

Or is the whole premise of this picture wrong?

Aside from the Hawkeyes suffering from Carly's Curse, the political highlight of the Rose Bowl yesterday was the anti-Trump skywriting, paid for by an Alabama multimillionaire Rubio backer, Stan Pate. A real estate developer like Herr, he had the plane spell out "Donald Trump is disgusting," using 2 of Trump's favorite words, "Trump" and "disgusting." Actually, there were several planes and their messages were all anti-Trumpf, including "Anybody But Trump."

Rubio's guy Stan told the media "There's no place for him. He needs to go back to one of his tall towers and build buildings and whatever else he does... Donald Trump is embarrassing to the country, and he's embarrassing to me. He's a despicable man... This is not over. This is just the beginning." He'll also be sending the anti-Trumpf air-brigade out to the Orange Bowl, the Cotton Bowl and the Sugar Bowl.