Why Cruz Lost – Inferior Combativeness

A Freeper rehash’s Rush’s take:

Presidential elections are situational and not ideological…

Ideological conservatives are scratching their heads in this election — For many people [Rush included], ideology is a single focus. They write about, study it, and try to persuade people to believe it.

And this year, many of them thought the closest thing to the dream conservative candidate was Ted Cruz. But his appeal to conservatives has not been as good as you would predict…

Trump understands that presidential elections are situational, not ideological. The candidate is the one who best applies their ideological outlook to the issues of the day.

And rather than announcing at every speech, “And I’m going to make sure that conservative values triumph in this country,” you simply stake out your position on an issue that is conservative. You don’t call it conservative.

I disagree.

Cruz lost the nomination for two reasons. One, Trump fought our enemies and Cruz didn’t. Cruz espoused conservative ideals, but was weak in his rhetorical attacks on our enemies. As an example, Cruz would never say #blacklivesmatters protestors are un-American savages. Nor would Cruz call leftists who support importing third world immigrants traitors to their fellow Americans. Trump would say that, then he would repeat it, then he would insult anyone who criticized him, then he would make fun of them on twitter, then he would repeat it a third time.

Subconsciously Cruz’s style read as, “I support what you support, but I also want your enemies to like me, so I can’t insult them.” That is not confidence inspiring. It was better than what the GOPe offered, which was, “You are wrong, your enemies are right, and you should elect me to fight you for them, because you are stupid and backward-thinking savages.”

But then Trump entered the fray, portrayed our enemies as attacking us, and then attacked our enemies in response. Trump said, “You are right, your enemies are wrong, and now watch as I grab a random enemy and punch him in the nose, just for fun! There’s gonna be a lot more of that! There’s gonna be a lot more of that!”

It began with illegals, then progressed to trade, then segued into the GOPe, then turned on #blacklivesmatters, then called for a complete halt on Muslim immigration, then moved on to guns and Hillary, then turned on all the nations that used us for security while screwing us. He was even talking about beating up the lefties at his rallies, and he was so unctuous that leftists began trying to intimidate his supporters with actual violence in response. Ted never got that threat from the left because he didn’t attack the left that aggressively.

Trump’s aggression against our enemies was so strong that where he didn’t fight, like on transgenders in bathrooms, it was easily overlooked, because the choice was a guy who fought our enemies on many issues, or a guy who never fought the enemy on any issue. The choice was a guy who had our enemies running at him on stage trying to take him out, or a guy our enemies were fine with.

The second reason Cruz lost was that when Donald’s rally was shut down because of leftist violence, Cruz took the side of the leftists and attacked Donald. Cruz literally supported the leftist savages. Until that moment, many conservatives, myself included were willing to offer Cruz loyalty because he had opposed leftist measures in the Senate. But those protestors attacking Trump were our enemy. They were attacking Donald because he was fighting them.

Once Cruz stood up for the #blacklivesmatters protestors, that was it for him among a lot of the voters who were having trouble deciding. I was enraged, and it changed my view of Ted completely. On Free Republic, the shift was astonishing, as poster after protestor began cursing him, and commenting on how they never knew him. Conservative author Matt Bracken publicly posted, “FU Ted Cruz!”

At that point, Cruz would have been wise to drop out, for his political future. From that point forward, to the anti-leftist conservatives who fell in with Trump, everything Ted said was seen as some sort of political calculation, rather than a stance of principle. Every attack on Donald was a reason to dislike Ted more.

As he continued, old wounds were reopened fresh. He took Neil Bush onto his staff. His wife worked for Goldman and the CFR. Lindsey Graham endorsed him. The establishment wanted him to win. And now he chose Fiorina as his running mate. It is almost a farce. If he continues to try and deny Trump voters their candidate by giving the GOPe a brokered convention, I would not be surprised to see him primaried right out of the Senate one day.

Yes Scott Adams is right that Trump’s use of persuasion was an issue. And Trump’s use of K-stimuli like violence, confrontation, images of shortage, and mortal salience stimuli has been brilliant. But I think the overwhelming factor was that this was a man who openly relished fighting the enemies of the movement, insulting them, hurting them, and driving them mad, and he did so in the course of trying to win the support of a K-strategist population that wanted to fight all along. Add Cruz’s support of our leftist enemies against Donald, and Ted was done back then. It just took until now to become apparent.

The only question now is will this battle cost Ted anything more than merely the nomination this cycle.