Trump is going to go easy on Cruz:
At a loss to explain Trump veering from frenemy to enemy to friend of Cruz again at the debate in the span of about five days, Joe Scarborough wondered this morning whether some “inside deal” has now been struck between the two. I doubt it. What would that deal look like? Cruz needs something from Trump, namely, a truce that’ll keep Cruz viable for Trump voters, but Trump doesn’t need anything from Cruz. What could Cruz offer him to get him to back off? (Trump’s not going to be anyone’s VP. C’mon.) Even if the deal is “we can make this a two-man race if we avoid attacking each other,” how does that benefit Trump? Trump needs either a three-man race, to keep the conservative and center-right majority divided, or a two-man race against someone unpopular like Jeb Bush. If he goes head to head with Cruz, he loses. Probably badly.
I sympathize with Scarborough’s confusion, though. I wrote a whole post on Friday about why it doesn’t make sense for Trump to hold his fire against Cruz. What does he gain from it at a moment when one respected poll has him down 10 to Cruz in Iowa? It’s one thing to hold fire when you’re ahead, it’s another to do it when you need to make up ground. Trump’s track record of damaging other candidates with attacks thus far this year has ranged from spectacularly successful (Jeb) to no real harm done to either side (Rubio), so there’s no obvious cost to attacking either.
For Trump, there is a real cost to attacking the wrong person. In the primary, Trump is appealing to Conservatives – a group with which he has not explicitly allied in the past. Conservatives are very in-group/out-group oriented. In large part because he is seen by most conservatives as a newcomer, Trump can move the needle either way with an attack on someone. If he attacks someone the conservatives don’t like, such as illegal immigrants, foreigners, ISIS, or Jeb Bush, then he will go up in the polls. He will be in-grouping himself with conservatives by attacking their enemies. So far he has “out-in-grouped” himself over every other candidate, and he has risen accordingly. If he attacks someone many conservatives like however, he will out-group himself and then he will go down.
Jeb, merely by being a part of the dynasty that has screwed conservatives for two presidencies, is firmly on the outside of the group. Cruz has specifically sought to portray himself as a long-time conservative, which, whether you agree with it or not, makes most observers in the conservative community view him as more of a trustworthy in-group member. Rubio is kind of in the middle, with some conservative reputation, but also some establishment stink, is why attacking him was a zero sum game.
I explained this before, but I’ll point it out again. A lot of Trump supporters like Cruz, and a lot of Cruz supporters like Trump. If I like “A” and I like “B,” both very much, and then “A” tells me “B” is a piece of crap, but “B” tells me he likes “A,” the overall balance of my favoritism will lean toward B. “A” triggered, however slight, aversive stimulus in my amygdala since he attacked something I liked, and that aversive stimulus will stick to him as well. Cruz’s psychological people have seen this, which is why Cruz will go to the lengths of tweeting out that Trump is great. Cruz says he thinks A is great, and so do I. Cruz is just like me.
Trump’s attacks on Ted were gentle enough that they won’t cost him. In truth they looked like gentle political prods of the sort we expect. But with Ted, Trump is in the strange position where the harder he attacks, the more he will hurt himself – and Ted is in the same position. So how should Trump fight to raise himself in the polls?
What Trump needs to do is what he has done all along. Identify an enemy of Conservatives and attack it with all his might, as aggressively as he can, in a way we know other conservatives won’t. That will allow him to out-in-group everyone else. It is a great strategy, because the media loves the enemies of Conservatives, so every time he does it he will get loads of free outraged press, provided by a media we hate, the Conservatives will look on stunned that somebody is fighting the left harder than they ever dreamed possible, and he will rise in the polls even more.
If Trump wants to get specific he can try to offer one proposal that appeals to libertarian small government conservatives, of a sort they couldn’t hope to get from anyone else. Then repeat with fiscal conservatives, then repeat with national defense conservatives, then repeat all over again, until every conservative has it burned into their brain that Trump always delivers what you can’t dream of others providing.
National concealed carry, elimination of Obamacare by executive order (just as Obama has kept it going by administrative decision making), granting Deputized Federal LE Agent status to gunowners who pass a background check and special training thereby allowing full carry country-wide and unrestricted NFA weapons access, offering citizenship based on how much you bring to the US favoring high IQ civilized people from first world countries, and so on. Question whether third world people wouldn’t be better off immigrating to a second-world country first, rather than landing in a technology driven first world country with little more than straw-hat-weaving and mud-hut-repair skills. Ban NASA from any Global Warming bullshit. Ban attacks on Christmas. Say he wants people who complain publically of being triggered placed in the federal database of the mentally ill. Given how far the public debate has headed leftward and anti-American nationally, Trump could promise a lot of things the other candidates won’t touch, get tons of free outrage-media, open that Overton window a little more, and hold himself out as Ted Cruz on steroids.
I love Ted, but if Trump promised every NRA member the ability to carry, concealed, a holosighted, short barreled, select-fire FN P90 everywhere nationally, and remove their gun rights from question by giving every free citizen the option of full LE-based authority to own and carry weapons, I’m officially done with any other candidate. Now I know that he can’t go that far, but each click toward it will raise his poll numbers a notch, and do so far more effectively than any attack on Ted ever would. In short he is saying, “I like everything about B, but I want to go a little farther toward our goals than B is able to.”
There is a lesson here for Trump and Cruz supporters as well. I happen to like both candidates, but if I didn’t, I would not attack one or the other, and I certainly wouldn’t attack one or the other while identifying myself as a fan of their opponent. If I said I liked Cruz, and attacked Trump here, especially with personal attacks questioning his honor, loyalty, or personality, every Trump fan would end up disliking Cruz, at least a little bit. That, on a large scale, translates into small poll number shifts.
A lot of conservative voters were happy when Romney lost because his people spent so much time trying to tear down the candidates they held in high esteem. I’m sure many Sarah Palin fans thought, “Well at least those Romney assholes are miserable tonight,” when Romney went down. I’ll confess I was comforted that the establishment hacks ended up crying into their beers.
Politics is personal, and conservatives are very in-grouping. Attack their candidate, and you make your candidate into the out-group – and being the out-group is very bad for poll numbers.
Either way, I am happy this cycle. Whoever wins, one thing we know is that the GOPocalypse cometh™
