Defying the Odds

by James W. Ceaser

  EARLY MARCH

  Following Super Tuesday, the voters continued to decline to identify a clear winner, though there were some indications that Cruz had seized the momentum. Contests on March 5 produced Cruz wins in the Kansas primary and Maine caucuses and narrower than expected Trump wins in Kentucky and Louisiana, where Trump underperformed in polls and Cruz came in a close second and would have won handily with either Rubio’s or Kasich’s votes. On March 8, Trump came back with solid wins in Michigan and Mississippi and a narrow win in the Hawaii caucuses, while Cruz won decisively in Idaho. Still, Trump was unable to breach 50 percent; even in Michigan, Trump’s 154,000 vote margin was eclipsed by Kasich’s third-place 322,000 vote total.

  In this moment of the campaign, three facts stood out. One was Trump’s continued march forward on a broad front, despite difficulties. Another was Kasich’s persistence despite not finishing higher than third in any of the eight most recent contests. The third was that Cruz had eclipsed Rubio as the main conservative alternative to Trump. Indeed, in these latest rounds of contests, Rubio had actually fallen to fourth place in Maine, Michigan, and Mississippi.

  Rubio’s sudden collapse was attributable to two factors. He had simply not won enough, and his voters began to sense that he was not viable in the primaries, though they continued to look forlornly at polls showing him beating Hillary Clinton handily in the fall. And he followed up his more aggressive debate approach by taking the bait that Trump had long been dangling to join him in the newly fetid gutter of American politics. Long abused by Trump as “little Marco,” Rubio made a strategic decision to take on his tor-mentor, to fight fire with fire. He overstepped, ridiculing Trump with relish and noting his “small hands,” in reference to an old wives’ tale linking small hands to other small appendages. Trump then defended his manhood in the next debate, assuring the television audience that all of his appendages were appropriately sizable. Rubio and Trump had succeeded in bringing the presidential race down to a level not seen in living memory, but only Rubio paid a price. He had come into the race with higher positive ratings and lower negatives of any Republican candidate, and he had largely maintained that position until now. No one expected any better of Trump, but they had expected better of Rubio, and his excursion to the gutter was a deep blow to an already-struggling campaign.

  MINI–SUPER TUESDAY

  March 15 marked the next major event, mini–Super Tuesday. Rubio’s Florida would be at stake, as would Kasich’s Ohio. Also in play were Illinois, Missouri, and North Carolina. Kasich and Rubio needed home state wins to remain viable, Cruz wanted a win to maintain what momentum he had, and Trump was looking for the kill and collecting endorsements from Ben Carson and conservative lioness Phyllis Schlafly.

  Kasich survived, winning Ohio handily. To no one’s surprise, Rubio was trounced by Trump in Florida and formally ended his campaign. Trump ran the table elsewhere, winning Illinois in a blow-out, North Carolina by a few percentage points, and Missouri by a whisker. In the Show-Me State, Cruz lost by 1,700 votes while Kasich was collecting 93,000 and Rubio 57,000. Trump’s percentages were inching upward, but were still well short of a majority, reaching 43 percent in Florida, 41 in Missouri, 40 in North Carolina, 39 in Illinois, and 36 in his loss in Ohio.

  One week later, Trump and Cruz traded victories in the American Southwest, as Trump defeated Cruz 38–25 percent in Arizona and Cruz demolished Trump by a 70–14 percent margin in Utah (with Trump doing so badly that Kasich actually finished ahead of him, in second place). Trump’s embarrassment in Utah was closely related to the fact that 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the Republican Party’s most famous Mormon, had intervened in the 2016 contest with a scathing speech critical of Trump. The New Yorker, Romney argued, was a fraud “who has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president.”30 Opinion was divided over whether Romney’s attack hurt Trump nationally or strengthened his position as an outsider who would shake up both parties’ establishments, but in Utah the effect was clear.

  The Romney speech drew attention to an increasingly bitter civil war on the right. Not only had the party’s recent nominees from the center-right— Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush—been critical of Trump, but much of the conservative movement’s intellectual core also found Trump philosophically, temperamentally, and morally unfit for the presidency. Arguably the two most high-profile conservative journals of opinion— National Review and The Weekly Standard —were firmly anti-Trump, as was RedState, one of the most widely read conservative websites. On March 17, a group of notable conservative activists held a conference call to try to plot a unified strategy to stop Trump. On the other side, pro-Trump intellectuals launched the Journal of American Greatness, trying to identify (or construct) a philosophical framework for Trumpism around a revival of nationalism. (It folded in June but was quickly replaced by American Greatness.) The intellectual debate was real, though one commentator would later note, “There is a profoundly asymmetrical relationship between Trump and the Trumpist intellectuals, who must formulate their doctrine without much assistance from its namesake.”31 Trump also had his share of supporters and opponents in the world of conservative talk radio, and evangelical leaders were, as usual, divided.

  WISCONSIN

  After the Arizona-Utah pairing, the candidates had two weeks to prepare for the next primary, in Wisconsin, which took on the character of a showdown. Trump saw Wisconsin as a prime target, a heavily white, working-class state with relatively few evangelicals. Cruz saw a great opportunity to seize the initiative in a state that had trended Republican recently. Cruz took full advantage of the state’s unique conservative talk radio network, which was almost uniformly aligned against Trump (in contrast with much of conservative talk radio elsewhere).32 He also benefited from the strong endorsement of Governor Scott Walker. The Texan pleaded with Wisconsin voters to stop the Trump tide, which he argued was doomed to defeat in November. Cruz also benefited from Trump’s ham-handed Twitter attack on his wife, Heidi. (Cruz additionally accused Trump of planting a story with the National Enquirer alleging five extramarital affairs by Cruz—the first of at least three times during the campaign that Trump either fed or fed off of the Enquirer, whose publisher was a personal friend, as if it were a serious news source.33)

  When Cruz won a clear 48–35 percent victory in Wisconsin, it seemed possible that he had turned a corner. He had finally put together the coalition of very conservative and somewhat conservative voters that has dominated Republican nominations for decades. Trump won only among self-described moderates. Cruz won among all age groups, all education levels, and all incomes. He crushed Trump among evangelicals but also beat him among non-evangelicals. He won handily among Republican voters and tied Trump among independents. He won on the economy, terrorism, and government spending, and on both electability and values. He won among those who felt betrayed by GOP politicians as well as those whose did not. Notably, Cruz nearly drew even with Trump among those whose first priority was making change.34 Wisconsin was nearly as broad and complete a victory for Cruz as New Hampshire had been for Trump a very long two months before. If he could replicate this success, perhaps with a unified Republican Party behind him, Cruz could win it all.

  Those who anticipated an open convention were more convinced than ever that it would come to pass. Trump had thus far won only 37 percent of the total reported primary and caucus vote. Analysts feverishly calculated what outsized proportion of remaining delegates Trump would have to (improbably) win in order to prevail on the first ballot. It was widely assumed that if Trump did not win on the first ballot, he would not win at all. Fighting back, the Trump campaign loudly argued that the convention should automatically back whichever candidate received the most votes in primaries, even if he had fewer than the majority required by the rules. Polls of voters in Republican primaries showed that about two-thirds agreed. Going further, some Trump backers threatened to publicize the Cleveland hotel rooms of delegates who held a contra
ry position, raising the phenomenon of “doxing” to a new level.

  THE END APPROACHES: THE NORTHEAST PRIMARIES

  It turned out that, far from Wisconsin being a turning point on Ted Cruz’s way to the nomination, it was his last hurrah. The Republican leadership, still smarting from his jabs, did not coalesce behind him. John Kasich did not clear his way for a one-on-one battle against Trump. And geography was not his friend. He would not again run against Trump in a state as hospitable as Wisconsin. Instead, Cruz had to face Trump in the Northeast, starting with New York on April 19, followed by Pennsylvania and four other Northeastern states on April 26. The race would not return to the Midwest until the Indiana primary on May 3. By the time Indiana came around, the dynamic of the race had changed dramatically. Trump himself adjusted after Wisconsin, turning to new people and a somewhat more orthodox approach to regain his footing.35

  As the New York primary loomed, it became clear that Cruz was in no position to compete there. His strong political conservatism, his Texas persona, and his cultural dismissal of New York combined to render him unviable. His remark denigrating “New York values,” delivered to the voters of Iowa in January, was replayed endlessly. Cruz gamely tried to explain that he meant liberal Democratic Manhattan values, and that the poor, longsuffering Republicans of New York should understand what he meant, but to no avail. Hoping to scrape at least a few delegates out of the barrel, Cruz even campaigned in heavily black precincts in Brooklyn where a few hundred Republican votes might net him some district delegates. As a candidate, John Kasich was actually more suited than Cruz to New York, and he continued running his own vigorous campaign. But New York was Donald Trump’s city, and it would not turn its back on its favorite son. Trump finally broke the 50 percent barrier in the New York primary, winning with 60 percent to Kasich’s 25 percent and Cruz’s 15 percent.

  New York was a sign of things to come. Cruz got little traction in Pennsylvania, losing to Trump 58 percent to 22 percent (Kasich finished third with 20 percent). Trump also won by wide margins in Rhode Island (with 65 percent), Delaware (63 percent), Connecticut (59 percent), and Maryland (57 percent). In all four, Kasich finished second, with Cruz bringing up the rear with 20 percent or less. Over the previous two months, Trump had suffered many setbacks and had not yet consolidated Republican support, but he was the only candidate who had proven appeal in all parts of the country. Now, just when he had needed it the most following his Wisconsin debacle, the race had turned to his own backyard, and he made the best of it. The speed with which Cruz’s position deteriorated was startling, not least to Cruz himself. His Wisconsin momentum extinguished, his claim to electability in tatters, and the breadth of his appeal exposed as inadequate, Cruz turned to Indiana on May 3 as one last hope.

  INDIANA AND THE END

  When the candidates returned to the heartland, it was a different race. Polling had been sparse, but an Indiana poll taken just after Wisconsin showed Cruz leading Trump by double digits. After Trump’s Northeastern romp, the candidates had switched places.36 Although Cruz’s supporters continued to point to math showing how Trump could be stopped on the first ballot, his campaign began to exude a sense of desperation. Indiana would be make or break. It was reported that Cruz and Kasich finally made a deal to stop cutting into each other’s support, and that Rubio had been involved in the talks. Kasich would give Cruz a clean shot in Indiana, while Cruz would back off from Oregon and New Mexico, the states next up. However, both candidates were already on the ballot in all of those places, and it was too late to be removed. Then, trying hard to reenergize his campaign, Cruz used a maneuver not seen since Ronald Reagan had attempted it on the eve of the 1976 Republican national convention: he named his prospective vice presidential running mate and campaigned as a team. The name was Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard executive who ran in the earliest primaries and had bloodied Trump’s nose in an early debate. She was an unquestioned outsider, a determined fighter, and a woman, a helpful attribute in both the immediate fight against the misogynistic Trump and the long-term fight against the feminist icon Hillary Clinton. However, Fiorina brought no appreciable base of support— she had dropped out after securing 4.1 percent of the vote in New Hampshire, and had no obvious pull even in her former home state of California—and her early designation by Cruz seemed to many like the sign of a flailing campaign.

  Cruz may have briefly closed the gap (one poll had him within two points) but he never restored his Wisconsin coalition. He did get the endorsement of Governor Mike Pence, but Pence waited until the last minute and made enough positive comments about Trump during the course of his statement that he had to issue a clarification reaffirming that he had, indeed, endorsed Cruz. On the day of the vote, Trump inflicted a final indignity, highlighting a photograph on the front page of the National Enquirer tabloid purporting to show Cruz’s father, Rafael, with JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. “I mean, what was he doing—what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?” Trump asked. “It’s horrible.”37 Cruz fumed that Trump was a “pathological liar,” “utterly amoral,” and “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen.”38 But the voting went on. When those votes were counted, Trump had prevailed, 43 percent to 32 percent, with Kasich in third with 15 percent. That night, Cruz threw in the towel, followed the next day by Kasich, though both notably declined to endorse Trump.

  The exit polls showed a large gender gap, with men supporting Trump and women Cruz (men were 53 percent of the electorate). Trump won each income group; each educational category but postgraduate; Republicans, independents, and Democrats; both the moderate and the somewhat conservative (Cruz retained his stronghold among the very conservative); evangelicals and non-evangelicals; and the two-thirds who said immigration, terrorism, or the economy were the top issues (as usual, Cruz won among those who were most concerned about government spending). Trump also prevailed among those who most wanted electability (a reversal from Wisconsin), a candidate who tells it like it is, and a candidate who can bring change (Cruz held on to the values voters); those who were satisfied with the federal government, those who were dissatisfied, and those who were angry; those who felt betrayed by Republican politicians and those who did not. Cruz won the vote of those who decided in the last week, but two-thirds had decided earlier, and they voted for Trump.39 Cruz had predicated his campaign on the belief that there were enough “True Conservatives” in the country—especially in places like Indiana—that they could carry him to the nomination. It was a fatal miscalculation.40

  Nine states voted after Indiana, but they were a formality, swept by Trump. The results, though never in doubt, exposed the degree to which many Republicans remained resistant to the Trump takeover. With every opponent having abandoned the fight, leaving only their names on ballots as a retreating army leaves its tents and broken-down jeeps as detritus of a lost battle, Trump nevertheless won only two-thirds of the vote in Nebraska, Oregon, and South Dakota, around three-quarters of the vote in West Virginia, California, Montana, and New Mexico, and around 80 percent in Washington and New Jersey. In those nine states, he averaged 73 percent. In other words, with no one running against him, anywhere from one in five to one in three Republican voters preferred no one. (Four years earlier, Mitt Romney had also faced an enthusiasm deficit, though doubtless among a different set of voters: in the eleven primaries after Romney cleared the GOP field, he had averaged 71 percent of the vote.)

  Trump would clearly have his work cut out as he tried to unify the Republican Party behind him. In an NBC/Wall Street Journal survey taken just after the Indiana primary, only 72 percent of Republican voters nationwide said they intended to vote for him in November.41 Complicating his task would be the NeverTrump movement of Republicans, mostly conservatives, who saw Trump as flatly unfit to be president for both moral and political reasons. NeverTrump followers could not abide Trump’s nomination and sought ways through November 8 to liberate themse
lves from his anchor. First, they hoped to work through the convention to deny Trump a victory. Not since 1952 had a nominee been drafted at a national convention, but what made this hope slightly plausible was that Trump’s campaign was very effective at communications but very ineffective at organization and mastering the rules of local delegate selection. Cruz’s success in winning delegates in states that had voted for Trump had been the basis of his hopes for many weeks. Now Cruz was gone, but his delegates were not. The NeverTrump organizers sought to adopt convention rules that would have unbound delegates on the first ballot, allowing the hidden Cruz delegates and others to nominate, if not Cruz (who showed little appetite for the plan), at least someone other than Trump. The rebels had the open support of hundreds of delegates, but failed to get sufficient votes on the convention rules committee to bring the proposal to a floor vote.42

  Simultaneously, prominent Trump opponents such as Weekly Standard editor William Kristol took a different tack, trying to recruit an independent conservative candidate for president. Mitt Romney was asked to run, but he declined. Ditto for senators Ben Sasse of Nebraska (who had said Trump had the appeal of a “dumpster fire”) and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Congressman Justin Amash, Rand Paul, John Kasich, Mark Cuban, Condoleezza Rice, and retired generals James Mattis and Stanley McChrystal were mentioned as possibilities, but they did not bite. After that, the effort drifted into obscurity, as National Review contributor David French was recruited, gave it serious consideration, and declined. Finally, Evan McMullin agreed. McMullin had been policy staff director for the House Republicans and, before that, a CIA special operations officer. He was young, well informed, conservative, and articulate—a perfect contrast with Trump. He was also completely unknown to the broader public.