Cruz and Kasich Are Playing Right Into Trump's Hands

Even as Don­ald Trump’s strong per­form­ance Tues­day night was a ser­i­ous set­back to the anti-Trump move­ment, the biggest obstacles to stop­ping Trump are his own Re­pub­lic­an rivals. In­stead of work­ing to­geth­er and deny­ing Trump del­eg­ates, both Ted Cruz and John Kasich have pur­sued self-de­struct­ive, self-in­ter­ested strategies that seemed de­signed more to one-up each oth­er than take on the front-run­ner in the race.

Ac­cord­ing to The Cook Polit­ic­al Re­port’s del­eg­ate score­card, des­pite Trump’s suc­cess­ful night last Tues­day, he is now (slightly) off track to se­cur­ing the 1,237 del­eg­ates ne­ces­sary to clinch be­fore the con­ven­tion. And, ac­cord­ing to the del­eg­ate math, Cruz and Kasich have no path to win­ning a ma­jor­ity. If both Cruz and Kasich are look­ing to deny Trump his ne­ces­sary del­eg­ates (and press their luck with a con­tested con­ven­tion), they should be co­ordin­at­ing to their ad­vant­age. Kasich would cede most of the West­ern states, with more-con­ser­vat­ive elect­or­ates, to Cruz. Cruz, whose so­cial con­ser­vat­ism doesn’t sell well above the Ma­son-Dix­on line, would al­low Kasich free rein in the North­east battle­grounds.

In­stead, we’re see­ing Trump’s op­pon­ents em­ploy strategies that mainly help Trump. Cruz spent valu­able time in the cam­paign’s last week in Flor­ida and Ohio, seek­ing to deny Marco Ru­bio and Kasich vic­tor­ies in their home states. (It had no im­pact: Kasich won com­fort­ably; Ru­bio lost badly.) That time would have been much bet­ter spent in Mis­souri, where Cruz lost by less than 2,000 votes, or in Illinois, where Cruz could have se­cured more del­eg­ates with a stronger show­ing.

Mean­while, Kasich is spend­ing valu­able time and cam­paign cash on ads in Utah, a state where Cruz is well-po­si­tioned to win big on Tues­day. But while Cruz would win all the state’s del­eg­ates with an out­right ma­jor­ity, fall­ing short of the 50 per­cent mark means Trump takes home 20 ad­di­tion­al del­eg­ates. Kasich’s re­sources would be much bet­ter util­ized in pre­par­ing for the round of North­east­ern primar­ies on April 26, when Pennsylvania, Con­necti­c­ut, Delaware, Mary­land, and Rhode Is­land Re­pub­lic­ans head to the polls. Kasich is well po­si­tioned to con­sol­id­ate sup­port with the re­gion’s many sub­urb­an­ites, and he has spe­cif­ic ap­peal in the Pitt­s­burgh area; he grew up in McK­ees Rocks, Pennsylvania (the son of a mail­man, as his stump speech goes).

But in­stead of think­ing stra­tegic­ally, Kasich and Cruz are be­hav­ing as if they have a lo­gic­al shot at win­ning a ma­jor­ity of del­eg­ates. Cruz na­ively be­lieves that, if the race were a one-on-one battle with him and Trump, he’d pre­vail. These as­sump­tions are de­lu­sion­al. Cruz would likely lose badly to Trump head-to-head in the North­east­ern battle­grounds, where his brand of con­ser­vat­ism is as dis­liked as Trump’s pop­u­list spiel. And Kasich is math­em­at­ic­ally elim­in­ated from win­ning a ma­jor­ity of del­eg­ates; it’s near-im­possible for him to even come close to Trump.

Their path to vic­tory lies in deny­ing Trump enough del­eg­ates to have a ma­jor­ity en­ter­ing the con­ven­tion. The math shows such an out­come is very pos­sible. The ques­tion is wheth­er Trump’s rivals have the stra­tegic dis­cip­line to pull of the task.

TRAIL MIX

1) The biggest fear among Re­pub­lic­an op­er­at­ives is that, if Trump wins the GOP nom­in­a­tion, around one-quarter of GOP voters will stay home and not cast bal­lots for down­bal­lot Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ates—a sig­ni­fic­antly great­er num­ber than those who would be drawn to the polls by Trump’s can­did­acy. It’s a much big­ger con­cern than the pro­spect that a lop­sided Hil­lary Clin­ton vic­tory over Trump would carry down­bal­lot Demo­crat­ic coat­tails. If close to one-quarter of rank-and-file Re­pub­lic­ans don’t even show up to vote, not only is con­trol of the Sen­ate en­dangered, but fairly safe GOP-held seats in Mis­souri, In­di­ana, and Ari­zona could sud­denly come in­to play. And con­trol of the House, which un­til re­cently looked ger­ry­mandered bey­ond Demo­crat­ic con­trol, would also be in play. Demo­crats would need to net 30 House seats to win back a ma­jor­ity. That’s ex­actly how many seats the party won in the 2006 wave, one that many Re­pub­lic­ans didn’t see com­ing un­til it was too late to do any­thing.

That’s pre­cisely why some party lead­ers be­lieve hav­ing a third-party con­ser­vat­ive can­did­ate is something of a ne­ces­sity with Trump as the nom­in­ee. Even if a split Re­pub­lic­an Party costs them the pres­id­ency, get­ting enough GOP voters to the polls will be cru­cial with the Sen­ate and the House both po­ten­tially in play.

2) For a third-party con­ser­vat­ive can­did­ate to have any chance of suc­cess bey­ond be­ing a spoil­er, he/she needs to bring three skills to the table: a) high name iden­ti­fic­a­tion, since such a can­did­ate can’t spend valu­able time get­ting voters to know him or her; b) per­son­al wealth and/or ac­cess to top donors; and c) abil­ity to straddle the ideo­lo­gic­ally wide di­vide of Trump crit­ics, from the es­tab­lish­ment cen­ter to grass­roots con­ser­vat­ives con­vinced Trump is a fraud. That’s hard for nearly any­one to ac­com­plish un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances.

Many names have been floated, in­clud­ing Mitt Rom­ney, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Ok­lahoma Sen. Tom Coburn — all of whom have flaws as a third-party al­tern­at­ive. (Rom­ney’s too es­tab­lish­ment, Perry is too con­ser­vat­ive, and Coburn is too un­known.) But the Re­pub­lic­an who best fits the bill is House Speak­er Paul Ry­an. This week, Ry­an furi­ously denied any in­terest in pur­su­ing a can­did­acy at the con­ven­tion. But he had been equally adam­ant that he would nev­er run for speak­er. If Re­pub­lic­ans get to the un­likely point where none of the ac­tu­al can­did­ates could muster a ma­jor­ity, Ry­an would be the only con­tender who’d have a shot at bridging the di­vide.

3) Wis­con­sin Gov. Scott Walk­er will be the most in­ter­est­ing politi­cian to watch in the next few weeks, in the run-up to his state’s crit­ic­al April 5 primary. He’s one of the few Re­pub­lic­ans not to be dam­aged in the Trump tor­nado, since he dropped out of the race early and pres­ci­ently warned that oth­ers should fol­low his lead to stop Trump. Walk­er has a chance to demon­strate his clout by ral­ly­ing his state’s voters against Trump and en­dors­ing a favored chal­lenger.   If he de­cides to en­dorse, Walk­er’s di­lemma will be the same as oth­er anti-Trump Re­pub­lic­ans — de­cid­ing which al­tern­at­ive to rally be­hind. While Cruz looks like the strongest anti-Trump chal­lenger na­tion­ally, he has lim­ited ap­peal in Wis­con­sin, where only 37 per­cent of GOP voters are evan­gel­ic­al and few­er than one-third define them­selves as very con­ser­vat­ive.  Kasich could well be the more nat­ur­al al­tern­at­ive to anti-Trump Re­pub­lic­ans.  

And if Walk­er wants to run for pres­id­ent again in 2020, ali­en­at­ing Trump’s sup­port­ers would cause him prob­lems down the road.  Walk­er is one of the shrink­ing num­ber of Re­pub­lic­ans with ap­peal among the es­tab­lish­ment and blue-col­lar pop­u­lists. That didn’t do him any good in a race that Trump took over from the be­gin­ning. Wheth­er he spends his re­main­ing polit­ic­al cap­it­al to stop Trump in his home state or saves it for the fu­ture will go a long way in show­ing where the nom­in­a­tion is headed.