“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” an ancient proverb goes. So it is for Ted Cruz and John Kasich in the upcoming Indiana, New Mexico, and Oregon primaries, where spokesmen said the weakest of the two challengers to Donald Trump will stop competing in the hopes of taking out the New York businessman one-on-one.
First up is the Hoosier state next Tuesday, where Cruz is close to Trump in the polls and Kasich’s camp said it would cease operations. The statement from Kasich chief strategist John Weaver was unambiguous: “[W]e will shift our campaign’s resources West and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana.”
In other words, Kasich is getting out of Cruz’s way there. You could interpret this to mean that the Ohio governor won’t spend any money against Cruz in Indiana and won’t spend any resources to promote himself, won’t make any campaign stops on the road from Evansville to Ft. Wayne, and won’t ask for any additional votes in a critical state where someone other than Trump — but not him — can win. Kasich wants an open convention in Cleveland, which he insists he can parlay into the Republican nomination. And he understands that the only way he will have such an opportunity is if Trump doesn’t win Indiana. Cruz is Kasich’s only hope.
But Kasich has to walk and not cross the line that separates strategy from abandoning voters. It’s a thin one. Indianapolis Star columnist Matthew Tully, a Kasich sympathizer, couldn’t help but criticize his preferred candidate for the “nauseating” display of “watching political rivals finally join together only because it is in their self-interest,” despite conceding the practicality of the governor’s decision.
So naturally, Kasich has hedged. Instead of pulling out of Indiana and allowing the move to speak for itself, he reassured his supporters Monday that it was still okay to vote for him.
“I’ve never told them not to vote for me. They ought to vote for me,” Kasich said Monday of his Hoosier state backers when asked directly who they should choose on election day. “But I’m not over there campaigning and spending resources.”
Kasich reiterated the second point, adding that Cruz was simply doing him the same favor in New Mexico and Oregon.
“That’s all it is.”
Further complicating the difficulty of tacitly supporting Cruz’s efforts in Indiana without giving up on the state’s voters, Weaver tried to have the final say on Twitter: “We’re not telling voters who to vote for in [Indiana], only where we are going to spend resources to ultimately defeat Hillary. They get it.”
Here’s the thing: If they truly do, they’ll vote for Ted Cruz next Tuesday. And in no political universe would Kasich ask them to do that.
