We shouldn’t be surprised the Republican presidential race has come down to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. This is a party in which half or more of its voters feel they’ve been betrayed by their leaders. Who else would they favor except the two candidates most at odds with the GOP brass?
It started in New Hampshire, where 47 percent of Republican primary voters answered yes to the betrayal question in the exit poll. In South Carolina, it was 52 percent. And in five primaries Tuesday it was more of the same. In Florida, 60 percent of Republicans felt betrayed, Ohio (54), North Carolina (57), Illinois (50), and Missouri (58).
That sense of betrayal has doomed the regular, mainstream, and establishment Republicans. Marco Rubio dropped out after losing badly to Trump in Florida, his home state. John Kasich, the sitting governor of Ohio, defeated Trump in his home state, but his chances of winning the nomination are close to non-existent.
That leaves Trump, the populist, and Cruz, who calls himself the only “true conservative,” as the only contenders in the race. And with them comes the biggest problem Republicans face in 2016: winning the general election against Hillary Clinton, now all but sure to win the Democratic nomination.
Against her, Rubio or Kasich are stronger candidates or at least appear to be at the moment. They could capture the political center by doing well among Hispanics and suburban women voters, two enormously important voting blocs. They could beat Clinton. But Rubio is gone, Kasich nearly so.
For Trump and Cruz, beating Clinton would be a struggle and for good reason. Trump’s negatives are sky high and Democrats would exploit all of them. Cruz seems to think he can win by bringing more conservative voters out of the woodwork. He can’t. Both would start from far behind among Hispanics and suburban women.
After winning Tuesday’s primaries in Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, and leading by a hair in Missouri, Trump’s path to the nomination is clear. Losing 4-to-0 to Trump yesterday puts Cruz in a deep hole. The best he can do now is simply keep Trump from acquiring a majority of the delegates to the GOP convention in July in Cleveland. And he’ll have to step up his game to achieve even that.
There’s another problem. If Trump is the nominee, a chunk of Republican voters may take a hike. Some may vote for Clinton, others for a third party conservative candidate. A wave of Republican defections would lead to Clinton’s election.
Trump talks about unifying the party, but that’s a dream at this point. He’s yet to win 50 percent in a primary, though he insisted that’s an unfair yardstick with four candidates in the race yesterday. He noted he’s reached 53 percent support among Republicans in a YouGov poll, a new high.
According to Trump, $40 million has been spent him in negative ads in the past two weeks. He said he couldn’t escape them even as he was congratulating the winner of a golf tournament at his Doral course in Miami over the weekend. Yet “my numbers went up,” he said.
His performance has impressed David Plouffe, President Obama’s campaign manager. Trump neither studies for debates nor puts his own ads on television, but still wins, Plouffe said on Fox News. “He gives you more upside” than Cruz against Hillary. If all goes well for him, he could get more votes than Cruz could.
Trump is a presidential candidate like no other, Plouffe said. “We just don’t know what you’re going to get from this guy,” he said. That should make Democrats nervous, and it does.
