Des Moines
As the Fox News anchors signed off, the lights turned on, and the ballroom began opening up for a big after-debate party, I wanted to know one thing: Had Ronette Smith made up her mind?
The 58-year-old Smith was one of a couple hundred at the Marriott downtown who gathered to watch Thursday’s debate at the official Ted Cruz campaign watch party. She was sporting a Cruz sticker, surrounded by Cruz volunteers and die-hard fans wearing Cruz-branded football jerseys. People were handing out Iowa-shaped cookies with Cruz’s logo drawn on in icing. If anyone in the Des Moines area is committed to the Texas senator, they’d likely be at this party.
So I was surprised to see several people in the audience respond favorably when other candidates, chiefly Marco Rubio, took their turns answering the questions. I spotted Smith nodding her head in agreement at one Rubio answer early in the debate about the threat from ISIS
“This group needs to be confronted and defeated,” Rubio said “They are not going to go away on their own. They’re not going to turn into stockbrokers overnight or open up a chain of car washes. They need to be defeated militarily, and that will take overwhelming U.S. force.”
It’s an answer a Cruz supporter can certainly get behind, but when I asked Smith during a commercial break if she would be caucusing for Cruz, she hedged. “I am pretty committed to Cruz, but not entirely,” she said. “Probably between him and Rubio.” She laughed at the idea that she might be revealing herself to be one of those Iowans, the kind who don’t truly decide until the last minute, earning the fascination and/or scorn of political observers outside the Hawkeye State. But it’s the truth, she insisted.
Another truth, Smith said, is that many of her Republican caucusing friends are in a similar situation. She has friends leaning toward everyone from Donald Trump to Ben Carson to Jeb Bush, but few of them are entirely committed, full-stop. What could possibly change minds in the final days?
Smith said she wanted to see how her leading candidate, Cruz, performed under the pressure and attention he’s been receiving in the last days and weeks. Cruz has been campaigning in Iowa with a big target on his back, taking hits not just from rivals Trump and Rubio. Even Iowa’s Republican governor, Terry Branstad, has been explicit in his desire to help “anyone but Cruz” win the caucuses because of the conservative senator’s view that federal ethanol subsidies should be phased out. (When Fox’s cameras focused on Branstad sitting in the audience during the debate, the Cruz crowd at the Marriott erupted in boos.)
Cruz played up his image as a conservative hero at siege from all sides. “Chris,” he said to host Chris Wallace as he geared up a response. “I would note that that the last four questions have been, ‘Rand, please attack Ted.’ ‘Marco, please attack Ted.’ ‘Chris, please attack Ted.’ ‘Jeb, please attack Ted.'” The watch party cheered.
Cruz gave the crowd plenty more to cheer about on substance, too. His precise indictment of Obamacare—”It is the biggest job-killer in this country. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, have been forced into part-time work, have lost their health insurance, have lost their doctors, have seen their premiums skyrocket.”—got the audience so worked up in excitement that their applause drowned out his attempt to explain how he’d improve the health-care system.
His stand on ethanol subsidies got a similarly raucous response. “I think God has blessed this country with enormous natural resources, and we should pursue all of the above,” Cruz said. “We should be developing oil, and gas, and coal, and nuclear, and wind, and solar, and ethanol, and biofuels. But, I don’t believe that Washington should be picking winners and losers.”
Things got interesting when talk turned to immigration. The first widespread negative reaction to Rubio from the pro-Cruz crowd came after the Florida senator tried to explain away contradictions in his rhetoric and record on amnesty. Fox played a brutal video montage that showed Rubio as a Senate candidate dismissing the idea of an earned path to citizenship for illegal immigrants as amnesty. “You cannot grant amnesty,” Rubio said then. How can he be trusted, moderator Megyn Kelly wanted to know, after Rubio later sponsored an immigration bill that would have granted that path? Rubio attempted to wriggle his way out of his past statements, which elicited some head shakes and a few boos from the Cruz party.
But things got awkwardly quiet when Kelly turned around and produced a similar montage of Cruz statements regarding the immigration bill debate in 2013. Cruz had spoken about earnestly wanting to pass an immigration bill and create a path to legal status. Cruz has since said his advocacy for that legalization path was an effort to kill the bill, a poison pill to demonstrate the obstinacy of the bill’s supporters. But the Cruz on tape, as Kelly said, sounded pretty convincing. There was a sense the room at the Marriott, at least momentarily, saw her point.
Did any of Thursday night’s debate matter? For the record, Ronette Smith says she remains a Cruz leaner but not entirely committed. “I still am very much leaning the way I was when I walked in here,” she said after the debate. “But…”
Her voice trailed off. “I could go with either one!” she said.
She thought Rubio’s ISIS answer was the best he gave, but the immigration exchange seemed to confirm some of her suspicions about him. “I want a leader who will be honest,” Smith said. “I don’t know if that’s true about Rubio.” Cruz’s social values and view of the Constitution, she said, align with her own, and the Texan seems to “do what he says he’s going to do.”
I push her a little more. Is there anything one of them can say or do in the next couple of days to push you one way or the other? Smith pause.
“I think they would be a great ticket. Cruz/Rubio,” she said. “That way, I could have them both!”
