When former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina first endorsed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the media kept replaying a clip of her from January in which she said Cruz would say “whatever” to get elected.
Media outlets excitedly replayed the clip to — what? — remind Cruz that he was once rivals with Fiorina? To make Fiorina look like a liar or a flip-flopper? Probably some combination of the two. And when Fiorina was named as Cruz’s running mate (conditional on whether he can win the GOP nomination, of course), the media again latched on to this months-old quote from when Fiorina was still running for president.
No one ever accused the media of being original.
Following Cruz’s announcement, ABC News’ David Wright interviewed Fiorina and asked about her past attacks on Cruz. Fiorina said “In a heated basketball game sometimes players foul each other,” making a reference to the Hoosier State. She also said her comments came in the “heat of a political campaign” and that Cruz would “do what he says.”
Fiorina’s past attacks on Cruz weren’t the worst attacks of the election cycle, but this hyper focus on past statements in the context of current endorsements leads one to wonder if there is any attack that would be unforgivable in a political campaign.
Businessman Donald Trump is the best example of this. He has both received endorsements from the people he said negative and highly personal things about, and he has received endorsements from others who said very negative things about him. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie repeatedly attacked Trump over his “temperament,” his whining and moaning and his political inexperience. Nonetheless, Trump accepted Christie’s endorsement in late February and the two have been appearing together on the stump ever since.
The most egregious example from this election cycle, however, was retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson’s endorsement of Trump. Last November, Trump told CNN’s Erin Burnett that Carson had “a pathological temper” in his book Gifted Hands and that “you don’t cure that.” The Republican front-runner then compared his rival to a child molester.
If ever there was a line not to cross, Trump crossed it. Yet there Carson was just a few months later endorsing Trump, even calling him “cerebral.”
(One could argue that in the intervening weeks, Carson has shown himself to be such a bad surrogate that a conspiracy theorist might wonder if this has all been payback for the child molester comment.)
At this point I fully expect Ted Cruz to endorse Donald Trump in the general, even after the constant “Lyin’ Ted” accusations. Cruz had initially — back when there were still 17 candidates vying for the GOP nomination – defended Trump. It seemed at the time to be a strategy to win over Trump’s supporters when he faded, but at this point he has abandoned such niceties.
The 2016 election cycle has already been one of the weirdest in recent memory, and the endorsements from former rivals have been just one element of that. It doesn’t seem like any nasty thing said about a candidate has had a lasting impact. Perhaps the viciousness between the candidates’ camps actually does have a chance of dissipating in the general election.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
