Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign has been, from the beginning, the campaign of a man with a determined plan. He beefed up staff in key states (and not-so-key states) and his campaign became intimately aware of the primary and caucus rules of each state so they could adjust their strategy as necessary.
Compare that to Cruz’s rival, businessman Donald Trump, whose campaign remains to this day based more on media appearances by the candidate than state-level planning and organization.
The latest example of this divide appeared in Colorado last week and over the weekend. Team Cruz had spent months organizing and weeks courting delegates to the state’s GOP convention, and walked away with all 34 delegates. Team Trump’s strategy, by contrast, was to pass out flyers at the convention site (with inaccurate information and a misspelled name) and hope the candidate’s name recognition would do the rest.
Oh, and then to whine and complain when that strategy predictably failed.
Cruz’s campaign played by the rules of the game. There were no dirty tricks, unless it is now “dirty” to do the nitty gritty campaign stuff necessary to win an election. Trump’s campaign simply didn’t do its homework and is now acting like an elementary student who failed to study for a test and blames the teacher.
As much as Trump seemed to despise Marco Rubio, the business mogul’s campaign actually took the playbook of the Florida senator — and added caffeine. Rubio’s strategy from the beginning had been based on earned media, believing the senator would be elevated in the media as the Republican Barack Obama: young, charismatic, with a modest upbringing and boasting a minority label.
That earned media never really materialized, especially once Trump belly-flopped into the race and sucked up all the energy of the campaign.
Without the ground game that Cruz had built, Rubio couldn’t compete. In state after state, his bare-bones campaign organization simply failed to deliver. His narrow miss in Virginia was bad, but much worse was his narrow miss at the delegate-earning thresholds in other states. It often seemed as if his campaign was not setting its turnout targets properly.
Past presidential elections have been viewed in terms of “lanes” — where each candidate can be defined by what constituencies to which they appeal. For example, former Florida Sen. Jeb Bush was in the “establishment” lane, while former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was in the “social conservatism” lane, etc.
Rubio’s strategy put him in a lane where he could eventually overtake Bush and other establishment candidates, as well as broadening the lane to take over social conservatives from Huckabee and Cruz. But when Trump got in and executed Rubio’s earned media strategy differently and far more effectively than the Florida senator ever could, Rubio became roadkill in the Trump lane.
While Trump’s team is sobbing over losing delegates to Cruz in Colorado, the casino magnate is actually benefitting the most from the GOP’s arcane election rules, according to MSNBC’s Chief Legal Correspondent Ari Melber.
“Trump now leads the Republican field with 756 delegates — or 45 percent of all delegates awarded to date,” Melber wrote. “Yet he has won about 37 percent of all votes in the primaries, according to the NBC analysis, meaning Trump’s delegate support is greater than his actual support from voters.”
And that’s without the ground game or delegate operation that Cruz’s campaign has carefully developed. Instead of stomping and screaming about not earning delegates, Trump’s campaign needs to do the work required to earn them. His strategy of media appearances and name recognition has worked in some states — and it will continue to work in some others — but it certainly isn’t winning him friends (hello, 69 percent unfavorable rating) and it definitely won’t be enough to win him the general election.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side are putting in the work, it’s only Trump who has not. If he sincerely wants to be president, as he claims, he’s going to have to do the work.
Because the election isn’t over after the primary, it’s just beginning, and if Trump isn’t doing the work necessary to win the general, then he will have wasted everyone’s time and one perfectly good party’s nomination.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
