Ted Cruz is climbing the polls, building a formidable ground game in the early primary states and bringing in more campaign cash than most of his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination.
Yet Cruz is not a broadly popular man. The first-term Texas senator is not only disliked but loathed by Democrats, the media and the establishment of his own party.
A potentially bigger problem for Cruz is that he is eyed warily by some conservatives and GOP-leaning independents. Recent polling shows that even Cruz’s recent rise in the polls is a product of his solidifying support among “very conservative” voters rather than his ability to attract support among other constituencies.
The degree to which Cruz is disliked by so many begs the question: Can a man so adept at making enemies be elected president of the United States?
The media and Democrats hate Cruz for all the usual reasons they hate outspoken conservatives. But in less than four years in the Senate, Cruz has given Republicans numerous reasons to dislike him as well. He drove a wedge into his party over whether it would shut down the government. And it wasn’t just his actions, but his personal attacks as well. He likened to Neville Chamberlain those who didn’t agree with his approach to defunding Obamacare. He has attacked fellow Republicans by name, deriding even conservatives who disagree with him as sell-outs. His Senate colleagues don’t see him as a team player.
Cruz has created the impression that he places his own ambition ahead of the interests of his country, his party and even the conservative movement. As Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has said about Cruz, “[I]t’s not what he’s trying to accomplish or what he says he’s trying to accomplish that bothers people. It’s that he’s consistently sacrificed the mutual goals of many for his personal enhancement.”
Other prominent Republicans have put their feelings about Cruz more simply. “I just don’t like the guy,” George W. Bush said recently, capturing a sentiment that some Republicans share.
That Cruz is disliked by McConnell and Bush is seen as a badge of honor among some conservatives. Indeed, Cruz’s divisive, combative and confrontational style has made him a darling of the talk radio crowd and others who seem to measure a candidate’s worthiness by how much he is hated by the media and GOP establishment.
But Cruz seems to have a knack for alienating natural allies too. This was made clear when Cruz hijacked a conference devoted to drawing attention to the plight of Middle East Christians. Cruz was the keynote speaker at the inaugural In Defense of Christians summit in 2014. Instead of helping to raise awareness of persecuted Christians in the Middle East — who are undergoing what many have labeled genocide — Cruz used the appearance to demand his audience’s allegiance to Israel, then staged a walkout.
Cruz’s theatrics at the IDC summit may have won him some fans. But I know that they also won him some enemies among people who would otherwise be sympathetic to him and his candidacy.
The good news is, it wouldn’t be as difficult as it might seem for Cruz to repair the damage. He clearly has a lot of talent — intellectual, political, oratorical and more. It’s not too late to drop the demagoguery and try to engage in some real statesmanship.
A good first step would be to show a little humility, some vulnerability, maybe even admit that he is or was wrong once in a while. It is rumored that Cruz or his staff later apologized to IDC for his outburst. If that happened, and if he had made the apology public, it might have helped him win back some support, and perhaps even some new admirers.
A key litmus test for any prospective president is whether he or she can bring the country together with a message of hope and optimism. Ronald Reagan did it. So did Barack Obama, at least for a while. Cruz fails this test so far.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
