NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — Ted Cruz attacking Donald Trump for his “New York values” isn’t all that surprising, nor was it a spur of the moment retort.
The top two contenders for the Republican presidential nomination are competing aggressively for evangelicals and other socially conservative voters who are influential in the crucial Iowa caucuses. Cruz’s implicit charge is that the thrice-married, four-times bankrupted Trump lives his life just like all the other Manhattan liberals, and an obvious play to depress the reality television star’s support among heartland conservatives.
The swipe was straight out of the playbook of the Texas senator’s bulldog campaign manager, Missourian Jeff Roe. That means — along with most moves Cruz makes — that it was probably deliberately calibrated and carefully planned. In 2008, Roe produced a television spot for a client, Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., that painted Democratic challenger Kay Barnes as a social and fiscal liberal who was “pushing their San Francisco values.”
The phrase “Barnes’ San Francisco values” overlays the screen as the spot concludes.
Don’t expect Cruz to drop the “New York values” charge, or back away from a fight with Trump, Thursday evening in South Carolina, when the top seven GOP presidential contenders will debate in prime time on the Fox Business Network, sources familiar with the senator’s debate strategy told the Washington Examiner.
Until this week, the feisty former litigator, 45, had assiduously avoided confrontation with the 69-year-old celebrity real estate mogul. Strategically, targeting Trump didn’t serve Cruz’s plans to consolidate all factions of the conservative base — at least as long as the New Yorker was leaving him alone. Trump’s trolling about Cruz’s citizenship, and other direct attacks, changed the senator’s calculus; so has the calendar.
With the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses less than three weeks away and Cruz’s image established, his campaign views this period of the primary contest as the time to draw sharp contrasts with other candidates. That includes Trump, who is running neck and neck with Cruz in the Hawkeye State. Trump typically plays nice with his opponents in debates, and leaves his attacks for the campaign trail. That might not be enough to keep Cruz at bay, as was the case in past debates.
The Cruz campaign believes the Texan’s key advantage over Trump, one they plan to highlight, is that he has political and philosophical “guiding principles” that form his decisions. It’s not just voting record or past life experience that matter. In a view often expressed by conservative activists, his team argues that Republican voters want to feel comfortable that a candidate’s worldview and governance wouldn’t change when, as president, they are inevitably faced with unforeseen circumstances.
“Voters are going to want to know: What are Trump’s guiding principles?” a Cruz supporter said. It’s a rhetorical question, in that team Cruz has already determined that this is a competition they will win against a candidate who appears to have no core ideology and has supported many Democratic and liberal policies. That’s where Cruz’s hit on Trump for embodying New York values factors in.
Cruz leveled the charge after Trump began asserting that the senator was constitutionally ineligible to serve as president since he was born in Canada (most scholars say Cruz being born to a mother who was a natural-born citizen makes him natural-born, and thus, eligible.) If the values charge hasn’t rattled Trump, it’s certainly piqued his ire. In an interview Wednesday, he responded by bringing up the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“When you want to knock New York, you’ve got to go through me,” Trump said Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg Politics. “New York is an amazing place with amazing people,” he said, conjuring up images of New York on 9/11 and how the city rebounded.
Cruz and his campaign don’t plan to let up on this line of attack, however. They have determind that these sorts of hits, as opposed to criticism of Trump’s personality, a la Jeb Bush’s new ad in which he calls Trump a “jerk,” will ultimately turns the tables on him. This approach neatly encapsulates how they plan to beat him in the race for Midwestern Iowa Republicans.
