Conservatives were happy when three freshman senators who defeated establishment candidates in Republican primaries —Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul — announced for president last year. Now that two of the three are well-positioned for the primaries and Cruz is leading in Iowa, they should be ecstatic.
But there is increasing unease in conservative circles that the attacks they have been launching against one another will damage all three of them to the benefit of other, less conservative candidates. Cruz and Rubio in particular have started hitting each other as they both have risen in the polls, emphasizing what in the past would have seemed like minor ideological and tactical differences.
Because Rubio is also vying for establishment support, he is taking at least as much friendly fire from candidates like Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, who are aiming at moderate voters in New Hampshire. But in an anti-establishment year, it’s shots from the Right on Rubio’s immigration record that could do the most damage. “It could be a bloodbath,” complained one Washington conservative activist.
Paul is significantly behind both candidates in state and national polling. But he has devoted a lot of his time on the stump and social media to arguing that Rubio’s approach to immigration, defense spending and surveillance aren’t really conservative. “Marco, Marco, Marco,” was his plaintive debate cry. “How is this conservative?”
More recently, Paul has jabbed at Cruz as the Texas senator swipes the Kentucky lawmaker’s libertarian base. Paul has accused his erstwhile ally of trying to have it “both ways” on immigration, surveillance and foreign policy. When Donald Trump started raising “birther” questions about Cruz’s constitutional eligibility for the presidency — Cruz was born in Canada to an American citizen mother — Paul quipped that his Senate colleague was qualified to be Canadian prime minister.
That last bit is an example of what has some movement conservatives concerned. Club for Growth President David McIntosh, a former Republican congressman, has publicly argued the three senators should go after Trump rather than each other. “I think they are all good leaders so it pains me to see them attack each other,” he said. “It’s like they are fighting to come in second.”
Cruz has especially been criticized for being accommodating of Trump, who is a populist and nationalist without much of a record on free-market issues. As Trump has begun implying that Cruz might not be a natural born citizen, while insisting that he’s just raising questions about what the Democrats will do if the Texan is nominated, the dynamic between the two has changed slightly. Cruz has joked Trump has “jumped the shark” and that he wouldn’t take the billionaire’s legal advice.
But none of that is as strong as some of Cruz’s criticisms of Rubio. Cruz has never said that Trump occupies the “moderate lane” of the Republican primaries, as he has said of Rubio. And as Trump has started saying Cruz is actually weak on immigration and amnesty, Cruz has mostly debated Rubio on these issues, highlighting the Gang of Eight immigration bill.
Several conservative activists told the Washington Examiner they felt conflicted about the state of the Republican race. On the one hand, they see a clearer path than ever before for one of “their own” to bypass Trump in the primaries. But they also see more conservative conflict, with the senators they had hoped would take the lead being the most involved in partisan warfare.
They don’t want the rising conservative stars of 2010 and 2012 to take each other out in 2016.
