How awful is Ted Cruz? He's so awful, he's the kind of guy who’s still sticking to the plan he made as a teenager—when he was hanging out with a libertarian youth group called the Constitutional Corroborators—to become president. Seriously, the past 30 years of life hasn't changed his world view or his ambitions. He's not going to let the fact that everybody who knows him—really, everybody, especially high-level Republican political operatives—finds him loathsome and repulsive stop him. No, in fact having so many people hate him is his path to victory.
"You know," the Texas senator said, eyebrows tented plaintively, black hair neatly parted on the left, "when we launched this campaign, the New York Times promptly opined, 'Cruz cannot win, because the Washington elites despise him.'" He paused for effect, exactly the same way he had paused for effect the previous night in Whitefield, exactly the same way he would pause for effect the next morning in Exeter. Then he delivered the punch line: "I kind of thought that was the whole point of the campaign!" […]
The audience laughed and cheered Cruz's joke, which he also laughed at, lips stretched thin over perfect teeth, his whole body shaking silently. "Listen," he continued, "if you think things in Washington are doing great and we need to keep heading in the same basic direction—just kind of fiddle around the edges—then I ain't your guy. On the other hand, if you think Washington is fundamentally broken, that there is a bipartisan coalition of career politicians in both parties that get in bed with lobbyists and special interests and grow and grow and grow government, and we need to take power out of Washington"—at this, he crouched and reached forward as if to physically snatch something from an unseen foe—"and back to We the People"—leaped up and hurled his clenched fist backward—"that is what this campaign is all about!"
This kind of routine, which Cruz delivers with choreographed precision at every campaign stop, makes the D.C. elites gnash their teeth. It seems so phony, so theatrical, so contrived. But here on the campaign trail, the people do not hate Ted Cruz at all. Here, they love him.
It's snake oil, pure and simple. But we've already seen how easy it is for the tea party types to be fooled. After all, they still think they're a pure movement, not realizing they're the astroturf dupes of the Koch brothers and other big monied interests. Cruz is dreamy to them, promising them that he shares their frustration over their inability to turn their tantrums into actual results, that their radical minority dreams can't all come true. Put him in, he tells them, and he'll railroad over all opposition, just like he's been doing since he went to Congress. (Never mind that he's accomplished exactly nothing, besides forcing a government shutdown that quickly went sour for his side.)
By making this appeal, Cruz figures he can get three of the four wings of the Republican party—tea partiers, evangelicals, and libertarians—and not have to worry about the fourth, the moderate establishment. That could conceivably secure him the nomination, but his problem is the rest of the country does not look or vote like Iowa Republicans. Much of the rest of the country is actually quite repulsed by him, including most of the Republican party. And they love talking about how much they hate him. Here's a former George W. Bush aide who spills his guts to David Corn and Tim Murphy of Mother Jones: Cruz is so hated among the former Bush folks, "it would be a big quandary even if it's Cruz versus Hillary Clinton. That's how much they cannot stand him."
Much of his own party is extremely repulsed by him. He could actually be the first Republican nominee to secure the opposition of most of his party. His getting the nomination could actually spur establishment Republicans to beg Trump to run as an independent. They really do hate Cruz that much.