When your party's lead candidate has broadly insulted people of color, promised mass deportation, and pledged a federal database and a ban on Muslims, it makes a guy who's alienated all of his Senate colleagues, inspired a deeply unpopular government shutdown, and is almost universally loathed by those who know him—start to look pretty grand! Bloomberg reports:
Rory Cooper, a Republican strategist in the "anybody but Trump" camp, indicated that Cruz would be preferable to the blustery Trump.
"I would gladly vote for whoever is polling last in the latest poll before voting for Donald Trump," Cooper, a former communications director for Eric Cantor wrote in an e-mail. "This is about the long term health of the Republican party and conservatism, and Trump is the only existential threat to either."
Ed Rogers, a Republican lobbyist and veteran strategist, also prefers Cruz to Trump.
"He is a real Republican," Rogers wrote in an e-mail. "Proven commitment to conservative principles. Not irrational or an egomaniac."
It's an interesting turn of events given the "Anyone but Ted Cruz" New York Times piece just a couple of weeks ago.
The political strategist Matthew Dowd, who worked for Bush back then, tweeted that “if truth serum was given to the staff of the 2000 Bush campaign,” an enormous percentage of them “would vote for Trump over Cruz.”
Heh. Rock, meet hard place.