What Went Down In The Indiana Primary

In the end, Cruz ran a pretty good campaign — in a field of 17 candidates, the second-place candidate probably deserves some credit. But he was also, in his own way, just as much a factional candidate as Trump, instead of someone who was able to unite or interested in uniting the Republican Party. It’s easy to look back now and say that Trump had a lock on the race all along, but we know that nomination races are fairly path-dependent — small things can make a big difference. So, yes, I’m an unforgivable Marco Rubio fanboy who wonders what would have been if Rubio had a better debate in New Hampshire, knocked Kasich out, won a few more states on Super Tuesday and emerged as Trump’s main opposition instead of Cruz. To some extent, Rubio would have combined Cruz’s and Kasich’s strengths, while also having more support from party elites, potentially making him more of a consensus choice as the rest of the field consolidated.

We often talk about the “base” of the Republican primary. I don’t know what the base exactly is, but I’ve often heard it described as the ideological base (i.e., very conservative voters). Well, that base is not in love with Trump. Even as he wins easily in Indiana, he’s losing self-described very conservative Republican primary voters 54 percent to 41 percent. Moreover, Trump is losing those who attend church at least once a week 63 percent to 28 percent. It’ll be interesting to see how these very conservative and very religious voters react to Trump’s nomination. Cruz himself gave them little direction in his speech this evening.

We’ve watched a lot of Republican candidates go down this year. But Ted Cruz’s speech feels the most like a wrap-up of the Reagan era. He’s talking about – and to – the conservative movement. His speech referenced Reagan and the Cold War. And then it pivoted to a discussion of terrorism and ISIS and health care and “race wars.” In other words, it’s not 1988 anymore, a year when the Republican Party nominated a sitting vice president for the first time in almost 30 years, and won a third term in the White House for the first time since Herbert Hoover’s election in 1928. The issues are new ones, and the terms of debate have changed. I doubt that’s what Cruz had in mind, but that’s how it sounded to me.